Midnight Prince: Empire of Sin

When the Pawn piece completely reformed inside the core of Adam's soul body and transformed itself into a rook piece, he began to have an understanding of the future path he would have to walk to follow the evolution pathway of the Dreamscape.

Pawn -- Rook -> Knight --> Bishop --->Queen.

Those were the pieces a pawn could usually become in a chess match. Finally, Adam's ultimate goal was to become the greatest piece.

The King.

"Huff…"

Breathing out deeply, Adam stood up from his lotus position, and from there, all sorts of sounds resounded from his body as though he was breaking and aligning everything inside of his body.

"Ugh…"

Unconsciously, a moan of pleasure leaked out from his lips. Even the best massage in the world could not bring him the feeling of lightness and freedom he was receiving from his body right now.

All the wounds that he had received were completely healed instantly at this moment, even his missing limb had returned right now. It was truly a wonder of magic like no other.

'Now I need to kill more Rooks to evolve my piece into its next form.'

He now knew what he had to do to achieve the next level of his chess piece. Like what he did initially, he needed to kill more and more enemies of a certain level to gather and harness their energy into himself and reform his chess piece once more.

But that wasn't all there was to it. Since he had gone through evolution, if he killed a pawn piece, he would only obtain Gaseous energy which would then need to be condensed in liquid before being assimilated into his body which was a very tedious process.

Moreover, in the process, some loss was inevitable for him. Furthermore, the purity was completely different as one unit of Rook energy was equal to 10 units of Pawn one on a figurative basis. Thus, more or less, killing ten Pawn was nearly equal to killing one Rook. When taking into account the loss of energy, he would need to kill at the very least fifteen of the pawns to get the equivalent energy of merely one rook.

'Yeah. I need to move from this place.'

This was definitely not sustainable for him in the long run. He had to kill hundreds upon hundred of pawn-class monsters, one queen who also killed hundreds of her children, and finally massacre an entire forest with fire only to become a Rook in this zone.

Adam smiled as he clenched his fist and felt the strength in his body rumble.

He threw a few jabs while working on his movement technique and nodded to himself. He was definitely stronger than he initially was while fighting the Queen.

Moving his hand, Dreamforce gathered on his limbs before turning into a blazing inferno of fiery resonance. Then the fire slowly molded and morphed, finally turning into a butterfly.

By relatively using the same amount of energy he used to create the butterfly earlier, he was sure that the power in them currently was far deadlier than before.

'Beautiful.'

He wondered for an instant if he could take on the wretched Jabberwocky in his current state as well as the usage of his infernal butterflies along with the usage of his 'Death' energy. But he immediately shook his head the moment that thought came to his mind. There was no way for him to beat him. It was because he was stronger now than before. When comparing the pressure he felt from the Jabberwocky, he was sure that the fucking dragon should be far higher than a Rook.

'Well. This is a goal to strive towards in this land.'

He smiled and admired the butterflies fluttering all around him. His control was far worse in the real world but— if he could reproduce even half of this technique there…

'Well. I will have to test this sooner or later. As for the butterflies.'

He smiled as the red flame changed into a deep shade of black. Looking like black holes in the shapes of butterflies that were able to eat out the light itself.

"Hell Butterfly."

He simply wanted to call them Death Butterfly but it lacked something. Though calling them with the suffix of Hell was quite ironic. After all, those he killed with this technique would not even have the chance to reincarnate or even enter the illusive and deadly underworld.

"Shadows."

Adam spoke quietly, calling his shadow warriors but when they came, they seemed a bit different than before.

"Did you guys grow taller?"

He tilted his head but his memory was telling him that they had indeed become taller. Furthermore, they seemed more substantial and more complete than before.

It was then that a stream of information reached his mind. Those were not words but more something akin to intent.

It was an intent filled with reverence and a desire for worship but at the same time — A feeling of love, devotion, and a desire of being recognized.

[Father.]

"Well…"

This shit suddenly became more complicated than he ever thought it could. Sadly, Adam was not able to give an immediate answer as an overwhelming feeling of danger filled his mind all of a sudden.

'What!?'

"Heh…You are really better than I thought. Kukuku~This is going to be quite fun."

Those were the last words he heard before a slight feeling of pain in his neck took him in a flash. n,/(---/(..

He was not able to respond as he felt his life leave him, still, even as death was approaching, and his blood soaked the ground, he forced himself to turn his head to see who had attacked him out of the blue.

All he saw… was a fluffy paw and a mocking large grin on the face of his attacker.

'A cat?'

In the end, he simply collapsed before being dragged out of the Dreamscape itself as the thought of the cat with a strange smile filled his mind.

Thus ended his adventure for this round…