353 Getting Trapped
I gave the order generally, but I knew the best to attack these were the lightning fallen gods. The next moment my fallen gods attacked in unison, and I had the chance to see the effect of their evolution.
The attacks travelled over a big distance without any problem. Even my short ranged fallen gods were able to hit it.
*Rumble!* *Rumble!* *Rumble!*
The attacks landed in torrents, releasing mighty waves of dust all around. I couldn't see for an entire minute while my boys kept raining down their attack non-stop.
"Enough," the attacks even touched that portal, "shift towards the other…"
*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
Just before I could continue saying my order, a group of gigantic spears flew like they were falling from the sky. Each one fell and was planted in the ground, hundreds of metres away from my chariot.
My chariot wasn't flying at great speed, but it was still moving fast. But when these spears fell, a great pressure was exerted over my chariot from all directions.
Like I was getting myself into a prison made out of thick liquid, I felt my chariot struggling to even move an inch forward. I looked around and all I could see was a thick layer of a weird azure fluid extending from each spear and linking it to the others around.
Twenty spears appeared and they all surrounded my chariot in a big area of almost a mile radius. That wasn't the issue, but it felt like I lost all the power to even move.
My chariot was protecting me and my boys and spearheaded by its shield. But even the spearhead beams of red light started to be affected by this liquid.
It wasn't that damaging to his ability, it just affected the speed of its spread and movement. "So this is an attack to stop me from moving?" I looked at the direction of that portal and there I saw a shocking scene.
From the earlier bombardment of my boys, I knew the weapons there must have been smashed to thin pieces. I even hoped for the portal to be damaged even if slightly.
But what appeared in front of my eyes was a totally different reality than I imagined. The weapons still stood erect without any damage at all. Not even a scratch was left there.
Of course the state of the portal could be imagined. It was totally fine, looking brand new like it was just summoned.
How could this be possible?
I felt a little lost here. More weapons were coming out from the portal. "Attack again," I selected one fallen god before adding, "only you."
The attack travelled slowly through the prison I was trapped within. Even if I was trapped like this, I didn't feel any threat or worry for now.
It was just a trapping weapon, nothing serious for now.
And with the spearhead's spreading ability and the attack of my fallen god, I knew this prison only decreased speed, but didn't omit it.
My fallen god attack travelled for twenty seconds inside that area around me before it broke free from that prison. The moment it broke free, it moved like a bolt of lightning towards its target, regaining its former speed.
*Rumble!*
The attack landed and this time I was attentively paying attention to what was going on there. Just five hundred metres away from the weapons, almost one thousand metres away from the portal, something flashed and stopped the attack from pushing forward.
"A protective shield?!" I muttered in surprise, "and a high grade one as well?"
The power of that shield was clear. I didn't assess it using the single attack just now. I considered the dense attacks from my evolved gods from before. If that shield could stop such a deadly combined attack, an attack that even a star weapon with an advanced shield couldn't stop, then the shield here was something else.
What should I do then?
I started thinking about all my weapons. I even considered using the Pillar of Hector Prime. It was indeed a mighty weapon and I could use the attack skill in it. But that wasn't guaranteed to take down that shield.
I didn't know if its attack was much stronger or the combined attacks of my fallen gods. But I knew my fallen gods weren't that weak at all.
So there was a slim chance for the pillar's skill to cause a change here.
Wasting its use for now wasn't good. I looked at the direction of the portal. It kept releasing more weapons plus tons of humans out.
"Something… Seems weird here," I never met something that looked so sturdy at all. For a second there, I felt like I was thinking all wrong about this.
"If it's not the issue of strength and defence… Then what is it? A difference in the quality of energy?" I looked at my evolved fallen gods.
They just sucked dry the higher form of star weapon energy. I couldn't believe that the star weapon's energy was of a low class.
Something was amiss here. As I was lost, I needed more clues to analyse this.
"Attack there, there, and there," I started guiding my boys while attacking the portal area. I didn't target the weapons, but directed the attacks to areas adjacent to it.
There were two options left for me. This shield originated from the portal, or from the one who summoned it.
If it was from the portal, then it might explain how it kept standing erect after taking such damage so far.
But if that was true, then that portal would have shown few changes. At least its energy would be greatly depleted.
It didn't dim, slow down its release of enemies and weapons, or even shrink in size or show any change at all on its surface.
So that left the second option viable. The Hector leader who summoned the gate was the one who was controlling this shield.
What did that mean? This shield was just like the pillar I had, an artefact of the Hector race.
354 Cultivation Is The Answer
That would explain how it received all this damage and didn't crumble or even crack. If this shield was an artefact, then it might have a formidable source of energy or it could have another ability; damage absorption.
I had a skill that could do something like that. Of course my shield skill could only send half of the damage received back after absorbing it.
So this shield might also work in a similar way, more advanced than my shield skill.
To take this shield down, attacking it wouldn't do any harm. I had to find that bastard and start aiming at him.
He didn't appear at all, making me feel he must have listened to the story of that paragon from before.
But as the shield was active in such a way, that meant that dude wasn't that far away, right?
I just hoped he wouldn't have another weapon up his sleeve. After all, when I fought that paragon before, he had that damn suit that protected him for a long time against my attacks.
Of course I was greatly limited in using my power, but that didn't mean that suit was half bad as well.
And that pillar I got must have come from that paragon. So paragons would have, at least, two artefact grade items up their sleeves.
That shield was one, and that portal might be the second. However I knew portals weren't that special at all. So the odds of that portal being a formidable artefact was so slim anyway.
"Just don't be a concealment item," I muttered to myself, just hoping that the artefact would be anything but an item for hiding.
Or else finding him would be impossible in this way.
"If I couldn't find him, what other options do I have here?"
In fact it was none.
*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
Just as my boys were hitting everywhere I pointed at without any success in catching the tail of that bastard, another group of gigantic arrows fell and surrounded me.
This time their number was double! And they surrounded another mile around the first layer of arrows. With this I was trapped in a double layer, two miles thick.
Damn! What was that bastard trying to do here?
In the next few minutes I got the answer. The two layers added more pressure over my chariot. It wasn't enough to break my shield, but it started to consume the stored energy at a fast pace.
And all the attacks coming out had to travel for a longer time than before. Each attack took almost a couple of minutes. Not to mention a few of the spearhead beams began to shatter under such pressure.
"This can't go on," I saw more weapons coming out from that damn portal. If the third layer was launched, I was sure that many of the spearhead beams of light would be destroyed.
So far these arrows didn't affect the spearhead advantage much. But it was threatened to be shattered soon.
"What should I do?" I looked over the direction of the city. Things were still under control here. "Should I ask them to use this chance and retreat?"
It was a viable option in my eyes. I tried before to do this yet failed. And now I got a golden chance to let them run away as far as possible.
This would also help in focusing the entire army here over me. With the presence of those arrows, I knew I was like a sitting duck.
But even with me getting trapped, not a single force dared to come and hit me. It looked like this weapon didn't differentiate between foes and allies.
Before I could make up my mind, I got an unexpected message at this moment.
[A god who just joined your channel sends you this message in private]
[That god says that you have a chance to turn tables around if you used your cultivation]
[He says that your cultivation is the only option you have here]
"My cultivation? How so?!!" He was like giving me a vague answer to my question. In fact I totally forgot about them and only thought about lady green nymphs and our weapon deal.
She was still busy finalising and getting my weapons. I thought this wouldn't take much time but it seemed I thought wrong.
Unlike what I expected, that god sent me other messages.
[That god says that your cultivation is special. If you want, he has a detailed road map for an interesting type of cultivation provided that you honour your words]
"You want me to accept you as a supporting god? Which shrine do you belong to?"
[He says he is from the wisdom shrine, human race, another human race than the one here on Earth]
My eyes flashed in realisation. "Are you perhaps a god of the world these humans came from?"
[He says these humans came from five different worlds that humans lost in. the armies you just fought so far are the tip of a gigantic iceberg]
"Damn!" I sucked in a cold air of breath. "So there are more yet to come? Damn that bastard!"
[He says you don't have much time left. Either you start now or never]
"Hmm… I agree then," I didn't find any problem in accepting the blessing of another human race god. He was a god of a world that humans lost the apocalypse at.
And he wanted revenge. I could totally understand his desire, and I was also supporting this.
"Send over that idea of yours and if it's feasible and effective in this battle, you are going to be my future god."
[He says he will send it to you now. His name is Rotan, please remember that]
[Here is what he sent over: He says the first step you have to do is to have a higher form of human souls. He knew human souls can't be stored as they are considered low class compared to other races. Also it falls under the same class as your soul. So your first step is to store human souls]
355 Upgrading My Soul Class
"But… How can I do that? And how will that help me exactly?" I was surprised to hear that from him. After all, I killed lots of humans before, but never got to store their souls.
