Soul Venerable (Re-written)

 

A few moments earlier.

 

After Morrigan entered the blood pond, she immediately went to work.

When she cannibalized the lightning elemental known as Übelblut Devouring Thunder, she also pillaged its racial trait. The elemental creature grows by devouring the blood essence of other lifeforms, extracting the energy within blood essence into lightning energy. 

Blood Essence, or at least blood in general, is the courier that provides energy to the body: It consists of a mineral-dense and energy-rich fluid. The blood essence of high-rank organisms is filled with powerful energy, and for some, it’s mere radiation is corrosive and harmful to low-rank organisms. The Übelblut Devouring Thunder completely, well, devours this particular energy so that it can grow, leaving useless dust behind.

Typically, a natural Übelblut Devouring Thunder would be born within an area when there’s both a high lightning elemental particle density and a large amount of people strong in blood essence have died; enough to last an incredibly long time. Over the course of years, decades, or even centuries, the evil elemental might be naturally born from the heavens. 

That being said, when Morrigan entered a blood-path environment, it was as if a wolf had been put inside a cage filled with sheep. There was no actual need for her to enter a blood pond to extract the blood essence when the atmosphere itself is chock-full of its radiation. She can just absorb the ambient blood-path energy in the atmosphere to cultivate. 

However, things are not simple when this is the domain of Lord Erebus.

She can’t just recklessly absorb the ambient blood essence radiation because a wisp of the World’s Will is mixed within the atmosphere. Mere breathing would allow the world’s will to infiltrate one’s body, and if it accumulated sufficiently, one could be assimilated by the world’s will, effectively become the slave of Lord Erebus.

Mordred had specifically instructed her to take various countermeasures so that she doesn’t get enslaved by Lord Erebus, or this World’s Will, for that matter. 

And so, the blood pond is used as a cover for her while she deduces a method to effectively expel the world’s will within the blood essence that she absorbed. 

She was given ample training and the racial traits for this particular endeavor, but it still took her a significant amount of time to accomplish this because Lord Erebus’s control upon this world is simply that powerful. His accumulation over the course of centuries isn’t for naught, even for a Legendary mage, they’ll take days, or perhaps weeks to accomplish the same. Morrigan’s accomplishment is not a coincidence, nor luck. 

It was all going according to his calculations and arrangements. 

In a sense, Lupusrazor’s Mecha-Wolf Brood and Mordred fighting in the flesh was a mere distraction for the man’s trump card, which was Morrigan. 

After Morrigan deduced the method to absorb pure blood essence, she immediately returned to Mordred, using the racial traits that she pillaged from another lightning elemental known as Disenchanting Dreamspark. It allows her to render herself into an illusory, dream-like apparition, phasing through the attacks and defensive lines made by Lord Erebus’ blood-slaves.

When Mordred felt her return, a large amount of information flooded his crystal processor, containing the method to dissolve this world’s will, but most of it was put on hold as he instantly redirected his computation power to calculate an extremely targeted, high-energy time stop method.

“Boy, You’ve just fucked up your last chance of winning. Rank 2 time-path killer move, [Subjective Time Stop]!”

With a flash of golden light, Lord Erebus is frozen in time, as well as in space. He is encased under an amber-like golden sphere where timeforce wouldn’t be able to penetrate, thus locally stopping the march of time.

As for why Mordred didn’t simply choose to kill him while he’s being time-stopped, it is simply impossible. 

The amber-like golden sphere does not allow timeforce to penetrate, this means any method that touched it would have its time stopped too. If Mordred wanted to have the ability to move in an area of frozen time, he’ll have to expend a significant amount of time-path resources, but what’s left of the chicken and snake year beast has been used up to refine the modules in his body, the catalyst to stop Lord Erebus’ time, and to temporarily widen the tributary of River of Time in this plane when he descended the first time (accelerating time rate of the whole plane relative to the main world).

Yes, he can stack time-stopped attacks so that when the march of time returns, they would hit Erebus all at once, but what if he has a contingency method to mitigate instant death? Mordred wouldn’t believe a vampire lord who has lived for centuries didn’t have one or two trump cards under their sleeves. It wouldn’t be surprising if the vampire lord can mitigate death through the sacrifice of his minions.

And so, his decision was to sabotage his supports, yet not the slave army nor the Gorod Krovi.

 

But the world itself.

 

To do this, he’ll have to kill almost every single thing that lived in this place, which includes the very land, sky, lake, forest, and the environment. The method of doing so had already been prepared for a long time. He simply needs to finish it. 

“The obstruction has disappeared… time to go all-out!”

