Chapter 666 - Things Are Not That Complicated
Chapter 666 Things Are Not That Complicated
Payne shook his head. “Of course it’s not such a thing; all my enemies are dead. I don’t need you to help me kill for revenge.”
“So you’re trying to resurrect?” asked Roland.
“I can transfer my soul too.” Payne waved his hand indifferently. “If I wanted to, I could attach myself to a random member of the royal family, and in less than five days, I could extinguish their soul and replace it. But then, the barrier in the royal tomb would be gone, and then all of the nearly ten thousand souls of the royal family would be slowly taken away by the Nether God.”
“Then what are you thinking?” Roland was a little puzzled.
Payne pointed to the huge walking winged devil over there. “Help me decompose this thing.”
Decompose? Roland looked over; the huge body of the winged devil looked terrifying. Roland then looked back again. “This thing, it should be a soul too.”
“Of course!” Payne smiled smugly. “Because before making this barrier, I had calculated that the magic power generated by my spiritual power would only supply the barrier for about a thousand years, but if I dragged in one more soul of similar strength, wouldn’t that be double the pleasure?”
“Indeed.”
Payne continued, “So I took advantage of the time when the demons invaded to capture their commander, then stripped its soul and sealed it into this barrier.
“I was planning to chat with him and live together for two thousand years as souls, but it turned out that this fellow couldn’t hold out a few years ago. His spiritual consciousness got worse and worse, and now he can’t talk anymore. It’s so disappointing.”
Roland, however, thought that it was impressive to last a few hundred years being locked up, facing a landscape that was the same every day, as well as an enemy. He said, “If you can seal it, you should also be able to dismember its soul.”
“I can, but I’d have to waste a lot of my spiritual power.” Payne smiled and said, “I don’t have a body, and the more spiritual power I use the less I have, so it’s better if you do it.”
Indeed.
When a creature had a body, its soul would be able to recover in its body, and it could even slowly get stronger if it exercised methodically.
But pure, unattached souls without a body to attach to were not likely to get stronger in the main plane.
Unless they went to the Netherworld.
…And absorbed the atmosphere of the Netherworld—that stuff was food for the soul.
But the quality and taste were still inferior compared to the energy provided by the body. It was essentially the difference between boiled meat slices and dog food.
Roland understood what Payne meant.
A demon soul like this, placed here, would also be absorbed, but very slowly.
The barrier was now absorbing the spiritual magic power of these two “people” at the same
time.
But if the soul of the walking winged devil was cut up, its spiritual magic power would become extremely easy to absorb.
The barrier would then prioritize absorbing the spiritual magic power of the walking winged devil first.
But in this case… this barrier might not last two or three hundred years. As Payne said before, he used to be a Demigod.
But now Roland sensed that Payne was just a Master.
Although his spiritual power was still massive, he had become empty on the inside.
“Actually, why don’t you resurrect, old man?” Roland was somewhat curious. “Find a random condemned criminal, devour their soul, and then be reborn in a shell. Isn’t that much better than you just sheltering the soul?”
“I don’t suppose you’ve been through many life and death separations, son,” Payne said with a smile.
Roland nodded.
Indeed, both of his parents and his grandparents were alive and well, and the relatives he was familiar with were alive and well.
“Among those souls are my most beloved kin. My parents, my wife, my sons and daughters, and even grandchildren.” Payne smiled tenderly. “If I were to resurrect, they would have to go to the Netherworld. It would be almost impossible for me to see them again.”
Roland was a little curious. “You can see them even in the spiritual world?”
“Of course I can. I’ll take my spirit out from time to time and watch them living leisurely in this small world of the royal tomb. This is a kind of happiness for me.”
Roland roughly understood the other’s mind and thoughts.
“Okay, if it’s decomposing souls, you’ll have to teach me.”
Payne said with a smile, “First, you have to learn to apply mental power and turn it into a sharp ‘blade.”
Three hours passed and Payne explained a lot of techniques on mental power application.
This benefited Roland greatly.
The application of mental power had always been one of Roland’s shortcomings. And Payne’s talk was all substantive, with very basic, yet quite useful and solid content.
When Payne finished his explanation, Roland didn’t hesitate to coalesce a sharp mental scalpel in his hand.
