Chapter 130: Advancing Two Levels 1

“Looks like you’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”

Kent clearly enjoyed seeing the shock on Manda’s face.

“That so-called ‘old monster’ you people kept talking about was nothing more than a severely injured soul. Sure, his level was ridiculously high, but that didn’t stop me from dealing with him.”

Kent proudly held up his staff.

“See? I sealed him inside here.”

He pointed toward the Life Stone mounted at the tip.

“And the reason I summoned you this time has everything to do with him.”

Manda leaned closer and examined the staff.

Sure enough, a soul creature was trapped inside the Life Stone, thrashing about violently as though it wanted to tear its way free.

Manda had no way of knowing whether this truly was the ancient being he had once feared, but Kent had little reason to lie to him.

So he asked cautiously,

“Master is truly wise. But... what does this have to do with me?”

“A great deal.”

Kent’s expression became more serious.

“Do you know what that creature really was?”

“He had already come close to becoming a god.”

Manda’s eyes widened.

Kent continued,

“He was severely wounded by a god during a battle and came down here to recover.”

“I’m planning to refine his soul now.”

“But my level is too low, and my own soul is too weak to absorb everything inside him.”

Kent looked directly at Manda.

“So I’ve decided to give you the fragment of his comprehension of the laws of heaven and earth.”

“You can fuse it into your own soul.”

Kent spoke honestly.

He had no intention of hiding the danger involved.

Fusing such a fragment was anything but safe.

The power contained within even the faintest comprehension of the laws of heaven and earth was not something to be underestimated.

However, before Kent could finish explaining the risks, Manda suddenly interrupted him.

He dropped to one knee.

Placing his right hand over his chest, he declared with trembling excitement,

“I, Manda, swear to follow my master for all eternity!”

“If I ever betray this oath, may my soul be erased forever!”

“Thank you, Master!”

Manda was almost overwhelmed with emotion.

Fusing another being’s soul was indeed dangerous.

But if he succeeded, the rewards were beyond imagination.

Until his cultivation reached the point represented by that fragment of law comprehension, he would face almost no bottlenecks at all.

And according to Kent, the owner of that fragment had once fought a god and survived.

What kind of existence could accomplish something like that?

Without this opportunity, Manda knew exactly what his future looked like.

He would remain trapped at Level Eight forever.

He had already stood at the peak of Level Eight for nearly a hundred years.

His problem was not effort.

It was talent.

His natural limitations had created a barrier he simply could not break through.

And if talent could be overcome merely by stubbornness, then there would be no meaning to the word talent in the first place.

“Good! Good!”

Kent could barely conceal his happiness.

Manda had voluntarily sworn eternal loyalty to him.

That was far more valuable than simple magical enslavement.

“I accept your oath.”

Kent casually took out several high-level Necromancy-element magic cores and handed them to Manda.

“Use these during the fusion.”

“Don’t worry about conserving them. I still have plenty.”

A tremendous amount of magical power would be consumed during the soul fusion process.

Having enough magic cores on hand could easily mean the difference between success and failure.

“Thank you, Master.”

Manda carefully accepted them.

Then his expression became subdued.

“It is fortunate that you managed to seal the old one.”

“Otherwise, even I probably would have disappeared before long.”

Kent frowned slightly.

Manda continued in a low voice,

“Whenever a Level Nine undead creature appeared in this underground region, it would slowly begin to weaken.”

“And before long... it would vanish completely.”

There was unmistakable sorrow in his voice.

Not for himself, but for all the undead beings who had disappeared before him.

After all, most undead creatures had once been human.

Kent fell silent for a moment.

Then he placed a hand on Manda’s shoulder.

“All right.”

“Stand over there and open your soul completely.”

He pointed toward one of the designated positions within the Soul-Refining Array.

“After that, whether you succeed or fail will depend on you.”

Manda nodded.

Without hesitation, he walked to the position Kent had indicated.

There, he relaxed both body and spirit and fully opened his soul, preparing himself for the coming fusion.

Kent returned the staff to its original position within the formation.

Then he walked over to his own designated place and sat down.

Once everything was ready, he looked toward Niuniu.

Then he gave her a single nod.

Once Niuniu saw that Kent was ready, she shot Big Nose a stern glare.

Big Nose immediately lowered his head and slunk away to stand guard.

Then Niuniu began chanting a long string of incantations.

A beam of brilliant white light descended from above and struck the staff.

Niuniu glanced toward Kent once more.

Kent understood at once.

With a thought, he released the soul that had been sealed inside the staff.

“Damned human! Cunning! Despicable! You filthy—”

The soul immediately began cursing at the top of its voice.

Then, all at once, it sensed that something was wrong.

It turned.

The instant it saw Niuniu, terror flooded through it.

Without hesitation, it tried to flee.

But it was already too late.

“Soul Severing!”

Niuniu spoke only two words.

In the next instant, the soul was completely engulfed by the white radiance above it.

“Mercy—!”

That was the only word it managed to scream before the barrier of light closed around it.

Apparently realizing that its end had come, the soul suddenly dispersed into a mass of golden mist.

