Kayn was slowly but surely realizing that he was nothing but a frog in the well when it came to understanding the uses of the All-Seeing Eye essence his soul absorbed. It wasn't merely a party trick that changed the color of his eyes slightly, or something to merely help him understanding things better.
The essence he took into his soul had changed him intrinsically, much like the Sins and Virtues were doing. Odin didn't tell him at the time, but the essence he obtained would allow Kayn to reach even Odin's own power of the All-Seeing Eyes if Kayn put the effort into learning about them.
To truly master them, to the extent Odin was granted right off the bat, Kayn would most likely need to spend millions of years examining the ins and outs of what he could do. The essence of the All-Seeing Eyes wouldn't just affect his vision, but his being as a whole. The essence could potentially be incorporated into everything he did if he could figure out how to.
However, with the discovery that Kayn had just made, his understanding to the depths of the All-Seeing Eyes was finally beginning to show itself to him. With this, he was just barely scratching the surface of actually utilizing the essence his soul absorbed.
If he thought about it before, he wasn't even using the All-Seeing Eyes as a party trick even. He was merely a child playing with a toy that wasn't supposed to be treated like a children's toy. But today, just now, he finally felt that he was taking a step in the right direction.
It came to him when he was examining the mana cores and former phylacteries of the two liches. He tried using all his abilities on them, but he couldn't figure out a good way to track them before he actually killed the lich's physical form.
He utilized every type of sense he had access to, even going back to trying to use specific Enhanced Senses which he began to develop before he learned about Mana Sense. Then it struck him, the All-Seeing Eyes were meant to help him see all things as a basic function of the essence itself.
If he couldn't track down the phylacteries with his eyes or his mana sense, why not try to track them by seeing through his mana sense?
The All-Seeing Eyes allowed him to see and observe the phylacteries when he spotted them, but if he wasn't seeing it in person or watching the soul return to its home, nothing was revealed to him. So why not incorporate the All-Seeing aspect into his Mana Sense?
If he could not just observe his surroundings with Mana Sense, but truly see what he was looking for, he theorized that he would be able to find the phylacteries within their hiding spots before having to confront the lich.
The only issue Kayn had with this theory was that he had no way to test it until he arrived at the next target area. The two phylacteries in his possession were "dead" and only their aspect as mana cores remained. He would need to utilize what he remembered from tracking them down the first time in order to incorporate what he was looking for into his Mana Sense.
If he failed with what he was trying to do, he would probably just give up on killing the two remaining targets that Yelena asked him to take care of as he felt it would be using far too much of his time. He told Talaro that he would get back to them within a few weeks, but at this rate, it would take him a few months.
He could spare a few months to get the cores he needed, but he didn't want to let Talaro and the remainder of the survivors believe he abandoned them. He thought that maybe if he was acting within the city, they would somehow realize that he hadn't abandoned them, it was just that he took longer to take the escapees to safety and return.
Not wanting to get ahead of himself and give up before he even tried, Kayn remained on the ground in order to keep Shadow's Embrace active as he sped off in the direction of the next lich. Each 6th stage individual had taken control thousands of kilometers of land. The Lavanth continent was massive, and Kayn could only imagine how large Talgonoth as a planet truly was.
He had to travel through a couple other areas that were being watched by larger groups of 5th stagers, but eventually he arrived at the next region. Once he arrived, he immediately began fusing the All-Seeing Eyes essence into his Mana Sense as he extended it out as far as he could manage.
He couldn't completely cover the region unfortunately, so he would need to travel around the territory in order to see if his theory was correct and if he could find a lich phylactery this way. Pulling upon his experience and memories of tracking down the previous two phylacteries, he began his exploration.
Yelena had mentioned that she killed this particular lich several times over the last few years, but he was never gone for long. His specialty laid within mass production of undead and overwhelming his enemies with numbers. Kayn understood what she meant after he entered the zone with his Mana Sense active, there were undead everywhere.
Millions of undead were spread out all throughout the region in clusters of smaller groups of anywhere between 10 to 50 thousand. Then in the very center of the region, was a grotesque monolith composed purely of the living dead. In the very middle of this monolith, Kayn sensed the presence of the lich.
