Nightmare’s Call

Lin Sheng’s muscular body held a thin blade, yet he could continuously unleash powerful, brutal slashes one after another.

The three mud giants could withstand the attack at first, but later on, they have exhausted every trick up their sleeves, and even as a Darkspirit Marshal, his specialty was soul-based spells.

Against Lin Sheng, he was totally shackled.

The only method left was to possess an inert or dead object for a temporary strength boost. However, even that was not effective against Lin Sheng as the combined power of the three mud giants were still less than his total.

“We cannot go on like this, we’ll be grounded down!”

Within one of the mud giants, the Darkspirit Marshal said in a panic.

“Then let’s do it, the Ritual of Telluric Doom!”

“Everything is already prepared, we only need an opportunity…”

The three mud giants were slowly pushed back by Lin Sheng’s relentless slashes.

Countless rents appeared on their massive frame, and some cuts were even deep enough to lop them in half.

Fortuitously, the mud giant was extremely potent, or else they would not have been able to withstand the battle of attrition for so long.

Soon, the three mud giants started to surround Lin Sheng, as they attacked from three different angles.

The number of bizarre runes on their body suddenly increased as the pressure in the air grew.

Lin Sheng sensed the change, and by instinct, just as the three mud giant’s bizarre aura was about to reach climax, he darted back hard as he unleashed all of his holy power toward them.

*Bam bam bam!!!*

The rampaging holy power turned into streaks of pure white beams as they ran rampant in all directions. The violent holy power smashed headfirst into the mud giants and blasted their bodies into a smoking husk as the bizarre aura prematurely exploded.

*Hummm!!!*

A brown pyramidal screen appeared in the middle of the three mud giants and locked Lin Sheng within.

“Die, you monster! Telluric Doom!!”

One of the mud giants roared as its soul like up like flames and charged toward the pyramid. Not only him, the other two Darkspirit Marshal’s mud giants too did the same as their bodies were engulfed in flames and surged toward the pyramid.

With the soulflame feeding it, the strength of the pyramid grew exponentially while it shrunk continuously, seemingly trying to crush Lin Sheng within.

Lin Sheng’s holy power was unleashed as a white beam shot out of his body and filled the entire pyramidal space within.

The holy power was endless, and with every passing moment, its potency grew.

Due to the lockdown, all of the originally scattered holy power was forcibly directed into the space inside the triangle. Following the surge of holy power, the pyramid was starting to destabilize.

At that moment, the location where Lin Sheng stood, the holy power’s potency had already reach the level of a sea of white mist. With its powerful repellant and corrosive nature, the holy power started to chew deep into the pyramid’s internal structure.

As the holy power continued to flood the inside of the pyramid, it was at its brink. The pyramid’s shrinking suddenly shuddered as cracks appeared all over.

The holy power did not force the pyramid open by brute force, rather it used its extremely potent corrosive ability to seep into and purify the internal structure of the pyramid.

“Noooo!!!” The three Darkspirit Marshals connected to the pyramid roared in fury as they infused it with the last of their strength.

The pyramid flickered nonstop as the powerful forces within roiled, and cracks started appearing once again.

More and more cracks appeared, and it soon engulfed the entire pyramid.

*Baammm!!*

A thunderclap later, Lin Sheng walked out of it.

The armor on his shoulder was mostly destroyed, and could simply come apart with a gentle prod.

The dark power sword in his hand too was gone.

This was the final all-in assault by the three Marshals, and Lin Sheng had noticed it sooner than expected as he used his holy power to blow everything up.

The result was his shoulder armor being blasted into pieces.

“Not bad, not bad. Sadly, you picked the wrong move.” Lin Sheng walked to the front of one of the mud giants as another dark power blade formed in his arm as he stabbed.

The mud giant had long lost all of its strength and had no means to defend itself. Its chest was simply pierced through, and its heart was destroyed.

The Darkspirit Marshal within its heart too was in despair and quickly turned into a black-red bead the size of a fist after it was stabbed.

The mud giant slowly disintegrated and Lin Sheng picked the bead up from the ground as his hand radiated in holy light, purifying the bead.

A moment later, Lin Sheng turned around and took out the other two Darkspirit Marshals inside the remaining two mud giants. He had gotten a total of three black-red beads.

Looking around at the vastness around him, there were no more dark spirits. So Lin Sheng decided to just sit down, and he started to absorb the dark spirit beads in his hand.

These three beads were incomparable to other dark spirit beads in terms of quality or quantity. After purifying them, Lin Sheng started to absorb them at the same time, he also collected every single dark spirit bead on the battlefield.

A torrent of souls entered the platinum vortex at the back of his mind.

He then simply sat down on the battlefield and started his breakthrough.

The thousands of dark spirit beads around him were his reward this time around, not to mention the three distinct beads as well.

Lin Sheng consumed the souls in a frenzy and his total volume increased like a pumped-up balloon.

Slowly, with the increase of the souls, Lin Sheng could feel that he was close to his limit.

Every living soul has a limit, so does any materials, as every structure has its limit. In essence, a soul itself also has a limit.

After consuming a large number of soul fragments, Lin Sheng’s soul was extremely powerful now, and now, with another torrent of souls crashing against it, the quality of his soul increased even more.

That was its limit.

“For me to be able to absorb so many souls is already thanks to the mutation of the Crag Dragon blood. Normal people would never be able to reach this stage.”

Lin Sheng was very clear on this. For his to breakthrough now, he needed to transform all of the souls he had from mere volume into high-quality ones.

To achieve that, he would need a very high level of knowledge of the structure and know-how of souls.

Lin Sheng lacked the prerequisite knowledge, as he had only managed to gain knowledge of the basic theory from the cleric. But since he got there and made contact with a large number of souls, he started to gain insight into the power of souls.

Even so, Lin Sheng dared not take foolhardy risks when he was just about to break through.”

“My soul is not as strong as my body, and it’ll be nothing but trouble if things were to go wrong. Even if it was just a wound, it will affect me greatly. Before I find any tomes on this, I better not take any unnecessary risks.”

Lin Sheng suppressed his urge to simply experiment.

There were barely any soul beads left on the ground and Lin Sheng only picked up the three largest Darkspirit Marshal soul beads as he stood up.

“The dark spirits are masters of soul manipulation, perhaps I could learn from them the knowledge of the soul.”

He suddenly thought of that. While the Darkspirit Marshals had been vanquished, they were not the only strong ones in this cavern.

Lin Sheng pressed on as the blood-red land seemed to be endless, but from the mouths of a captured spirit, Lin Sheng knew that there was an end to this land.

Dark spirits were not monsters without minds of their own. Conversely, they would trade with otherworldlings through the gaps of the world, for knowledge and powers to empower themselves.

However, what Lin Sheng got wrong was, not all dark spirits were well-learned or have mastery of many skills. Rather, every dark spirit had a specialty skill or knowledge.

During the summoning ritual through the dimensional gap, they would determine what kind of knowledge a summoner requires through their mental fluctuations. And then the appropriate dark spirit would step forward and answer the call, trading part of its powers to the being on the other side.

These powers would drain the life or spirit of the user, and part of the consumption was food as well as a reward for the dark spirit to allow them to grow stronger.

Lin Sheng had something in mind after getting to know of this process upon interrogating a few dark spirits.