Chapter 1243: Seven Snuffed Souls

Far from the glittering towers, private estates and beautifully maintained roads of Hell’s Paradise Island, one of the Maxtons’ properties rested beneath the night with such studied insignificance that even curious eyes would have found little reason to linger upon it.

The land was little more than a broad wooded hill rising from acres of neglected green, its slopes crowded with old stone, thorny shrubs and trees whose roots had spent decades crawling between weathered boulders. Moss covered much of the exposed rock in thick dark-green blankets, wild grass grew waist-high wherever the trees opened, and several narrow streams wandered down from the summit before vanishing beneath beds of black stone.

From above, it was simply another forgotten fold of Paradise’s wilderness.

The truth slept several hundred meters beneath it.

Buried beneath stone, roots and layers of formations designed to confuse both mortal eyes an their little equipments along with spiritual perception was an immense underground prison.

Even knowing the property existed would not have been enough to find the place.

The entrance had been concealed inside the hill itself, the passages descending through false caverns and dead ends before reaching a network of chambers completely severed from ordinary maps.

Anyone searching without knowing the exact path could walk across the hill a thousand times and never realize World Transcendents were chained beneath their feet.

This was where the Maxtons kept many of their Chained whenever those prisoners were no longer required for the day’s purpose.

Tonight, the prison was restless.

Seven Chained stood throughout the largest cavern with their attention sharper than it had been in years. They had been ordered to guard five Elves secured near the deepest wall, an irritating command under ordinary circumstances, considering the guards themselves carried the same restraints around their bodies and souls, yet none had questioned it.

Slaves guarding slaves had apparently become another of the Maxtons’ little jokes.

Something else had made the seven uneasy.

Along one wall floated a row of dark crystal orbs, each bound to the life of each of the World Transcendents Danton had taken with him. For years those orbs had burned steadily, small flames of their bloodline essence suspended at their centers, allowing the Maxtons to know whether their more valuable Chained remained alive when they sent them to missions.

During the last minute, the flames had begun going out; one orb dimmed until its inner radiance collapsed, another followed.

Each death left behind a lifeless sphere of black crystal.

The seven guards had stopped pretending not to notice after the third.

By the fifth, even beings hardened by centuries of imprisonment had begun exchanging looks.

Whatever Danton had encountered had killed all the World Transcendents frighteningly quickly.

The five Elves they guarded looked considerably worse.

They had always been thin beneath captivity, their natural elegance stretched into something almost spectral by years of chains and suppression, yet whatever the Maxtons and Heavenchilds had done to them recently had accelerated their deterioration brutally. Their skin had lost much of its remaining vitality, their breathing had grown shallow and the faint light once carried naturally by Elven blood seemed to be withdrawing deeper with every passing breath.

They resembled lamps running out of sacred oil.

Life did not merely weaken inside them; something was drinking it.

The female Flower Elf sat against the stone with both arms wrapped around herself, the silver flowers woven through her hair almost completely dead now. Their petals had curled inward and darkened until only traces of their former beauty remained. Beside her, the male Moon Elf breathed with his eyes closed, faint lunar markings beneath his skin appearing and disappearing as though even his bloodline could no longer decide whether remaining awake was worthwhile.

The Forest Elf had deteriorated furthest; the living-wood crown growing naturally from his head was blackened along more than half its branches, and the single remaining green leaf trembled whenever he breathed.

His chest barely moved.

The High Elf remained upright through pride alone, one shoulder against the wall while faded golden hair hung over a face that had grown too sharp beneath starvation. Even exhausted, he continued watching the others rather than himself.

At their center sat the woman with woodland-blue eyes.

The Origin Elf.

She appeared scarcely healthier than the others, yet something about the way the remaining four unconsciously placed themselves around her revealed a hierarchy the Maxtons had never properly understood. Her bloodline had been hidden beneath suppression for so long that their captors had treated her as merely another rare Elf, valuable certainly, but hardly different enough to deserve greater consideration.

They had been wrong.

Even now, with her life fading and her body too weak to stand without assistance, the other four still watched her first whenever danger seemed to be approaching.

The Origin Elf felt the change in the cavern before anyone else.

Her woodland-blue eyes lifted... something had entered.

The seven guards reacted a heartbeat later, their bodies tightening while chains rattled softly around them.