As the lich was hiding within a solid building created of undead, Kayn had no chance to assassinate him and follow his soul. He thought about using a massive Light of Purgatory, but even then, he didn't know if he had enough mana to purge that entire building and the lich inside. It was absolutely insane to him that there was a possibility that he didn't have enough mana to do something, but that was one of the troubles of going after liches and why most didn't.
Yelena was able to get in and assassinate the lich a few times before, but that was it. She wasn't able to track down the phylactery as she didn't have a method to do so. She also struggled to get away each time and ran dangerously close to failing. Once she killed the lich's body, wave after wave of undead would charge to her location.
Finding the lich and learning his unique mana and soul signature were extremely helpful and the good news was that Kayn thought he would be able to use them to better look for the phylactery. But there wasn't only good news as he also discovered how this particular lich maintained such a gigantic army.
He wasn't just turning formerly alive people into the undead, no his atrocities didn't stop there. Somehow, he was breeding them with living females. Kayn discovered entire floors dedicated to the horrific act within the monolith.
Kayn had a pretty tough stomach, but viewing a "birth" through his Mana Sense made even him nauseous. Nothing came out whole, only bits of flesh and bone. However, it would soon form into small undead beings that would be taken to feast on…something, Kayn couldn't tell what it was they were eating at this point.
The women looked like they were beginning to turn undead themselves, but if they remained living and had a functioning reproductive system, they were taken back to the breeding floor from the birthing floor. That was the floor Kayn discovered the lich on. Apparently, he had to personally "perform" to ensure that what came out was what he desired.
Kayn only spent around an hour examining the place before he had a basic understanding. Along with the other discoveries, he estimated the entire process would take a day or two. After having the process done to them too many times, the women would eventually become undead themselves and the lich would enslave them.
Kayn was so disgusted by everything happening within that he was strongly considering just annihilating the entire place without finding the phylactery first. He could always find it later. This lich's name wasn't listed in Yelena's notes, only that he was a lich, but Kayn had no desire to learn it.
Just as he made up his mind to destroy the place, consequences be damned, his Mana Sense focused in on the young woman the lich was now approaching. She seemed untainted as of yet and was resisting with all of her might to get free of her bonds, in opposite to the other women who blankly stared into space as if their minds were already long gone.
It wouldn't be worth it to risk charging into the monolith just to save one woman when he could obliterate the place instead. He would feel guilty about killing an innocent, but at least she would be freed from the torture she was about to endure.
The mana was already starting to flow through Kayn's body as he raised his hand, but then he dropped it as something about that young woman bothered him.
She seemed familiar, with the All-Seeing essence applied to his Mana Sense, even though it wasn't perfect, he could see what the woman looked like, vaguely anyway.
While Kayn had interacted with a lot of people during his days as a professor, this woman looked too young to have been one of his former students. By his estimates, she was around 18 or 19 based on the feedback he received from his Mana Sense.
Risking his Shadow's Embrace spell falling off, he placed his hand to the monolith and used a resonance sensing spell imbued with the All-Seeing Eyes to see if he could get a better look at the woman. He wanted to figure out why she gave his Mana Sense such a familiar feeling.
The lich was still preparing within her space and hadn't started anything yet, so Kayn was able to get a decent look at the woman. She wasn't a stunning beauty or anything, but she could be considered cute. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a small nose, and a birth mark that looked to be a burn scar above her collar bone.
Now Kayn remembered where he met this girl. Many years ago, during his first contracts with the Black Hand Society, he saved a small girl and killed her father. She had burn marks on half of her body, and he healed all of them. Kayn thought he needed to heal her more at the time due to the odd birth mark near her neck, but when he noticed it wasn't something he could heal, he let it be.
Yes, this was the girl that he brought back to Charlotte and sponsored her while she was at the orphanage. How she ended all the way out here with this lich, Kayn didn't know.
Now he had doubts about his plan. He wasn't attached to her or anything, but he had checked in on her progress occasionally during the time after he rescued her, at least until he ended up on Earth. Maybe when the inner ring was being attacked around 3 years ago, the citizens tried to escape and she succeeded, at least until recently.
Sighing as he was about to do something very stupid, and he knew it, he changed his plan of attack. Before that lich could lay a single finger on her, he was going to get her out of there.
There was no entrance to the monolith, and Kayn wasn't about to wait for one to open up.
He made his own.