For Mordred, energy is finite. Thanks to the resistance of Lord Erebus and the Heavenly Tribulations, his energy reserve has gone down the drain. In addition to the intensity of his combat, he’d probably run out of energy in less than 5 minutes.

The most important aspect of any war is not the amount of men that he brought nor the firepower, but rather, logistics. When said war is in someone else’s pocket dimension, it becomes even more important. Since Mordred heavily relies on fuel cells, this would naturally extend to that of the energy supply chain, but with the Heavenly Essence Hemorrhage currently ongoing, there’s no way his three core reactors can outperform the energy expenditure. 

In the first place, stacking the output of three rank 1 core reactors is not equivalent to a single rank 2 core reactor.

Thus, the method to solve his energy crisis is… by absorbing it from the environment directly. 

Bzzt The atmosphere churned, crimson thunderbolts suddenly manifested from the surroundings, repeatedly smiting Lupusrazor’s frame, showering him with great amounts of energy. Through Morrigan, the rich blood-path ambience energy of this world is being forcefully extracted, transmuted into his very own lightning energy. She is, after all, Mordred’s trump card for hunting the vampire lord in his own domain. There’s no need for Mordred to worry about World’s Will infiltration into his sea of consciousness, as Morrigan obliterated them all.

As Mordred’s primary, secondary, tertiary, up to his septenary energy reserve has been filled to the brim, he began tapping the near-limitless energy of the whole plane. 

But first, he needed protection.

“Come forth, my [Song Specters]!” 

From the depth of his Soul Phylactery, a group of ghastly specters gushed out like a fountain. Numbered 40, these are his prized soul-slaves, the Song Specters.

Extremely similar to banshees in terms of racial traits, Mordred’s Song Specters are basically a soul-slave specialized in sound attack or defense. They are refined from the souls that he pillaged from, well, killing stuff. 

The reason why his soul cultivation has yet to advance from the early-stage of rank 1 is because of this. His soul resources have been funneled into this particular endeavor. 

These faceless humanoid ghosts that looked like they wore butler’s outfits would defend Mordred from the attacks of Lord Erebus’ slave army, but he has yet to finish his round of summoning.

“Don’t delay. Come out, [Dreadshrieker]!”

The new arrivals are literally banshees, but they are not for combat. These spectral beings are the product of sound-path, soul-path and rule-path profundity; designed to assist and amplify Mordred’s song. With the support of Dreadshrieker and the protection of Song Specters, Mordred could accelerate the terraforming-class killer move greatly.

What should take more than two hours of full concentration of song, or a week of singing while combating Lord Erebus, has been cut off to less than a minute. 

Naturally, when the connection to their master has been disturbed, Lord Erebus’ blood-slaves immidiately went on a rampage. They began bombarding Mordred with their methods, such as blood lances, a rain of crimson arrows, a condensed blood ray, or other curses like lesser versions of Heavenly Essence Hemorrhage, toxic blood puss, or others, completely ignoring the fact that Mordred could swipe his hand and gouged the earth.

Explosions of blood, sound and soul energy occured constantly as the Song Specters used sound barriers or [Triple Extreme Sound] to defend and counter the attacks. Two of the ten Dreadshriekers even used an Area Silence method to deny vampire mages from casting their magic spells, making the battlefield suddenly take on an eerie quiet as the fighting continued.

The battle had suddenly turned from a vampire vs machine, into a vampire vs ghosts.

Just as the [Subjective Time Stop] reached near the end of its duration, Mordred also reached the last stage of his song. Even as thunderbolts constantly bombard him with energy, the temperature has dropped below zero degrees.

“Heh, the last time I unleashed this move was when I froze the entire Extreme South. Although I no longer have Stukov’s Profound Dao Ice, it can be replaced with Larissa's Chronophagous Hoarfrost.” Mordred raised his head, as the energy of the whole plane and all of the resources he received from Larissa are galvanized to activate this method. 

"Ice Aeon, rank 3 ice and snow-path killer move, [A Glimpse of Galatreon]!”

Centered around Mordred, a wave of bone-chilling, icy wind spread, encasing the whole world with ice and snow. This red, toxic world suddenly turned into an icy world where heat, and life, could not thrive. 

 

 …

 

Before reaching the ranks of Sovereign, the Great Archmage once said that, “Time-stop countermeasure is mandatory once you’ve reached the ranks of Legends… as most Legendaries already had a time-path trump card under their sleeves.”

True time-path cultivator, in a sense that they primarily cultivated time-path, is extremely rare due to the amount of control held by the Eternal Dragon Church. Other than theirs, time-path inheritances are extremely rare to the point that non-Sacred Alliance countries would have to research time-path by themselves.