Even when I killed traitors, they didn't end up as a separate soul in my soul list. I never thought about this before. After all humans were that kind of race that wasn't good at any battlefield.
Yet per his words here, it seemed I was wrong, partially.
[He says that having human souls are essential for your road map for cultivation. You are killing a ton of humans now, so it's a waste to not use this chance to do this. You have to upgrade your soul class two stages in a row. The next stage of your class is called soul merging. It's aiming to merge souls to make a stronger one. The next stage will be the soul evolution, which will enable you to upgrade any soul you have stored before]
"Hmm… Don't tell me I'm going to create a human god soul here!" I thought fast about what he said, and found this as the only logical explanation I had.
[He says it's up to your ability to do that. And you have little time left to do anything. Once the fourth layer of that weapon is launched, you are done for]
"As I expected," I muttered before opening my soul class. In fact I visited this interface many times before, yet never cared about upgrading my soul class.
I was already satisfied with the way things were going on for a long time. But it seemed it wasn't that good and I neglected such a big issue.
"Upgrade the class," I selected the upgrade option and the next moment, a message popped up in front of my eyes.
[Your current soul class is at level ten]
[You need to pay one thousand soul point for each level]
[The next upgrade is at level fifty]
[Do you want to pay the price for the missing forty levels?]
"Pay," forty thousand soul points might have been a great number for me before. But now it was a drop in the ocean.
[Forty thousand soul points are deducted]
[Congratulations! Your class has been advanced]
[Soul master class: Rank: Hidden. Grade: Heaven. Level: 50]
[Third stage is opened for you to use: The grade of soul merge II]
[Each time you kill a living being, you'll be able to absorb his soul. The absorbed soul won't reincarnate or be revived by any means]
[Storing one hundred souls will allow you to raise all your stats by one point]
[Storing one thousand souls will let you upgrade the level by one]
[Merge phase II: You can decide to sacrifice ten thousand souls and merge them together. The merge will yield a soul monster that's higher than the souls you used for the merge. The merge will consume one thousand souls to create one higher soul]
[The newly higher souls will be loyal and follow your orders. They can be stored inside your soul class list in a separate menu according to their grade. You can use them to summon loyal monsters to you. They will possess zero stats and will need you to spend stat points to increase their stats. The rise of the stats will follow the same rules of the warrior section]
[There is no limit to the number of the monsters you can merge]
[Upgrading the class level to reach level one hundred and fifty will open the next stage of the class for you]
So… The upgrade yielded a second phase of the merge ability. It wasn't like that merge from before as it made sure the merged souls would yield better monsters.
And the price I'd pay to do that would be eleven thousand souls. Not that cheap after all comparing this to the original five thousand souls of the merge ability phase I.
"Upgrade the class to the next level," I didn't hesitate to keep pushing my class forward per that god's advice.
[Your current soul class is at level fifty]
[You need to pay one thousand soul point for each level]
[The next upgrade is at level one hundred and fifty]
[Do you want to pay the price for the missing one hundred levels?]
"Pay!"
[Forty thousand soul points are deducted]
[Congratulations! Your class has been advanced]
[Soul master class: Rank: Hidden. Grade: Heaven. Level: 150]
[Fourth stage is opened for you to use: The grade of soul evolution]
[Each time you kill a living being, you'll be able to absorb his soul. The absorbed soul won't reincarnate or be revived by any means]
[Storing one hundred souls will allow you to raise all your stats by one point]
[Storing one thousand souls will let you upgrade the level by one]
[Using soul evolution will help you evolve any stored upgraded souls to merge together and evolve. The evolution process will bypass at least three ranks and also will add more features to the final soul. Each time you'll need at least one hundred high grade souls developed by your merge phase II ability. Each time you'll consume one hundred thousand soul points to make the process succeed]
[Dealing with the evolved soul is like dealing with your merged and stored souls in your soul class list]
[Upgrading the class level to reach level three hundred will open the next stage of the class for you]
"Damn! That means… I have to spend a lot of souls this time to get just one evolved soul?" I roughly calculated things here. Paying eleven thousand for a single merged higher grade soul, and I needed a hundred of these…
That meant I'd pay one million and two hundred thousand soul points to just get one evolved soul! How could this be a good thing?
"Are you sure about this?" I looked up to the sky, "this is like wasting my souls to get just one damn soul!"
[That god tells you it's crucial, and you have to get at least one soul for each cultivation stage you will break through. He says that according to his estimation, you'll need to open three stages at least to be able to turn table here]
"F*ck!" I looked at the current souls stored, "that means almost paying most of my stored souls! That's insane!"
356 Start Evolving My Souls
I got close to five million stored soul points here. If I paid to create three evolved human souls, that would mean I'd have to pay roughly three million and half soul points!
I didn't hesitate for long. I had to take this step anyway.
"I want to use merge phase II to merge one thousand souls."
[Doing So requires you to pay ten thousand souls]
[The end result will be a race you select from the list of the souls you currently have]
[Here is the list:..]
The next moment a long list appeared in front of me. I looked at all the names I and my forces killed so far. It was really a very long list.
"I select humans," I didn't have to go for all this. I knew which race I wanted to merge.
[Do you want to pay ten thousand souls?]
"Pay."
[Merge is complete]
[The final soul is two hundred percent stronger than the normal human souls]
[Please give a name for such new soul]
"Higher humans," I didn't find naming it anything important.
[Name is granted]
[Higher human soul is now included in your soul class list]
"Use soul merge II again," I didn't stop even to inspect that new soul. After all, I had a long way to go.
*Bang* *Bang!* *Bang!*
Just as I was in the middle of this process, the enemy launched his third wave of arrows.
They landed like the previous ones, forming a layer to trap me inside. Now I was trapped with three layers, which exerted a great deal of pressure over any attack getting out from my chariot.
"Boss, this… This is bad," but as this happened, another one panicked here. It was the spearhead, and he had all the right to feel so.
"I know," I didn't even look at him, "just take more crystals and try to fight back."
"O… Ok," he seemed to want to say something, but he didn't. I was looking really busy dealing with merging my souls here. And I didn't need any disturbance for now.
I kept merging my souls as planned. In the end, I got the first one hundred higher human souls I wanted.
"Time for the real show… I want to use soul evolution."
[You need to use one hundred upgraded souls for the evolution process]
[You'll need to pay one hundred thousand souls for that]
[There is a failure possibility of thirty percent]
"What the f*ck!!!" I cursed out loud and that seemed to make the dude next to me more panicked.
"Boss! Is there anything wrong again?!!!" he jumped once I cursed, even ran towards me.
"It's fine, stay and work at your spot," I stopped him before returning to think about this problem.
Thirty percent failure percentage? That meant out of three attempts, I'd fail one. It wasn't time for such a thing to happen.
"Can I lower that failure rate?" I asked with much hope for my system to give me a way out.
After all this system was acting stingy at many times, asking for my wealth if it got a chance to.
[You can pay one hundred thousand souls to raise your success rate by ten percent]
As expected! That meant to make sure my success rate was one hundred percent, I'd have to pay an additional three hundred thousand souls.
Well… That wasn't bad, I could cover up this cost.
"Do it," I firmly said, "pay three hundred thousand extra soul points in the process."
[Evolution is under progress]
[One percent is done…]
[Two percent is done…]
[Three percent is done…]
Damn! It was going like a snail! I didn't have anything to do this time but wait. That system was trying to delay me as hard as it could.
As I had to wait for a couple minutes for this countdown to end, I paid more attention towards this battle.
Well… the battleground changed once the third wave of the trapping weapons appeared.
This time, my boys' attacks moved at a very slow pace inside the three layers like they were crawling to get out. I looked at all the arrow-like bolts that moved slowly in the middle of the three layers and had to sigh.
That enemy of mine was really trying his best here. Even with the third layer, he was still bringing more weapons to this world via that gate.
"The fourth is the end," I looked up at the sky before adding, "I hope this way can do the trick."
That god didn't answer me. I knew he was listening, watching, but he didn't say anything to me this time.
Perhaps he was waiting for me to finish the evolution. "It's done," as I saw the evolution bar reach its end, and before I could read the messages that popped in front of me, I added, "what should I do now?"
He didn't directly answer, and I started to read the messages that appeared after the evolution ended.
[Congratulations! The first evolved soul is being born]
[The soul is an evolved human soul]
[It's one thousand percent stronger than any human soul]
[The soul developed a special ability; Wither]
[You need to give a name to this soul]
"Let's call it…" just before I could find a useless name for this soul, the god sent me a message, barely stopping me at times.
[That god says you shouldn't rush and name that soul. He says that name is very important]
"How?" I didn't continue to name that soul and only looked up as if I was speaking directly with him.
