Soul Venerable (Re-written)

 

‘I should’ve ordered Paimon to deal with the wasp queen but she must be hungry enough to eat a thousand souls… To kill Lord Erebus, I need to accumulate a lot of souls as a substitute for my lack of cultivation base, so I can’t splurge on her yet. Oh, right.. I forgot Paimon is a ‘he’ right now, what a perverted bitch. She must be harboring grievances about being subjugated by me. I guess she wanted to have revenge in her own perverted way… but let’s see about that later.’ Mordred erases the distracting thought as he fights against giant lanian wasps. 

These hulking wasps are covered by a layer of armor that would be difficult for Mordred’s [Finger Whistle] to penetrate. His only option was either [Bell Palm] or [Drum Fist] of Triple Extreme Sound, but using them means he has to get close. 

However, he doesn't have to deal with these wasps in the first place. The reason why he took the egg was so that the chicken would do it.

The chicken’s sharp beak could penetrate the giant lanian wasps’ exoskeleton as the chicken’s original speed had almost reached the speed of sound. Each time it pecked at the wasp, it would produce a sonic boom. With its time-path bloodline abilities to affect self time rate, the chicken could almost reach mach 1.5 when it attacks. Also, there’s no need to worry about the year beast’s defense as its durable scales could defend against the wasp’s spear-like appendages. 

Even if it got wounded, the chicken could reverse self flow of time, effectively healing itself. The chicken has an absolute advantage in terms of strength and size.

In comparison, swarm-type beasts are relatively weaker than those of other types, but they are easy to breed and relatively cheaper to groom en masse. Due to these qualities, they are the type of creatures usually chosen by enslavement-path experts. What they couldn’t beat in quality is compensated with quantity. 

The giant lanian wasps are entangled with the chicken while Mordred carefully brought the egg with his two claws, but as stated before, they can only delay and wear the chicken down despite their rank 2 strength. 

When other wasps wanted to encircle him, he used his tail to produce waves of [Finger Whistle], but just as Mordred was able to learn how to handle the chicken, the wasp queen was able to learn how to handle Mordred. Since the giant lanian wasps couldn’t keep up with Mordred’s speed and are being entangled with the chicken, the new wasps which were sent to block his movement are those with resistance against sharp damage.

“Quite smart… for a beast. But not smart enough.” Mordred gagged as he breathed out bright silver chemical fire onto the new arrivals. It was the same type of fire that his incendiary missiles have. The fire was supposed to be burning slowly as it was designed to be a type of coating to a weapon against vampires, but the time-dilated environment allows it to be extremely effective against biologicals. 

In that instant, he became a fire-breathing wolf.

Whoosh! The cracking sound of burning insect flesh raised Mordred’s phantom appetite, but he had to satiate his phantom hunger by devouring their soul instead of flesh as he couldn’t eat insect barbeque while carrying the egg. 

Waves of new wasp would be dealt with with either the fire breath or incendiary missiles until the queen wasp changed her tactics once more.

In the third wave, the wasps that she sent are more powerful than before. 

The queen is starting to use its elite. Mordred noticed the strong undulations coming from the new wave of wasps. There’s only three of them, but he couldn’t kill them easily. They are relatively smaller than his Lupusrazor frame, have equal movement speed to himself (after being affected by the time-dilate environment), resistant against chemical fire and [Finger Whistle] while capable of shooting stingers with firepower equal to .50 cal anti-tank rounds. If not for Mordred’s AT-Field Structural Fortification, Lupusrazor frame would already be shredded. 

Mordred also could not evade all those stingers because he had to protect the chicken’s egg. 

Just as the chicken lost the initiative after Mordred had taken the egg, Mordred too, lost the initiative when the wasp queen realized Mordred doesn’t want the egg to break. If it broke, the chicken would enter a state of rampage which would consume its energy reserve at a faster rate, but Mordred wouldn’t be able to match its speed or strength. Also, the wasp queen whose location is unknown wouldn’t be that dumb to use her wasps as Mordred’s cannon fodder.

Thus, the battle has come into a deadlock where their expenditure is roughly equal.

However, the chicken and the wasp didn’t know that Mordred was able to recover by killing. Even if he does not land the last hit, the souls in the area would naturally be attracted to Mordred’s Soul Phylactery which could be used in restorative methods. 

