Chapter 144 - Void Travel (1)

Outside the cave, Arnold stood with Talos intently watching the trail of dust left behind by Allen and his small group of soldiers as they retreated towards the Alpha base, and immediately headed inside the cave once they were out of sight. He still had a way to use the corpse of the Demon Orc... as a source of food for the Wyvern egg. Once inside he quickly opened a portal to his domain and threw the corpse inside it, before stepping inside it himself.

'The mountain of corpses is growing exponentially, even though my summons don't have a problem living along with a ton of corpse, I think I should do something about their living arrangement...' Arnold thought while scratching his beard, 'Hm... maybe I should go and visit the church once again. It should be big enough to house a couple of monsters right? I should ask Alice about it when I'm done with other things here.'

"Duke, come here a sec." Arnold called the golem who had been with him for the longest and moved towards the mountain of corpses, Arnold then, pointed at the corpse of the Black Troll chieftain, "You still have a transformation slot left right?"

Since golems couldn't speak, Duke nodded in agreement with his master.

"Good, then absorb and transform into the troll chieftain and practice shooting with his crossbow, the crossbow is next to his corpse. I'll make you a better crossbow and arrows from the spikes of the dead orc later, okay?"

The golem happily nodded once again and used his blood rune to absorb the monster.

So far Duke had already acquired two forms, first one being the Undead Reaper, and the second one being one of the behemoths that Arnold had encountered during their time in the Trans-dimensional dungeon. Absorbing the troll's form would fill all the slots of Duke's transformation blood rune because unlike the blood runes attached to Talos and Cerberus, who could absorb and take up to 4 forms, Duke's Blood rune allowed him to absorb only three forms. If Arnold wanted Duke to transform into a monster apart from these three monsters, he'd have to make Duke delete one of the preexisting forms to do so, but Arnold doubted he'll need to do something like that for some time.

After successfully absorbing the form of the troll, Duke immediately transformed into his newly acquired form.

___

NAME: Duke

ROLE: Frost Golem

FORM: Black Troll (Mutated being)

LEVEL: 88

RANK: A+

FORM ROLE: Tank/Marksman

AFFINITY/ABILITIES :

• Uproot (active skill)

• Fury Stomp (active skill)

• Hardening (active skill)

HP: 9000/9000

STRENGTH (STR) : 91

DEFENSE (DEF) : 85

STAMINA (STA) : 78

INTELLIGENCE (INT) : 60

AGILITY (AGI) : 63

ACCURACY (ACC) : 55

EVADE (EVD) : 24

CHARISMA (CHA) : --

Damage Resistances: Ice based attacks

Condition Immunities: Exhaustion, Frightened, Frozen, Poisoned.

Weak Against: Bludgeoning attacks, Fire, and Piercing attacks

___

'It's good. Now I have someone who can deal long-range damage to my enemies. However, I'll have to make a crossbow and arrows for him to use because I can't modify the trolls crossbow. The moment I'll touch it, it'll disintegrate. Luckily I have both the time as well as resources to do so.' Arnold thought and turned around, "You can change back now or you could do a target practice and get yourself acquainted with the weapon, while I'm out."

The golem nodded and picked up the crossbow, he wasn't going to waste a single moment and went to master the of shooting with whatever crude arrows the troll carried with him.

Arnold then went to Alice to inquire about the building that the Church had used as its headquarters.

"I see, it's very noble of you to think about your summons and yes, we did remodel the building so that it could accommodate around 500 people but it would be difficult for Dread and Asterios to settle inside that building as they are quite huge..." Alice replied.

She was right and even Arnold knew that. Dread and Asterios were especially big and hence Arnold would need to think about some other way to comfortably accommodate them in the void. After attending to a few other matters, Arnold stepped out of the portal, Talos at his toes.

"Time to tame some beasts!"

