Mathias only sees his clones as living on if they embody him. If Mathias cannot recognize the clone he forces himself to scrap it. Even so, he understands that no two things can be completely identical.

There are times where even he looks at his memories and asks, "Would I have done the same as the past me?"

But ultimately, since Mathias Calypses has been an iteration for most of his time as a sorcerer, he tends not to think about these things very often. It's just a part of life for him.

Mathias looked at the soul core in hand, channeling aether into his palm he cast a simple yet effective sorcery, Astris Fulo

A beam of starlight easily pierced the Ascetic's head and he died, just like that. No more tricks, no flashy complicated sorceries, just the most basic offensive sorcery a sorcerer can feasibly produce: A simple beam of light.

Without a soul core, a sorcerer cannot use aether, since they don't have aether. Normally when a soul core is removed, it's like taking someone's brain out of their skull. Mortals and Initiates would collapse instantly. Adepts, if it's an action they are extremely familiar with, the body becomes capable of doing it without the core, such as walking in a straight line.

When it comes to Ascetics, their body can move and think consciously without their soul. It is thought that the reason for this is because of an Ascetic soul's greater imprint on the body. Although this consciousness will continuously fade and wear off, completely growing still after 20 minutes.

Ascetics, if their soul core is stolen, can use this brief intelligence to steal back their soul core and reincorporate it into their bodies, saving themselves. If another wishes to save them, up to 10 minutes after the Ascetic loses consciousness, implanting the core would still save them.

Although, after 10 minutes this becomes impossible and their bodies would never be able to reincorporate it. You also can't reincorporate cores into mortals and initiates, once their core is ripped from them their bodies can never accept it again.

The case with Adepts is different, once a core is ripped you have 10 seconds of certified success to incorporate their core back into them, after that you can still try to incorporate their core within 5 minutes but that would rely on the situation and a set of invisible conditions. Beyond 5 minutes such a procedure becomes absolutely impossible.

If revival of the soul belonging to the soul core is still wished for, a sorcerer can construct a modified real body double of the person in question and give it the soul core instead of an artificial consciousness.

The prerequisite for this is that the soul in question wasn't struck with a sorcery that counters this type of resurrection and it hasn't been too long since death.

The length of time before the soul truly dies depends on the level of sorcery they possessed, for mortals it's half a day, for initiates it's 3 days, for Adepts it's 2 and a half weeks and for Ascetics it's three years.

Mathias Calypses, who held the Ascetic's core, smiled slightly. He was not planning on using the Ascetic's soul core to make him into a golem that fought for him. Although Mathias could have done that, if he was holding an Apostle's core instead he might have even done so.

Nor was he planning to make it into a domain artifact to fortify the area against the other Ascetics in the surrounding Hua forest.

Instead, he was planning on literally absorbing the core and using it to ascend to an Ascetic.

This was only possible because Mathias Calypses had already accomplished all the prerequisites required for ascension. As mentioned before, to ascend to a higher level of sorcery a sorcerer needs to achieve both gradual and explosive progress.

Gradual progress is achieved by simply saturating the soul core with aether, the main issue sorcerers run into with this gradual progress is the sheer amount of aether required to achieve this gradual progress.

Explosive progress on the other hand, is gained by achieving a feat so great that the universe itself deems you of a higher level than you are. If you add the ridiculous amount of aether required to the feat the soul undergoes automatic ascension.

Feats in this case can either be something completely surpassing the limits of your stage or a series of feats that reach the extreme upper limits of your stage. Mathias, despite the fact that he survived the cataclysm caused by a suspected Evangelist that killed a God, didn't satisfy the condition of 'completely surpassing the limits of your stage'.

Only after the death of the Ascetic had he sensed that his soul had completed the necessary feats required for ascension. He did not know how he sensed this.

