Tower led the group of five towards the backward streets of the Willow Town. His assignment needed lives and where could one find lives who are easily ignored by others? Of course it was the backward streets where orphans, beggars, and the discarded lived. No one would give a shit about these guy's lives.
The backward streets of the Willow Town were concentrated towards the south where the environment was foul with a stinky smell.
This was because of an outbreak of a Devil's nest towards the south of the Town. Though the churches had eliminated all that was evil from the Devil's nest, they did not bother with the stinking smell and the damaged environment leaving the south parts of the town smelly and polluted.
The wealthy in the south of the Town moved away from the south as much as they could, and sold a lot of spare space for cheap to the poor. But the poverty of the poor knew no limits and thus some of the poorer ones who could not afford the cheap price had to live on streets.
Tower and his group of five selected a dark alley and started conversations about their night activities as they smoked to pass time.
They waited for 15 minutes before a child beggar entered the dark alley. Usually these beggars would leave early morning to beg the kind residents of the west and east parts of the Town and this dark alley was a short cut to the west part of the town that was known to have a large portion of kind individuals.
The child beggar noticed the stare of the outlaws as soon as he entered. He hesitated for a moment, but decided to go through the alley at last. Begging was a competitive occupation, the first one to beg gets better benefits than those that begged at last. Wasting time by rerouting would make him earn lesser or even none. This made the child beggar decisive.
He lowered his head and pulled the begging plate closer to his chest. He avoided making eye contact as he passed by them, but to his dismay, two strong arms suddenly covered his mouth and lifted him up in air.
The child beggar seemed to have guessed the outlaw's intentions as soon as he was caught. He trashed his legs wildly trying to kick and escape from the attacker, but his weak legs betrayed his heartfelt intentions.
"Jiji, Don't choke him! The Purification Bead needs him alive." Tower chided his underling who seemed to be enjoying choking the kid with a laugh.
He took the Purification Bead in his right hand while his left hand lightly touched the child's head. Soon a stream of voices entered the child as his eyes lost all focus.
Tower was satisfied. He had used the Devil's ability to control the mind on the small kid and received response instantly.
"Do you want to sacrifice your body and soul to the Purification Bead?" Tower asked the child.
"Yes!" A monotone voice answered back.
"Very well!" Tower willed the Purification Bead to take action.
The light pinkish bead left Tower's hand and floated towards the child. Then, a suction force appeared out of it and sucked the child's skin, muscles, blood, bones and even the soul.
It took half a minute for the bead to completely absorb the child and 2% of the Pinkish Bead started lighting up. This indicated that the Purification Bead was 2% full.
Tower was not surprised. The amount, the Purification Bead absorbed depended on how pure the individual it was absorbing was, while the time taken to absorb depended on the willingness of the target. The more he resisted the more time it would take the Purification Bead to absorb him. This was the reason behind why Tower had controlled the child before letting the Bead absorb him. It was to save time.
"Hehe! A beggar obviously is less pure than others! His whole life depended on the kindness of rich, how could he be pure?" One of the underlings chuckled. He was a beggar in the past, but he had successfully joined the gang to escape his fate as a beggar and now lived a little better life, at least he no longer depended on other's kindness to earn his food.
....
Three more child beggars faced the same consequences as the previous guy that morning. They were ambushed, caught and sacrificed to the Purification Bead.
But not all beggars who saw their group dared to go through the alley. Tower saw a small girl turn around and leave as soon as she noticed them.
Even though he could have stopped her with his illusion power, Tower let the girl leave.
His felt that 'those who knew their limits needed to be given a chance'.
When they were about to pack up and leave, Tower saw another beggar enter the dark alley.
But strangely, his underlings acted as if they did not see this beggar.
His underlings were not acting this time. They could seriously not see this beggar passing through the alley and neither did the child beggar see these outlaws.
But as the beggar passed through the alley, chains appeared out of nowhere and dragged him away before he could even react.
That's right! Tower had used the Round Table to catch this child beggar.
When Tower had first received the Helsin's memories, he became very intrigued with Helsin's ability to cast illusions and control minds. So Tower decided he had to seriously check these two abilities out.
When he was assigned a mission to fill the Purification Bead, Tower accepted it instantly as he thought it was a perfect chance to test the Devil's abilities.
When they first entered the dark alley, Tower slowly released an illusion and read his subordinates' reactions. To his delight he found them acting the same, acting normal. This meant that they were unable to see through his illusions.
To explain this situation, Tower came up with a conjecture based on what he knew. His conjecture was that the strength of the illusions one conjured depended on how strong one's mind was! And he, who had three human minds was able to release stronger illusions than others. Of course this was only a conjecture.
The strength of the illusions need not depended on strength of the mind directly, Instead the strength of the illusions might be dependent on something that depended on the mind. For example the consciousness or the spirit?
Anyway, his illusions were strong enough to fool his underlings and thus in the following hours Tower showed them what he wanted them to see while hiding what he did not want them to see. For example, he hid the fact that his Round Table stole a child right under their eyes.
As for why he had stolen the child, it was obviously to convert him into energy!
It would be wrong if Tower said that he would not feel anything while sacrificing a kid, but according to the norm, the kid was a dead man as soon as he entered the dark alley, so Tower was only converting a dead body into energy. Moreover Tower had been a underworld leader in his previous life. Obviously he was used to killing.
Helsin had not only practiced Devil Cultivation, but also Body Strengthening. In fact Helsin had a Body Strengthening cultivation manual that was more effective than the Great Wood Physique Scripture. The new cultivation manual would allow Tower to absorb 50% of the energy while the Great Wood Physique Scripture allowed only a 30% absorption.
If there was something that Tower understood about Body Strengthening after reading and comparing these two Body Strengthening Cultivation manuals in the past few days, it was that the energy from human muscle was more easily absorbed than muscles of other creatures. He did not come to this conclusion rashly, but deliberated on it for a long time based on facts.
This might be because of the familiarity between muscles of the same species.
After he came to this conclusion, Tower abandoned the idea to return to the forest to hunt chickens. After all, though there were numerous danger-less chickens in the forest and their muscle could indeed help in his Body Strengthening, Tower did not forget the memories he received from the Henocks!
A Large bird that released dark fire? Another bird that could break huge stones with its beak alone? Sorry! Tower wasn't an idiot!
With massive benefits along with a perfect excuse, Tower did not want to leave this piece of treasure to others. Tower's mindset was, 'if you are going to die anyway, why don't I benefit from it!'