With this strategy, Mordred slowly used the wasp’s numbers to wear down the chicken. 

As seconds turned into minutes, time slowly passed by. 30 minutes later, Mordred’s Lupusrazor frame has multiple cracks on its surface. His spear-like tail has been pulled out by one of the elite wasps and the sixth wave of elite wasps are powerful enough to puncture the chicken’s golden scales. 

He had deducted that at this point, the chicken would be exhausted and the wasp queen would take the field. 

However, he was wrong.

Ymir, Mordred’s spectral soul who serves as sentries, suddenly returned to his shadow. He carried crucial information that put Mordred’s plan to a halt. 

“My king, I suggest a tactical retreat!” At the same time, he received a telepathic message from Paimon through their soul link.

At this instant, Mordred understood what went wrong.

The time-path environment is being encroached by an obscene amount of dark elemental particles.

It needs to be said that the level of elemental particles would define the environment. Since the underground passage that connects to the underground world has no sunlight, dark elemental particles become the dominant. Naturally, it is a dark-path environment, with some pockets of other elemental particles such as earth, metal, or fire.

Since there is a River of time Tributary that leaked timeforce onto the material plane, the environment changed into that of time-path.

However, the sudden rise in dark elemental particles overwhelms the pressure of timeforce. At this point, Mordred could feel the time-path environment becoming smaller with each passing second.

“Dark-path Minor Elemental Wave?” Mordred raised a question as he received Ymir’s intel. It turns out that… Ymir has sacrificed most of his spectral soul subordinates to gain and pass this crucial information to Mordred. “No… the timing is wrong. This level of elemental radiation and phenomen… signify the presence of a giant-class beast! Is this the world's passive retaliation method against my karma?”

Since rank 1 beasts and cultivators are equivalent to miniature walking nuclear reactors, then it isn’t strange for higher rank ones to cause Minor Elemental Wave with their presence. In fact, top-tier rank 3 Legendaries are capable of doing so if they feel like it. Their mere presence triggers Minor Elemental Wave as they have started to touch the boundaries of dimensional laws. 

That being said, beasts too, are capable of triggering a minor elemental wave with their presence. 

The chicken year beast’s time-path radiation affects the time flow of its surroundings, but it wasn’t a minor elemental wave because it’s area-of-effect is too small.

Then, the only reason why this area is slowly being enveloped by a dark-path minor elemental wave, which is equivalent to rain, storms, and other natural phenomena, is because there’s a giant beast nearby.

The time-path environment is being influenced by the influx of dark elemental particles. Since dark elemental particles are already aplenty in the underground passage caused by the lack of sunlight, the golden glow of timeforce river is being eclipsed by the pervasive darkness. Sooner or later, the time-dilated environment will return to the natural flow of time as the concentration of timeforce lowers.

Mordred spared his computational power to investigate the area beyond the battlefield. 

In his senses, the area is shrouded by a thick blanket, but there’s nothing that spreads the unnatural darkness. 

Just as lightning-path is specialized in burst and fire-path is specialized in destructive power, dark-path is excellent in stealth. The theoretical giant beast who radiates dark-path radiation so thick that it causes a Minor Elemental Wave is actually shrouding the surroundings under a wide-area stealth field, rendering most types of investigative method useless.

Mordred sighed. With the presence of the unknown giant-class beast looming around somewhere nearby, the situation has changed greatly.

Obviously, Mordred lacked the no power to kill a giant beast.

Unlike the ‘Giant’ Kararan Serpent who is a large-class beast, any true giant-class beast is the personification of disaster. Kararan Serpents are actually called giants because they are quite common, often revealing themselves in front of mortals. To them, Kararan Serpents are no different than giant beasts since mortals have no methods to kill that walking monstrosity but Hunters merely consider them as larger-than-normal snakes because they are actually not that big. 

The size classification is like this : a group of tiny-class¹something with the size of a human toddler or smaller, lifeforms which are typically smaller than human like kobolds, goblin, etc beasts is considered equal to a hunter of the same rank. A small-class²Human-size beast is equal to a hunter of the same rank. A medium-class³Lifeforms whose size is comparale to wagon or a car beast would require a group of hunters to hunt while a large-class⁴Something as big as a trailer truck or equivalent. Long-bodied lifeforms might be as big as a 20-car locomotive. beast like the ‘giant’ kararan serpents need several groups of hunters to handle.