“Impressive, boy.” Payne looked at Roland with considerable surprise. “With that talent, you could probably be compared to Mystra.
“Okay, now go help me split the soul of that thing,” Payne pointed behind him.
Roland walked over with his mental scalpel.
Within a few moments, the soul of the walking winged devil was dismembered into dozens of pieces.
Payne looked a little sad. “Old friend who I used to quarrel with and curse at every day, goodbye forever.”
With a soul shattered like this, it would be hard to put it back together, even for the Nether God.
“Mental power attack is a powerful tool against souls. I hope you can use it carefully when you go out. Don’t needlessly use this method to destroy souls. It earns the disgust of the Nether God,” Payne reminded Roland, then he laughed. “The next thing is to teach you how to form a magic body. Not that I’m braggingif I wasn’t worse at spatial magic, with this technique alone, I could surpass Mystra by a notch, but unfortunately my talent in spatial magic is just awful.”
“It’s that powerful?” Roland became more and more interested.
Someone who could become a Demigod from the same era as Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, probably had techniques and theories that were quite practical if not extremely effective. “That said, this method is a bit troublesome,” Payne said. “It requires a lot of magic materials, even using herbs from the Elf Forest, and then making it into pills, taking them one by one to gradually expand one’s body’s magical capacity and increase the speed of magic power regeneration.”
“Well, please go ahead, old man, I’ll write it down,” Roland said as he opened his system notepad. Payne sighed wistfully. “If I hadn’t been the only one who could be king back then, I really would have been a pure Mage.”
After lamenting, Payne explained the method.
Roland jotted down three full pages in the system notepad.
When Roland finished writing it down, Payne said, “You are very talented. With this method of increasing the upper limit of magic power, and if you have some special luck and get some useful magic guides and other things, given a hundred years to progress, you could probably pull down the Goddess of Magic.”
“There’s no need for that.”
Roland shrugged. Pulling down the Goddess of Magic wasn’t something he wanted. He had a good relationship with Mystra, and Mystra would help Roland make money-big money, so there was no reason to pull her down as a
god.
“Do whatever you want, just remember to look out for the Fareins royal family when you can.”
“Okay, no problem,” Roland nodded in agreement, and then he suddenly remembered something very important. “By the way, this time, me and Stephanie came over mainly to check out a soul that glowed all over.”
Roland relayed Stephanie’s description. After hearing that, Payne laughed lightly. “Don’t worry about Stephanie, Eichensva is protecting her.”
“You know Stephanie, too?”
“She has been following her father to pay respects to me since she was five years old, how could I not know.” Payne laughed rather cheerfully. “Although Eichensva is a member of the royal family, she also has some devil blood in her. You know how promiscuous we male nobles are.”
“A child born from a devil?” Roland didn’t find the interracial union that strange. In the real world, there were many people who played with dogs and cats. “What did she know?”
“Because of the devil bloodline, she senses that there seems to be a hidden evil bloodline in the kingdom,” said Payne, “and Stephanie is the future queen, so of course she can’t be harmed by the devils. So, Eichensva left a ‘land’ in her soul, and if Stephanie is in danger, she can directly replace Stephanie in the battle. If necessary, she can give up her own soul and feed Stephanie, allowing her to improve her strength tremendously in a very short period of time, and her future growth ceiling will become higher.”
“So the enemy is still in the kingdom?” “Indeed they should be.” Payne said helplessly, “Now my strength has dropped so much that I can no longer see what’s going on outside the barrier, so I’m not sure.”
“I see.” The clues in Roland’s mind connected. “So the Third Prince was compelled to come in and steal the necklace just so that all the souls in the royal tomb would go to the Netherworld?”
“No, I reckon they intended to use them as an army of undead,” Payne said after a moment’s thought. “There are quite a few races of devils who know how to control undead creatures. The souls in the royal tomb, if they get them, with a little magical control and transformation, are a terrifying force that can sweep across the entire main plane.”
“It’s not that much of a stretch.” Roland laughed. “You’re not taking the Church of Light seriously, and there’s a Church of Life, both of which counter the undead creatures.”
“Don’t undercut me.” Payne smirked.
