The Witch Hunter System

Chapter 1230: The Controllers Behind the Undying Fiends

Fortunately, due to the sheer number of Undying Fiends under the control of the Soul Imprint’s owner, the Soul Imprints themselves only possessed basic commands and were not actively manipulated.

As such, Vaan’s existence didn’t immediately alert the controller when he invaded the hollowed souls with his own Soul Power. Then, with Soul Imprint Isolation, he was free to read through the scattered memories and information without being noticed by the other party.

Countless streams of data immediately flooded Vaan’s mind, but he was not overwhelmed. Far from it, in fact. He quickly processed the mountain of memories, filtering out the important information.

Within moments, an organized set of valuable information on the Dead Lands was formed.

Vaan’s eyes shimmered with profound wisdom as he understood many secrets related to the Dead Lands. Alas, they were limited to the outer region; the deeper secrets still eluded him.

Even so, just the secrets of the outer region alone were considered a fruitful gain.

At the very least, Vaan managed to grasp the military strength of each sub-region, their controller, the Undying Fiend Production Method, and even their plans for the survivor shelters located outside of the Dead Lands.

Just as he had suspected, the survivor shelters outside of the Dead Lands had all been marked and treated as livestock-rearing bases.

Of course, the survivors themselves had no knowledge of this. .

Once their shelter’s population reached a certain threshold, Undying Fiends would be deployed to harvest their lives and biomatter.

This knowledge wasn’t specifically mentioned but was inferred from precedents in the hollowed souls’ memories. Moreover, such precedents weren’t few in the past seven hundred years.

In the beginning, the Undying Fiends’ numbers in the Dead Lands grew rapidly due to the injection of living beings from devoured star realms.

However, after consuming the majority of the survivors, the Undying Fiends’ numbers practically stalled for hundreds of years, hardly increasing due to the lack of living beings entering the Dead Lands.

It was only in the past three hundred years that the Undying Fiends’ numbers rapidly grew again, and at an exponential rate no less. This was due to the introduction of multiple Undying Fiend Production Methods.

As they had also guessed, it was related to cloning and duplication technology and, of course, livestock rearing.

Although Vaan wasn’t able to glimpse into the details of the Undying Fiend Production Methods from the limited memories, he was at least able to confirm that they existed.

Moreover, these methods didn’t seem to be perfect.

For example, while the duplicated or cloned Undying Fiends were able to inherit most traits from their host, they weren’t as powerful. Also, the duplicates of duplicates or clones of clones would also suffer greater depreciation in power.

As such, the Dead Lands still required fresh living beings to produce original Undying Fiends.

This was why they had permitted the continued existence of survivor shelters.

More importantly, there was a unique ability shared among the original hosts, their duplicates, and clones. They could share their senses.

As such, the controller only needed to take control of the original Undying Fiend to command all of its subsequent duplicates and clones.

This greatly reduced the mental burden of control on the controller.

Vaan quickly realized that even if the controllers didn’t actively control every Undying Fiend, their monitoring ability wasn’t any less powerful.

Their eyes and ears were practically everywhere due to the shared sense.

As long as they noticed something was amiss, they could easily access the shared memories and discover the oddity immediately.

It was no wonder that survivors couldn’t hide from the Undying Fiends.

Nevertheless, after understanding the Undying Fiends, Vaan no longer found them concerning, even though they were still a significant threat and a force to be reckoned with. ᚱ𝐚Ν𝖔BЕṠ

However, compared to the controllers behind them, the Undying Fiends were indeed insignificant.

Originally, Vaan thought the Outerworlders were the controllers behind the Undying Fiends. For better or worse, that wasn’t entirely the case.

The controllers were indeed related to the Outerworlders, but they themselves weren’t true Outerworlders. They were mix-bred offsprings of the Outerworlders and some exotic creatures of Chaos.

In other words, they weren’t full-blooded fourth-dimensional beings, but existences in between the third and fourth.

This new generation of mix-breeds reminded Vaan of the Earthworm he encountered on Pangea’s moon. But compared to it, the controllers were evidently far more advanced and intelligent than the Earthworm.

For the time being, Vaan collectively labelled them Sentinels to differentiate them from typical Outerworlders.

’Sigh...’

Vaan couldn’t help but feel defeated once he realized that it was virtually impossible for a safe passage through the Dead Lands to exist. The Sentinels’ watch over the Dead Lands was too strong, practically covering every nook and cranny.

There was no possibility of slipping past at all.

When Vaan rejoined Empyrean Oceanheart’s group, who were interacting with the survivors of the Ashstar Outpost, the latter quickly noticed his troubled look.

"What did you find out, Sir Vaan?" Empyrean Oceanheart inquired.

"Sigh..." Vaan sighed again before saying, "It’s impossible to cross the Dead Lands without being noticed..."

Vaan explained his findings, sharing everything he learned about the Dead Lands, Undying Fiends, and the Sentinels behind them.

"This..."

Unsurprisingly, the Ashstar Outpost Survivors and the Proud Ember Tribesmen revealed varying complex emotions when they learned that the Sentinels treated them as livestock awaiting slaughter.

They thought they had some control over their destinies, being able to hide away from the Undying Fiends for so long, but, in fact, they had never been in control at all. How naive they were.

Reality was truly cruel and unforgiving.

"What should we do? The shortest route to the Grand Unity Human Clan is through the Dead Lands. However, we clearly can’t go through the Dead Lands. Going around isn’t really an option either."

Empyrean Oceanheart frowned at this dilemma.

"We have seen and learned of the terrible secrets within Umbral Edge. Escape also isn’t an option. At this point, I believe we have an important decision to make."

Everyone focused their attention on Vaan as he spoke. Some of them vaguely realized what he was going to say.