There had been no opening of the prison entrance and a young man simply stood in the middle of the cavern.

He looked 18-19 at most even his constitution which should have made the sight ridiculous.

It did not!

The Origin Elf’s pupils contracted.

Her weakened soul and bloodline reacted so violently that for the briefest moment she forgot the pain gnawing through her Life Root<anno data-annotation-id="769d1219-37de-e645-713a-d2410e0605b7" data-title="<strong>.</strong>">.¹</anno>

Void!

It seethed within him.

And something else endless breathed beneath the young man’s flesh, fathomless enough that her senses recoiled the moment they attempted to descend into it.

His power was worse.

There seemed to be no end to it.

Life surged through him in tides vast enough to make the Flower Elf gasp. Her race was exceptionally sensitive to vitality and what she felt inside the stranger was absurd. His body brimmed with enough vitality that the air around him almost tasted alive despite the dead prison surrounding them.

The High Elf sensed something else mixed within that life.

Age... he was Eternity, itself!

Something in the young man’s existence felt impossibly old like the beginning of time, older than the face wearing it and deeper than the mortal vessel containing it yet also young and real immortality like age couldnt touch him.

The High Elf’s faded eyes widened before he could conceal the reaction.

The Moon Elf stared longer than either of them.

His perception followed the brilliance of that impossible life deeper.

Then his expression changed: "But he’s dying..."

He never finished before the seven guards moved.

One lunged from Phei’s left while another tore free enough of his restrained strength to fracture the cavern floor beneath his first step. The others followed almost simultaneously, essence surging through chained bodies as ancient killing instincts seized control.

Phei glanced around them.

{Talk about slaves enslaving other slaves.}

The soothing voice seemed to enter the cavern from everywhere at once.

{Jörmungandr Prince cruelty really does possess a certain elegance, doesn’t it?}

The first guard reached him.

Phei moved and seven taps followed so closely that the Elves perceived them almost as one.

A fingertip touched a forehead, a shoulder, chest, the side of a throat.

The remaining three never even understood where the contact landed and:

All seven World Transcendents stopped.

Their bodies remained standing for the smallest fraction of a breath before the life inside them suddenly flowed outward. Their essence left first, streaming from their meridians in luminous currents before being followed by denser strands drawn from their power and flesh. Their souls came last, seven distinct lights tearing free from their bodies only to stretch toward Phei and disappear into him.

The guards collapsed.

The cavern became still.

[Ding!]

All this was (but the system) was only visible to the elves.

A faint vigor passed beneath his skin, subtle against the immeasurable power already brimming through him, but unmistakable to the Elves. The Flower Elf stared in disbelief. The life essence of seven chained World Transcendents had just nourished the young man’s body, and although the increase was laughably small compared with what he already possessed, she understood immediately what such a harvest would have meant for someone closer to their own level.

A single World Transcendent consuming that much refined life force, cultivation and soul essence might have required years to completely digest all of it, cultivate it and consolidate it.

This man had swallowed it like seven drops of rain falling into an ocean.

{Huh.} Phei looked toward the five prisoners... his gaze wandered across them before settling upon the woman with woodland-blue eyes.

{Look who we have here~}

The Origin Elf stiffened when he began walking toward her.

Her companions shifted despite barely possessing enough strength to remain upright. The High Elf forced himself half a step forward before his legs trembled, while the Moon Elf reached toward the Origin Elf’s shoulder.

Phei ignored them.

He stopped directly before their leader and went down upon one knee.

That surprised all five.

The Origin Elf had spent centuries receiving only chains, commands, rituals and contempt from the families holding her; this young man took her chained hand with extraordinary care.

Up close, his beauty became almost distracting. The Origin Elf had noticed it from across the cavern, everyone had, but proximity made the effect unfair. His features carried a refinement that seemed to sit somewhere between mortal beauty and the impossible symmetry of ancient divine being, while those eyes held depths she could not begin to measure.

Then Phei bowed his head and kissed the back of her hand.

The Origin Elf’s eyes widened: {It is an honor to finally meet Your Ladyship, Origin Elf.}

<annotations style="display: none;">I do not just throw this word around, there’s a reason why most of these powerful beings bloodlines react to Phei</annotations>