Also, the ‘giant’ lanian wasp is called ‘giant’ because it is significantly larger than other wasps of the same type. Some cultivators are fond of exaggerating certain beasts by granting them names; it couldn’t be helped that their size would be used as names. Giant lanian wasps are actually considered as medium-class, it should take a few hunters to hunt them, but they are actually weaker since these wasps are swarm-type beasts.   

Of course, the said hunters used in this metric are the typical ones, not the elite ones.  

That being said, for giant-class beasts, there was a need to call an expedition to hunt it. 

Hunters would be mobilized like an army, there would be a clear division of roles such as vanguard, dps, tank, support, specialists, logistician, etc. Typically, each expedition to hunt a giant-class beast is assisted by a group of Legendary Hunters. 

Which means the dark-path giant-class beast that approaches the river of time Tributary is at the very least, considered as a rank 2 lifeform!

Or in other words, rank 2 giant-class beast is the weakest among giant-class beasts as rank 1 lifeform simply could not reach that size. Their skeletomuscular system would simply collapse on itself due to their mass as their genetic complexity has yet to reach the necessary level to develop tough bones that can handle their weight. 

Of course, it is unfair to consider large-class and giant-class lifeforms as the same. In the first place, their size grants them the biological energy reserve comparable tens to a hundred times of large-class beast. 

A hunter’s cultivation [rank] dictates the height of one’s achievement and quality of self, but beasts might gain larger [size] instead. After all, an obscene quantity of energy, biomass and size is a quality in itself.

“Hahah…” Mordred chuckled at his bad luck. Giant-class beasts are the primary reason why the civilization of Morgen World could be considered backwards despite it’s long history. 

These walking disasters are truly the bane of progress, thwarting most plans of expansion and development. Their mere existence could cause tsunami, hailstorm, earthquake, or other natural disasters. Despite the vastness of Morgen World, only a portion of it is developed by intelligent races because they could not easily kill these personifications of disaster. 

An army of same-rank cultivators wouldn’t necessarily be enough to kill them.  

In fact, the reason why Mordred invented Floating Fortress was primarily to handle high-rank giant-class lifeforms, but that’s a tale for another time.

“There shouldn’t be any giant-class wasp beasts in the area. Otherwise, Valerie would be warned by the Underground Hunters as their presence is closely monitored. Ymir also could not detect anything with that level of dark elemental particles. Since this is the underground passage that connects the 1st layer to the surface world of the Land of Autumn Rain, there shouldn’t be a lot of dark-path giant-class beasts.” Mordred speculated as he dropped the egg safely. “Symbiosis Mutualism between wasp queen and the giant-class beast? It is more likely.”

“What type of giant beast could move freely in  the underground world? It’s weight alone should be in the range of 10.000 to 100.000 tons, that kind of displacement would trigger an earthquake. Since there’s little to no wide-spread earthquakes, it must be a type of beast with an excellent sense of weight distribution. Perhaps… a giant-class snake?” He quickly reached a conclusion.

“The giant-class snake must be several kilometers long, with its body circumference as big as a 5-storey building. The wasp should be living on the fold of it’s scale, like an underground, flexible aircraft carrier. Their relationship should be symbiosis mutualism, the wasps would bring food while the snake could laze around. Otherwise, with that size alone, the giant beast would be dying of starvation during a food crisis unless it reached qualitative growth and became a rank 3 giant-class beast that could sustain itself on elemental particles directly. In that situation, it would be far more dangerous for me to stick around.”

Mordred quickly reached a conclusion. 

He has to flee. There’s no other way. Even a group of rank 4 Paragons wouldn't be enough to hunt a rank 3 giant-class beast. They are simply that dangerous.

However, Mordred felt it was a waste. He has already dived down to this depth, wasting a lot of resources to fight against wasps and wear down the chicken. It would pain his heart if he came back up to the surface empty handed. With this trend of karmic retaliation, it would be harder and harder for him to collect resources. 

“It seems like… I have to go all-out…” Mordred eyed the chicken. At the very least, he has to kill the chicken as its whole body is a treasure trove. 

