Chapter 1334: [Emergency Mission!] Before Godhood

Phei felt absurdly pleased with himself when he sensed the Dragon Lady’s reaction beneath him. The rage that had haunted her ever since they entered the abyss had sharpened now that the creature responsible for centuries of misery finally floated before her, and underneath that rage sat something more complicated, a hesitation she would probably deny if Phei ever accused her of it.

Together, they hovered inside the lightless depth while the abyss around them remained utterly black. The crystalline veins illuminating the upper reaches had vanished long ago, leaving even Phei’s enhanced sight with little to cling to except the thing suspended farther ahead.

Its own existence provided the only illumination, a sickly blue-white radiance throbbing from somewhere deep within its spectral chest and spilling faintly across the darkness.

Phei stared at it for several seconds before a grin crept across his face. "Too bad you’ve never indulged in humanity’s creative arts, little sister, because that thing right there looks like somebody took Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, killed him again for good measure, ripped off the armor and left the evil soul floating around by itself."

The Dragon Lady gave a low rumble beneath him.

Phei patted her scales. "Trust me. That was an excellent reference."

What floated before them deserved something better than the word ghost.

The Zone Lord possessed no body the two were prepared to fight; its soul itself had become its body, a towering translucent apparition suspended several meters above the frozen darkness with the vague proportions of something once humanoid.

Its upper torso remained broad enough to suggest shoulders and arms, though the edges continuously dissolved into spectral vapor before gathering together again.

Beneath the waist, its entire form unravelled into long pale strands that drifted through the air without wind, dozens upon dozens of ghostly streamers moving with the slow rhythm of something breathing underwater.

Its face were features that existed there only as suggestions carved into translucent darkness, with deep hollows where eyes should have been and dim glacial light burning impossibly far within them.

Looking into those hollows felt less like meeting a gaze and more like staring through holes cut into the apparition and glimpsing some dead frozen star beyond. Its mouth appeared as a darker fracture beneath those lights, while pale mist leaked through it in slow ribbons before curling back around the enormous figure.

The strangest thing rested behind its ribs.

A blue-white mass throbbed there.

Every pulse illuminated the Zone Lord from within and revealed a network of crystalline veins threaded throughout its incorporeal body. Those veins did not belong to the creature, and Phei felt that truth almost immediately. They carried Dragon Essence, stolen power embedded so deeply into the Wraith’s soul that each pulse sent white brilliance crawling through its spectral form before fading back into darkness.

The Dragon Lady stiffened beneath him.

Her hatred surged through their bond so violently that Phei’s smile vanished.

She knew what she was looking at.

Pieces of herself still existed inside the thing.

Another pulse came before Phei could speak—

—soul power rolled through the abyss in a vast invisible wave.

It touched neither his skin nor his flesh, yet his soul trembled under the pressure while the Dragon Lady’s wings twitched beneath him. The darkness surrounding the Zone Lord seemed to deepen as the wave of soul energy surged outward, carrying with it the same spiritual oppression Phei had felt spread across the Primordial Frozen Zone for almost a year.

This was the source of it all.

Everything they had encountered across the region traced back here.

The soul-slaving surge of soul power saturating the Frozen Zone had flowed outward from this single creature for centuries, spreading farther and farther until enormous portions of the land had become its domain. Beasts entering that zone infested by the Zone Lord’s power and will all gradually fell prey, their souls overwhelmed, their desires strangled and their bodies reduced to unwilling thralls wandering the frozen wastes beneath someone else’s will.

The thralls Phei had slaughtered by the thousands had never chosen any of it.

Their obedience had begun here.

Fortunately for Phei and the Dragon Lady, the Zone Lord had encountered a rather serious problem when dealing with the two of them. Their souls were fundamentally different from those of the creatures it normally enslaved.

Phei was a Cosmic Dragon, his bloodline standing among the highest existences; well, according to Eira so... The Dragon Lady’s exact lineage remained a mystery to him, yet every instinct inside him insisted her bloodline was equally ancient and terrifying in its own way that was why the Zone Lord could only capture and imprison her rather than becoming a slave of it.

Their Dragon souls possessed too much innate pride, perhaps a higher rank too and resistance for the Zone Lord to reach across the zone and claim them as another pair of obedient husks.

That realization had answered a question Phei had wondered about for a long time.

If the Zone Lord could simply steal the Dragon Lady’s soul, why had it needed chains? Why had it needed servants to capture her, a prison to contain her and centuries of slow draining to feed from her Dragon Essence?

Because it could not take her.

Her soul and bloodline, just like his, were on a higher rank.

The bastard had been forced to break her body instead.

Phei’s hand tightened unconsciously against the scale beneath him, and the Dragon Lady felt it through their bond. Her answering growl rolled low through her chest, carrying enough buried hatred that Phei could almost feel centuries of captivity behind the sound when—

—a familia blue light flashed across his vision.

[Ding! New Mission Generated!]

[Mission:Enslave the vulnerable and bodyless Astral Wraith!]

[Reward:Ability — Dreaded Soul!]

Phei stared at the mission for several seconds, reread it and then slowly looked toward the enormous spectral being floating ahead.

"Wait... what?"

The Dragon Lady glanced back toward him.

Phei looked at the Zone Lord and mentally pointed at it as though the System required visual assistance. "System, are you fucking serious? That thing is practically at a god fucking stage!"

A touch of panic entered his voice despite himself. The Astral Wraith might have been incapable of simply enslaving his soul, but that did not make trying to enslave it remotely sensible. There was a considerable difference between resisting someone’s ability and voluntarily attaching a god-level being’s soul to your own existence.

Phei had become arrogant during the past year and was perfectly willing to admit it. There was ordinary arrogance, Dragon arrogance, Phei arrogance and then whatever deranged category involved looking at a god-stage being and deciding it would make an excellent servant.

The System answered before he could insult it further:

[The Astral Wraith is currently undergoing an evolution, Host. Its present state is exceptionally vulnerable. It possesses no physical body or visible barrier capable of protecting its soul, and its Soul Domain is ineffective against the Host.]

[Furthermore, the destruction of its thralls has severed the primary source of energy required to complete its evolution.]

Phei’s eyes narrowed as another message immediately followed—

[NOTE: Attempting to kill the Astral Wraith would be extremely inadvisable. The energy, Essence and destructive power released to attack it would instead be nourishment and energy source for its evolution.]

[If sufficient energy from both your attacks is absorbed, the Astral Wraith will complete its evolution, form a physical vessel and ascend to Godhood to a full-pledged God stage existence.]

Phei’s expression slowly stiffened.

The System continued without mercy—

[Host is also advised to remember the difference between surviving attacks from higher-realm beings and actually possessing the strength to truly injure a God Stage existence no matter how strong you currently think yourself to be. Most of Host’s present attacks, regardless of their destructive appearance, would fail to even reach a god existence much less inflict meaningful harm upon a completed god.]

[Do not become too arrogant, Host.]