A soul?
Skullius wondered in shock.
It didn't look like how a soul should, at least from what he had seen. Souls usually had a similar look to the body, like his own – even though it had a different look to it because of undeath related circumstances.
This one though...
It look like a simple luminous ball, with a blue glare around it that seemed to announce something Skullius wasn't aware of.
What was this?
The Hybrid Luman ignored the blinking notification in his face, swiping it away.
'Did I trigger something? This didn't happen when Aurolio—"
Cutting off Skullius' thoughts, Aurolio flashed up to the rising soul, gripped it in his hand, and swallowed it.
...
Skullius looked on in shock.
His attention then subconsciously sped to the onlookers, but instead of donning the same look of surprise he had, they looked puzzled instead!
Wait!
Had they not seen the soul that Aurolio had just gobbled up just now?
No way!
Skullius turned to the pale man and saw him closing his eyes, his focus obviously being on something deep within him. Something sliding down his gullet, as bizarre as it seemed.
In the next moment, a fierce blast of power that only Skullius could feel shot from Aurolio, turning the Hybrid Luman's face pale!
It was a wild burst of Voided Death Essence!
'What... is this?' Skullius thought in horror.
With just the reading of the gushing foreign essence alone, Aurolio seemed to be far stronger than what a Master Stage should be! And if the same feel that mana gave could be used to judge how much he had in the way of quantity in Voided Death Essence compared, then the pale man had close to as much mana Vali had!
That was ridiculous!
Was this a mirror of how far Aurolio was in terms of his progress in his Existential Parallel abilities?
Skullius remained still and slack jawed, admitting to himself that if this was the case...
The outburst of power didn't last for long. In a few seconds, Aurolio's body returned to being the human frame from which nothingness spilled out, as if he wasn't the overpowered monstrosity slowly being sculpted in Skullius' mind.
The pale man then opened his eyes and looked at Skullius.
"Let's move on to the next one."
Skullius' eye twitched.
"What the flesh was that?!"
"I'll explain later. Let's get this done now first."
"Flesh you, you sockethole! Tell me right now!" Skullius cursed with a frown and stood straight in front of Aurolio.
The pale man gave Skullius a dark look, and for a full ten seconds, the two were locked in a staring contest with neither of them flinching or backing away in their stance.
...Until Aurolio finally gave in.
He sighed and lifted his hand.
This time around, Skullius didn't miss a spark of light that quickly disappeared, signalling that a thin barrier unseen by the Mages had been erected to mask what was about to be said between the two.
Aurolio scratched his head and smacked his lips.
"You're too ignorant for me to give a snappy explanation, Festos. Long story short, Null Life as an Existential Parallel, is acknowledged as the weakest among the three. At least that's how I've understood it. However, the thing is, Serenity, the progenitor of Null Life, has a treasure that the other two desire. It's a vast land. A world. Or maybe bigger. Honestly, it's unclear. Within this world are eons of history and diverse creatures, all born from Null Life," Aurolio said.
Serenity's treasure?
Yes.
This subject had come into discussion before, at least between Somanda and Serenity.
And truly, it did seem like Somanda expressed interest in this so-called treasure he mentioned.
'Hmmm... A treasure? What can it be?... Wait! Serenity's... treasure...'
...!
Skullius felt like he had just found out what it was. Better yet, he felt like he had seen it before!
A blurry glimpse!
Before the Hybrid Luman had time to think this over in detail, Aurolio continued.
"From what I learned from the Book of Alignment, killing creatures from other Existential Parallels breeds greater growth. Even if they don't have mana, what they give counts as experience, even if its not cumulative mana experience. It's an advantage. Furthermore, for the creatures that come from Serenity's treasure... 'Their deeper components are guarded unless their demise is brought on by one of their kind...' That's what the Book said," Aurolio explained.
"Even though I had an idea, I hadn't confirmed that you and these beasts were the creatures from Serenity's treasure until we had our little chat. Like I said, the world is vast, Festos."
