Chapter 272 Shattered Soul

With Silvian's soul in his hand, Nial could do whatever he wanted. He was not nice enough to give Silvian the hope of escaping unscathed.

Nial's following actions were the exact opposite of that because he was ready to destroy the entire soul inside the Sacred Knights leader.

But before Nial was able to do anything, his entire body began to crackle, his skin burst open and the dark energy around him began to grow unstable.

By using the entire mana that was released by destroying the energy devouring crystals, Nial's entire being was overflowing with an unimaginably high density of dark energy.

Every single bit of mana had been devoured by his dark energy before entering the darkness domain Nial had manifested far longer than he was supposed to be able to handle.

? His entire being ached heavily now that all the dark energy didn't have an outlet to be released in the outside world anymore.

While the Cursed Divine energy was still rampaging through Silvian's body, Nial would have still sacrificed his dark energy to calm the Cursed Divine energy. However, now his only way of destroying dark energy had disappeared as well.

The trace of Cursed Divine energy entered his body through Kaeldur's claw. It moved slowly, and the destruction it caused despite its calm state was already more than enough to affect Nial severely.

It was sucked inside the Odyssey seed and destroyed Nial's body on its way there severely. Fortunately, Nial was in possession of the Symbol of Life. It allowed Nial to regenerate quickly, and to face less severe injuries, right from the beginning.

However, even when the Cursed Divine energy had been absorbed by the Odyssey seed that tightly sealed it away, Nial was far from safe at the moment.

The entire cave was still overflowing with dark energy. The dark miasma might not be a problem because it dispersed the moment Nial stopped controlling it, but the same couldn't be said about the dark energy.

If Nial were to stop controlling every bit of dark energy within his range of perception, it would wreak havoc until the energy that empowered it would get exhausted.

Nial couldn't allow this as long as he was in the deeper parts of the cave. He would die the moment he would cut off his control of the dark energy.

"Good luck, trying to tend to your broken soul, son of a bitch!" Nial growled all of a sudden as his entire being released an intense tension.

The cave began to violently tremble as a reaction, and Kaeldur clenched his claws, crushing the soul he had been holding tightly.

It sounded like a large orb made out of glass shattered on the ground when the soul broke. Silvian's lifeless body slumped to the ground when Nial released it. Following that, Kaeldur was released as well.

Nial couldn't control Kaeldur anymore. His mission was fulfilled, and Nial didn't have a reason to force Kaeldur to stay behind in the world of the manifested, and the living.

The Odyssey seed began to pulsate when the darkness that had fused with Nial began to dissolve. The Essence of Darkness was sucked back inside the Odyssey seed, while the remaining energy turned to dark energy that merged with the domain of darkness.

'That's so fucking painful,' Nial nearly cursed out when he sensed a heavy weight pressing on him all of a sudden.

The pressure generated by the dark energy was far too intense, even for Nial, who was less affected by the dark energy than other beings.

He controlled the dark energy. Thus, he was hardly affected by it, if one excluded its mental influence.

However, right now, the pressure the dark energy executed exceeded everything Nial had ever sensed.

Even the memories of the God of Darkness didn't show that Damian's body was ever affected by the dark energy in this kind of way.

'Calm down and control it. Retract it in the Odyssey seed and store it tightly!' Nial tried to calm down and avoid most of the trouble, hoping that he would soon emerge from the Dimension rift amulet without all that dark energy. Otherwise, the situation might become a little more chaotic than he could have hoped for.

Nial could sense that his surroundings were slowly changing, but that was only obvious. Silvian was killed, and he was allowed to emerge from the Dimension rift amulet.

"Wait, what the hell!?" Nial swore under his breath the moment he perceived that every single bit of the dark energy emerged with him from the Dimension rift amulet.

It shrouded him like a huge, highly compressed sphere of dark energy, preventing Nial from grasping where he was.

His senses were restricted all of a sudden, and the only thing in his world was the dark energy. This was unexpected, but Nial didn't allow this to influence him.

He tried to absorb the dark energy sphere inside the Odyssey seed to prevent anything bad from happening.

However, just when he thought about it, the last remnants of dark energy emerged from the Dimension rift amulet. They were naturally pulled toward the dark energy sphere.

It was as if these last remnants of dark energy were a spark. The moment they touched the dark energy sphere which had reached a stable state, it exploded, releasing all the dark energy that was stored within.

In a radius of two kilometers, the day turned into darkness. It was almost as if the abyss had emerged in the middle of the battlefield, where the last thousands of Dryx were fighting against the Elves and human Originals, who had survived until now.

Everyone was exhausted including the Dryx, whose strength and stamina had increased drastically with respect to every single corpse they had eaten.

The tides on the battlefield had switched multiple times. At one point the Elves and human Originals had gained an upper hand. They had nearly killed all the ordinary Dryx, thereby ending the battle before anything worse could happen.

