For about a week, nothing major happened. Dred and I spent our time in the forest hunting and devouring magical beasts, sometimes chatting with Audrey and company about the things they’ve seen on their travel and about Cor slowly building up the undead army. Since there was no legendary creature, he was one of the highest ranked undead, but of course, he wasn’t alone. Although it made things harder, after forming friendships and with the help of my blood, quite a few of them fell into my hands.

Seeing that the undead around Cor were becoming stronger and trained quicker, most likely prompted the other undead to follow him as well. Naturally, Audrey and Jake were exploring the area outside the tomb since they’d have been attacked by the other undead.

As it turned out, the deeper Cor went, the stronger undead he found and the fewer undead there were. Despite numbering in the millions, the undead’s levels averaged around six hundred and twenty, only the leaders being at the upper half of the sixth realm, reaching the six hundred and eightieth level.

They were the strongest forces I had right now, though I had no reason to use them and in fact, I couldn’t send them between the other races either. Unless the army was too powerful, like on Dink, undead creatures weren’t accepted in society. We pretty much shared a common fate in that aspect. Maybe that was one of the reasons why they weren’t betraying each other and were waging wars with the other races and lived happily at their own places instead.

Cor was rather simple to please as well, after all, just looking at the moon at night and feeling the wind made him happy all the time. The dead seemed to pay more attention to the little things the living tended to ignore and not notice.

In that same week, the Warton brothers also befriended different people, though most of them were at their level of power or maybe a bit more powerful. After becoming ‘brothers’ with a few other people, they also started to share the ‘secret elixir that made people stronger’. Since neither of the people who turned into my pawns acted differently, nobody noticed that something ‘bad’ was going on.

Rather, rumours spread in the dormitory and later in the school as well, stating that some people had a strange elixir that made people stronger and increased their talent. In a world where power was everything, such words made quite a lot of people interested or even go crazy over it. My pawns ‘didn’t want to betray’ their friends and didn’t share who were the distributors until they were actually threatened with their lives by some nobles. Their secrecy only made people more interested in the elixir and prompted them to get a bottle for themselves.

I couldn’t be any happier when I heard that even noble kids took the bait and started to be interested in my ‘elixir’. I also sent back two people to distribute my blood in the form of some super elixir back on Dink and Dunk. I imagined it would be easy for my pawns since nobody would have the power to threaten them there and just showing their association with me would most likely put many at fear.

When the bunch of interested people finally found out that the Warton brothers were the ones who were handing out these elixirs to their close friends, many people in the dormitory demanded their own portions because of bullshit excuses like ‘they were the future, the truly talented ones’. After being ‘forced’, they handed out the elixir and told about its effects. Emily Heder, the Soul Artist, also asked for a bottle amidst the interested crowd, though she was rather respectful, unlike the others. Much to her and my happiness, she got two bottles of it, both containing Audrey’s blood.

Some other talented people got Audrey’s, Jake’s, or Cor’s blood as well. Of course, they all got different ones. Some got Jake’s while others got Cor’s. Since the Warton brothers and the other pawns they made spent there more time, I had rather clear and accurate information on most of the students in the academy. After she turned into my blood servant, I immediately withdrew her from the academy to teach me the soul-related spells and skills she knew.

At present, I finished learning the soul spells, out in the forest.

New Spell Acquired: Soul Crush

After training your control of soul, you managed to change its shape at your will and turn it into a sharp weapon. Armours and magical barriers matter not for this spell, which attacks directly one’s soul.

New Spell Acquired: Soul Devourer

This spell helps you in slowly devouring one’s soul. After learning in-depth about the soul, now you can ignore the memories and personality-related things in the soul.

This meant that I would no longer have to worry about my personality changing because of devouring souls. And with this, I could devour genes, souls, armours, and even mana, which made me feel like a true devourer!

New Spell Acquired: Soul Shield

You can control your soul to turn into a powerful and tough shield at your will and block soul attacks with ease, unless the opponents’ attacks are too powerful.

Although soul devour couldn’t capture souls, so I wouldn’t have been able to devour the whole if I killed a monster or a person instantly, since I had Soul Container taught by Khax, I could always store the soul and slowly devour it with soul devourer.

But there was a slight problem. Before drinking the elixir, Emily sent one bottle of elixir with one of her servants to her father to inquire about it. There were numerous kingdoms in Ketarn, but there was one person in control of this whole world, the one who created the formation which kept Ketarn in one piece, Zurdon Heder.

He was above the nine hundredth level, which meant that it wouldn’t take more for him to kill everyone in Ketarn than a thought. And the daughter of that prominent person was none other than Emily. It was no wonder that she was in possession of such mighty soul spells at her age of four hundred. No human would ever be able to reach this level in such a short amount of time, without a background like that.

And the problem was that once Zurdon got wind of this elixir, he’d definitely find out that it was the devourer’s blood. Although I had Emily under control, if Zurdon found me and Dred by any chance, we’d turn into dead meat, along with our pawns.

Looking at the silver-haired beauty, I commanded, “Emily, you go back to the dormitory and live your life as usual for now. You should try your best to make your father think that you’re still a normal human.”

Her mother was a silver-haired demon, so she wasn’t completely human. Luckily, descendant level servants changed races only if their original race was weak. As the daughter of a high-level human and a demon woman in the eighth realm, she inherited powerful genes, so her race didn’t change.

