Chapter 1335: Enslaving a Female God!

Phei remained silent for several breaths before slowly nodding.

"...Fair."

The System was fucking right.

Phei had become enormously stronger. His body had reached a state where World Transcendent weapons shattered against his skin. He could kill Saints and Divine Lords with an ease that would have sounded absurd when he first entered the Primordial Frozen Zone, and with enough preparation, cunning and every ugly trick available to him, he could now survive exchanges with World Transcendents and even kill them.

Apparently that had allowed his Dragon pride to develop a mild illness.

Somewhere along the way, a small part of him had genuinely begun wondering whether he could simply attack the Zone Lord until it died.

A God-level being.

Phei almost laughed at himself.

Even his arrogance required borders somewhere.

Worse, attacking this particular creature would accomplish the exact opposite of what he wanted and become a source for a being desperately trying to complete its evolution.

They could literally beat the bastard into it accomplishing complete godhood.

’That would be an impressively stupid way to die.’

Phei leaned toward the Dragon Lady and began explaining everything with the confident expression of someone who absolutely had not learned the information fifteen seconds earlier.

"So, basically, I figured out what’s happening. It’s evolving, and this spectral state isn’t its finished form. After we killed all the thralls outside, we accidentally cut off most of the energy it was using to finish the process to become a complete god existence."

Her icy eyes narrowed slightly as she stared toward the Wraith.

"If we attack it now, though, all we throw at it even if its just a pure physical attack becomes nourishment. Give it enough and it finishes evolving, grows itself a physical body and becomes a proper God Stage monster."

Well that physical part he just added. He knew how desperate to kill it, who knew what method that desperation could suggest.

Phei didn’t have a death wish.

The Dragon Lady considered the creature for a moment before nodding elegantly.

Phei nodded with her as though two ancient scholars had independently reached the same brilliant conclusion. "Exactly. Horrible idea. Glad we agree."

He slipped from her back and began floating toward the Astral Wraith.

The closer he moved, the more violent its Soul Domain became.

Power rolled from the creature in slow, dreadful waves, each pulse was beginning somewhere inside the glowing mass behind its ribs before travelling through the abyss. Phei felt those waves strike his soul directly, pressing against it hard enough that his physical body was actually shoved backward despite there being no physical attack involved.

He frowned and forced himself forward.

Another pulse made his soul tremble, and for one ugly moment Phei imagined what this ability would feel like if the Astral Wraith were healthy.

The thought was unpleasant.

A fully evolved God Stage Wraith would almost certainly possess a direct soul attack far beyond this passive pressure, something capable of striking the soul so violently that Dragon Regeneration, tempered skin and every absurd layer of physical durability he had spent the past year developing would become completely irrelevant.

It could shatter the thing inside the body and leave the body perfectly beautiful afterward.

Phei swallowed.

The System wanted him to enslave something capable of that.

His fear survived approximately three seconds before greed began strangling it.

’A God-level slave!’

Phei’s grin returned.

This journey had become outrageously profitable.

He had entered the Primordial Frozen Zone expecting suffering and perhaps a useful improvement or two. Instead, he had gained a little sister, refined Void-Ice and Primordial Blood to terrifying levels, pushed his combat ability until Saints and Divine Lords barely qualified as serious obstacles and learned how to survive battles involving World Transcendents.

Then there were the servants already waiting elsewhere.

The Vampire Lady, the Blood Elf, Seraphine, the female Demon, the Dragonkin and the Undead Queen.

Six World Transcendents bound to him already!

The Undead Queen herself possessed five World Transcendent undeads, alongside the immense legion of dead she had long possessed before she became his slave.

Phei’s expression slowly became ridiculous: "Holy shit."

He had never properly stopped and counted them like that.

Sure he had a progenitor for a slave but that was just Kyle’s existence not actual power the way a god being or the World Transcendents were! These six, seven after the Astral Wraith, had actual cultivation base one could ever see on Earth!

Pure raw power!

Was he then already one of the strongest beings on Earth?

The thought made his chest swell before common sense arrived quickly enough to save him from himself.

Earth had old monsters, things hiding in places ordinary people would never discover.

Chaos—his grandma—almost certainly belonged somewhere on that list, and Phei had learned enough about the world to suspect that anyone confidently claiming they knew every ancient horror sleeping beneath it was probably preparing to become educational material.

Still, six World Transcendents of his own, five more through the Undead Queen and now possibly this?

Phei stared at the Astral Wraith with increasingly indecent enthusiasm.

"What a fruitful trip this was!"