Unfortunately, a few Dryx had completed their mutation, and even their evolution after ending the battle seemed to have been decided. The tides changed once again, and the Elven side was pushed back.

In the following hours, the battles were more drawn out, and only by giving their utmost was it possible for the Elven and human Originals to survive.

It looked like the Dryx were about to win because more and more ordinary Dryx were done with their first mutation.

As a result, they became overwhelmingly strong and the difficulty to kill even one of them increased by leaps and bounds.

Because of the increased difficulty to survive, it was already a wonder that the Forest of Life was still unscathed after almost eight hours had passed.

But even if that were to be the case, it didn't make any sense that the Dryx were still fighting against the human Originals and the Elves. An entire week had already passed within the Dimension rift amulet after all!

However, what nobody knew was that time ran differently within the Dimension rift than everywhere else in the universe.

All of a sudden, an ear-splitting scream filled with unbearable pain and helplessness tore through the air that smelled heavily of blood and death.

Nial, who had been able to control the sphere of dark energy felt immense pain the moment the sphere exploded.

His entire mind felt like it had been torn into pieces within the explosion. This was a terrifying sensation, and he could hardly regain his senses as he continued to scream out in pain.

Everyone's attention was drawn over to the origin of the scream, only for a flood of darkness to swamp everyone, whether human, Elf, or Dryx.

The beings that were swamped by the darkness lost their ability to move and to make use of their mana.

All of their senses were sealed at once, forcing them to end up in utter darkness. Their situation was like that of chickens in a coop unable to figure out what was going on.

Many human Originals were scared witless. They imagined that they had just died and that the afterlife was something as terrifying as the sensation they were currently feeling.

Even some Elves couldn't help but get scared. It was impossible to stay unfazed after suddenly being rendered incapable of moving, seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching anything.

The humans, Elves, and even the Dryx within the flood of darkness were afraid of what was going to happen. They were not sure what had actually happened, to begin with, and the fear within them was the last sign that they were still alive.

At least they hoped that feeling fear meant that they were still breathing.

Meanwhile, Nial was trying to control the flood of darkness that originated from him, or the sphere of darkness, to be precise.

Upon accessing his Origin seed that kept pulsating, Nial noticed something.

'The Ankh is glowing brightly, and is still absorbing dark energy...'

The Odyssey seed could absorb some dark energy but because it had absorbed the Essence of Darkness and the Cursed Divine energy, the Odyssey seed had more than enough to take care of.

After Nial forced it to absorb some dark energy until it was filled to the brim, the flood of darkness had lost some of its intensity.

However, it had yet to disappear. That was why he ignored everything else as he focused on the Ankh.

'If you want to absorb my dark energy, I will be the last one to complain!' Nial could only think while trying his best to ignore the pain in his mind. His entire body was bleeding and he could tell that some of his bones were broken as well.

He was not sure how severe his condition was but Nial clearly felt that it was far from good.

Nonetheless, Nial knew that he had to take care of the flood of darkness first, otherwise, he might accidentally kill others.

Thus, by actively allowing the Ankh to absorb his dark energy, Nial created a strong suction force. The Symbol of light began to glow brighter and brighter, and the Odyssey seed pulsated as a reaction.

The changes Kaeldur had caused within Nial were dismissed and it returned to its original state, his eyes turned to the same lifeless milky white eyes they had always been and tremendously intense currents of dark energy swirled around him.

Slowly, the humans, Elves, and Dryx were released from the cover of darkness. They breathed a sigh of relief, only to realize that the flood of darkness had emerged from Nial, a young Original at the 1st Mirae rank.

The power that surrounded him was far more terrifying than his rank suggested, but it was a matter of fact that he was merely at the 1st Mirae rank. This was hard to believe, but none of the Dryx dared to remain still.

After Silvian's life on Jundra had ended, the commands given by the God of Saints and Devils lost their priority. Simultaneously, the Dryx' wild instincts were telling them to keep as much distance from Nial as possible.

If they wanted to stay alive, they should flee...as long as it was still possible.

On the other hand, the human Originals and Elves looked at Nial with widened eyes. By now, everyone had heard of Nial. In fact, if one didn't know about Nial, one could label oneself an influential person.

He was the human ambassador who was responsible for maintaining a harmonious relationship with the Elves, meaning that one shouldn't get in his bad books if they wanted to stay on the favorable side of the Elves.

But considering that everyone knew about Nial's identity by now, it was even more shocking to see him at the moment.

"Is that really Nial...?"

**

If you want to support me use your golden tickets and powerstones.

You can also visit my pa treon: Pa treon.com/HideousGrain

More character images and nice chats about the HideVerse:

https://discord.gg/EdsDgFVWwZ

Link also in my description.

Do you like it? Leave a review and add it to the library!