Thus, the Great Archmage’s insight was well-accepted by the masses. 

It created a wave of rapid development for time-path countermeasures 300 years ago, this has become one of the reasons why the Eternal Dragon Church views Mordred with extreme hostility, but that’s for another time.

Nevertheless, there was no medicine for regret. Despite not reaching the rank of legends yet, Lord Erebus has hundreds of years under his belt, but his personal research on time-path isn’t as deep to the point of allowing him to have a time-stop countermeasure. 

Lord Erebus tried his best to breathe in this inhospitable environment, but it was painful. The biochemical suit naturally has a life-support system, allowing the pilot to breathe or even survive in the vacuum of space for a period of time. However, this ice is not any ice he is familiar with.

This cold, frozen world is oddly familiar to the vampire born in the Seas of Eternal Winters, but it felt extremely unfamiliar at the same time. The cognitive incongruence made Lord Erebus have a bad feeling about this.

He tried to move his arms, but for some reason, his actions were so slow that he felt like he was trying to wade through snow. 

“Instead of using true Profound Dao Ice, I’ve used Chronophagous Hoarfrost as a replacement. Your time rate should be… 0.71 compared to mine.” Lupusrazor smiled as countless ghosts of vampire slaves are gathering on him, bearing their fangs and claws in hostility. These ones, after all, aren’t his own specters;

They are the souls of the dead.

When the terraforming-class killer move was activated, this world immediately changed from a blood-path one into a ice and snow-path one, supported greatly by sound-path and soul-path. The dimensional laws of blood-path have been temporarily suppressed by ice and snow, sound, and soul. Thus, ghosts could manifest much more easily in this world.

Even in death they were bound by their master, filled with extreme rage. They tried to harm Mordred by channeling their grievance of being insta-killed and the rage imposed on them by their lord, but Mordred’s mental state is invulnerable.

Thousands upon thousands of lifeforms within this micro-plane have been slaughtered. With the exception of those that hide within the city-wide force field-protected Gorod Krovi, all other life forms have been killed.

Even so, most mortals within the Gorod Krovi froze to death as the temperature reached -70 degrees celsius, and that was under the protection of the city-wide force field. Outside of the city, the temperature was so cold that it reached triple or perhaps quadruple that into the negatives.

“Holy Terra’s dimensional laws could barely support -273 degree celsius before molecular motion paused to a halt. The fact that this micro-plane can easily reach -300 degrees simply speaks of Morgen World's depth of dimensional laws and its influence towards the surrounding dimension.” Mordred muttered to himself as he reformed his Effulgence Weapon once more. This time, it isn’t a gunlance but an oversized war scythe.

The war scythe bears a metallic sheen, yet it burns in an aerie purple fire as souls are literally being used to ignite it. When it is swung, the scythe produces a sharp nail-on-glass noise that affects the vengeful souls surrounding him, not only burning and refining them into usable soul material, but also forcefully attracts the souls from afar.

In a sense, the sound that the war scythe produces is a soul-luring method so that Mordred doesn’t have to travel far and wide to collect his spoils of war.

A hundred, two hundred, four hundred, a thousand, two thousands of souls are quickly being piled up in his Soul Phylactery, with more still incoming. This small country-sized micro-plane could accommodate up to ten thousand intellectual lifeforms, it wouldn't be strange for the total amount of souls in the micro-plane double or triple that. 

With this, Mordred basically had recoup his losses and secured up his much-needed soul-path resources required to ascend towards rank 2, but he couldn’t simply ascend as it’ll take him time and effort, things that he can’t spare when Lord Erebus is still alive. A different case compared to the Dragon’s Shadow, Lord Erebus is an expert whose learning rate is high, any rank 1 ‘static’ sealing method would be completely unveiled in a matter of seconds. 

As for the vampire lord himself, he had immediately encased himself in a spherical blood-red defensive force field, impervious but only to the strongest attack. He couldn’t deny Mordred of his spoils of war as he is busy trying his best recovering his time rate.

Fighting against Mordred with a slowed down timerate is extremely unwise. 

With a radiation so strong that it twisted the light around himself, Lord Erebus used a blood ignition technique. What he lacks in countering the time-slowing ice, he temporarily suppressed it by using up his lifespan. 

The biochemical suit that he wore is now bleeding as its cellular activity is being put in an overdrive, similar to overclocking compared to Mordred’s body. With this, he had barely regained his 1:1 timerate.

“BASTARD!”  The vampire lord followed up his temporary recovery with overwhelming fury. The ice was so cold that it would permanently ruin his plans, even if he were to defeat Mordred.