The mist churned violently inside the barrier, twisting and surging in every direction as it desperately searched for a way to escape.

But how could the Soul-Refining Array Niuniu had constructed be broken so easily?

The glowing barrier slammed downward, pinning the golden mist directly onto the magic array.

At once, thin threads of golden light flashed across the entire formation.

Following the intricate pathways engraved into the array, those streams of light flowed toward Kent and Manda.

Then they entered their bodies.

“Soul Refining.”

Niuniu forced the two words out with obvious effort.

The white barrier, already dazzlingly bright, suddenly became even more intense.

Inside it, the mist-like soul began to shrink at a visible rate, almost as though the formation itself were consuming it.

At the same time, the magic cores embedded throughout the array rapidly diminished in size.

Magic cores were condensed entirely from pure magical elements. They contained virtually no impurities.

Magic crystals, on the other hand, were naturally occurring magical ores and contained a considerable amount of unwanted material.

They were far cheaper than magic cores.

As the formation continued to operate, the colors of the magic crystals steadily faded.

Some eventually lost all their energy and crumbled directly into powder.

The instant one magic crystal collapsed, another immediately replaced it and continued supplying power to the formation.

The entire Soul-Refining Array operated like an enormous millstone.

It relentlessly ground down everything trapped within it, separated the resulting essence into different components, and then sent each portion toward its designated recipient.

Kent felt wave after wave of information flooding into his mind.

Along with those memories came an enormous amount of extraordinarily pure magical power.

Yet after undergoing Body Tempering, Kent barely felt uncomfortable at all.

Instead, he calmly began sorting through the torrent of information.

Anything useless was ignored.

Only memories he considered valuable were allowed to remain.

Meanwhile, the streams of pale gray magical power, scattered with tiny golden specks, poured into his mind.

The moment they entered, they were immediately absorbed by the silver-white point of light within his consciousness.

That mysterious point of light was only about the size of a soybean.

When Kent had advanced from Level Two to Level Three, it had barely grown at all.

What had changed instead was the space within his mind, which had expanded to more than twice its previous size.

Now, however, the silver-white point was visibly growing.

Kent could actually perceive it increasing in size.

Once he confirmed that the incoming magical power posed no danger to him, he stopped paying attention to it.

Instead, he focused entirely on the memories pouring into his consciousness.

One fragment after another passed before him.

Kent examined each one carefully.

Memories he considered useless were simply left alone.

Without his mental power to preserve them, they quickly faded away and disappeared.

Whenever he encountered something useful, however, Kent immediately wrapped it in his mental power and began forcing it to merge with his own consciousness.

That was the true process of memory fusion.

Slowly, piece by piece, Kent sifted through the memories.

And as he did...

the life of the soul he was refining gradually unfolded before him.

There was the joy of advancing to a higher level.

There was the grief of failing to break through a bottleneck.

There was the despair of being trapped with no way out.

There was the helplessness of watching a beloved companion die.

And there was everything else that made up an entire lifetime.

As scene after scene passed through Kent’s mind, he felt as though he himself had lived through all of it.

His expression changed constantly with the memories.

Anger.

Joy.

Despair.

Helplessness.

At times, even tears slid silently down his face.

Niuniu watched him with growing anxiety.

In truth, fusing memories in this manner was itself a form of comprehending the laws of heaven and earth.

In many ways, it was actually better than directly absorbing someone else’s understanding.

But there was one enormous danger.

Most people who tried to merge another person’s memories into their own consciousness eventually became lost within them.

Some could no longer distinguish which memories belonged to themselves and which belonged to the dead.

Others simply ceased to be themselves at all.

That was what worried Niuniu most.

She stared so intently at Kent that she did not even notice when Manda completed his own fusion and successfully advanced to Level Nine.

At last, Kent slowly exhaled.

Then he opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was Niuniu’s enormous, bright eyes blinking directly in front of his face.

Kent immediately leaned back.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re... fine?”

Niuniu asked in disbelief.

The transmission of memories had only just finished, yet Kent was already awake.

That was almost impossible.

According to the most closely guarded records of the Mage Guild, even the fastest successful memory fusion required at least half a day before the recipient regained consciousness.

And some people who did wake up...

were no longer themselves.

Instead, their personalities had been almost completely replaced by the memories they had absorbed.

“Of course I’m fine.”

Kent looked at her strangely.

“The memories finished merging, so naturally I woke up. What else was I supposed to do?”

Niuniu, of course, had worried for nothing.

For Kent, absorbing another person’s memories was not all that different from watching an enormous collection of films back on Earth.

Useful things were kept.

Useless things were forgotten almost immediately.

And truly unforgettable moments might remain with him for the rest of his life.

Niuniu could never have guessed that Kent’s soul had never truly belonged to this world in the first place.

“Your servant has already reached Level Nine.”

After carefully checking Kent and confirming that nothing seemed wrong with him, Niuniu finally relaxed.

Then she looked at him curiously.

“What about you?”

“Level Nine?”

Kent’s eyes immediately lit up.

“Manda! Well done!”

He was absolutely delighted.

His first true elite enforcer had finally been born.