Novel Full Chapter 318: The Purge Begins!
Chapter 318: The Purge Begins!
A few seconds later, both Bruce and Duke felt the suppressing, opposing sensation from the environment vanish entirely. The Everwhite Abyss no longer regarded them as intruders.
It regarded them as belonging.
The Core’s glow stabilized into a steady, submissive pulse.
Isolde had claimed it.
By claiming the Labyrinth without clearing its beasts, she had bypassed the traditional path entirely. The will of the Labyrinth now flowed from her own. The ancient consciousness that once resisted her had been overwritten, restructured, absorbed beneath her sovereignty.
And with that, every creature within it bowed.
A dozen SSS beasts now fell under her direct command. More than fifty SS tier beasts followed beneath them. And the S ranked inhabitants numbered easily triple the SS count.
An army. Not conquered through slaughter. But through will.
For the Eiskar Kingdom, this was not merely reinforcement.
It was transformation. Bruce withdrew his hand slowly, golden light dimming as Isolde’s body steadied. He let out a quiet breath.
Ingenious. To claim a Labyrinth intact and inherit its entire ecosystem as loyal forces, this was efficiency on a sovereign scale.
He couldn’t help but wonder why he had never considered such a method before.
Then he shook his head faintly. It was useless to him.
With Heal, death was a resource. Slain beasts were not losses but templates. He could recreate perfect clones, loyal, refined, sometimes even stronger than the original. His path did not require preservation.
It required harvest. Isolde’s shoulders trembled once before she inhaled sharply.
Consciousness returned fully to her body.
Her eyes opened slowly, frost light fading into clarity. She turned her head slightly and looked over her shoulder at Bruce, who still stood behind her.
“You’re the one who helped me?” she asked quietly.
Bruce nodded once.
She studied him for a moment longer, understanding dawning.
“I’m indebted,” she said calmly. “You saved my life twice. Don’t worry… my life isn’t so cheap. You will be rewarded.”
Bruce suppressed a sigh. He hadn’t done it for reward.
But he also knew refusing outright would insult her pride. He couldn’t help but sigh, he had gotten what wanted from this Labyrinth, bloods of the Humanoid turtles and important parts of living beasts of this Labyrinth, as for the golemns, Bruce had used his life glance on them and knew that his mirrored surgeon will have no effect on them, as even though the golem where living beasts they didn’t run on thesame concept as living beasts, they didn’t have cells, tissues and system, they didn’t have all those basic concept of life.
Around them, the battlefield shifted. The suspended Diamond golems were released from Duke’s Spatial Lock. The frozen humanoid turtles thawed at Isolde’s command, frost receding from within their bodies without resistance. They staggered briefly before kneeling instinctively, crimson eyes now steady, not hostile.
Loyal. The Labyrinth itself responded to her will like a living extension.
Isolde rose to her feet fully, frost spiraling gently around her as the Core’s light harmonized with her presence. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, testing the connection.
Then she opened them again.
“Return us,” she murmured, not aloud, but inward.
The Labyrinth obeyed. Space rippled.
Mana folded. And the Everwhite Abyss prepared to bend to its new sovereign’s command.
The world folded.
Frost dissolved into light, and light collapsed into a narrow thread of displacement.
When space settled again, they stood beyond the heart of the Everwhite Abyss, no longer inside the Labyrinth’s inner sanctum, but upon the outer expanse of Eiskar’s frozen frontier. The air was sharp, clean, carrying none of the hostility that had once pressed against their lungs. Behind them, the Labyrinth’s entrance shimmered faintly before stabilizing under Isolde’s newly established will.
For a brief moment, there was silence.
Then Bruce exhaled.
“It’s time for the purge.”
His voice was calm, but there was steel beneath it.
Isolde turned her head slightly toward him. She understood immediately what he meant. Claiming the Labyrinth had secured power. It had secured forces. But it had not solved the infestation.
The invaders were still out there.
Still burrowed into flesh.
Bruce rolled his shoulders once, golden light faint beneath his skin like a dormant sun. “I’ll move ahead.”
Isolde studied him for a breath. Then she nodded. “Be careful.”
He gave a small, almost dismissive huff at that.
And then he stepped forward.
The snow beneath his boots barely compressed before he vanished in a burst of controlled speed, crossing distance without spectacle. When he reached a high ridge overlooking the frozen plains, he stopped and closed his eyes.
Then he spread his awareness.
It did not expand explosively. It unfolded like a silent tide pushing outward from his center.
Thirty kilometers.
His senses had risen to such a height that the radius felt natural now, not strained, not forced. His consciousness stretched across terrain, through settlements, across frozen rivers and snow buried villages.
Then he activated Life Glance.
His eyes opened. The world changed.
It was no longer a landscape of ice and structures. It was a sea of souls.
Every living being within thirty kilometers ignited in his perception, each one a flame of varying density and color. Civilians flickered gently. Awakened burned brighter. Beasts shimmered in colder hues. The entire region became a constellation of existence layered over reality.
And then the information hit. An influx. Chaotic and vast.
He observed the souls of all living beings within that radius simultaneously. Patterns formed instantly in his mind. Density, stability, fluctuation. He filtered instinctively, isolating anomalies.
And he frowned. The infestation was worse than he had imagined.
Among the dozens of Awakened scattered through nearby towns and patrol routes, several flickered wrong. Their soul signatures were doubled, two distinct presences occupying a single body. One dominant. One suppressed. In some, the foreign soul was thin and parasitic, coiled around the host like a leech. In others, it was aggressive, pressing, attempting to overwrite.
A few dozen. Within just thirty kilometers.
Bruce’s jaw tightened slightly. Vaelith had warned him. But he didn’t know it would be this bad, if it was this bad then the situation was worse than it look, any slight leak of the core’s location to the public will immediately get into the hands of the invaders with their huge numbers infesting everywhere.