[That god says that the name of this soul will determine the nature of your first cultivation stage]
[You need to think of a name that will suit that soul ability to make the best use of it]
"Can you explain it a bit further?" I decided to keep merging the souls until this talk was done, "I need to better understand your idea now!"
357 They Say... Thank You!
[That god says that your cultivation lacks the general blueprint for it to start. He says that he has that blueprint, with each step aiming to make you take better control over the world of shadows]
For a reason, it felt like I was speaking with Sith.
"Do you know Sith? Did he send you over to help me?" I asked in doubt, but the next answer I got was something else.
[That god says to you: Sith? He is an arrogant piece of shit!]
"Sorry man, you two are gods and I'm just a human," I raised both hands in the air, not commenting over this insult from that god.
[That god says that you need to work for one aim, take control over the shadows of all humans here and anywhere in the universe]
"Taking control over their shadows…" I paused for a long moment while everything started to fall in place. "So you made me merge the human souls so I could control human shadows? What about other races? Can I do that?"
[That god says yes, you can do it. He says that you have to be patient and wait until you finish laying out your foundation stage first]
I got his point. Per Sith arrangements, my cultivation would be six stages with an extra foundation stage. Each one would be thirteen smaller phases, and I was just forming the first step.
[That god says that you need to select the name then enter your cultivation. Inside your shadow, select a perfect spot and think about that name of the soul. He says that your first attempt to plant soul is the hardest]
"Plant souls? Don't tell me we are going to build a garden!" I was just joking around, but that dude seemed to lack any sense of humour.
[That god says that we aren't building any garden but these souls will be the grand framework you'll use to form the ultimatum soul of your cultivation]
Well.. I had to give it in for you pal… every time you spoke I became more lost. Anyway, let's start with what I got so far.
"Keep releasing your attacks," before starting cultivation, I said to my boys before adding to the spearhead, "don't panic even if you can't release your ability freely. Just keep pushing and forcing your way through."
"Are you going to leave me here, boss?" That dude was really a coward.
"Why not throw you away to the wolves down below, it would be much easier and faster to kill you, right?" I stepped forward for a half metre but he had to run back for almost ten metres.
"B… Boss… Don't scare me like this," he said while his body was drenched in sweat, out of fear.
"Hahaha, your face… Come on dude, how long have we been together?" I shook my head helplessly while laughing, "Keep working and let me focus on solving this crisis here."
I returned to my initial position but that dude didn't. I could feel his gazes still attracted to my actions, like he wasn't confident in my words or promise.
I looked at the world around me for the last time before starting my cultivation. That bastard out there was bringing more weapons here. The third layer took almost fifty weapons to attack. So the fourth might need more than one hundred of these deadly weapons.
He just had no more than sixty so far. So I got time, considering that he was still summoning herds of humans here.
All of them were moving in the city, bypassing me like I never existed. Even with the three sealing layers, my boys' attacks were still hitting the enemies.
At first there was a gap when the third layer landed. But then my boys' attacks connected and they continued to kill the enemy without pause.
The spearhead weakening ability was the one to get greatly damaged. Instead of covering almost all the lands to the horizon, he was now struggling to just keep control over an area in front of the city.
He was trying his best to shield the city from any attack coming. The forces led by my teammates seemed to sense this danger and they stopped pushing forward, and only were defending the city at the river.
The city had two rivers lining two sides of it. My forces just crossed the bridges standing and started to make posts and rudimentary forts and trenches to get a better hold over this zone.
Of course they must have gotten the word from the spearhead about how dangerous this situation was.
Anyway, things here didn't look that bad for now. I just hoped I'd get done with my cultivation first.
I managed to merge and evolve one more soul. I just lacked the third soul and I was now waiting for the evolution of the third soul to finish.
The first soul had the wither ability, the second soul had the devour ability. Giving names to each soul to match its ability was a nuisance.
"I shall only use their ability as their names," I paused and when I didn't get any objection from that god, I decided to do this.
After all, if I kept looking for names suited for each ability, I'd waste more time than I needed. And I didn't have that much anyway to waste.
[Congratulations! The third evolved soul is being born]
[The soul is an evolved human soul]
[It's one thousand percent stronger than any human soul]
[The soul developed a special ability; Ruin]
[You need to give a name to this soul]
I was now ready. "Name the first one Wither, the second Devour, and the third Ruin," I finished this step before taking a deep breath and sat on the ground.
I was ready to get into my cultivation world
[Your souls got the names you gave them]
[They say thank you]
I saw the last weird message before closing my eyes and feeling my dantian.
What did the system even mean by the last message? Could these souls speak even if they were just… stored souls in my soul list?
358 Starting My Cultivation
Anyway, I started regulating my breathing and entered my cultivation world. The dantian was still burning with energy, yet it was still silver white grade energy.
It was the lowest and most basic form of spiritual energy. I still recall With words from before. I had to evolve my energy grade, but I had no time to do that.
Sorry Sith, I had to deviate from the general plan you devised for me. He also told me to use dark realm monster bones, no lower than the one I used to establish my cultivation.
However I didn't yet get any chance to face such horrifying monsters. All I got were bones I had left from the monster I killed before.
According to Sith, this would take much more bones than needed. I didn't have any other option but to do that.
The first thing I did was to take successive breaths to circulate my spiritual energy. After letting it take ten rounds, I started to go to the shadow world.
I passed my consciousness through my feet with my spiritual energy, entering into my shadow.
The shadow wasn't any much different than before. Two zones were there, one under the control of that hard to tame soul of the shadow, and the dantian I planted here before.
The two sides kept their balance, while my smaller dantian was controlling a small zone. It was filled with a dense net of small meridians filled with my energy.
Ok… What should I do now?
I recalled what that god said. He told me to think about the name of the soul I wanted to plant here.
I got three, Wither, Devour, and Ruin. I planned first to use them in the same order I created them.
But when I was about to do that, I felt this was wrong. Looking at the names again from a different perspective, I got an inspiration.
I should change the order to match my final goal… That meant I should start with Devour, then Wither, and lastly Ruin.
Alright… Let's get this done in that order.
"Devour!" the first name I called in my head. I didn't know what should happen, but the next silence that appeared was surely not what would happen.
"Devour! Come forth man!" I recalled the warning from the god. The first soul to call here was the hardest.
But even after calling ten times, nothing happened. "Was I doing this wrong?" I thought before thinking about it from a different angle.
"Damn! I should call it out first before letting it go into my shadow!" I realised what went wrong here after thinking about it for a few minutes.
It was all my mistake. The three souls were already stored into my class, meaning it was under control by my system. I had to first call them out, then guide them into my shadow through my body.
Would that work? I frankly didn't know until I'd test that theory first.
"Devour, come out!" I opened my eyes and instantly called for that dude. The next moment I felt something weird. It was like a fog that was intangible and transparent at one second, then it would turn visible and corporeal in the next.
This kept alternating, like this was his nature.
"Come to my shadow world," I said, closing my eyes and didn't even wait for an answer.
I entered my shadow world again. This time I had more confidence in getting him in.
"Devour, come here boy," I said, while waiting for him to enter.
But what happened was a different story. I now knew why that god told me that getting the first soul in was the hardest ever.
That dude was trying to force himself into my meridians and dantian. It wasn't that easy feat indeed, especially when that dude was trying to get in full form.
This couldn't continue for sure, or else my meridians would burst open. I thought about this.
I didn't need his cooperation except for him to take the first step. I had to take over and guide him down there, to my feet and then to my shadow.
"Alright, time to experience the might of my spiritual energy then," I knew this would only be solved this way.
I controlled my spiritual energy, and instead of absorbing and rotating it, I forced it out.
It was a weird feeling, like I was breathing through my skin pores. But that wasn't my goal here. I exerted more mind control over the energy, forming it as a net around that spirit of mine.
It was something I never did before, so I was just experimenting and getting experience from it. That was why the first attempt was the hardest.
I kept trapping that Devour soul before I completely enveloped him. At some point, he tried to break free, feeling panic or something like that. I didn't give him any chance as I forced more energy out and maintained my total domination over him.
Then I slowly started to pull my energy back, while driving with it pieces of that soul. At first I wasn't sure if this would work. After all, I was going to dissect him into tiny pieces and hope to reattach them inside my shadow world.
That was the plan anyway. So I tried to force him into my meridians as fast as possible, before pushing the pieces and the energy surrounding them towards my feet, then to the shadow world.
This process took slightly longer than I expected. In the end, the entire energy with the pieces of that soul appeared into my shadow world.
The moment they entered there, I moved them towards my dantain, aiming to merge them all there.
I didn't know how to merge these pieces together, but the moment a good deal of them gathered into my dantian, they started to come closer on their own.
Then as if the soul regained his consciousness after a long time of slumber, the pieces merged and started to get out from my dantian.