"I see," Skullius said with a hard face.
So that's what it was about.
At this moment, Skullius finally called back the notification that had come after he slew the Null Badub.
[You have killed your own kin. You are awarded nothing]
Skullius' face hardened even further.
That stung.
Just as Aurolio had said, only killing OTHER creatures blessed in Existential Parallels awarded high returns.
Figures.
Yet, Skullius imagined this only applied to a bearer of Serenity's will like him.
'Tsk. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth.'
The Hybrid Luman's attention returned to the Voided Deathform before him.
So, as it appeared, Aurolio was hunting the finer aspects of the Null beasts instead of just the experience they gave. And as a protection measure, it seemed that only a Null Lifeform could expose the ethereal innards of another Null Lifeform, like the soul for instance.
Once again, this left questions?
Why was only something like the soup protected?
Also, did Aurolio's Book of Alignment really tell him to swallow the souls of Null beasts?
The Hybrid Luman shook and gave Aurolio a cautious glare.
'That's right. It's clear now. We really are supposed to be enemies, as he said. It must be a form of motivation. Killing an opposing Parallel holds rewards...' Skullius thought.
As his mind steered to this, he suddenly felt like he was doing all sorts of wrong right now by helping Aurolio kill his own kind.
"Are you having second thoughts? That's fucking ridiculous, don't you think? You didn't have a problem with it before?" Aurolio said as his face drew closer to Skullius'.
The Hybrid Luman wasn't at all intimidated by this, but he felt his struggle getting exacerbated.
Damn it!
"It's too late for that, right?" he said to Aurolio.
Even if he wanted to, he couldn't back away now.
Not like this.
He had prepared the contingency, but this would be a lame way to back out for a plethora of reasons.
One of them was, breaking his word right here left Aurolio no reason to not kill him. After all, refusing to help with this meant that he wasn't willing to help with the rest of what they agreed.
And sure, he could ask for help from Arch-Mage Ryte, but he wasn't sure that was the best idea, given that the old Mage was just starting to warm up to him, and even if he did help, the Hybrid Luman would probably be stuck with a pending favour for the solid.
Sigh.
Not right now. He couldn't refuse right now.
He hated that he was helping this already powerful man became way stronger than he thought he was making him but...
No.
Instead...
"So by eating the souls of Null beasts, you strengthen your Void powers?" he asked.
"Simply put, yes. Though the 'eating the soul' part was improvised. It worked well still," Aurolio said, the dark air he exuded a second ago vanishing completely. "Now, let's get on with this, shall we? This seriously isn't the time to be having a long fucking chat."
The pale man dispelled the Voided Death Essence barrier and turned to Ryte.
"Sorry about that. We were just having a little lovers tiff. Can we carry on?" he said.
The Arch-Mage looked to his peers who seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.
Yes, there was a deeper secret they hadn't been told and they were curious to know.
However, if Ryte who had invited these two over had no intention of probing, they wouldn't either – even though they had attempted to re-establish the audio after it was suddenly hacked off.
Ryte nodded and dispelled the Shocked Time spell from another one of the Null Badubs.
As the creature shook itself out of having its senses stalled, Skullius' internal struggle had yet to be extinguished.
For some reason, the words of the Null Devil King echoed in his mind repeatedly with the ongoing events:
'Are you ashamed of your true form perhaps? Or are you afraid that the humans in this world will hunt you down if you show your true self? If so, I can't help but feel my respect for Serenity drown even further...'
These words shouted a vibrant wave of ridicule towards Skullius' decision, making his grip over the Bashful Abomination waver.
But only for a second.
In the next moment, he brandished the sword and grit his teeth.
'I'm not ashamed, and neither will I regret this!' he thought.
What followed, under the closely attentive perception of the Mages, was a culling of two more Null Badubs, the follow-ups which seemed to be the most important bits, going over their heads.
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