Death... and me

Chapter 2470 A New Soul Devil

"That thing already destroyed another five cities, and it is getting stronger as it moves," one of the voices Roan was hearing said.

"I heard that it was created by the devils to change the course of the war," said another cultivator somewhere else.

A demon beast in another place seemed pretty concerned. "What if it keeps absorbing more souls?"

As Roan heard all the stories, he managed to piece all the clues together to get a full picture of the situation. With that, he returned to the hotel room and entered the Soul Gem Dimensional Realm before telling Rean and the others about it. 'From the looks of it, a soul devil has appeared in the Realm of Gods, and it is going on a rampage.'

'Soul Devil?' Rean, who was working on the armor, asked back. 'Is it Beelzebub?'

'No,' Roan answered. 'It seems like this is a completely new Soul Devil that has just been born. Also, this Soul Devil is not taking Dead Souls. Instead, it seems to be quite similar to the Devils themselves, only absorbing Living Souls instead.'

'That's weird,' Celis entered the conversation. 'Soul Devils that have no intelligence. They only act on instinct, and it takes a very long time until they have a chance to acquire sentience. The cultivators of our Realm of Gods should have eliminated this thing fairly easily. What's the problem?'

'That's the point,' Roan commented. 'This Soul Devil is very intelligent, already having sentience from the moment it appeared. Not only that, it seems to have some kind of sensorial ability that detects the presence of anything alive that can threat its existence. Once a cultivator way too strong appears, it immediately flees before the other part even manages to get close enough to detect the Soul Devil with its Divine Sense.'

[That's even more weird,] Sister Orb still found the story hard to swallow. [That would only be an issue if you couldn't teleport straight to the city that is being attacked. However, if you teleport straight there and use your Divine Sense as soon as you arrive, even this Soul Devil wouldn't be able to see it coming. The same could be said if you use a Spatial Gate to arrive as well.]

Roan shook his head, though. 'I wasn't able to check that much. However, the truth is that this Soul Devil seems to be able to escape even under the situation Sister Orb mentioned.'

'How come we haven't heard about this thing before?' Rean couldn't help but ask.

'Because it wasn't a big problem at first,' Roan answered. 'This Soul Devil appeared quite a while ago. But because it was too weak and the damage it caused was too small, the powers of the Realm of Gods simply ignored its existence. After all, the war was more important. But when the Soul Devil began to grow strong enough to wipe out cities, that's when the Realm of Gods moved.'

'Yet, the Soul Devil is escaping every single time. Not to mention, its power is increasing nonstop, already being close to the Divinity Realm,' Roan explained. 'Of course, the people I heard it from can't be completely trusted. It's not official information. Yet, this Soul Devil's appearance was enough to force the armies to stop moving forward. That said, I do believe it has grown quite strong enough to be a problem even for our Divinity Realm experts.'

'I see...' Rean understood. 'The Divinity Realm experts of the army probably decided to join forces to capture or kill it. However, leaving their armies without Divinity Realm experts to defend the fort would be an invitation for the Devils to wipe them out. Without another choice, they were forced to call all the armies back from the frontlines and join them together in waiting.'

'Exactly.' Roan nodded. 'It is not only a single army we have around this city. We have more than five armies here at the moment, and there is only Folesve and Flinyu to protect them. In fact, it was supposed to be Folesve alone, but you know why Flinyu came here.'

[Still, if this Soul Devil was born recently, for it to have sentience and already be strong enough to flee from Divinity Realm Experts is quite ridiculous. I can bet whatever you want that this Soul Devil has a huge flaw.]

'Why?' Kentucky asked.

[The laws of the Universe are not fair, but they aren't absolutely ridiculous either. The Universe would never allow the birth of something that can get strong this fast without some huge drawback. If I were to guess, I would probably say that this Soul Devil's existence is on the line. It must continue absorbing Living Souls nonstop, or it will probably suffer something very bad. Otherwise, do you think it is an intelligent move to keep appearing and destroying so many cities?]

Roan agreed with Sister Orb. 'She is right. If it truly has intelligence, it definitely knows that doing such a thing would catch the attention of the Divinity Realm experts on our side. Yet, it continues playing with fire. Most likely, it has no other choice but to continue doing it.'

In the end, Kentucky shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, so what? This has nothing to do with us. A Soul Devil that can give problems to our Divinity Realm experts? I'm sorry to say this, but... that's not something we can mess with. 

Roan knew that. 'Kentucky is right. Nonetheless, we needed to at least know what was happening, and now we do. Let's try to avoid any places where this monster might appear in the future.'

'The Realm of Gods is too big! There is no way we would bump on such a thing,' Kentucky added.

Rean and Roan weren't as confident, though. After all, they have their beloved destiny attraction feature from the system. Roan even wondered if it was a good idea to go out to search and learn about that thing.