***

"No no no! You're doing it wrong. Control your strength! You don't always have to kill your enemies, sometimes you need to capture them alive so you need control your strength!" Arnold stood back as Asterios fought with a small group of ogres that they stumbled upon while they were on their way to the 'Church'. Behind Arnold stood eight ogres and two goblins, silently witnessing Asterios slaughtering their kin.

Initially, the group had eight ogres and twelve goblins and mindlessly charged at Arnold and Talos, Arnold could've easily dispatched then on his own but he decided it was a good opportunity to try to train his summons, especially the strong ones like Asterios who had the ability to one-shot their enemies. Arnold didn't want to lose the ogres that's why he already instructed Talos to control them and a couple of goblins before he summoned Asterios out.

Arnold decided to train his summons as he knew in future he was going to battle stronger and stronger enemies like the Demon orc, who could be added as his summons, which would then indirectly increase Arnold's battle power. But the way his last couple of fights ended, he doubted if he'd be able to do what he was planning to. He couldn't resurrect either the Demon Orc or the Black troll chieftain because they were damaged beyond recovery. Yes, he had the transformation blood rune but their slots are limited, although he could reset them, it was still a pain to do so frequently and one could never know when and where would he a specific type of summon to do a task.

That's why it was necessary for him and his summons to control their strength. Unfortunately, it was easier said than done. Asterios was like a Minotaur on steroids, it was very difficult for him to control his strength and having an overpowered weapon didn't help him either.

"Don't go for their heads until and unless you want to kill them. If you want to capture them, then you should preferably go for their lower body or legs." Arnold instructed Asterios after he smashed a goblin's head with his hammer.

Asterios looked back momentarily and gave Arnold a thumbs up, before viciously swinging his abnormally large hammer towards a goblin's stomach.

His single attack blasted the goblin into the air like a baseball, the goblin kept flying until he was slammed into the wall of an abandoned building. The goblin's blood and flesh got splattered all over the wall.

"This guy... I teach him one thing and he forgets everything else I taught him before," Arnold smacked his head and let out a heavy sigh, "You know what? Just drop the hammer."

Asterios looked at Arnold as if he was telling him, "But I don't want to..."

Asterios finally let it go once he saw the annoyed look on Arnold's face. The hammer, nearly as tall as the one who had been using it, dropped to the ground and unexpectedly made a small pit around the hammer's head. Asterios then started fighting against the goblins using his limbs and head. Asterios' strength was still a bit overwhelming for the goblins but he managed to hold back a bit, and not one-shotting the goblins until one of the retarded goblins decided to use the hammer against the Minotaur.

Arnold saw this but didn't do anything. Why? Because he knew, it would take the goblin a hundred years before he'd be able to wield it. The hammer was simply too big for the goblin to use, but it didn't matter to Asterios whether the goblin could wield it or not.

He. Was. Pissed. How did the heck a goblin dare to touch his weapon!?

He released all the strength that he had been holding within himself upon a lone and pitiful goblin... The goblin died a quick and painless death. The moment Asterios' fist touched the goblin's head, it splattered into bits and pieces.

'Overkill much?' This was the only thing which crossed Arnold's mind.

"Alright alright, I'll give you that one, no need to get pissed about it now... try not to one-shot the others though." Arnold tried to calm down the raging minotaur who now refused to let go of his prized weapon, "Looks like this will take some time..."

Arnold then turned towards the monsters that were standing behind him like his bodyguards and pointed at the two goblins and one of the ogres, "You, you and you. Go and check out whether there are any more monsters around the church or not."

However, the monsters didn't budge from their spot, like the couldn't hear what Arnold was instructing them to do.

"Oh right. I forgot they don't listen or obey my orders... Talos, could you?" Arnold looked at Talos who was in his newly obtained Demon Orc form.

Unlike Talos' [Animate Dead] ability under which every resurrected being could be controlled by Arnold, [Demon's Will] didn't work like that. The green-skinned monsters under the influence of the ability would only obey their 'master' who was Talos.

"Yes, master." Talos then said something to the monsters in the orcish tongue and the monsters immediately departed towards the church.