"Little Xi~"
"Little Xi~"
"Fat Xi!"
In the darkness, a pair of scarlet pupils lit up.
Jolting awake, Sigmund held his forehead and listened quietly, but he heard nothing.
"Is this the effect of soul damage?" he muttered.
A week had already passed since that annoying Roommate was annihilated by the Demon King.
Afterward, the Demon King had carefully examined his soul and confirmed that what remained was entirely his own soul. Those heterogeneous soul fragments hadn't left a single trace.
The Demon King had handled it very well, so well that Sigmund almost ought to be grateful.
But he wasn't.
During the battle of souls, he lay there, allowing the Demon King's consciousness to probe into the depths of his soul.
That feeling was like having his chest cut open and his heart held in someone's palm to be examined.
The Demon King might not have held any malice, but that feeling of powerlessness, of only being able to be at the mercy of others, made him remember his past self from long ago... remembering the iron chains, remembering the whips, remembering those days of kneeling on the ground, not even daring to lift his head.
He detested this feeling of having his life and death out of his control, whether it was his life being manipulated by the Roommate, or his soul being freely examined by the Demon King...
As the provider of the battlefield for the clash of souls, even though the Demon King had tried his best to avoid harming him, his soul had still suffered some minor damage. Fortunately, it wasn't serious; according to the Demon King, he could recover to his original state in about two months.
Therefore, although he would occasionally hear the Roommate's calling while in a trance like this, Sigmund temporarily attributed it to the aftereffects of soul damage.
But Sigmund didn't plan to just wait; he intended to find a way to solve this auditory hallucination problem himself. The experience of being invaded by the Roommate made him realize the importance of mental defense methods, and he planned to study them systematically.
As for going back to the Demon King to take a look?
That experience of life and death resting entirely on another's whim—having it once was enough.
He had worked so hard for so many years, climbed so high, and killed so many people, all for one thing.
His own fate could only be grasped in his own hands!
Mushroom Garden.
Couldn't connect back, damn it!
There seemed to be a tiny bit of remnant left on Fat Xi's side. However, this remnant was too little, so little that Lin Jun could only faintly sense its existence. Even if he tried calling out, he couldn't confirm whether it reached Fat Xi.
Logically speaking, with only that tiny bit of soul left there alone, it should have quickly dissipated naturally and then condensed back into his main soul.
However, for some unknown reason, that sliver of soul stuck to Fat Xi's soul very stably.
Unfortunately, Lin Jun could no longer observe that side now, otherwise he could have studied what was going on.
Of course, these doubts weren't important; what was important was... honey... deliciousness...!
With only a sliver of connection left, Lin Jun was left with only that vague sensation; it was impossible to control that wonderful flesh anymore.
And all of this was thanks to that sinister and despicable Slime Demon King!
Flames of anger burned atop the mushroom cap. In a fit of rage, Lin Jun... once again summoned Giant Puchis on the sea and beat up Keith.
There was no helping it. After the Empire turtled up, it was truly hard to deal with. At the very least, he had to train the population in his current territory into qualified Puchi Masters or Jida pilots, making them into tangible combat power before he could target the Empire again.
Before that, he would beat up Keith first.
As for the grudge of the Demon King snatching his physical body... Lin Jun took out his little notebook that he had never shown anyone, and opened a new page solely for the Demon King.
If anyone in the Mushroom Garden benefited from this, it was probably those D-Class personnel who originally had to have their blood drawn from time to time.
While Lin Jun was magnanimous enough to prepare to let the Demon King off the hook, the Demon King himself didn't think so.
Right now, he was more interested in Puchis than at any point in the past.
However, he didn't rashly conduct a mental connection exploration.
This was because the Empire had recorded quite a few cases of death caused by mental contact with Puchis.
The Demon King tried having a mage who was equally skilled in mental magic use ten sacrifices as a shield. The requirement wasn't even to explore deeply, but merely to take a glance and bring out even a sliver of intelligence.
However, the result was that the heads of that mage and the ten sacrifices exploded almost the instant they entered.
Through an analysis of the remains and residual mental energy fluctuations, the Demon King roughly deduced that the other party used an extremely strong mental shock. This kind of attack far exceeded the upper limit of what ten sacrifices could bear, and thus failed to protect the mage.
Creating a mental shock of this intensity wasn't impossible; as long as he prepared properly, the Demon King could do it too.
According to the Demon King's understanding, the other party must have set up this kind of mental counterattack method at a certain central node, and then used the mycelial network to detect invasions and transmit mental shocks to counterattack.
To be honest, just this alone was enough to make the Demon King marvel endlessly at the capabilities of the mycelial network.
But this still couldn't explain why this mage suffered a counterattack the very moment he invaded, not even given a chance to disengage. Was there no delay at all between the individual and the center? How was that done?
Of course, the unknown was exactly the reason why he wanted to understand the soul of the Puchi. Its importance might even be no less than his other plan.
Regardless, the Demon King had roughly figured out what kind of attack one would suffer upon contacting a Puchi's soul.
Using sacrifices to resist the attack was feasible. The reason the people who did this previously failed was simply because the scale of the ritual wasn't large enough, and the number of sacrifices wasn't enough.
The Demon King brought out all of the more than one thousand five hundred Blood Guards from the dungeon.
At the same time, a massive number of death row inmates were also transported from various places to Duskfall Keep.
The Demon King planned to take this opportunity to thoroughly figure out the situation behind the Puchis.
For this kind of large-scale magical ritual that required continuous maintenance, the Demon King naturally couldn't use it casually like he did with other magic. To be safe, he still had to set it up properly.
Setting up the ritual required some time. During this period, the Demon King also went to see the fox-man and the human Hero, wanting to see if he could get any suggestions.
However, the fox-man still had not awakened.
This phenomenon of life draining away caused by [Temperance] couldn't be remedied by potions at all.
Looking at the comatose fox-man, although the two sides hadn't communicated much, the Demon King felt a bit emotional in his heart.
Since he possessed the ability of predictive simulation, it was impossible for him not to know what he needed, nor could he be unaware of what his ending would be when he came before him.
He knew, but he still came.
The Demon King suddenly thought: if they had met hundreds of years ago, right when the Empire was first established, when he and his subordinates had almost nothing except a ruined land but were full of hope—if he had met Gilo then, perhaps they could have become friends.
Just like Rune, Direwolf, and the others.
Unfortunately, at least for the Demon King, there were no "ifs."
"Let it end early," he said softly, his voice scattered by the night wind, "this disgusting world... sustained by suffering."
(End of Chapter)
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