The Dragon Lady rumbled behind him.

"I said fruitful."

Her stare somehow communicated doubt even through the darkness.

Phei ignored her and continued floating forward until another wave from the Soul Domain slammed into him hard enough to shove his body backward several meters.

"Right. Concentrate."

Void wrapped around him.

Black-white darkness spread across Phei’s body in a thin skin and began eating at the spiritual force wherever it translated itself into pressure against him. With the Void gnawing apart the push, Phei continued drifting toward the Wraith meter by meter while the creature remained completely still.

Its hollow eyes stayed fixed upon him.

The spectral body continued breathing and dissolving through the dark.

Eventually Phei came close enough that the blue-white glow inside its chest illuminated his face.

He raised one hand.

His fingers moved toward the spectral ribs.

The System chimed again:

[Note: Host should use the Tiamat Slave Mark.]

[The Astral Wraith presently exists as a complete soul-form; making it feel physical and soul pleasure is therefore unnecessary for establishing the Mark.]

Phei froze.

His eyes widened: "Wait."

He slowly looked up at the towering apparition, then back at the message.

"Tiamat Slave Mark?"

The realization struck him a heartbeat later.

The Tiamat Slave Mark did not work on men and he had assumed it was male and was about to use the slave mark until the system’s timely warning.

Phei looked at the Astral Wraith again while the spectral creature continued hovering in complete silence; his expression became incredulous.

"You’re a woman?"

The Dragon Lady made a sound behind him that might have been amusement.

Phei glanced over his shoulder. "How the hell was I supposed to know? She’s a floating nightmare with half a face."

Another pulse rolled from the Wraith and Phei quickly turned back.

"Fine. Female ghost god. Got it."

He floated closer until his fingertips hovered centimeters from the glowing center inside her chest. The blue-white radiance looked almost tangible from here, pulsing with warmth and stolen Dragon Essence beneath the spectral ribs.

Phei inhaled: ’Here it goes guys, I am about to acquire a god-level female slave for myself!’

"Tiamat Slave Mark."

His finger entered the glow.

At first, there was nothing.

The sensation resembled placing his hand inside light itself; warmth surrounded his skin without resistance, and his finger passed through spectral radiance as though the Wraith truly possessed nothing capable of being touched.

Before something inside the Astral Wraith reacted.

The warm emptiness around Phei’s hand suddenly became substance, and a presence slammed into him with enough spiritual weight that his entire body locked.

His eyes widened as something immeasurably vast rushed through his hand and entered Phei’s soul. The Astral Wraith’s spiritual existence had already been terrifying when experienced as distant pressure, yet direct contact made that comparison feel almost laughable.

Phei felt as though he had tied one end of a thread around a mountain and fastened the other directly to his soul.

The Tiamat Slave Mark burned!

Golden radiance erupted inside the spectral incorporeal body and raced outward through those pale strands, spreading across the Astral Wraith’s form in branching lines. The blue-white core behind her ribs convulsed, and the crystalline Dragon Essence buried throughout her soul flashed violently as the Mark pushed deeper.

Phei clenched his teeth while the connection formed.

His soul buckled beneath the weight.

[Ding! Tiamat Slave Mark successfully—]

He never heard the rest—

—consciousness vanished so abruptly that his body simply went limp in the air.

The Dragon Lady surged forward instantly and caught him between her foreclaws before he could fall into the darkness, drawing his comparatively tiny body carefully against her chest. Phei remained unconscious, his white hair spilling across one claw while faint golden light continued pulsing beneath his skin.

The Dragon Lady looked toward the Astral Wraith.

The enormous spectral figure had changed.

Golden lines now covered its entire soul, spreading across the translucent body until the blue-white light behind its ribs began disappearing beneath them. Pale strands that had floated through the abyss for centuries curled inward toward the glowing center. The enormous torso folded after them while darkness rushed into the collapsing shape, followed by every remaining thread of spectral light.

The Zone Lord disappeared.

Its Soul Domain vanished with it, and the crushing spiritual pressure that had saturated the abyss for centuries ceased so completely that the sudden emptiness felt almost louder than the power itself—

Everything entered Phei!

The Dragon Lady remained still for several moments, staring at the darkness where her tormentor had floated for so long.

Then she lowered herself through the abyss and carefully settled Phei upon her back, positioning him between the crystalline ridges where he had ridden so many times before. One enormous wing curved partly around him while his unconscious body continued giving off faint pulses of gold.

Far inside Phei’s soul, a a female god being had just opened its eyes.