The world outside wasn't that friendly to my energy or anything related to me. As long as this Devour soul was in the vicinity of my meridians, it was ok.
359 Dad! He Calls Me Dad!!!
However, that soul seemed to be more rebellious than I initially thought. Just as he started to regain more than two thirds of his initial body, he started to move towards the outside.
"Hey, you need to stop!" I tried to stop him, but aside from the weak energy threads surrounding parts of his body, I couldn't do anything else to him.
These weak threads aren't able to stop him. I tried to use the same trick and control my energy to surround and stop him, but I failed.
For unknown reasons, this time I couldn't trap him. My energy surrounded his body, but weirdly enough his body seemed to devour them.
Damn! Was that bastard going to use his ability on me first or what?
Ok, if you were acting like a naughty kid, then it was just fair to let you suffer from the darkness outside. I kept a few threads following him, to save him at the moment of crisis.
After all, I wanted to just teach him a lesson, not really kill him.
But what happened next was out of my wildest expectations.
As that soul got to the outer border of my meridian zone, he was only one hair breadth away from regaining his full shape.
He then took the last step towards the border zone, then stepped outside. I knew he was going to suffer, and so I moved all the energy I could muster from my dantian and meridians here.
But when he stepped outside, it seemed like his body turned all black. It started with his outer lining, giving him an eerie feeling.
The central zone was silver white, and the outer layer was black. The blackness kept increasing, as if he wasn't affected by it.
I was this step away from pushing my energy out and helping him. But for a reason it felt like he was enjoying this.
"A devour ability… It's interesting…" I decided to wait and see how his ability would fare against this darkness here.
This wasn't just a simple darkness world, it was a big and boundless world, connected to a much larger dark universe.
So in the end, this dude had to stop at one point. And I was curious to see what he was going to look like after that.
That dude didn't seem to know the limit to his ability. Just a few minutes after his daring move, he made a more daring one.
The darkness around him was already making a clustering layer of an inch or so. But then it started to go wild, forming torrents and whirlpools around his body.
That dude… was he turning into a bottomless pit or what?
"You know absorbing too much isn't going to do you any good if you can't digest well," I tried to help, and said in my mind, hoping he would hear my words and listen to them.
He was just doing exactly like the spearhead did. The latter was going to explode, but I hoped my boy here wouldn't commit the same mistake.
"I'm not even full yet, dad," he suddenly said in my mind, in a voice that was more similar to a three-year-old kid's voice.
"You… Can I speak?!!" He called me dad! What the f*ck!!!
Kid, I didn't give birth to anyone yet. Don't scare me like this!
"I need your help, dad. Can you give me that tasty meal again?"
I didn't know what he meant for a second before I realised what he was talking about. "You like my energy?" I asked.
"It's delicious! More than this meal here," he said, "I just want to add it as a teaser to eat more. I loved your meal dad! I even integrated parts of it into my body."
"Cool," I didn't know what to say to this child that kept calling me dad. Luckily I was the only one able to hear him. If Hilary or Karoline heard him, what would they think of me?
Damn!
I didn't delay in sending him the delicious meal he asked for. That little kid was seeing my energy as a tasty meal, even considering it as a teaser to eat more.
The moment my meridians moved to touch his body, it felt like that kid wasn't as young and small as he seemed.
He started devouring my energy like never before. It felt like my meridians here were going dry.
I had to push more energy towards these meridians from my dantian here, also sending more meridians towards him.
Without knowing it, this soul started to be like another dantian of mine here. He was surrounded with a dense layer of meridians, and above that thick and wild dark energy kept gathering and pouring into his body.
This kid… he was doing much better than I thought! He didn't even show any struggle so far, even his body didn't swell for even an inch.
As for the meridian network, the repulsion and aggressive attacks that I experienced before vanished. That made me try and push much more meridians around him.
And like I expected, they didn't face any struggle to expand at all.
Great! I could use that Devour boy as an anchor and make a dense cluster of my meridians around him.
But my energy here was getting depleted fast. I looked around and decided to go all out.
A bone… I recalled what Sith said. I needed a bone now.
I opened my eyes, took a fast gaze around. That bastard brought over seventy weapons so far. I still had time then.
I took out a black grade bone, the last one I had from my inventory. I had many dark gold ones left and pale gold as well. But I decided to use the highest grade first.
As I held it, I closed my eyes and started to regulate absorbing the bone energy. It wasn't that easy to do that. But as I had experience dealing with this from before, I didn't do bad this time.
360 A Platform
The energy amount coming from this piece of bone was really massive. I controlled this towards my dantian, meridian network, then through my feet zone to the shadow world.
The dark energy from that bone turned into my dantian to a silver white energy that I could use. Then when it entered my shadow world, that Devour kid started to madly absorb it.
"Dad! Dad! What is that amazing meal? It's intoxicating! I love it! Want it, want more dad, please!"
Damn noisy kid! That was why I didn't plan to have kids so soon.
"Just eat what I give you, don't waste time on anything useless like talking."
This was a black grade bone kid, not your common daily cabbage or something. It was indeed tasty, and I just kept eating it.
As I watched this ongoing process, I started to think about a crucial thing; how would this end up by opening a cultivation stage for me?
I didn't know the answer. That soul showed his consciousness and awareness, giving me the impression that things weren't going as planned.
But as things were rolling to this stage, why would I bother overthinking about it?
I kept watching, only regulating energy and doing nothing more. The area that soul took started to expand, pushing against all the darkness around like nothing was there to stop him.
In the next ten minutes, he managed to dominate an area much more than what my dantian initially controlled after all this time. And he didn't show any signs of stopping.
"Dad! More! Give me more! I can feel myself on the verge of getting matured!"
Matured? Don't tell me you were going to wet yourself kid! Not in my world! Not under my watch bastard!
"Isn't it enough already?" Imagining this scene made me feel gross.
"I want to evolve dad, I want to become a weapon for dad."
His words enlightened me. What if this was the missing step before he would turn into something I could use?
I opened my eyes. That bone was already gone. In ten minutes my boy absorbed all this energy like it was nothing.
"Another bone then," I took out one of my dark gold grade bones and paused for a second in hesitation. "Let's get three then," I took out another two, and then closed my eyes and watched what was going to happen next.
The gush of energy this time seemed different. I feared the amount to be smaller, not enough for him. But in a few minutes, that dude started to show the first changes since this all started.
His body seemed to grow bigger. But I didn't feel he was going to grow bigger in size. It seemed like his energy was getting out, engulfing all the meridians around, looking like it was merging with these meridians.
I watched him turn from a body of white and silver in the heart and black at the outer surface, into a shining growing star of bright white and silver light.
This took a few minutes to happen, but I didn't feel it didn't take that long. As he reached the edge of my meridians, a new change occurred.
Instead of a silver white, a dark colour appeared. It started from the centre of his body, expanding fast like a mighty wave outwards.
"Are you ok?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Dad, I'm going to turn into a stepping stone for you. I hope you can treat me well and let me grow," he said in a much stronger tone, one that seemed to belong to a ten or eleven years old youth or something.
Then as the entire area turned all black, it all turned solid. He didn't exaggerate when he said he was going to be my stepping stone.
"So… You turned into a big platform?" I looked at the big and strong looking black platform in front of me. It had thirteen levels in it, seemingly similar to my thirteen stages in my foundation base.
So he turned himself into the backbone of my cultivation, interesting. This time I got nothing but silence as a response to my words, making me inwardly sigh.
Kids… They grow fast, make noises and troubles, then they'd leave like they were never here. For a reason it felt really desolate being here alone.
But at least I got what I needed. Now what? Should I use these thirteen steps to build over one by one?
Alright… I got my framework ready. It looked weird standing in the middle of all this darkness, yet it looked much darker and fiercer than any darkness here.
Its size was almost ten metres in length and five in width. But for a reason, the old torrents of black energy still surrounded it.
It was time to start the next step then. My Devour soul was used, and it was time for my Wither soul.
"Wither, come out!" armed with my past experience in dealing with Devour, I opened my eyes and called Wither out.
Like Devour, it appeared in a changing state before I started grabbing it into my meridians by breaking it down. I wasn't worried this time, as I knew he wouldn't die or something by this.
At the same time, the remaining parts of the three bones were still gushing into my dantian. I controlled both energies, and moved them towards my shadow world.
Once the Wither soul entered there, it got attracted to the platform. Without even the need for me to interfere, this soul found its way to the platform, and started gathering up his pieces at the first step.
I didn't need to do anything but to try and store as much energy as possible for future use. Last time Devour almost left my dantian and meridians here dry. I didn't want to experience this again.
It didn't take much time to form the entire body of my new soul.
"Father, I'm alive!" and with it, a new source of noise appeared again, making me not much regret missing my Devour kid.