For now, even if she showed her stats to her Father, he wouldn’t find out. My only worry was that her allegiance towards the devourer was visible, unless she blocked the inspect spell with a treasure. My last hope was that her father wouldn’t ask her to remove the treasure. If there was no other way out, she’d have to… end her life. That’d be a huge waste and I wouldn’t want her to die because she was a rather pure girl. I’d have left her alive even if Dred hadn’t changed my mind to turn everyone into blood servants.

“Yes, Master, but I think that it’s better if you stay low key from now on. My father dotes on me a lot, which was the reason I left home to see the world, and by doing so, fell under your grace. I’m not sure what he’d do with me if he found out that I turned into your blood servant, but most likely he wouldn’t keep either of us alive,” Emily said.

“And what if he didn’t have the heart to kill you?” I murmured.

“I’m really unsure,” she shook her head. “He never hit me or hurt me in my entire life and he took great care raising me. Even if he didn’t kill me, he’d most likely try to find a way to track you down somehow. I wouldn’t mind playing the role of his daughter my entire life if that was necessary. Maybe I could prove it to him that falling under your grace is a good thing,” she smiled.

“If it comes down to that, then do as you please. Just remember not to reveal anything about us,” I replied.

Nodding her head, she turned around and teleported back to her dormitory room.

“Now then, what should we do about the others? Should we withdraw everyone? I’m afraid Zurdon would kill everyone if he found out about the people who drank the elixir,” I said.

“I think that it’s enough if we withdraw the Warton brothers and send them somewhere far away. They should visit other planets where people are weaker than them and turn the people into blood servants, using their blood,” Dred replied.

“Hmm, that’s indeed a good idea. If they went far away, not even this Zurdon guy would be able to find them. Alright, let’s go with your plan!” I jumped up from the rock I was sitting on and directed my command through the soul realm. Since Emily had been training her soul for a long time, hers was as large as house, while ours were human-sized.

Her threat level would still be around nine if not for the fact that she turned into my pawn, which meant that she wouldn’t be able to attack me or turn against me. Thanks to her memories, I also found out that the lake in front of the Abyss gate led to a magical mansion, deep underground. It was a separate space with a bright sky, shining sun, clear weather, and a beautiful piece of flat land. There was even a sea!

I really felt like going there, but that mystical place was where Zurdon, his wife, and Emily lived, and I didn't plan to seek my own death.

Just two days after Emily left, there was an uproar in the city because the true lord of Ketarn appeared in the middle of class and took Emily back to his mansion. Zurdon also told the people that the elixir was most likely produced by a legendary creature and warned everyone that they shouldn’t drink it. By this time, it spread in the city as well, so I had quite a lot of people under my control, but after this news, there was no way that I could spread my blood any further.

About two hours after his announcement, the kings held a meeting, which Jareg attended, and in the end, they declared that the people who took the elixir should be searched and inspected thoroughly. Unfortunately for the kingdom, we withdrew every person that came in contact with the ‘elixir’ in front of others two days ago, the same day Emily turned into a descendant. This meant people numbering in the thousands, which was very unfortunate for me, but I had no other way to keep them alive and not make them die a pointless death.

Going back to the Greywing mansion, I sat down in my rolling chair, in the room I shared with Dred. There was a desk behind me, and our bed in front of me. The light shone through the large window on the right and lit up the dark room.

Sighing loudly, I curled my hair on my finger and asked, “What should we do now?”

After a bit of silence, he sat down on the bed facing me and shook his head, “I don’t know either. I think it’s best if we wait for now, just like Emily said.”

Biting my lower lip, I shouted, “Argh! If only Emily kept her mouth shut and just drank that bottle of blood silently! Why did she even drink it before her father’s reply if she questioned its contents? Emily should be safe, but the others? They all had to leave! Now we barely have about ten thousand people left in the city serving us directly!”

“Shh, don’t raise your voice,” he said as he stood up and walked up to me.

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he said, “Look at the bright side. Now our pawns can spread through the universe and conquer other planets, while we try to deal with this tough one. And we have people both in the Shikanai Dynasty and the elven forest, so we should be fine. Let’s just focus on training ourselves for now.”

“I know, but it’s so confusing. Everything was going nicely and I built up an army and then because of a stupid message, everything was turned upside down,” I grumbled as I crossed my legs. I grumpily leaned on the armrest of the chair and looked at Dred from the corner of my eye.

“What is it?” I asked.

Leaning over to me, he put his hands on my thighs and said with a sense of self-confidence as he looked into my eyes, “It’s going to be alright.”

Gazing back, I nodded my head, believing him, “I know. But I’m still worried a bit.”

“That’s alright,” he smiled and gave a kiss on my forehead.

Smiling back, I said, “Just now, that made me feel better.”

“Do you want more?” he laughed.

“No~ let’s train like you said. We’ve reached the six hundred and eighth level already. We better become even stronger else we’ll never be able to deal with Zurdon,” I replied through our bond and pulled up my legs to sit down with my legs crossed.

Closing my eyes, I started meditating. There should be nobody leading the tracks back to me and just because Zurdon was able to sense me, I was just one among many with not even my soul being stronger than the average. My shortcoming turned out to be my good fortune since if I had a powerful soul like Emily had, he’d surely find me.

Sighing one last time, I shut out the things swirling in my mind and focused on my training.