Kairos took in a shuddering breath as the battle ended. A lot had happened but merely seconds have passed. His face went deathly pale partly from the vigorous movements but mostly because he used the War God’s Epithet. The soul art extracts a tremendous amount of energy from him just to project an astral form that could bypass all physical and most energy barriers and is the only method to attack someone in the middle of a teleportation spell.

Kairos looked at the soul he had retrieved and realised one thing. His astral form could hold the living soul of another! He looked at Von Von and suddenly had an idea.

“Aisa, can I save Sparrow and Von Von?”

The small dragonling thought for a bit, as though something is holding her back, but eventually replied.

Kai, your soul is special. Do you remember the devil that was possessing Relestia?

“The one I vanquished?”

Yes, it did not disappear but made powerless when you broke it down into the tiniest pieces.

Kairos nodded, recalling the events.

And then it was deposited into your sub-conscious.

Kairos’ eyes widened so much he almost thought they will pop out.

“What do you mean deposited?!”

Just thinking that such a disgusting soul parasite is residing inside makes him feel like clawing it out.

That’s what Aisa meant that your soul is special Kai~ If you don’t store the devils you vanquish, they might come back one day! Don’t worry, that devil is neutralized for sure.

Kairos can only nod dumbly. He should have expected this when he heard that souls cannot be destroyed.

Kai~ If you want, you can invite the elf and the dwarf to the place where the devil is stored

“Will it be safe for them?”

There is no problem! Your soul will only suppress those who are impure or evil

“Okay, tell me what I need to do?”

First, close your eyes and shift your consciousness into your astral form

Kairos tried it for a bit but nothing happened until Aisa suggested for him to enter the selfless state first.

The pure-self state is to maximise one’s connection with the body and feel everything more sensitively, whereas the selfless state is to detach one from the body completely and retreat into the recess of the mind or even escape the shackles of the flesh.

The Origin Cultivation Method is a one-way fast track to help Kairos move his conscious to his astral form. In fact, the actual use of the cultivation method is to deal with devils in both their corporal and incorporeal forms.

The view of the world changed the moment Kairos saw through the eyes of his war soul. Colours like he had never known appeared all around him. Things that he cannot see in the past became visible, like soundwaves, emotions, auras, scents, and all other things, including those of the spiritual realm. The human eye is sorely limited to the visible spectrum, but the war soul can see everything. Even Kairos’ ocular ability with the Veritable Sight is limited to the physical world, although it is capable of seeing through objects and illusions that the war soul cannot.

When the war soul looked around, he quickly found Von Von’s spirit, and with Aisa’s help, Kairos gently coaxed her into holding his hand. With a firm pull, he led her out of her dying flesh.

At this time, three young souls that were hovering around Kairos came over and playfully but respectfully greeted him.

Oh Great One! Oh Great One! You can see us?

When they came into sight, Kairos instantly teared up. The war soul’s tears were like rolling lava that fell from its face. These three are the ones that sacrificed themselves during Kairos’ first year final exam to protect Kairos from the orc onslaught.

They are Sieg, Luk, and Xiu Xiu. The sons and daughter of Siegfried, Laksa, and Helena. All these years they had been following around Kairos and cheering him from the spirit world and Kairos had never knew.

A beaming smile broke on his face when he saw them again and he invited the three to join him as well. Then together with Von Von and Sparrow, Kairos retracted his war soul back into his consciousness.

In his mind, a vast white space with a giant blue crystal looming in the middle, the six of them arrived together with Aisa who somehow managed to enter as well.

The giant blue crystal is his mana core, as magic is of the mind, the core crystal resides here in Kairos’ consciousness. Incidentally, the Dantian also has a Ki core, or more accurately, it becomes a Ki Core when the cultivator reaches S rank to get ready to ascend to the immortal realms. And there is one last core, the Soul Core, which resides in the heart. Kairos had formed this when he attained C rank by absorbing a monster soul: The Divine Gorilla Soul – a shiny orb of light that can be found rarely from hunting a great number of enlightened beasts.

