Banishing a being to the spirit realm didnāt just mean that they would be thrown inside and forgotten.
It meant that they would be made a part of the spirit realm itself!
King Allen forced them all to sign a life and death contract with the very ālawsā of the āspirit realmā itself!
As long as those ālawsā of the āspirit realmā bind them, they canāt physically get out of the spirit realm; at most, they can only be summoned in the form of spirit beasts like other spirit beasts.
This was also one of the main reasons why the shadow dragon king was waiting for King Allen to come back and free him and his kin from this cursed contract of eternal suffering.
Without having that cursed contract broken, the ālawsā of the āspirit realmā were never going to let them escape out of it.
The same rule applies to Elisia Mistilteinnās soul fragments; they belong to the spirit realm and canāt be taken out with normal means.
But if Rio succeeds in merging those fragments, he will technically create a ānew creature,ā a new life that will not be bound to the spirit realm.
After all, to the spirit realm, Elisia Mistilteinn is dead; whatever is created from those dead soul fragments would be a āNew Lifeā created from older remains of a being.
...
"Letās begin..."
Without wasting any more time, Rio made his sword float in the air and let Ellieās shattered soul orb circle around it.
This way, the soul energy Rio had collected and stored in his sword for the past week would be easily administered into Ellieās soul using Rioās sword intent.
Once the first procedure was stabilized and the soul fragments had absorbed enough soul energy to become strengthened, Rio used his soul manipulation to the maximum precision possible and started solving the āPuzzle.ā
Just like how a picture puzzle is solved slowly by putting one piece after another in the right place, Rio had to do the same.
Using extremely precise sword intent control and soul manipulation, Rio focused his entire mind on that task and slowly fused one soul fragment with the other one.
What Rio was doing was at least a thousand times more complex and riskier than a brain or heart surgery.
There are no certainties, even with immense mastery and repeated experiments.
The possibilities of succeeding in this task were below 0.1%, and just a single miscalculation or just a small spatial or soul fluctuation deviation can ruin it all.
Rio only dared to do this kind of thing because he had no other choice left.
He had promised that he would bring Liam and Ellie back at any cost, but Elisia died, and Rio canāt let the same thing that happened to Zach back then happen to Ellie.
This was the final chance to bring Ellie back to life, and if it failed, there would be no other possibilities left to think of.
This precise surgical procedure was not only taxing for Rio but also for those soul fragments too.
Rio had seen many monsters in the spirit realm who were suffering horribly because two or more souls were stuffed in their body.
And because those souls were actively colliding and repelling each other, they were constantly causing unimaginable, soul-shattering pain to each other every single second!
If not for miasma, they wouldnāt even have been able to stay stable for long and would have killed each other in just a few days with that level of damage and repulsion!
Although Ellieās soul fragments were highly compatible with each other, any small mishap would end up in them damaging each other and will inflict unbearable pain on that dead soul of Ellie.
Ellie was a friend, and Rio didnāt want to inflict that kind of pain on her, and he didnāt want her to suffer that horrible soul damage that all the monsters inside the spirit realm were suffering!
That is why he had to do everything perfectly and with utmost precision.
The need for such precision became the reason why it took Rio several hours just to fuse the first two fragments properly!
After Rio succeeded in the first āperfectā fusion, his skill proficiency increased tremendously, and the next fusion attempts became much easier and consumed less and less time each time.
It took Rio an entire day just to finally assemble 1/4th of Ellieās entire soul back into one complete piece!
But after the first success, his proficiency improved, and the rest of the soul fusion didnāt take as much time.
Obviously, everything was not fine and well, though; Rio messed up a few times and nearly failed more than a dozen times, but with the insanely high soul energy he had collected in his sword, he was able to make up for the mistakes.
At one point, Rio even ended up damaging one of the soul fragments permanently, but thankfully it was just an empty artificial fragment that he himself had made to fill the gaps.
So, Rio paused the entire procedure and created a new soul fragment before restarting the āSoul Merging Operationā once again from the same place that he had left.
Eventually, Rio managed to complete the procedure after three days, and the āpuzzleā was solved.
Rio became the first person in the entire universe capable of successfully Merging and reviving a shattered dead soul!
Ellie soul floated around Rioās sword with a shiny, grey-white glow as if it was beaming with vitality and happiness!
Rio even managed to confirm that Ellieās sea of consciousness was now starting to come back to life and was starting to process soul fluctuations in an arranged manner just like a living personās soul would!
Seeing that the āSoul Merge Operationā had really succeeded, Rio carefully placed Ellieās ārevivedā soul into its dedicated container, and only then did he take a long breath of relief.
"Phewwwwwwwww~~~~~~~~ I WON!!!"
The very moment Rio finally loosened his tense muscles, exhaustion beyond anything he had ever felt hit him directly!
His entire body almost became paralyzed on the spot from sheer exhaustion, and his brain, on the other hand, became filled with relief and happiness!
"I might as well start calling myself a full-fledged doctor now with this successful operation! Rio the humble travelling doctor, hehe~"