361 Buy Me Time As Much As You Can
A soft voice of a three year old girl appeared clearly in my ears. This time it was a girl, at least I wouldn't end up with a bunch of ungrateful boys in the end.
"Do you want to eat?" As I learnt from Devour, these souls seemed to consider my energy as food.
"Yes father, please, please give me your delicious food that I tasted on my journey here."
"Ok," I wasn't as furious or impatient as I was with Devour. Perhaps that was the magic of having girls.
I already stored lots of energy for her. The moment I thought about it, my meridians and energy threads waiting on the side gushed towards her.
Devour kept the meridians around him. But this girl acted differently. Any meridians getting close to her withered, became thinner and fainter before vanishing like it never existed.
I looked up at all the meridians breaking down and vanishing in puzzlement. The energy I stored wasn't even consumed by any visible amount.
But the meridians I extended were gone. I had to push my meridians again, trying to push more energy through them.
Yet again they withered and broke into thin air.
"What's going on?" After doing this for a couple more times, I knew something wrong was happening here for sure.
"Father, they just wither away once touching me… Sorry father, it's just my nature, sob… Sob…"
Oh god! She started crying!!
"Don't cry, girl, I'm not mad at you," I tried to fix this situation before hurriedly adding, "you just keep eating as much as you want, and I'll give you all the delicacies in this world till you are full."
Why was I acting this soft with her? Dunno, but how could I meet such a crying cute little girl and not feel touched?
I started my journey into forming endless threads of energy, pushing them towards her, and watching them wither away.
It felt endless, but I didn't stop. By the time my three bones' energy was exhausted, a change started to occur at her.
"Father, can you give me the old delicious meal again? I'm feeling like getting older and bigger, needing that delicious meal father."
"Ok," how could I say no to such angelic voice? I opened my eyes, took two bones out, and closed my eyes again.
The bones turned into big clusters of energy that started to dissipate into my body. Once entered my body, this black energy would go directly to my dantian, turning into my silver white energy.
Then I controlled all this amount to pass to my shadow world through my meridians. As before, my girl showed an outstanding withering ability to anything I threw at her.
Unlike my Devour boy, my Wither girl didn't swell and shine like he did. Instead she started to merge with the first step of the platform, making it shine and look thicker.
Then like it was growing, that step started to expand outwards. I thought it would just expand for a few metres, mostly ten or something. But as time passed fast, this stage started to turn like an entire layer of ground.
It was all silver white in colour, expanding in a dominant way. The more it expanded, the more energy it required, the faster this girl withered my energy threads.
Without knowing it, I entered into a fierce battle against this. If I didn't push an endless amount of energy towards her, then this expansion would stop.
I didn't want that! Something told me this layer was something crucial for my future cultivation. I didn't want to stop here, but the issue was related to my bones.
Why the hell did I take out two bones? Why did I act stingy with my little girl here?
I regret not acting generous with my little girl. I should have taken out ten pieces of bones. But this was too late to regret.
I felt if I just opened my eyes and took out more bones, something that wouldn't even take a couple of seconds, it would end up with losing this chance.
So I decided to just exhaust all these bones for now and not care about anything else.
This didn't last more than five more minutes, then all the energy gushing inside my body ceased to exist.
And with it, the amount of energy I could give to my little girl here decreased by a great chunk.
"Sigh, this is the best I can do for you," I said while watching the growing step to slow down than before. I knew it was going to stop anytime soon.
"I'll do my best for you, daddy."
So… Father turned into daddy… Cool!
She didn't take much longer before all the expansion stopped. I moved my eyes around. Well, I got almost the size of a ground that was over a mile in size.
Wait… How could there be a mile in this shadow world? I looked around and in such a moment of daze, I realised how things looked weird here.
If I looked at the world around me, then this platform and the ground base extending from it looked like a small drop in the ocean.
But when I looked back at the platform, I saw a massive ground there.
So… I didn't get it! Looking at this world in different viewpoints changed how I could see it?
Anyway, my ground and platform were real, and that was the most important fact.
Ok, time to get the third kid here to join my family.
As I just opened my eyes, I stood up and checked the situation.
"Damn! It took a long time!!" I was startled when seeing the big weapons out there, almost close to ninety.
That meant that the bastard needed only ten weapons before launching his next and last attack.
I couldn't let him do it. I knew by the fourth layer, I'd be sealed inside and anything I'd do would be futile.
"Come out," as I was faced with this, it wasn't time to hesitate anymore. I released all the soulers and also called forth my Albany city monsters. "Go, do anything and destroy those weapons out there," I pointed in the direction of the big shining portal.
"Spearhead."
"Yes, boss!" he was already profusely sweating out of stress and exhaustion.
"Focus everything over that damn portal," I decided to bet everything on this move, "try to buy me as much time as you can…"
I even turned to grab his shoulders as I seriously added, "As much as possible."
"G… Got it boss," he nodded in a nervous way, "even if it cost me my life, I'll do it."
362 The Third Soul
That's what I wanted to hear. I looked at him in silence. I didn't need to emphasise how important this mission was.
If he failed, if my boys failed, then we would be doomed. If I was trapped, then the spearhead ability would be sealed and my boys wouldn't be able to hit anything.
I didn't place much hope on their shoulders to destroy these weapons. But I hoped they could at least buy me half an hour.
I only needed half an hour, and my next soul would be integrated into my platform.
"Come forth… Ruin!" I didn't delay and returned to sit on the ground. As I said so, the soul started to appear just near me.
This time I took six bones. I didn't want to face the same problem as before. Two dark golden bones were enough to create such a wide ground for me.
So with six, I hoped this soul could bring me a surprise.
I closed my eyes, entered the shadow world. The world there was looking like my home.
I was still feeling a little weird about the current status of that world. When looking over it in general, my platform and dantian wouldn't look as big as when I focused my eyes over any of them.
Especially my platform. It was like a gigantic place from one angle, and a very tiny thing from another.
"Ok, time to bring that dude here," I returned to focus on my body. I controlled my energy and moved it outside, surrounded that soul and cut him into pieces.
The first soul I got was a boy, and the second was a girl. The two called me father and dad, making me feel already older than I was supposed to be.
But that also made me little anticipating this new soul. Would it be a boy or a girl?
I moved the soul pieces engulfed in my energy towards my shadow world. Once there, they moved like being pulled with hidden force, heading directly towards the platform.
And once there, the soul stopped over the second step, starting to gather there.
"What is… That?!!" I was surprised when the shape of that soul became clearer with each passing minute. "A… Twin?!!" I was shocked to realise that this soul wasn't one, but twin.
Well… It was a good decision indeed to bring out six bones at the same time. Even if each bone was as huge as to cover the entire chariot's length of mine, they weren't enough to satisfy my girl's need last time.
"Pappa!"
"Daddy!"
The two soft voices echoed in my ears once their full bodies were formed.
"Are you two… Ruin?" I asked in doubt, and the two nodded.
"I'm the destruction of Ruin pappa."
"I'm the reconstruction Ruin daddy."
I didn't get what they meant, neither did I have time to worry about that for now. "Let's start then, please eat as much energy as possible and start evolving my dear kids."
One was a boy and the other was a girl. The next moment I released all the energy I stored nearby in the dantian, letting them be surrounded with dense energy threads.
Yet two opposing scenes appeared in front of my eyes.
The boy who said he was the destruction Ruin had a similar effect like Wither. The energy threads vanished, but not in the same fading and withering way like his older sister.
This boy here had the threads smash into pieces, then these pieces would smash into smaller ones until only specks of energy remained.
He absorbed part and the other he controlled and pushed to his twin.
The girl had a much different thing going on at her part. The threads didn't break or wither, they were getting stronger and denser until they formed a cocoon.
As the cocoon of energy was formed, few thick threads were extended from it towards her twin. In front of my eyes, the two brother and sister twins were affecting my energy threads in two opposite ways, and they also helped each other at the same time.
Just as I was watching this amazing scene, a new change started to happen at the platform itself. The second step started to grow, not directly expanding like the first step did.
Instead it started to grow up, twisting and taking different shapes, expanding partly over the first step and the other started to form a curved edge at the border of the first step.
My bones energy was gushed in a copious and dense amount towards these two. And with it, new things started to appear.
"Are these… Towers and buildings?!!" I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus over these tiny and rich details in the small protrusions appearing on the ground of my platform.
Yes, these were buildings and towers, streets and other structures one could see in a very bustling city. I didn't know what was going on here, but as these souls were doing things on their own, then I had nothing else to do but watch and wait.
Hopefully this would end up in my favour.
As minutes passed by, I was growing anxious. Were my boys successful? Did that spearhead pull a miracle? Or…
I didn't want to think about the consequences if they failed. They were just too devastating and frustrating to make me not want to think about such an end.
The twin brother and sister kept doing their magic and the buildings kept extending without any signs of stopping.
