“You… who are you?” Kongsha heard her own voice trembling.
Everything before her eyes had already completely exceeded her understanding.
Not only had the person she’d been suppressing all along gotten up from the ground unscathed, even the surroundings had completely changed.
The circular hall had beco a stone platform suspended in the void.
And all around the platform was darkness densely filled with stars.
Those stars twinkled, as if sothing was watching her.
Under the eerie starlight’s gaze, Kongsha’s entire body trembled.
She didn’t know how she had co to this place. The power within it was even more terrifying than the elves’ ntal realm.
Kongsha thought her soul body would collapse imdiately.
But it didn’t. Her soul body was even more stable than ever before.
She hadn’t experienced such peace and calm in a long ti.
“Now you should recognize .”
Seeing Kongsha’s frightened gaze fall on him, Saul’s facial muscles began to squirm and deform.
A few seconds later, he had transford into a face familiar to Kongsha.
Only, the young man from before was now a head taller than her.
“Saul?”
Seeing the familiar face, the fear in Kongsha’s heart slightly reduced, and the instinct to survive began to rise again.
She tried to borrow the power of the Elf King, hoping to break free from the tentacles binding her, but discovered that the beautiful head was no longer at her side.
That head, with which she had already ford a connection, had not followed her into this strange and terrifying space.
But she did not panic. Instead, she quietly activated her soul body to send out a call.
At last, large patches of flickering black began to appear around her body, as if a brush were painting the air black again and again.
But before Kongsha could rejoice, she discovered that the blackness around her was rising rapidly, as if being drawn away by sothing.
Following the direction of the flying shadows, she looked up and saw, to her shock, a massive leather-bound book suspended overhead.
The book lay open. It was dozens of ters long and more than ten ters wide.
She had never seen such a large book before.
But it wasn’t the size of the book that shocked her—what truly stunned Kongsha was that this book was absorbing the spiritual energy of the Elf King she had summoned with great effort.
Even more terrifying, after staring at the book for just a few seconds, Kongsha felt her own spiritual energy beginning to be drawn away as well.
She quickly looked away and stared at Saul in disbelief.
“What are you?”
She didn’t dare look at the presence above her again, didn’t even dare ask what it was.
“You still rember, when I killed Sid, you asked why he went to such great lengths to target ?”
Kongsha’s eyes widened.
“So it was… it was actually…”
She didn’t dare speak of the presence above her—she could already feel the imnse terror.
But if Saul truly possessed such a horrifying trump card, why had he let her hurt him just now?
If he had brought out that thing above his head right away, even the ancient Soul-Devouring Mire would have fallen silent.
And how could an apprentice possibly control such a terrifying power?
Of course, Kongsha didn’t know that Saul’s ability to use the diary’s power was limited. Only within his ntal realm could he sense the diary’s might. But this might was only for intimidation—it couldn’t truly be wielded by Saul.
Like those golden pages—beautiful, but only to look at.
But for frightening enemies, they were exceedingly effective.
Without the power of the Elf King’s head, Kongsha was no match for Saul. Even regular Third Rank apprentices couldn’t defeat Saul, let alone Kongsha, who was still a Second Rank apprentice due to having switched locator devices.
And Kongsha understood this as well.
Her legs went weak. Pressed down by the tentacles surrounding her, she slumped powerlessly to the ground.
“So all along, while I was trying to lure you into losing control, you were preparing to drag into this terrifying place. Heh. No wonder you kept clenching your teeth, refusing to open your mouth.”
She looked sowhat dazed.
“I kept rambling on and on, waiting for you to snap. Ended up putting on a farce for your amusent.”
“That’s why villains always die from talking too much,” Saul thought, expressionless.
Though Kongsha had talked so much in order to agitate his soul and push him toward losing control.
Saul would not give Kongsha a chance to turn things around.
He knew that even though this woman looked as if she had admitted defeat, her spiritual energy was still active—she was still trying to find a way to escape.
“Kongsha.” Saul opened his mouth, prompting Kongsha to look up at him.
Then he stretched out one hand. A mirror like liquid rcury appeared before her.
“So this is what you really look like.”
The mirror clearly reflected Kongsha’s soul. Her soul looked only eighteen or nineteen—at the height of her youth and beauty.
Kongsha stared at her reflection in the mirror and slowly opened her mouth.
She reached out and gently caressed her own face.
Unlike when she had touched the Elf King’s face earlier, her fingers now moved carefully, trembling slightly, as if she feared that too much pressure would shatter the illusion before her.
Now, she had completely lost any desire to run, or to sche, or to beg for rcy and wait for a better opportunity…
She only wanted to look at the girl in the mirror—to see the version of herself that had been forcefully erased by Gorsa.
And as Kongsha was lost in her mirrored image, the suction cups on the tentacles binding her opened into mouths filled with sharp teeth.
Kongsha didn’t notice the killing intent closing in from all around her—or perhaps she did, but knowing she had no power to resist, chose to remain still.
Only when several tentacles sank their teeth into her soul did Kongsha’s lips tremble faintly—but her eyes never left the mirror.
Saul stood just behind the mirror, his face expressionless as he watched Kongsha’s soul gradually fade and thin out.
He raised his right hand. The diary above his head shrank rapidly and drifted down, quietly hovering above his palm.
The diary remained open. By now, several new lines of prophecy had appeared on its pages.
When Saul had lured Kongsha into the palace, the diary had already issued a death warning. But Saul had only glanced at it and then set it aside.
In his plan, he had already prepared several contingency asures—so of which could just barely avoid Kongsha’s killing moves.
Seeing that there were no new alerts in the diary, Saul moved his fingers. With a snap, the diary closed.
Shff shff shff shff—
Four figures appeared behind Saul. As they gazed at Kongsha’s vanishing soul, fear surfaced in their eyes.
The longer they spent inside the diary, the deeper their dread of it grew—and the more inscrutable they found its owner, Saul.
Just what kind of person could control sothing so terrifying?
As Kongsha’s figure faded to near transparency, Saul suddenly withdrew all his tentacles.
He sent the four soul bodies back into the diary, then closed his eyes and opened them again—exiting the hard-won ntal battlefield.
Back in the real world, Saul was still pinned to the ground by several ice spikes, and Kongsha, who had previously been crouched beside him, had already collapsed.
Having absorbed Kongsha’s soul energy in the ntal battlefield, Saul’s previously rattled soul body had now stabilized.
Magic flowed once more through his body. With a jolt, he shattered the ice spikes that had pierced his limbs and were now no longer controlled by any master.
Then Saul conjured a magic scroll between his fingers—it was for Lesser Healing.
A white light swept across him. Together with his own regeneration ability, within seconds, he was moving freely once more.
But Saul did not get up right away. Instead, he sat relaxed beside the fallen Kongsha.
In the distance, black tentacles and white frost still tangled and clashed. Sections of the palace continued to collapse.
The ancient Soul-Devouring Mire seed to have realized that Kongsha had failed—and there was a faint hint of retreat in its movents.
Suddenly, a cracking sound beside him drew Saul’s attention back.
Kongsha’s glassy half-skull split open, and a few eyeballs rolled out.
But this person, who looked deader than dead, suddenly spoke.
“Am I… beautiful?”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
Saul sighed. His not-yet-fully-healed arm rested loosely on his knee.
“You’re the most beautiful.”
(End of Chapter)
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