After chatting with Payne for a while, Roland came out of the spiritual world.
As soon as he “woke up,” he saw Stephanie by his side, even leaning gently against him.
This seemed quite natural; the two of them were the only ones alive in the entire royal tomb.
Then on the side, there were a bunch of ghosts milling around, invisible, but it was uncomfortable just knowing that.
Roland woke up with a slight movement of his body, allowing Stephanie to notice.
She looked at Roland in surprise. “You’re finally awake.”
“How long have I been in there?” Roland asked.
“It’s been at least three hours.”
Roland, however, felt that something was wrong; he had been talking to Payne for absolutely no more than an hour and a half.
In other words, the passage of time in Payne’s spiritual world was much slower than that of the outside world.
He stood up and said to Stephanie, “Surely you can’t guess who I met inside the spiritual world?”
“Who? Payne?” Stephanie asked.
“How clever you are!” said Roland admiringly.
“It’s just a coincidence, because that necklace is called Payne’s Legendary Necklace. If there is really a soul inside, it should also be related to him.” Stephanie asked somewhat anxiously, “So did you find out anything from him?”
“The infested area in your soul is actually for your protection,” Roland said. “If you experience any kind of hallucination while you’re sleeping, don’t be afraid. It’s just the unconscious whispers of the other soul. It’s not harmful.”
UNCO
“Why protect me in this way?” asked Stephanie, keenly aware of the peculiarity of this. “Does it mean that someone will turn against me?”
“Not just you, but the royal tomb.” Roland began to walk back and forth. “And Payne suspects that the devil, presumably, is still hiding inside the capital. The other man is a devil who specializes in playing with souls.”
“I see,” Stephanie muttered. “Looks like we’ll have to get help from the Association of Mages.”
The two exited the royal tomb, got into a carriage, and headed toward the capital.
As a result, just as they reached the city gate, an archbishop wearing a red cloak took the initiative to go to the carriage, bowed his head slightly, and said, “May I ask if Mr. Roland is in the carriage?”
The carriage had Stephanie’s personal coat of arms on it, so it was extremely easy to recognize.
And Roland and Stephanie going out together hadn’t been hidden.
Roland lifted the curtain of the carriage, looked at the other man, and said, “I am, may I ask what you want?”
“The Holy Lady has something important to ask.” The archbishop spoke softly and gently. The Holy Virgin invited him, and even had the archbishop come to relay this, which was giving him considerable respect.
This was the treatment Stephanie received.
Roland spoke up. “As soon as I escort the First Princess back to her estate, I will go find the Holy Lady. By the way, you haven’t said where to meet.”
“The commoner street on the west side of the Holy Realm, where there is a small three-story building made of green bricks. The Holy Lady will wait for you there.”
“Understood.”
Roland then sent the First Princess back to her manor and had her mobilize a large number of soldiers and a small number of royal Mages for her protection before leaving.
It took ten minutes to find the green brick building on the commoner street to the west.
Roland found the archbishop who had delivered the message waiting at the door.
He led Roland up to the second floor.
When he pushed open the door of a large public room, he saw the blonde, blue-eyed, shimmering Holy Lady sitting inside. The creak of the door closing sounded.
The only two people in the large parlor were Roland and the Holy Lady.
The Holy Lady was dressed in a plain white dress and had no valuable accessories on her; her hair was simply tied up with a hairband and styled into a side ponytail.
Normally, the Holy Lady didn’t tie her hair, and in the Holy Realm, her hair was usually left down.
When walking around, her long hair drifted in the air and also emitted sparkles of light, looking rather beautiful.
Now she had her hair tied up instead, indicating that she was more respectful of this meeting. “Roland, hello.” When the Holy Lady saw Roland approaching, she stood up. “Schuck has often mentioned you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you at the First Princess’ manor earlier.”
“It’s fine, I’m ordinary-looking and not outrageously handsome like Schuck,” Roland beamed. “Schuck often told me about Your Holiness too.”
“Is that so?” The Holy Lady’s cheeks were slightly red, then she immediately realized that this was not right, so she looked serious again and said, “We’ve interrogated Peter, and then felt that there was something else hidden in the matter, so wanted to ask you to help.”