But I didn't get what was the benefit of such buildings. Having a city inside my platform… what would that help my cultivation with?
My puzzlement didn't last for long. After roughly ten minutes, a strange building started to appear.
It was at the central zone of one side of the platform base. The platform base was already in hexagonal shape. At the side I was looking at, one building started to grow taller than any other building.
363 Moving My Dantian
I thought it would be a tower at first, like the slightly longer towers scattered here. But soon I realised this wasn't true. It kept expanding up, up until it reached almost the highest point of the platform, and even started to expand further up.
It wasn't only one, but six tall towers. They started to grow up one after another, but all didn't stop until they exceeded the height of the platform itself.
Looking at this from far made me think these towers were like six big guardians for the platform. However as they appeared, my twin soul started to shine brightly, giving me the familiar scene of them merging with the platform.
"Pappa, I'm going to be your sharpest weapon."
"Daddy, I won't let any harm come at you."
Two more matured voices came from their direction before they went into silence. I saw them merging with the second layer of the platform, before the entire city they built and six towers rising high up shook.
"What's going on?" I looked in daze towards this and didn't know what to do. This Ruin twin soul just took half of the bone energy, leaving almost half still gushing here.
So my first reflex was by guiding these energies towards the platform and the newly formed city and towers. But as the first waves of energy touched the platform, that shaking grew from being weak to become stronger.
"Damn!" I knew this couldn't help but to make things much worse. I didn't even have time to celebrate opening my first three stages of cultivation.
And now I had to deal with such a disaster! I could see how fierce the shaking became, even causing a few cracks to appear over the outer surface of the platform.
Damn! Damn! Damn! Don't tell me all this was going to fall and shatter! What did I do wrong just now?
I calmed down myself, tried to recall anything to help in such a situation.
I tried to recall anything from the old man's records that could help. However I knew this was like searching for a needle in a massive haystack.
Also the main problem was that my cultivation methods were much different than normal cultivation methods.
To add more bad news, the energy coming from my bones was getting out of my control. I already was directing all this energy to enter here. But after trying and ending up stirring more trouble for my platform, I had to keep this energy nearby.
And in just the few minutes I spent in thinking for a solution, the amount of energy began to grow to a terrifying degree.
I felt if this kept up, I'd end up losing control and might even get a damaging backlash from this.
"Forget it! Go into my dantian then," I didn't find any other way to control and store these energy in but into my dantian here.
And as the energy poured into my dantian, I had to control it to circulate in the densely packed meridian network around the dantian.
I was just trying to buy time, hoping I'd regain control over this berserk energy.
Just as I was busy doing that, something weird happened. I was pushing the energy around in the meridians rich network. But at a few places, I felt like part of the energy was lost there.
At first I didn't notice it, but soon I felt something was wrong. I watched carefully while pushing another wave of energy into my meridians.
And this time I could see what happened. For unknown reason, my energy went into tiny black holes that appeared at one side of the meridians.
These holes were weird. They weren't there before. But when I noticed their pattern of distribution, I got a flash of realisation.
"Isn't this in the direction of the platform?" I looked and confirmed my guess. "Ok, let's try this then."
I controlled the energy and pushed all of it towards these holes. I watched all the energy I threw to vanish into the black holes, and with it new changes occured.
The platform and the ground attached to it was filled with cracks. The cracks were expanding fast. But when my energy gushed into these black holes, these cracks started to heal at a rate visible to naked eye.
That meant the platform couldn't handle pure energy without the interference of my dantian. I looked at this scene while a question popped up in my head.
Why was my dantian away from my platform in the first place? Wasn't this supposed to be my cultivation base or what?
According to the old man's words, the cultivation base was built first by a dantian and a network of meridians. Then cultivation would be built entirely over this.
But my platform was built away from my dantian, even separated from it. As I watched how my platform was eating my energy like it was a barren land, I couldn't help but think about another crazy idea.
"Let's see… After all this situation is all wrong…" I knew this wasn't my fault. After all, the platform was built by my first soul, Devour.
Devour selected this area to build the platform away from the dantian. And now, I had to correct this childish and crucial mistake of my first boy.
To do that, I had to improvise. The only thought that crossed my mind at this moment was to use the same way I used to drive the souls into here.
But this dantian was already in the shadow world. So I didn't need to cut it into pieces. I just had to control the excess energy, forming two gigantic palms that carried that dantian alongside its meridians.
Then I slowly pushed it towards the direction of my platform.
I feared my platform would reject my dantian. But the problem didn't originate from there. The platform didn't show any resistance as I feared.
In fact it started to grow an attraction force, helping my dantian to come closer. But the problem came from nothing else but that hidden force here.
Just when I started moving my dantian, it seemed like a behemoth was stirred up. Giant torrents of dark energy started to come and crush at my dantian and meridians, trying to crush them.
364 Draw A Circle
It felt painful, really painful with each hit. I didn't know what caused this to happen, but the balance that my dantian maintained here seemed to be lost the moment I started moving it.
At some point, I realised I wouldn't get done if I kept acting cautious and slow. "Screw it!" I gritted my teeth and decided to endure the pain no matter what.
Instead of slowly pushing the dantian around, he acted like he was crushing it forward towards the platform.
In a few seconds, the dantian hit the platform and like a dry sponge meeting water, the platform engulfed the dantian and meridians, letting them all vanish inside it.
But that came in return for feeling a strong backlash from that hostile dark energy here. It felt like I was getting lashed and burnt by fire, making me want to scream out of pain.
However I endured. I had to endure. After all this pain lasted for a few seconds before it started to slowly fade. I endured to my best ability, while watching the platform.
The moment the dantian and meridians vanished inside it, I could feel my connection with them getting broken for a few seconds. I panicked when that happened. What! Don't tell me I was going to lose everything I worked hard for!
Just as I was trying to get in touch with my dantian, the dantian regained its connection with me on its own. But that link wasn't to the dantian directly this time. It was a link with the platform itself.
The connection felt weird. The platform changed to become like a dense net of meridians that took a physical shape of the platform. And when I was just wondering about what was going on, all the energy coming from my bones was sucked dry at a frightening rate.
"It's… growing branches like a tree!!" I saw that from the platform, thin tree-like branches grew and started to twist around the platform.
Then it expanded to the base layer with all the buildings over it. When it covered the entire platform, the towers started to slowly shine in silver white light.
And then the buildings started to shine as well, not at the same intensity as my six towers, but it was noticeable from far.
"What now?" As changes stopped here, I didn't know what I should do next. The dantian seemed to be lost inside the platform, or perhaps the two completely merged together.
I couldn't feel my dantian anymore. All the meridians were linked together with the platform, giving me the feeling of turning into an endless maze.
But as long as my energy entered there and circulated it was fine. I followed my energy and found out that every single detail here was filled with my energy. I could examine everything in many details like I was standing in front of it.
That was cool indeed, however how could that help me in any way? I developed my cultivation base, started my cultivation path, opened three stages so far, and established my platform and merged it with my dantian.
So what was next? Shouldn't I feel any difference now? Then why did it feel like nothing changed?
I tried to inspect the platform further, but failed to spot anything new or special. Things weren't looking good to me. Overall I succeeded in establishing my cultivation base, yet failed to get any benefit from it.
Wasn't that considered as… Screwing up?
Feeling helpless and dejected, knowing how this would greatly impact the course of the entire war and also the lives of everyone, I had to go out and speak with my team.
I had to ask them to run away as far as possible from here. This… this fight was going to be my devastating loss.
I knew I was able to handle anything on my own, but they wouldn't. If this kept going on, then during the next hours they would be killed in front of my eyes without being able to do anything to help.
That… It was a really frustrating, very painful feeling that I didn't want to experience for real.
[That god says that you have done exceptionally well]
Just as I opened my eyes, the next message that popped in my eyes shifted all my depression and powerless negative feeling over that god.
I was like a damn volcano on the edge of getting erupted at the next second.
[He says it's time for you to unleash hell upon your enemies]
"Hell? Are you sure?" I couldn't help but stand up, clenching the fists in rage. My body started to shiver out of pure anger. "Are you… For real?"
[That god says it's not time to waste on explaining things. Just release your blood and drew a circle in the air and you'll see by yourself]
"You…"
[He says that you trusted him to this point, why not follow his words for this last time?]
I tried to say something, curse him, explode in anger at him, but I ended up doing nothing. I looked around. The spearhead was already on the verge of collapsing.
He already ate all the crystals I provided to him during the past half an hour. That… was something crazy indeed.
But he managed to push his limits beyond the triple seal here. My boys were fighting fiercely at the front of the gate.
For a reason, few of the weapons were arranged outside of the protective shield. This helped in reducing their numbers by ten pieces, buying me precious minutes here.
It seemed that Hector bastard underestimated me, a mistake that came at the perfect time and greatly helped me here.
