Loud and thundering booms were echoing inside the big hall, the two gods joined hands and went all out to demolish the strange black box. It had to be said that it was astonishingly resistant to the point that it made Tarathiel and his brother wide eyes and awed.

No matter how many times their God Spirits banged on the black box, it didn't crack even a bit.

This black box, which was a unique skill Arthur obtained thanks to the Zodiak's powers is a very strong defensive skill meant only to protect what's inside of it, it can also be used to capture targets but in that area, it wasn't that efficient.

It cost a permanent loss of Mental Power to use it but for Arthur, who could replenish the lost Mental Power in a few days, it wasn't worth worrying about it. In fact, if he successfully absorbs the earth knight then his gains would far outweigh his small losses.

The absorbing process went quite smoothly as even after ten minutes, the black box only had small cracks in the side where the Gods attacked. At this rate, it would take them hours to fully open a way in and Arthur had already gulped the whole knight, which surprisingly showed no signs of fighting back or resisting him.

Although it went a bit different to his expectations, he still had to restrain this mysterious knight inside his consciousness. Actually, what he had done just now was a full use of his Mental Power and a characteristic of his Race. Ever since he heard his lame copy inside the ARK talk about the various powerful uses of his Race, he thought about it and managed to come up with a clever yet risky trick. It consisted of using Mental Power to lock forces inside his consciousness. Of course, he couldn't lock down anything but he bet on the chance of being able to lock down the knight and the first part did successfully work.

In the second part, he had to restrain the knight and stop it from damaging his consciousness, especially when his soul laid there.

Without minding the never-ending shaking of the black box, Arthur left the worm's body which disappeared in his storage ring and sat cross-legged inside the black box. He closed his eyes and immediately entered his consciousness.

.....

The place was vast and was like a starry sky, cold and lonely, there was only one extremely bright light which was Arthur's soul. Thick chains with small purple and blue lines enveloped the big blob of light, and above this light rotated two objects, one was a metallic cube with strange runes and symbols and the second was an orb.

Arthur paid no heed to those and focused on the Earth Knight, which floated silently in his consciousness, from time to time spatial fluctuations occurred, which caused immense pain to Arthur. Even activating the pain Immunity won't help him as injuries to the soul or consciousness were not the same as physical damage.

What was fatal to all beings was an injury to their soul, which is why soul cultivators and soul attacks are feared by many and very few treasures or techniques were capable of defending against them, which made them even more dangerous and fearful.

Fully focused on the earth knight, Arthur's hand started forming various seals around the earth knight. Circular black symbols which emitted a faint gray light started appearing around knight, in the span of a few seconds, hundreds of these small symbols enveloped the knight to the point where you couldn't see its body. You could only see countless black symbols blanketing a large object.

[Death Seal] was a simple technique he obtained from the Book of the Damned, its offensive or defensive power was almost nonexisting, in terms of combat utility, it was neither efficient nor powerful. As the name suggests, it is a seal meant to constrain entities, mainly living beings. In some particular cases, it can serve as a catalyst too.

Arthur's main purpose in using this skill was to stop the knight from attacking him, he wasn't too acknowledgeable about this knight but knew that it should be dormant on injured. If he could fully stop it from fighting back until he figures out how to possess it then it's for the best, if not, then he'll destroy it immediately. With countless seals surrounding it, it should at least be able to weaken it.

Looking at the mass of seals, Arthur felt satisfied, he took one final look at the knight before leaving his consciousness.

Just as he opened his eyes, he saw a crack the size of a person's arm appear on the black box. Although it's a long way before they fully can enter, Arthur's wasn't going to wait for them, neither was he foolish enough to fight them for no reason.

He dived into the ground and used his maximum speed to head towards Rose, who was still dumbly standing there. She had a worried look and a look of struggle appeared on her beautiful face, she didn't know if she should go or not. At last, her fear won against her resolve, she couldn't muster the courage to provoke the gray-haired man, just his presence made her hair stand so she couldn't imagine how he would react when he sees she disobeyed.

Yes, she was a strong and loyal general, yes, she fought countless battles and shouldn't fear death, but once this death arrived at her house's death, she couldn't help but panic and fear for her life.

......

Because they were focused on destroying the black box, the two Gods didn't notice the faint, almost unnoticeable presence that dived at extreme speed into the ground. In just a few seconds, Arthur found himself facing Rose, who didn't react in time before he entered her body and lowered his presence to the maximum.

Only when a few seconds passed did Arthur feel safe, he muttered to Rose to go back to her room and ignored her questioning. Annoyed, Rose could only return to her room with a helpless expression. She felt the strong tremors and knew that something major had happened but she didn't dare go there.

When she returned to her room, a loud and angry roar rang in her ears, without needing to check, she knew it was the Tarathiel's. A look of disbelief flashed in her eyes.

'What could make the usually calm clan leader shout like that?'

She didn't know what Arthur had done, but to anger Tarathiel to such a degree, it couldn't be something simple!

..

Inside the large hall, Tarathiel breathed heavily, he looked disheveled with a messy hair, red eyes, and an extremely ugly expression. Even Ehrendil's face was green with anger, he looked at the empty throne with disbelief and rage.

To this point, they had no clue how the invader took the Earth Spirit, which was supposed to be very strong. Moreover, they could do nothing but waste their time and effort shattering an empty black box!

"I want all the holes closed, no one gets out and no one gets in! Whoever dared to steal the Earth Spirit must still be lurking in here!"

Ehrendil didn't dare talk with an angry Tarathiel, he heavily nodded his head and left the hall, leaving an angry gargoyle.

After a short a while passed, a cold smile resurfaced on the young gargoyle's face, he stared at the empty throne then at the roof before muttering

"I see now, you never left our base since the beginning. But if it's not the from outside, then who exactly are you... I can't wait to find that out!"

...

"What did you do ?"

Rose couldn't hold back her curiosity after the strict order had descended from the higher-ups. Seeing the red-faced Ehrendil order the general and yells loudly, she knew that Arthur did really piss off the leaders.

"Hmmm, nothing major... I just borrowed something. It's nothing to fret about tsk tsk... I must say, you gargoyles are really stingy people. It's just a cheap thing! Hahahahah"

As he mocked the gargoyles, Arthur released a small laugh which made Rose's whole body uncontrollably shiver.