The year beast’s blood could be used as a type of ink to refine time-path body runes or circuits, depending on the need. It’s eye could be refined into a mechanical magic eye. The chicken’s bones are strong enough to serve as a material for support-type time-path weapons. Its flesh and organ is also an important material for time-path rituals, so on and so forth.

“ROAR!” Mordred roared, his voice imbued with soul-shattering vibration. Any mortals or rank 0 cultivators would die as their soul shattered if they could not resist this. 

There was no need to hold back anymore as the mission objectives had changed. 

The wasps who were very annoying and specifically resistant against Mordred’s attack are now flying like headless flies. Their consciousness has been disturbed, their soul shaken by the soul-shock. In that opportunity, Mordred uses his clawed fingers to unleash the most powerful version of whistle finger that he could do.

“Rank 1 sound-path killer move, [Truesilver Finger Whistle]!” 

Schwing! The crisp sound of sword slicing through the air could be heard. A trail of silver slash was made as his finger traced the air. When the trail of silver slash made contact with the wasps, they were dismembered as if their previous resistance was a lie.  

Needless to say, this version of Finger Whistle was augmented. Not only it was induced with [Quadruple Maximize: Overlapping Resonance], it is also augmented further with [Quadruple Pierce: Rend Harmonics]. 

Sure, the two quadruple amplifications allowed his methods to be effective even towards rank 2 entities, but they were also harmful towards himself. Each time he traced the air with his clawed finger, the vibroblade-claws literally disintegrated into fine dust. 

Sound-path methods are based on sound and vibration. His Lupusrazor frame wasn’t specifically made by sound-path resources. It was obvious why the armor was crumbling.

Yet, that did not stop him. Schwing! Schwing! Schwing! Each time that sound resounded, one of his clawed fingers disintegrates into fine metal dust. Since he only have ten vibroblade-claws, after ten schwings, Lupusrazor armor have lost its most powerful weapon. Now, Mordred is like a lycanthrope without fingers. 

On the other hand, the wasp has been cleaned out completely. There’s simply no more wasp that would disturb Mordred’s line of sight.

There’s only him, the three-dimensional rivers of timeforce flowing from the spherical Tributary, and the chicken year beast. 

“So you’re not a beast specialized for investigation… No wonder you’re taking it easy…” Mordred went down on all four, stabbing his fingerless hand towards the ground to serve as an anchor, the golden glow of his body slowly undulating into a gray hue. 

The chicken was surprised at the dog who killed all the annoying wasps, but since year beasts of one type are essentially the prey of year beasts of other types, the chicken now bore its hostility at Mordred. Well, since he also stole the egg, the aggro has been accumulating. 

The chicken rushed at Mordred but he kept on doing what he did. His crystal processor has been overclocked through it’s inherent ability as a computer and through the use of ninjutsu related to time. His computation power was completely funneled to design a killer move.

“The base… is [Banshee’s Wail]...”

Banshees are a type of undead known for their destructive scream. Their wails can damage a large amount of targets in one area. 

“Use [Destructive Pulse]’s parameters instead of the original, and overlap 20 pulses into one…”

Destructive Pulse was a method that Shion used during her battle against Xi Ling. It was a concentrated sound attack that would come in waves, each ‘pulse’ would be stronger than the previous one.  

“Don’t forget to calculate the factor of time in the attack, since the chicken is a year beast…”

As a year beast, the chicken is filled with various time-path bloodline abilities. One of the most troublesome time-path abilities that Mordred has encountered was the ability to split damage. For example, a 100 damage can be divided into 10 instances of 10 damage and then the user can simply deal with it. Of course, that would be too complex for a rank 2 beast, but the chicken might have something like [Rewinding Self] or [Personal Backtrack] that could instantly heal itself in dire moments, so he needs to take care of it. 

“For the last touch…[Quadruple Pierce: Rend Harmonics], [Quadruple Maximize: Overlapping Resonance], [Quadruple Break: Sound Barrier], [Quadruple Acceleration: Supersonic]...”

At this point, the chicken has closed the distance more than half of the original. Yet, Mordred merely opened his lupine mouth a little.

“Calculating secondary environmental and tertiary target parameters… Tsk, it’s difficult without a secondary intelligence doing this for me…” He opened his eyes. The chicken has closed in his position further as it moved its large body almost at the speed of sound. In that instant, he activated his method. “Rank 1 sound-path killer move…. [Wave-Force Sound Artillery]!” 