In this vast emptiness, Kairos quickly discovered something out of this place, a tiny piece of dust. If it is not because he is the owner and nothing can escape him here, he would not have noticed. With a reach of his hand, the dust flew over and harmlessly landed on his palm.

Aisa scooted over and bobbed her head over it.

Aha! Kai you found the devil you vanquished!

“Can it hear us?”

Aisa shook her head lightly.

It is reduced to be incapable of anything

Just imagining staying in a perpetual emptiness caused a shudder to crawl down his spine.

Kairos turned to look at the five people looking around curiously.

Kai~ I think you should make this place a bit more habitable for them. You can create anything you want here, because it’s your consciousness, or even show them the outside world if you wish

Hearing this, Kairos immediately got to work. The vast empty spaces quickly became filled up with all the music, books, sceneries, and food that Kairos had experienced before, letting those here freely participate in anything that they want. And instead of letting them see the pictures of what is happening outside, Kairos created a large shimmering pool in the centre where they can submerge into a simulation of the outside world – which, of course, only if he actively keeps the connection open.

With these done, Kairos exited from this place and returned to his body. Now with five people in his mind, he can talk to them whenever he wants, and fortunately, this communication is completely voluntary. That means, if he wants them to hear his thoughts, he can try to speak to them, and they could choose to hear him if they wanted to, and the vice versa is true as well.

At the least, he won’t be forced to hear things in his head and go crazy from that.

Looking at the mess around him, Kairos did not stop to go to Von Von’s body. Kairos quickly enveloped Von Von’s body with healing magic crystals. The magic crystals are just like talismans that cultivators use, but for spells. When crushed, they will unleash the stored magic within, and Kairos quickly crushed all the ones that can provide healing. Of course, for Von Von, this level of healing spells cannot repair a shattered life stream within the body, but it can slow down the process. Kairos continued to reinforce the activated spells with a magic of his own: the Continuity spell.

This magic specifically provides mana to an existing spell so that its activation can be prolonged and is most commonly used on storage trinkets or item box devices to store things in the Item Box spell, empowered by mana gems.

Next, he created a magical barrier to prevent the cells from dying when encountering a dimensional shift. It is general knowledge that normally a person cannot enter a time-space ring. The dimensional shift, along with the frozen nature of time and of space in such a thing will stop a living being’s body functions, and after just a short while, those functions can no longer be restarted. In other words, it’s certain death to go into a time-space compartment. Still, this is only true for the cultivators who are limited to runes. For the mages in this land, they can tap into the arcane and lessen the damage of the dimensional shift by using counteracting forces. As for why the mages on Axis Mundi have such a spell, well… they are rather advanced in magic and magic is more of an intellectual power than raw power. To compete with powerful races like the physically strong dwarves or the shapeshifting gnomes, mages must make full use of the limited mana in this lower realm.

With magic researchers relentlessly proving new theories every day, it is why the mages could use a teleportation spell or summon heroes from another world.

Afterwards, Kairos kept Von Von’s body in his time-space ring. When he first landed on Axis Mundi, all his time-space rings – save the Thunder God Ring – were destroyed by the dimensional transfer but he managed to find one in the castle where Relestia was attacked. It was an ancient piece of artefact that is barely functioning. It had a rather tiny amount of space and everything within already crumbled into dust from the passing of time. The quality is also rather poor, making things slow down to a-third of the actual process of time.

Fortunately, due to the protective barrier and the healing spells, Von Von’s condition can last a few months. If Kairos could recover enough by then to transfer some Origin Energy over, it is possible to revive the elf. All he needs to do now is to make sure there are ample mana gems to keep the barrier and healing spells active.

With that done, Kairos let out a sigh of relief as Von Von quietly gave him her thanks. As for Sparrow, he has plenty of questions he needs to ask her, but for now it will not be possible to return the dwarf to her body. Whereas for the three friends, things are a little more complicated. Normally it is impossible for a spirit to command a body that is not its own, but Kairos has hope that perhaps the immortal realms or the celestial realm might have an answer to that.

Seeing that Kairos is now done with everything urgent; Aisa decided it is the best time to tell him. With a tiny, squeaky, guilt-ridden voice, she softly telepathed to Kairos.

Kai Kai, Relestia had been kidnapped