Chapter 82: The Devouring Blade

Alderton’s alchemy laboratory was like an unmined gold mine. Every object, every material, seemed to contain immeasurable value.

Aiden carefully stored the thick Alderton’s Alchemy Journal and the three epic-quality recipe blueprints inside his ring space. Such a wealth of knowledge required time and careful study. He couldn’t afford to rush through it.

His gaze then shifted toward the storage compartments filled with rare alchemical materials. Like a shrewd appraiser sorting through a treasure vault, he began carefully examining and selecting anything that might prove useful.

Yet while doing so, Aiden couldn’t shake off a strange feeling.

He had been hearing the faint wailing of souls ever since entering the laboratory.

At first, the sound had been extremely loud, almost deafening. But now, for some reason, it had become incredibly faint, barely more than an indistinct whisper.

Aiden frowned.

He tried to pinpoint where exactly the wailing was coming from, but no matter how carefully he listened, he couldn’t determine its source.

It was almost as though whatever was producing those cries had realized that he could hear them...

And was deliberately trying to hide from him.

The thought made Aiden’s eyes narrow.

Just as he was clearing out a dusty compartment hidden beneath the workbench, however, his fingertips suddenly brushed against something cold and hard.

He paused.

Unlike the bottles, jars, and various alchemical materials stored around it, this object felt... different.

Exceptionally heavy. Exceptionally dense. And beneath its cold surface, Aiden could faintly sense something resembling a pulse.

Almost like a heartbeat. His expression changed slightly. Carefully, he reached deeper into the compartment and pulled the object out.

It was a short blade. Less than a foot long, its design was archaic and almost crude. The blade was covered in dark-red rust that resembled dried blood, making it nearly impossible to determine what material it had originally been forged from.

The hilt was made from an unknown dark wood and wrapped in worn, faded leather cord. There were no decorations, engravings, or jewels.

The entire weapon looked like something that had been unearthed from the ruins of an ancient battlefield and left to decay for countless years.

It radiated an aura of vicissitude, decay, and deathly stillness.

At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a piece of worthless scrap metal.

If not for that faint pulsation he’d sensed earlier, and the fact that the weapon had been carefully concealed inside a secret compartment beneath Alderton’s workbench, Aiden might have thrown it aside without a second thought.

But then...

His expression changed. He could hear it. The wailing.

Aiden’s eyes narrowed as he realized the truth. The cries weren’t coming from somewhere within the laboratory.

They were coming from the blade. Countless souls seemed to be trapped within its rust-covered body, their faint cries echoing from somewhere beyond ordinary perception.

Aiden’s grip tightened around the weapon. And then he felt something else. Something far more unsettling. The blade seemed to be hungry. Not for blood. For him.

There was an inexplicable sensation coming from the weapon, as though it wanted to devour something within his body. His soul.

Aiden’s expression became solemn. This sensation... It was strangely familiar.

A memory suddenly surfaced in his mind.

Damien.

In his previous life, Damien had wielded an extremely powerful blade. Aiden had never been able to discover where Damien had obtained it, but he distinctly remembered the strange, almost predatory sensation that radiated from the weapon.

The same feeling he was experiencing now. Aiden’s eyes slowly widened.

’Could this really be that weapon? Could this be the same blade Damien had eventually obtained?’

If so... He had actually found it before Damien.

Aiden’s heart stirred with excitement. ’I’m sure this is it.’

He glanced down at the rust-covered blade in his hand.

’I can’t believe I actually managed to obtain it before Damien...’

The thought immediately brought Luna’s Heavenly Karmic Dice to mind.

Perhaps this was another effect of her extraordinary luck.

However, one question continued to bother him.

’If the sensation is the same... why does the appearance of this weapon look completely different from the blade Damien wielded?’

Aiden frowned deeply. The weapon in his memory had been completely different.

It had possessed a magnificent appearance that had earned it the name Glorious Blade. It was powerful, imposing, and unmistakably extraordinary.

Yet the weapon in his hand looked like a rusted piece of ancient junk.

The difference was simply too great.

’Could the weapon change its appearance? Or was there another secret hidden within it?’ Aiden’s gaze gradually became sharper.

There was one more possibility. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to hear the wailing souls in his previous life because he hadn’t possessed the Sovereign of Souls class back then.

Without the class, he might never have been able to perceive the souls trapped within the weapon.

That would explain why he had never noticed anything unusual about it before.

Aiden slowly turned the blade in his hand, examining every inch of its rust-covered surface.

Whatever its true identity was... There was clearly more to this weapon than met the eye.

And if his suspicion was correct, then he had just obtained something that had once belonged in Damien’s hands.

Only this time... It had fallen into his hands first.

Ignoring the blade’s abnormal weight, which far exceeded what a piece of metal of its size should have possessed, Aiden tried channeling a trace of mental energy into it.

Nothing happened.

His mental energy sank into the blade like a stone falling into a bottomless sea, disappearing without producing even the slightest ripple.

Aiden frowned. ’That thick layer of rust seems to be blocking all attempts at investigation.’

"Sir Aiden, what did you find?" Silas leaned over curiously, scratching his head as he examined the short blade. "A piece of scrap iron?"

From his perspective, there was nothing remarkable about it.

Luna, however, suddenly let out a soft, "Huh?"

Her amethyst-like eyes remained fixed on the blade, a confused expression appearing on her small face.

"Sir Aiden... I think..." She tilted her head slightly. "I can feel that it’s very... hungry."

’Hungry?’ Aiden’s eyes narrowed.

That peculiar description immediately reminded him of the sensation he had felt from the blade.