His lupine form was like a cannon turret, his mouth producing a sound wave so powerful that it evaporated water molecules in the air and pushed out other particles.

The gray beam-like sound wave actually missed the chicken as the beast glowed in golden light. Some sort of time-shifting ability was used but fortunately, Mordred anticipated it. Although it physically missed the chicken, it was actually not!

Mordred’s attack has a +.2 second time factor added. Meaning, his attack had already arrive .2 second before he even made that move.

Boom!! After the golden glow of the chicken faded, it had its heart crushed. Its eye was ejected from its socket, most of its golden scales are broken, the relatively soft chicken bones could not handle the wave-force sound artillery. The chicken stopped in its tracks, no longer moving as most of its organs had been pulverized. As for Mordred, his body was thrown a few dozen meters back. 

Since the attack was effective towards the rank 2 chicken, then it was inevitable that Mordred would have to pay a significant price. Even under AT-Field structural fortification whose parameters are specifically set to endure vibration damage, his body still ended up broken. 

Lupusrazor frame, the external armor, was completely grinded into fine dust as it was the primary source of the killer move’s power. The mortal shell which was made from the materials of Combat Exosuit Minor Inheritance has been damaged significantly. His chest has been opened up, revealing the complicated mechanical parts. The core reactor’s heat shielding which was made from ruby has also been damaged, the heat which was similar to an active furnace is leaking.

“Fuck…” Mordred cursed as he opened up his chest. His most precious asset is located within his breast. When he found that the eighth rib bone of his right chest was intact, he heaved a sigh of relief. There was a ring slotted on it, hidden underneath a non-newtonian liquid metal layer which was held by magnetic attraction.

That’s right, it was his dimensional storage ring. 

Mordred often used variations of triple extreme sound, so he could not wear rings on his fingers. This also extends to his foot as his limbs are expendable. Thus, he wore the ring on his rib cage. Also, the dimensional storage was the black gem on the ring, not the ring itself. The metal that made the ring is actually a common rank 1 metal. 

“No time to waste.” Mordred took out some mechanical parts to do a quick fix on his body. It was mostly like using flex tape to strap a sheet of metal onto his body but at least it would save time. The most severe damage was on his core reactor’s heat shielding which required him to use several layers of heat-resistant materials. After this, he has to refine a new set of heat shielding for the core reactor and fix a few of his organs. The biofurnace which was close to the core reactor has been damaged quite heavily. 

He stood up and quickly put the chicken’s corpse into his dimensional storage, followed by the nearby corpse of rank 2 wasps. 

Then he started at the river of time Tributary. It was really big. 

“A tributary of this size would supply me with sufficient amount of time-path resources to construct a dimensional factory. Tsk… This rotten luck.” He quickly exposed his palms at the tributary. The three dimensional golden river of timeforce is flowing into a ring that is centered on him.

 ….

 

“As expected of my dearest king.” Paimon’s lips curved upwards. “It’s so refreshing to see one of his favored methods, the Arcane Artilleries… or should I refer to it as the Myriad Artilleries now? Simply amazing!” Paimon’s sight has never left the scope. 

The eye that he used to aim at the battlefield suddenly turned sharp when he saw Mordred trying to refine the Tributary. “He already knew about the presence of a giant-class unknown beast, yet he still wanted to take some part of the tributary.” He releases a deep sigh. “As expected, this is the karmic retaliation from the world.”

“Unlike other cultivators whose karma accumulates slowly, he is extremely efficient in accumulating karma due to his refinement-path attainment. The soul, the corpse, and even the timeforce in the environment… nothing is left behind. If those gains are converted into karma, then his rate of accumulation is too fast! No wonder his luck is terrible, the world is simply trying to slow down his growth to adhere to the balance of heaven and earth.”

“Currently, he is damaged and focused on refining the tributary. His resources must be stretched thin as I can’t even sense that weird defensive force field that protects his soul at all times. Yet, he is still trying to accumulate karma, is he not afraid of further karmic backlash?” Paimon’s eyes glint in a dangerous light.

“At this point, he is at his weakest…It would be a pity if… someone ambushed him…” 

Boom!! The railgun on his hand fired a shot, its barrel velocity reached mach 16. A golden-blue trail of plasma fire is left behind the temporal supermagnetic round’s path.