Chapter 215
The reason Oliver wasn’t moving was not because he was enjoying the chimera’s final moments of struggle, but because he was observing something more profound and deeper above it.
There was something else—something hidden within its dying form.
His eyes shone with a mysterious light as he looked at the thousands of blurry gray wisps of light that were leaving or breaking out of the chimera’s body as it withered away in the holy flames of nightmare.
‘Are these…?’
‘…the souls of the deceased?’
Oliver looked intently at the cluster of gray wisps. He didn’t know beforehand what they were, but his intuition told him exactly what they were.
The hybrid was a being made with the help of others’ souls, so it wasn’t hard for him to guess what those clusters of light were. As the chimera reached its end, the souls were released from the confines of its body.
The dark alchemists used sinister methods to stitch souls into the chimera’s body so they could no longer escape, forcing them to suffer eternally while serving as fuel for the hybrid indefinitely.
It was a fate worse than death, a torment beyond comprehension.
‘They sacrificed a lot of people… how did they manage to go unnoticed for so long? Did they collect souls from somewhere else before arriving here?’
Oliver had many speculations about the matter, but at the moment, he was more focused on the souls of the deceased floating in the air.
They seemed lost, wandering without purpose, tethered to this world by the violence of their deaths.
They gave him a strong feeling of resemblance to the spirits he encountered when training under Sigfor.
The difference was that the spirits were colorful and denser compared to the monotonous souls here.
“Sigh, what a mess,” he said to himself.
“I can’t let this huge number of souls disperse into the atmosphere…”
From a novel he had read, he knew that letting out this many souls in raw form would cause them to become contaminated, turning into wild ghosts that would create chaos.
It would be a terrible outcome for everyone involved later.
Usually, there were certain exorcism techniques that could allow souls to leave peacefully without turning malevolent.
However, the issue was that he didn’t know any such techniques. In the novel, these techniques were taught at the institute.
But he wasn’t in a novel, and this wasn’t the time to worry about things he couldn’t control.
He was also in no position to let the souls roam freely like this.
“Hmm…”
A certain look appeared in his eyes as he remembered what happened when he was summoned to the partial spirit world.
At that time, his abyss energy had gotten a certain boost…
The memory flickered in his mind, bringing with it a strange mix of temptation and hesitation.
Well…
Would he become a cannibal if he did the same thing to the souls here?
“Erm… this…”
He became a little flustered at the thought. He had to do something about the situation, and his options were limited to just one.
“I am sorry, my human fellows, or maybe some demon fellows who got mixed up in this cluster. I must do this for the sake of world peace.”
Oliver looked sorrowful for a moment, and before anyone could even react, a large amount of corrupt reddish-black energy instantly engulfed the large cluster of souls and disappeared in less than a second.
He had used a little of his abyss energy earlier and could feel a strong boost to his initially low reserves. However, it wasn’t as significant as the time when he consumed the partial spirits.
It felt different, weaker somehow, like the souls were lacking something.
Well, it made sense since most of these souls belonged to powerless humans.
‘Wait, I won’t be called a killer now, right?’ He frowned and quickly shook off the useless thoughts. What’s done was done.
There was no undoing it now.
“It’s all for the greater good,” he told himself as he watched the chimera’s body completely extinguish, and the dark espera thread connected to it suddenly broke.
It meant that the control and connection with the heretics had been destroyed.
“Now then, what should I do?”
He looked thoughtful as he stared at the sky for a moment before deciding on his next action.
The morning light was starting to creep into the horizon, but his task was far from over.
He noticed the faint trail of dark espera, as thin as a thread, extending into the sky.
He glanced at the chimera, or what remained of it, and saw something that caught his eye on its body. Without a second thought, he stored the hybrid’s remains in his mindspace.
He felt a large amount of space being taken up by this sudden action. He was still not proficient in using abyss energy, and his level of abyss energy was still too low. From the cryptic knowledge he had obtained last time, he knew the stronger his abyss energy became, the vaster his mindspace would be in the future.
It was limitless.
Oliver then quickly followed the slowly disappearing thread of dark espera, heading directly toward where the heretics responsible for the whole situation were most likely hiding.
He moved quickly, every second wasted increasing the risk of losing his lead.
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In the underground dark chamber
A few hours ago
Two heretics were seated in meditative positions facing one another. The woman was responsible for manipulating the dark espera and controlling the hybrid’s consciousness, while the man’s role was to keep reciting a script from an ancient scroll he held—which must not be stopped while the woman concentrated on controlling the chimera.
It was crucial that he continued until the woman stopped herself first.
Their main goal was the revival of their lord and the restoration of their dark sect’s heritage to how it used to be.
To achieve that, they needed to direct the chimera toward them and have it merge with the decaying skull placed between them. This skull, inscribed with runic characters, would allow their lord to possess the chimera and help him revive.
They could not directly bring the hybrid fetus back to this underground base, as the conditions for it to be born required strict environments best suited for the playground.
They had planned everything carefully. They would let the hybrid be born, then allow it to rampage in the city to grow stronger before ordering it back to the underground base, where they would use it to revive their lord.
Their victory was all but assured—at least, that’s what they believed.
Everything was flawless…
It was supposed to be flawless, at least.