The aether required for the ascension of Ascetic is the same as an Ascetic. Mathias Calypses was holding the core for an Ascetic. He was slowly draining the aether with Energia Furari. From the slow leeching of the mass amount of aether, Mathias had discerned that it would probably take multiple days to fully accommodate the energy.

He also realized that with the Ascetic gone there was a real possibility of the other Ascetics in the Hua forest to come and raid this compound. Mathias considered fending them off impossible. At first he contemplated running away.

But he realized he couldn't do that while carrying this massive energy ball which would attract those cultivators.

Mathias wasn't confident in his ability to escape while carrying the Ascetic's soul. Astris sorcery may be the best at escaping out of all the schools but as an Adept against multiple Ascetics, that tidbit of trivia matters little.

So he instead opted to fool them for just a few days.

Calling up his clones from underneath the rock below, Mathias Calypses infused them with aether directly from the Ascetic's soul, intending to turn those illusory clones into a sort of key.

The reason why he had to use aether directly from the Ascetic's soul was because when sorcerers absorb aether into their soul they change its properties. This was part of the reason why draining the Ascetic's soul was taking so long.

But since the Ascetic was a Solaris sorcerer and Mathias was an Astris sorcerer it didn't take as long as it could have. This was due to the interconnected nature of the sun and stars.

If Mathias instead was draining the soul of an Astris sorcerer this doesn't mean that he's able to accommodate all the energy instantly. He would still have to drain it slowly from the soul core and remove the aether's previous identity while instilling his soul's identity into the energy.

It was for this reason he had to give his illusory clone the aether before he ripped it of its original identity.

Receiving the aether directly from the Ascetic's soul core, the illusory clones headed down below the rock by utilizing the same method as before.

Approaching the golden barrier, one of the clones began to fuse with it; if this clone had a consciousness, it would have screamed in pain. This action established a link between the Mathias Calypses' aether and the aether inside of the barrier.

Since the Ascetic was of a higher realm than Mathias he couldn't forcefully commandeer control of this golden barrier like he previously did to the elders' barrier. He needed to opt for a more gentle approach of slowly convincing the barrier of his authority.

If at all possible, he wished to conserve this barrier and use it for himself in case the surrounding Ascetics decided to push into the complex before he assumed they would.

This technique of commandeering by convincing could only be used by Mathias due to the similarities between Astris and Solaris. If he was trying to convince a barrier made by a Geo Ascetic it wouldn't work, even if he did have the soul core in hand.

As he began monitoring the progress on convincing the barrier, Mathias realized that it was going to take too long, 4 days to be exact. So he immediately changed his plan, instead of trying to commandeer control of the barrier and allow himself to phase through it, he would fuse his clones through the barrier while forgetting about convincing it. This would cause the clone to fully be integrated into the barrier and pass through it.

The clone, which would now be on the other side of the barrier, would change its form into a structure that Mathias Calypses could teleport to easily.

Mathias couldn't teleport into the barrier originally but he felt that with a teleport beacon inside the barrier, such an act wouldn't be so impossible anymore.

7 hours later, the clone completely phased through the barrier. Mathias had to supply it with more aether from the core occasionally, since the barrier would pull in the Solaris aether embedded into the clone at an ever-increasing rate.

Now inside the confines of the golden barrier, the clone transfigured itself into an Astris beacon designed with the sole purpose of teleporting Mathias Calypses to it. It could do this because Mathias had already embedded the sorcery required.

Mathias then looked down at the ground, with his aether-infused eyes he could barely discern the clone's relative position. He then began to chant various incantations of sorcery in preparation for the teleportation. These sorceries included ones that would teleport him out of danger if this place was a trap.

It took a full five minutes before Mathias Calypses was ready to teleport. Activating the sorcery, he found himself in a place he didn't really expect.

The inside of the barrier reeked with death and desolation. The gray walls pervaded his soul and a certain stench came from the black upper console where a coffin laid.

Approaching this coffin, Mathias had a disheartening thought, Please don't let this be a sentimental thing.

