Novel Full Chapter 1144: Are You...?
Chapter 1144: Are You…?
Quinlan exhaled slowly.
His body shimmered once more as the flow of water mana peeled away. The glow of Tide Stance faded from his veins, replaced by the raw, blistering force of fire.
Flame Stance.
Heat rolled off him in waves as his muscles tightened, bulged, and became more pronounced. Strength flooded into his core and limbs, each heartbeat of his feeding power into bone and sinew. Where before he had been a torrent of magic, now he was an inferno of destruction.
The change wasn’t just for show.
Soldiers were already pointing, whispering, screaming about the strange mage beneath the earth, the water spears, the firestorm. They saw him as a sorcerer, dangerous at range, devastating in area of effect attacks.
Thus, they were getting ready to counter his next big spell.
That was exactly why it was time to flip the board.
Quinlan’s foot tapped the ground, and wind whipped around his frame. The gust hit him from behind, launching him forward. To most of the Fujimori watching, he simply vanished, only to reappear in front of one of their armored men.
The Soul Reaper sang through the air. The black saber coated in ghostly blue flames crackled with power as it met the man’s neck. Armor resisted for the barest instant before shattering under the combined force of the Flame Stance, Quinlan’s brute strength, and the speed of his approach. Steel parted, flesh followed, and the head ripped free.
[You’ve slain Ito (Level 50). You’ve gained 35,000 XP.]
The decapitated head spun across the battlefield, spraying blood onto the stunned Fujimori soldiers behind him. Gasps tore through their formation.
“What?!!”
“Squad Captain Ito!”
“He’s as fast as a high-level assassin!”
“Wasn’t he a mage?!?!”
But the horror didn’t stop there. Mid-strike, Soul Reaper flared with a sudden, ghostly brilliance. The previous blue fire became a blaze, illuminating the battlefield in azure.
Quinlan’s voice echoed alongside, calm and merciless.
“[Eternal Damnation].”
The severed head, still flying through the air, convulsed. Its eyes snapped open, burning bright blue. Light poured from its mouth, from its ears, from every opening in its face until it looked less like flesh and more like a ghostly lantern. A piercing shriek rattled the air as a glowing orb was ripped free from the head.
The soul itself.
Drawn by an invisible tether, it streaked into the Soul Reaper and sank into the blade with a pulse of cold light. The saber hummed, alive, feeding.
And it didn’t end with one. Quinlan had already slain dozens earlier; those burned by fire, crushed by stone, skewered by water. Their souls had already left their bodies, drifting toward the unseen Goddess that waited beyond life. But the Soul Reaper pulled. And they came.
From above, streaks of azure light fell. One by one, the wandering spirits twisted off their natural course and plummeted into his blade. Each impact sent a dull thrum through the weapon, filling it further, brighter, heavier.
The Fujimori froze. Their formation shuddered as dozens of soldiers broke rank, some even stumbling back. They didn’t understand what they were seeing. Their people had no defined concept of souls, no doctrine or magic to define such things. This was true not just for the Fujimori, but all residents of the Iskaris Continent.
They did mention souls sparingly, like humans back on Earth did, but did not know it like Quinlan did.
However, they understood enough.
He had taken something.
They had seen heads roll, had seen bodies burn, but this was different. Something deeper than flesh and blood had been stripped away before their eyes. It wasn’t just death. It was theft.
And for the first time, many of them looked at Devil not as a man, not as a mage, but as something else entirely.
His next actions didn’t help either.
[You’ve harvested the Elite Soul: Ito.]
“Oh. An Elite!” he grinned and made a decision that would alter his life forever.
No more hiding.
“[Awaken]!”
Quinlan only had two Elite Souls up until now. His understanding of the reasoning was that to be an Elite Soul, they had to occupy a station of importance while alive. He’d killed many lionkin back in the genocide of Lionheart, but they were footsoldiers, the strongest of which were level 45.
Eve, however, was weaker in life than the strongest lionkin he killed, but she was the bodyguard of the Greenvale twins, Amara and Vivienne. As such, her soul was somehow elevated from the status of Lesser to Elite.
Veyrin did not need explanation; not only was he the prince of the foxkin people, but he was a great talent himself, using foxfire archery to suppress the mana usage of his enemies.
In the same vein, Ito seemed to hold a position of power in the Fujimori ranks, evidenced by his soldiers calling him Squad Captain.
The spell [Awaken] took effect, and Ito’s soul staggered into being, a hazy outline of a man in ghostly blue. His form wavered, unsteady, lacking detail. He looked like a memory too blurred to grasp. If his wife stood before him now, she would not recognize the face.
However, the soldiers who saw his eyes noted that Devil didn’t seem disappointed. If anything, he looked expectant.
A black tome drifted out of nothingness before him. The [Necromantic Codex].
It hadn’t been pulled with his hands; it simply appeared, hovering at chest height for convenience. Pages turned of their own accord, stopping where his gaze lingered. Alien script shimmered across the vellum, unreadable to anyone but him.
He tapped a line with his will.
“[Soul Fusion].”
The Codex pulsed. A soft vibration rippled through the battlefield as blue orbs spilled from the Soul Reaper into Ito’s phantom body. They sank into him one by one, vanishing beneath his spectral skin.
Ito’s outline grew steadier. The blur sharpened. His jawline set, his frame solidified.
Blue light poured through him until his body became not just recognizable, but him. A perfect echo of the man his soldiers had followed, only his flesh was replaced by glowing azure.
When Ito finally raised his head, his eyes were fireflies of soulflame.
The Codex’s pages gleamed bright, and in Quinlan’s vision, fresh script etched itself across the vellum.
Necromantic Tier Ascension
To ascend to Tier II:
Possess 10 Elite Souls of Rank 3 or higher.
2/10 → 3/10