Sending some of his spiritual energy into the pseudo soul fragment, Marcus attempted to activated it and make it transmit a signal back to tis source.
Admittedly he had never done something like this and did not know if it was even possible for him to follow the signal to its source, but he figured he might as well try.
'Come on, there has to be some sort of trigger to make the thing transmit.' He thought as he sent his spiritual energy into the thing.
Unfortunately, no matter what he tried it did not seem he could get it to work, and instead as a last resort tried flooding it with energy until it popped.
The pseudo soul fragment already had the ability to slowly siphon off spiritual energy from whoever it infected, so all he had to do was overload it and see if that triggered any sort of response.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtBy some miracle Marcus' reckless plan actually worked and right before the pseudo soul fragment burst, it sent out a signal.
Marcus could only surmise that it did this when it realized it was about to be destroyed so that whatever entity was collecting the data would not lose anything and that this had not happened with the one that infected him because he destroyed it too quickly for it to notice when he used his Soul Devour unique skill.
Still, it was not like he had a computer to do any processing for him and while some sort of signal using spiritual energy was sent out, all he was able to get was a vague direction of where it was headed.
'It seems to be headed towards the southeast from what I could tell. But I have no idea how far it went. For all I know it could be a thousand kilometers from here. I suppose all I can do for the moment is wait and see if the perpetrator will come to me if they noticed what I just did.' Marcus thought after the pseudo soul fragment exploded.
He had managed to get the surveillance device to send out a signal, but it was not something continuous and was only a single burst. He had no way to really follow it to its source.
For the next twenty minutes Marcus simply stood in his room waiting for something to happen, yet all remained quiet.
Having received no response he could only gather that either the entity behind these pseudo soul fragments had either not noticed what he had done or decided it was not worth intervening in.
It was always possible that they were some type of evil spirit and could tell that Marcus was very dangerous to them.
With a sigh he accepted that he was not going to get any other clues and connected to Mrazivý with his telepathy.
'Mraz, it sort of worked, but it does not seem we are going to find the mastermind behind this plot easily. Come back up and I will tell you what little I was able to find out.'
In just a minute Mrazivý had rushed back to the room, and after making sure Marcus was fine, she listened to his explanation.
"That is really all you got? They are somewhere southeast of here. That barely narrows it down at all." Mrazivý said with a less than ecstatic expression.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmShe had been hoping that Marcus would be able to pinpoint the location of the one spreading these soul attaching surveillance devices and then they could go and bust down their door.
"I mean we still have other clues we can follow. We got infected while staying here so I bet that plenty of other people have been as well. You can rip out these things from other people and we can keep following the signals until we find the place." Mrazivý said excitedly, thinking she had come up with a good idea.
Sadly, Marcus could only shake his head at this plan.
"It might work, but I would likely leave anyone else with a badly damaged soul or even just outright kill them. I was able to remove the one attached to your soul with barely causing any damage because you fully trust me and have an incredibly powerful soul that is close in power to mine. I might accidentally rip someone's soul in half if they are significantly weaker than me and trying to fight back. It is far more delicate a procedure to remove a foreign object attached to a soul than simply taking their body over. I am also not receiving any assistance from the system since what I am doing is not any sort of power it recognizes. We should save this method as a true last resort."
After hearing Marcus' explanation Mrazivý could only shrug her shoulders and give up on her suggestion.
Even if it worked, there would be little point if they had to leave a mountain of dead or crippled people in their wake.
The two of them continued to rack their minds, until Mrazivý came up with another plan. One that she was more confident in.
"What if we just found the source? These pseudo soul fragments are not being put into people's drinks from out of nowhere. They need to intentionally be put there. We do not know whether there is someone or many people are consciously adding them or if perhaps they are doing it unknowingly, but there should still be a large supply somewhere on the resort. We may even be able to find more if we simply order some more drinks."
"That sounds like a good place to start. This whole place might be a little fishy as well. I am certain that an otherwolrder was at least somewhat involved in the creation of this place. It is possible that the entire resort was created in the first place just to infect as many rich and powerful people as possible. Plenty of high-ranking nobles and wealthy merchants visit this resort every year. With so many people infected, the entity that created these pseudo soul fragments likely has the best information network on the planet. Without anyone even knowing they are being spied on."