Alright… If you were this confident in the sh*it you lured me to do it, then I'd see it to the end. Drawing a circle with my blood? How hard would this be? What difference would this make?
Burdened with doubt and regret more than anything else, I took out my dagger and cut a wound at my palm.
*Sizzle!*
365 You Are On Your Own
But the moment I did that, my blood reacted so much differently. It felt like my hand got attached to a bigger force, a bigger world, a bigger presence that was around but didn't notice it before.
My blood kept sizzling like it was fire meeting water. And my hand was controlled against my will, wanting to be raised upwards.
[That god warns you to not succumb to this force. He says that you have to force your own will here, draw that circle with both hands, or else you'll lose everything]
Well… He could say what he wanted, but it wasn't that easy to counter this force.
It felt like I was against the world! I tried to resist that force out of instinct, even before that god sent me his words of advice.
But soon I realised it was so damn hard to do that. Just as I was resisting with all my might, I heard a muffled thud as a body fell just a few metres away from me.
"Damn! Spearhead! Hey, you! Wake up!" I shouted at the all weak and powerless Spearhead who just fell on the floor of my chariot without moving a finger.
He just fell, and I knew that my hard earned soulers were going to fall here as well.
Damn! How did things reach this deep and dark point? I looked at the direction of the portal… Indeed my forces were getting pressured and pushed back with the all strengthened humans at the portal.
If this kept up, then my forces would be annihilated! Should I summon them back? Or should I…
"Just stop the damn resistance you motherf*cker!" I turned to the intangible force that kept fighting against my palm. It wasn't time to hesitate. I should fight, fight and force my hands to complete that goddam circle.
I tried to force with everything I got, even held my hand with the other and pushed it like I was pushing against a rock.
At this moment, I felt something hot burning inside my abdomen. I didn't know what it was at first, but soon I realised it was my dantian.
It was pushing forward all the spiritual energy to circulate inside my meridians, making my entire body warm up and soon burning like a piece of ember.
I didn't know how much power it pushed into my body, but it was enough to make me finally move my hand in the air.
Just by moving my hand, the blood coming out didn't fall or evaporate. It stopped in the air like it was held with its own power or will.
And like that, I started drawing a circle, bit by bit, until it finally got in full shape.
*Rumble!*
The moment the circle was formed in the air, the area around started to shake and rumble. I even saw thin lines that looked more like cracks in the air.
What? Was it going to crash the world? Or what?
It wasn't a perfect circle, with all the weird shaking lines it had. But it seemed it was enough to start something. And the next, the words of that god came to enlighten me about what was going on here.
[That god says that you did it! The dark world your shadow is connected to is considered the nemesis of the real world]
[He says that by unlocking your cultivation base in that way, you managed to establish a connection between the two worlds using your body, and your blood is the key to all this]
[That god says that once you use your blood to draw a portal, that link will be activated. Fire always eats away water, and the dark world will always crush the real world]
"But I don't want my world to be destroyed!" What the heck was wrong with you, pal? Do you have mental issues or what?
I wanted to win and triumph over my enemies, crush them not crush everything in this world.
[He says that it's now up to you. If you wanted to control this deadly effect, then you have to come up with a way to do it]
"What the f*ck…"
[He says that you have to devise a new technique, using your cultivation base to execute it]
Aha… So that was what he wanted to say… But who said that devising a cultivation technique was this easy to come up with?
"Any suggestions?" I asked while the thin lines started to grow thicker and broader.
[He says that's where his help ends]
"F*ck you!" it wasn't a good thing to leave me in the middle of the road. Having a cultivation base wasn't enough to turn this shitty situation around.
Yet that god kept his silence. And the situation just turned from being bad to getting so damn worse.
Alright… I needed to calm down and just think… It wasn't like I lacked knowledge about a few basic cultivation techniques.
I listened to the old man's teachings, and also read a few about techniques back in my days. I knew the general principles about how techniques work.
Cultivation was like fuel, and techniques were like the missile that used this fuel to get fired.
According to what I knew, my cultivation base was all about the dark world. It worked to use dark energy from the dark world and channel it through my body to affect this world here.
But wait, wasn't my cultivation based first onto my shadow? Didn't every single living creature and race in the universe have their shadows?
Why don't I just use my cultivation power and aim directly at this point? Aim my shadow power to affect or even control others' shadows?
Wouldn't that affect my enemies? But how could I do that?
I didn't have any time to think about what I should do. Didn't that god say my blood was the key? Didn't he say that my portal here was the link between the two worlds through my body?
Then I should do something using my blood and this portal here.
366 Developing A New Cultivation Technique
To be honest, I didn't know what exactly I was doing here. I just used the blood gushing out from the wound at my hand and started to form a symbol.
What I wanted was to control shadows. For some reason , three layered seals appeared in my mind when I thought about that.
Each seal was formed of a certain number of axial points. In the real world they were gigantic arrows. And inside my circle of blood, I just placed points in the form of small stars.
My circle wasn't that big to start with. So I could only place seven points there before it looked crowded.
The points I placed were all on the rim of that bloody circle. Once I did that, the circle started to flash in a weird silver white light.
It meant it got connected to my spiritual energy and drained it out. I didn't stop here as I was just starting.
I went inside and placed five more points, then drew a smaller circle connecting these dots together. Once I did that, the area in between the two circles got covered in a thick membrane of my silver white energy.
It got connected, and it looked fine to me. Yet it was far from over.
I placed three points at the inner zone, and drew a circle as well. Another membrane appeared. The remaining area was so small to only allow for a single point to be placed there, and I surrounded it with a much smaller circle.
Coincidentally enough, this last dot and circle were exactly at the centre of my circles. The entire big circle was now filled with four membranes, lined by three circles.
But I felt something was still missing. "I should link the circles together," I thought to myself, "I should draw lines extending like this… connecting this dot with these three… these three with those five…" I kept extending lines using my blood.
My blood worked like it was a real material used for painting or something. As I finished connecting all the dots together, I didn't feel the need to stop.
I drew lines from the outer rim of the circle, so many to look like they were hair. They extended to the air outside without getting connected with anything.
They looked like they were floating in the air, with some sort of power connecting all of them.
"What now?" I looked at all these densely drawn and stretched out lines without knowing what to do next.
[That god says that you should cover your fist with blood, and take control over the central axial point you drew at the centre]
Finally that damn god said something really useful at this moment. I didn't hesitate and created a deeper wound at my hand, raising it in the air while closing my fist.
The blood covered up my fist and the next instant, I placed it over that point.
It felt like I was pushing against a soft medium, like I was placing my hand in jelly or something. At the same time, it felt like I got connected with something that I could control.
I got the urge to rotate my fist, and the moment I did that, the threads of blood extending out from my portal moved in response.
*Flash!* *Flash!* *Flash!*
Like real bolts of lighting, they all moved in unbelievable speed, reaching almost in the next second to the area I was looking at; that damn portal.
Just at these few minutes while I was trying and testing my new cultivation base, the enemy brought forth more weapons from the portal, pushing them outside to line up in wait for attack.
They were pushed by a large number of humans, getting protected by much more human forces there. My soulers were just having trouble dealing with these humans.
Instead of just flashing and killing them like they were nothing, they had to attack more than ten times in a row to kill them.
As for Albany city monsters, they got killed and smashed by the strengthened human forces.
Yet that all stopped the moment my threads arrived there. I didn't know how, but it felt like I got total control over all these threads and they could execute my thoughts.
And at this moment I held one simple thought in my mind; control these bastards' shadows and control their movements.
In the next few moments, my threads attacked the shadows of many humans. Using my hawk eye skill at this moment, I saw my threads acting in the same way as my soulers; jumping from one foe to another, jumping from one human to all those around them.
One got attacked, yet the rest standing around got attacked the next moment. Then those around these were attacked the next moment, and this kept going on in such a terrifying fast and smooth pace.
It seemed that nothing in the world could stop my threads. Even that pressuring seal here failed to do that. When that leader of Hector race noticed what I was doing, he tried to attack my threads using everything he got.
He even launched attacks from his mighty weapons to try and contain or even damage my threads. But for a reason, everything thrown at my threads got passed through them like my threads weren't even real.
That was just great news to me, very, very bad to the enemy.
"That's amazing," I couldn't control my excitement, especially when I saw all the humans attacked by my threads showing changes in their movements during the next few minutes.
They first grew sluggish, like they were resisting my threads. Their movement speed and actions grew slower and weaker, before they finally stopped moving.
They stood up in their places like they were waiting for something. I looked around using my hawk eye skill, not knowing how I could express my delight about that.
"Let me try and give you orders then," I thought about pushing my technique to the next level. "Go, smash all these big weapons to pieces!"