Mathias himself had wished for a cool weapon or something, seeing a coffin made him suspect that the Ascetic was guarding it for purely emotional reasons.

Moving the coffin with a simple spell, he looked at the rotting corpse, he could tell by the energy that it was giving off that it was a mortal's corpse.

A certain cliched scene then materialized inside Mathias Calypses' mind.

Shaking his head in annoyance and slight disgust, he turned to his left to look at a leather-bound notebook.

Thinking he knew exactly what type of story was described in the notebook he chose to read it anyways. He, of course, knew what kind of lunatics write in notebooks around rotting corpses so he opted to use sorcery to flip the pages.

It read, My near niece how I have failed you so-

Sensing the story, Mathias decided to flip to a more interesting part.

By offering all the souls of the Hua forest to a grand demon, you shall be revived once more!

Mathias contemplated this term, he believed it might either be the mythological creature from his storybooks or a high-level sorcerer. He was banking on the second option.

He didn't believe that the writer, who he assumed was the Ascetic's plan to work. From what Mathias was reading he believed that the plan entailed a mass offering of aether to a high-level sorcerer.

From Mathias' knowledge, complete resurrection of the soul is impossible beyond a certain point. Copies of them can be made, but that probably wouldn't suffice for the author of this notebook.

Also, the highest level sorcerer who would accept that mass of aether to do something had to be an Apostle, the level above Ascetic. Aether of that amount is pennies to a Sage, nevertheless an Evangelist or God.

To his knowledge Apostles, while being unrealistically stronger than Ascetics, are not capable of breaking the absolute principles. A precondition Mathias discerned as being necessary to achieve such an impossible feat.

Julien Watson, the Alchemist of Law, once told Mathias Calypses that he could in fact break the absolute principles. Although he never did so.

Sighing, Mathias Calypses, using the excess aether at his disposal began the construction of multiple real body doubles.

Seven of them were of himself. He planned to place them in stasis and then put them away in appropriate places, having them wake when he doesn't send a signal to them in three days. The reason he opted to do this rather than when he died was because if he was placed in an eternally sleeping state they would be unable to be deactivated from the stasis.

The other 28 body doubles were of the clansmen Mathias had killed, which he had infused with Solaris aether from the Ascetic's soul core.

Two days later,

The bright sun shone on the Hua Tai clan. Their members were in the pavilion training, brandishing their new qi techniques.

The elders were having a meeting on political jargon and appropriate responses. Although their clan leader was nowhere to be seen.

A man approached the walls of the clan from the village and one of the clansmen in the courtyard pavilion went to meet him.

He spoke of relations and righteousness. Asking about finding a missing clan member. The Hua Tai clansman spoke back to him with a delighted smile on his face, he wholeheartedly promised to find the missing man.

The Hua Tai clansmen went to find him and soon did, bringing the distraught man to tears, it was truly a miracle.

Upon arriving back to his village the formerly missing man had a delighted smile on his face. They welcomed him back in open arms and he soon played with the younger disciples, showing off that blissful grin.

A few peaceful days passed and eventually one of the young disciples also had a delighted smile.

Despite tensions between the villages, certain clansmen had an extremely pleased look, it made others wonder what they were so happy about and before they knew it, the corners of their mouth also lifted up in a delighted smile.

Their happiness was so pure and wonderful that it was contagious.

A certain clan leader was pleased with how happy everyone was now for some reason, it made him feel like he was doing an amazing job. Although even with those feelings, he never felt as happy as they looked.

Despite this, he still enjoyed the wondrous atmosphere and bathed in the small security it brought.

Deep below the earth in a dreary sanctum of grey, a beautiful blue haired boy started to laugh dangerously. It seemed that doing all of this was too much for Mathias Calypses' sanity, he felt it all ludicrous, all ridiculous. He felt feelings of elation but also felt feelings of terror and slight despair with himself.

He quickly whispered, "Julien must have had so much fun."