Unlike other enslavement-path cultivators, Lord Erebus has a basically near-limitless army within this micro-plane. When each of his vampires suffered from death, the micro-plane would recycle its genetic materials. Although not 100% efficient, a death of his blood-slave wouldn’t hurt his foundation in the slightest. Perhaps, he might be able to wage war for decades before the micro-plane dried up out of its foundation.

However, Mordred’s ice completely destroyed his scheme. Blood-path resources are mostly biological matter. Even Blood Crystals, a rare currency that was circulated in the main world, are condensed biological energy. Due to the ice being so cold like this, it completely destroys any cells, thus turning the mineral-dense and energy-rich blood that seeped into the very soil, rocks, or mountain into complete waste.

“[Monumental Blood Path]!” Swoosh! Lord Erebus turned into what can only be described as a blood light, ramming Mordred with his form. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a true light. It was a mere imitation of light through blood-path. Thus, it cannot reach the speed of light. 

Mordred halted his soul harvesting activities and instantly burnt hundreds out of the seven thousand-ish souls that he had gathered to temporarily gain a boost of power. “No wonder your movement-type killer move is familiar, it was derived from the Great Archmage’s [Monumental Element Path]!” Mordred faced towards the incoming blood light as he recited, “I too, am perfectly capable of doing something similar. Rank 2 sound-path killer move, [Monumental Sound Path]!”

BOOM! It sounded like the sound barrier had been breached a dozen times in an instant. A soundfield is encasing Mordred as he flies like a railgun projectile towards Lord Erebus.

Monumental Element Path was a movement-type method known for being one of the most cost-effective killer moves. The linear movement granted by the killer move is so useful for the energy required that it was widely adopted to other paths.

BANG! When the blood light and sound wave collided, another sound reverberated across the whole micro-plane as some of the ice on the ground cracked, instantly turning into incredibly fine ice crystal particles.

The giant war scythe has been dispelled as Mordred needs to channel his AT-Field to reinforce Lupusrazor’s frame. In addition, a large and clunky weapon like that isn’t a good choice in an extremely short melee.

‘Fortunately, it’s only a 4M-class Biochemical suit, not a 10M-class. Otherwise, I’d have to use a MEKA…’ Mordred traded hits with Lord Erebus, constantly breaking sound barriers. As both pummeled each other, Lupusrazor’s frame creaked with every punch. They are exchanging punches at a rate of over a thousand per second, mortals wouldn’t be able to follow their movement. 

While this was happening, the nanomachines within Lupusrazor are currently undergoing emergency repair, using the reserve energy and repair materials stored within. 

As it would happen, the biochemical suit of Lord Erebus was also doing the same. What makes it different is that the biochemical suit has the natural advantage of biologicals. Even now, it is optimizing itself for combat of this level. The cellular walls are getting thicker, its muscle fibers are being optimized and streamlined, allowing Lord Erebus to constantly adapt to not only the frozen environment, but also Mordred’s movement.

Therefore, Mordred used another one of his trump cards.

Lupusrazor’s frame, which was shrouded in his AT Field, suddenly bled black blood, which didn’t just seep into the soil, but crawled along the ground.  This was one of Mordred’s creations, the Dark Mist. The violent desecrator-strain nanomachines can dominate biological or non-biological entities, but this time, it wasn’t used to infest Lord Erebus’ biochemical suit, but Lupusrazor itself.

During Mordred’s advancement to rank 1, the Dark Mist have been fed with Dragon’s Shadow. It gains its racial traits to create a shadowy clone of itself. The Dark Mist is no longer a pure machine. Most of the Dark Mist outside of Mordred’s body are spectral nanomachines, they consist of soul matter instead of physical matter. 

Utilizing its corrupting nature, Mordred was slowly infesting Lupusrazor with the Dark Mist, optimizing the magic machinery armor for high intensity combat. 

Swoosh! During their melee, Lupusrazor spontaneously combusted in an eerie, purple flame. Of course, this wasn’t a true flame, but the spectral clones of the dark mist being ignited in a type of yin fire. 

Although it looks like a fire, it was actually extremely cold. Frost accumulated on Lord Erebus as it dealt effective damage towards Lord Erebus’ biochemical suit. Unlike Chronophagous Hoarfrost that slows down time, this fire hurts Lord Erebus’ body and soul directly.

“Castigation Fire!” Lord Erebus yelped in fear, recognizing the fire that Mordred used. He not only stopped his advances, but also attempted to retreat  further back. Yet Mordred wouldn’t allow it. 

In the first place, Mordred is expending an ungodly amount of resources by fighting Lord Erebus directly. Overclocking modules upon overclocking modules are currently active, he’s unable to dally. The faster it ends, the higher his chances of victory. 