367 The OP Technique
I gave the order out loud and thought about it in my mind. I kept watching in anticipation. Would they execute what I just said? Would they move against their will and smash these weapons?
Would their shadows be this mighty existence, enough to control the real bodies? Or what?
I really wanted this attack to link. If so then it would be just OP technique, one that I'd simply keep using from now on.
The next moment I felt strange things inside my body. Up till now, that heat from before was still raging at my body.
But when I gave such an order, it felt like this heat was dying down at a fast pace. I closed my eyes for a brief second and there I saw my spiritual energy getting pushed out, drained fast like it was getting dried up.
Damn! That technique was really working, but it required such a ton of energy to get executed.
If this continued, then my energy wouldn't be enough to sustain it for more than a few minutes. Besides, I was still letting my threads control more humans.
So that might even not last for more than one minute.
"Screw it! Come out!" I didn't hesitate any longer. I took one dark gold grade bone and started to absorb its energy with mine.
If my energy amount wasn't enough, then it was just logical to make use of another source of energy. But that bone energy was so fierce to force me to close up my eyes and try to control its gush into my dantian.
The moment this dark energy entered my body, it was turned into silver white energy of mine. Yet it felt like a tsunami was entering my dantian, the almost dried up dantian.
I had to exert more control over this energy, push it through my meridians. It felt hard at first, considering there was little energy left of mine.
But just as the energy circulated once inside my meridians, things started to grow calmer. The suction force helped greatly in stabilising everything inside, making me finally able to heave a breath of relief.
As I opened my eyes, I saw the world change in front of my eyes. The dense human forces that were surrounding and protecting these big weapons were now turning their blades against these weapons, starting to crush them.
Even that protective shield that damn bastard used to shield most of these big weapons couldn't stop my technique. The humans everywhere around the portal started to grow berserk, moving against their will and against the orders of their master, attacking and smashing these weapons to pieces.
It felt painful looking at these weapons smashed in such a way. But at such a stage, I couldn't think about keeping these weapons anymore.
I had to deprive that Hector bastard from his deadly weapons. This blow came in just an unexpected way, giving a scare indeed to that bastard.
No more weapons poured out from the portal, or even the human race. That bastard seemed to be speechless out of immense shock. After all, what was happening here was way beyond normal logic.
"Start crushing that damn portal!" as the weapons all fell into tiny useless pieces, it was time to aim at the source of all this sh*t.
Right now my spiritual energy was abundant as that bone kept gushing energy non-stop towards my body. The bone turned into a clump of energy shining in black and silver white light.
I estimated only one tenth of its energy was consumed so far. I didn't keep my hand at this moment, rapidly expanding my control over the humans here as much as I could.
[That god says that this is a great chance for you to expand your forces]
Just as I was absorbed in doing this, that god sent me such a weird message. I frowned, thought a little about what he said and couldn't help to ask:
"How?"
[That gods say that all humans here are bound by loyalty contracts with that Hector race paragon. You can use this moment of freedom you forced upon them using your technique and make them sign a new contract with you]
Wow! I never thought about this!
"Can this work?" but I had much doubt about that, "after all that's a paragon. He must have used some sort of a strong contract to bind them."
[That god says that other races don't think high of our race. He says that the contracts used are just the basic forms of contracts. He advises you to use higher grade contracts to bind them to you forever]
"Damn! That's just cool!"
I looked at all the big numbers here of humans. Having such force with such size and such advanced stats and cultivation was just like heaven in my eyes.
I instantly opened my market, bought a great number of high grade loyalty contracts.
I signed some and then looked at the distance. "Let's see if this is going to work… Sign these contracts my fellow humans, serve me, a human. I won't treat you badly or mean, not like that damn bastard."
I said, not knowing if they could hear my voice or not. I threw the contracts in the direction of my threads. And in the next moment they vanished from my eyes.
I didn't know if the humans there would sign these or not. So I opened my profile, checked the contract section and there I noticed the addition of dozens of names there.
"It… Work!" I couldn't help but shout in triumph and excitement. As this trial worked, I started a spree of signing and throwing my contracts over.
Things kept looking good as I kept throwing contracts in the direction of the portal. This heaven kept going for almost half an hour before that bastard started to retaliate.
During this time, my humans kept attacking the portal. The portal was really sturdy. Even with all these humans attacking, it only showed a few cracks at the end.
But after half an hour, a new change came up.
"New species? Aren't they… Bulltors?"
368 A Plan To Secure More Bulltors
In front of that portal, a large number of giants appeared. They each held massive sledgehammers, waving these around like they were holding small toys or something.
Comparing the two sides together, my humans lacked in everything. The newcomers weren't weak. They were also supported with their high stats and cultivation.
Just the first minutes of attacks, the frontline of my humans crumbled. Many died and much more were thrown in the air like they were nothing.
"Get back here," I wasn't ready to lose these humans yet. "As for you… I won't say no to any race you throw at me."
That bastard seemed to read my technique wrong. He thought my technique only targeted humans as I was one.
But he didn't know that my technique was aiming at shadows. No matter which race it was, their shadows would end up under my control.
As I gave the order to retreat for my boys, I didn't hurry to show up the fierce side of my technique. In fact I kept only focusing on controlling more humans around, neglecting the Bulltors.
To be honest, since the first day I got my Bulltors and I dreamt about getting more. So at this moment, how could I let such a chance slip by my hands?
I had to keep drowning that bastard deeper into his illusion and misunderstanding. Like this he would get as many Bulltors as possible, letting me gather them in one fell swoop later on.
I also needed to prepare. Who knew what else that bastard was preparing this time. He took a longer time to react, meaning he must have arranged something against my actions here.
The contracts humans here had from him were all weak and low class. So if I was him, I'd refresh all the contracts of these Bulltors, using a much higher and much stronger kind of contracts.
That enemy of mine was another paragon. I didn't know why I was attracting paragons of this race in such a way. I stayed in the apocalypse all this time, and never faced a single paragon of any race here till Hectors came in picture.
What? Were they having lots of paragons to throw them around like cannon fodders? Or were they just placing a great bounty over my head, enough to lure all these paragons over my path?
Fighting paragons wasn't a good thing. After all these were considered the top of the pyramid, the cream of crop here.
Facing them meant facing not only strong foes, but ones with immense wealth, treasures, and forces ready to stand up and fight for them.
But for me it wasn't that bad. Just using my Anubis treasure against them meant I was going to cut the head of the snake in one move.
It was risky, yet it was rewardable as well. I couldn't say I hated fighting paragons or even liked it.
Anyway, my bone energy was consumed for almost two thirds. I looked up at the portal and the number of Bulltors gushing out was now in tens of thousands.
I had to wait until he released hundreds of thousand before moving. At the same time, I opened my marker and looked at the highest grade possible contract I could purchase at this stage.
I got a long list of contracts at this moment. The first thing I looked up at was the most pricey contract here.
It was like an invisible kind of contract, only could be broken with the intervention of a god.
Damn! We both were fighting at the same stage of the apocalypse. So that dude must have used this kind of contract to bind these Bulltors to him.
Even if the price for a single contract was fifty million coins, for such a paragon of such a wealthy race, it wasn't a big deal.
Sigh! It seemed I could only control them temporarily and wouldn't be able to hold them by my side.
[That god says that killing the head of the snake will let its body loose]
Just at this moment, I got such a message from that god. Well… hitting the head of the snake… Did he mean killing that bastard?
But how? I still couldn't sniff a whim of him yet.
[That god says why not use that compass of yours?]
"Compass? You mean Anubis compass?" I shouted in a loud tone out of realisation.
Indeed I could use it! After all, I wanted nothing more at this moment than finding that bastard and killing him!
But no matter where I tried to look, I never found even a trace of him. He was somewhere near, I was sure of that.
Or else he wouldn't be able to adapt in such a manner. I got out my compass, feeling more regret to not think about it at first.
I was pressured by this hectic battle from the start till now. I had to grow calm and be more thoughtful about my assets.
Just like this instance here, with just this compass I could pinpoint towards my enemy and find his location.
Anyway, I owe you one, a big one, my god.
He indeed gave me a valuable hand here. Starting from getting me inspiration about my cultivation, filling the gaps left by Sith, and ending up suggesting the contract thing and this idea of killing that Hector paragon.
I'd surely need such a brilliant mind to be on my side. I decided, my next god as a sponsor would be you.
And now… I had to think of how I'd fight and kill that paragon in the shortest period of time.
After all… He was a paragon, not just the normal kind of pathetic opponents one would find anywhere here.
Finding him was just this hard to begin with. Not to mention the task of killing him would be much harder than ever.
"I got my Libra anyway," no matter what plan I'd think about, using my Libra to weaken him was the first step I had to take.
[That god says you can't use this… Or else the entire forces belonging to him will lose a great deal of their power]
"What the f*ck…!!!"