Crack! Lord Erebus’ activated a Mage Armor-type defensive method, making his biochemical suit bleed and harden. In an instant, his body is covered by layers of blood crystals, protecting him from the invasive Castigation Fire. When a wisp of Castigation Fire ignited his blood crystal, he simply detached it and created another layer of blood crystal, therefore effectively countering the damage potential of Mordred’s Castigation Fire.

The Vampire Lord is truly an old monster with a deep life experience. If it weren’t for the restriction of information by the church, he would’ve even had a counter for the time stop.

Mordred has been using the advantage of surprise before Lord Erebus can adapt. From using mecha werewolves, terraforming-class killer move, time-stop, time-slowing ice, and even Castigation Fire… but despite all his best effort, Lord Erebus still survived.

‘In the first place, an enslavement-path cultivator shouldn’t have this kind of personal might…’ Mordred deducted while both of them are tearing each other apart. ‘That biochemical suit is truly my biggest miscalculation. No intel suggests that he had connection with the Jaegers of Kaiserreich, but I guess this was the main world’s World’s WIll karmic retaliation on me…’

Boom! Lupusrazor’s left arm bent into the opposite direction after receiving a direct hit from Lord Erebus. Micro-missiles are launched in retaliation while they were trading more punches, but they were obliterated before being able to explode because at this point, the Biochemical Suit has evolved beyond the upper limit of Lupusrazor. 

‘Sigh… I don’t want to do this… but that biochemical suit is truly problematic.’ Lupusrazor opened up his mouth, but he was slapped by Lord Erebus.

Naturally, the Vampire Lord wouldn’t allow Mordred to use any type of breath attack as they are extremely annoying. Mordred responded by trying to make space for himself as his computation power is insufficient to deal with this level of high-speed combat. Lord Erebus’ has completely overwhelmed him in body spec alone.

The vampire lord reciprocates what Mordred did to him. He won’t allow Mordred to leave, so he grabbed one of Lupusrazor’s arm and pull it back towards himself. The Armored Soul Tribe simply ejected Lupusrazor’s arm and deactivated the anti-gravity module, allowing himself to fall towards the ground.

Erebus crushed the mechanical arms on his hand and chased after Mordred. Activating [Monumental Blood Path] once more, he turned into a blood light and rammed himself against Mordred.

Boom! The icy ground exploded as if a tactical nuclear warhead had been dropped, the crater had a radius of 3 kilometers wide with almost two kilometer deep. 

The battle is still ongoing, motion sickness absent from both of them. Lupusrazor’s exterior had cracked on them, but he immediately used the Electric Jet Stream Propulsion system to raise from the ground, leaving a werewolf-shaped silhouette on the ground. ¹

‘I have no choice. If you won’t let me get away… then let’s die together!’ From behind Lupusrazor, Song Specters and Dreadshriekers are swarming towards the vampire lord.

Each slap from Lord Erebus literally splattered the ghosts as he had some experience in dealing with spectral beings. He isn’t a Lord Inquisitor for nothing, his hands becoming  enveloped with a red glow, a counter against ghosts. 

With the sacrifice of his soul-slaves, Lupusrazor has some leeway to overwhelm Erebus. He tackled the 4 meter tall werebat as the Dreadshriekers and Song Specters followed suit, ignoring the fact that Lord Erebus had intensified his radiation further. With this radiation, ghosts would literally melt, but Mordred’s soul-slave wouldn’t care. 

At this point, Lord Erebus noticed that Mordred’s movement pattern had changed. 

If it was before, he attempted to find the fastest way to end this battle, but now, he wanted to stop him from moving. Crunch! Lord Erebus choked Lupusrazor to push him back, but he saw that the mecha-werewolf is no longer glowing in prismatic light when he attacks. His attacks simply pass through Mordred’s ‘defensive’ method, the mecha-werewolf ‘naked’ from any defense. A single propper hit from him might be able to completely eradicate the werewolf.

Lord Erebus had a bad feeling about this, but the mecha-werewolf with its head dangling uttered two words and spoke. “Too late…” Lupusrazor said as his arms locked itself behind Lord Erebus’ back, hugging the vampire lord like a parasite. 

Without warning, the core temperature of Lupusrazor’s core reactor reached a meltdown. All the energy remaining within Lupusrazor has been channeled into its heroic-class Kamikaze Mod. 

“You are… Terminated.”

BOOM! An explosion of flame and lightning so big and powerful that the core explosion area within this icy world instantly melted into boiling magma, engulfing Lord Erebus in the center.