Serenity's appearance caught Actuass' eye.
Her words, on the other hand, gave him a sense of foreboding. What in the world did she an by 'there's a better way.'
Serenity turned her vaguely defined head towards Actuass and then back to Vohnvolt before speaking in a voice only he could hear.
"Turn him into an artefact. A soul-based artefact," she advised.
"What?" Vohnvolt said, stunned. Turning Actuass… into an artefact?
"I don't even know how to do that. Maybe to non-living things I can, but how do I go about doing that to a living creature?"
The amalgam's concerns were expressed in a low voice as well.
"Don't worry. I'll teach you. You already have the ans to do so right now. The last piece you would need, you acquired it during your battle with this man. [Soul Sense]."
"What about [Sense]?" Vohnvolt asked before reeling. "You an I can use his soul to create an artefact? Not his body?"
Serenity nodded.
"But before that, you need to seize his soul. The best thod for that, is to use [Greatest Executive Arbitration]."
Vohnvolt took a mont to think, and then it suddenly clicked for him.
Of course. That actually made sense.
[Greatest Executive Arbitration] was Red Rage's skill. It wasn't entirely offensive, but it fit perfectly with the Apostle's entire justice shtick. Its powers allowed Red Rage to take sothing from its target as long as they were guilty of any cris. The greater the cris, the more the Apostle was able to extract from the skill's victim.
(A/N: Refer to Ch.586.).
As Vohnvolt understood Serenity's suggestion completely, he imdiately activated [Greatest Executive Arbitration: Full Release], as was the skill's full na.
A circular boundary of pristine light expanded from Vohnvolt's feet and covered a twenty-ter radius.
Actuass was included in this glowing range as well, much to his apprehension.
What was this?
What was about to happen?
Unlike Red Rage's previous victims, he managed to quickly identify that this glowing boundary wasn't a simple shed of light marking the area, as normal conventions would have him believe, but a forced shift in vision, as though soone was forcing him to see what they saw.
Vohnvolt then beca garbed in a robe of Null Life Essence that seed to establish him as a judge. It swept over his [Nullmancer's Royal Raint of Acclimation], but didn't make him look awkward.
Actuass' eyes narrowed.
"What is this?" he asked.
Right after he spoke, Actuass was suddenly blasted by a cacophony of loud screams in his head!
"ARRRRRRGHHHHHH!" he scread.
The torrent of grating sound caught him off-guard.
Wails, screeches, groans, cries and mourns rocked his brain and caused his eardrums to explode violently.
It was as though a few tens of thousands, no, millions of people were shrieking in his ears, so in agony, so in grief!
Actuass convulsed.
"I guess your cris are that heavy, even if you don't seem to think of them as such," Vohnvolt said casually. He didn't hear the noises. They were all for the necromancer to taste in his last monts.
They were the echoes of his victims.
[Greatest Executive Arbitration] judged how guilty its target was in this way. After all, the tric for incrimination was largely based on how many lives its victim had taken in a distasteful manner, and Actuass just happened to be a vicious murder responsible for single-handedly killing millions upon millions of people for selfish goals over four hundred and so years.
Actuass' eyeballs seed to swell, or perhaps they were close to popping out of his skull.
They bled.
His insides hemorrhaged fiercely and there was nothing he could do about.
The venom from Grim's fangs had been killing off his bodily functions little by little.
Allora's ntal attack had done so serious damage to his brain and Pherdanta's constant hacking at his neck had done a number on him that hadn't been subtracted.
Actuass shook.
Vohnvolt scoffed.
The necromancer gave him a dark, hateful look.
"Heh…"
It wasn't much. It was much at all, but Vohnvolt was pleased this bastard got to suffer for a bit.
Regardless of what he had planned for the 'after', as he seed to, for now, he was paying dearly.
Soon, the amalgam opened his mouth and spoke in an authoritative voice.
"I will permanently claim… your soul."
Almost instantly, Actuass' radiant, powerful soul was extracted from his body!
It was larger than his body and almost blinding to look at.
It rose while seeming as though it was bound by invisible chains.
Vohnvolt stared at it for a while. He couldn't help but think that if Actuass had strength enough to resist, this might not have worked at all.
[Greatest Executive Arbitration] wasn't anything more than a Special Skill after all. The fact that Actuass was at death's door was the only reason this had been possible. That, and the fact that his soul wasn't from Aigas, otherwise the Yormuness would claim it as its own.
Beyond that, he didn't fight back even in this form as he had before, because his soul was bloated and hard to control. Unlike Deities, mortals couldn't exist as souls alone for long and Actuass was no exception.
Now that he had no body, his soul had lost its tether, and had already begun the process of deterioration which he couldn't stop because he was bound.
"Now what?" Vohnvolt asked Serenity.
"You will need to use your [Soul Sense] for what follows," she said as she extended her hands and grabbed ahold of Actuass' soul. Null Life Essence flooded from her and encased it in a glass-like construct that seed to keep it frozen, as though ti didn't exist within it. "However, the problem is, you aren't strong enough to perfectly handle this soul and I can't quite help in the whole process of artefact-making in this state. You need to evolve and do it yourself."
"I see," Vohnvolt said.
He didn't have qualms with that now. He had mostly achieved what he had been hoping to do with a few more minutes in his amalgam form.
To evolve, he needed to deactivate [Bringer of All], after all.
"Alright."
Without wasting another second, Vohnvolt released the skill and his tall, dark, six-ard form turned into what looked like a porridge-like mound of darkness and stars before splitting into three figures: Replicus, Red Rage and Araeyn.
Red Rage had a lot he wanted to say, but since he had been aware of everything happening while entangled with his master, he decided to shut up. Now wasn't the ti to catch up.
Replicus, still adorned in the Hollow Dusk's Prison, imdiately called the guidance field.
[You have broken past many hurdles and reached LV80. You are now able to evolve into the Fourth Tier of Power. Do you accept?]
"Yes," Replicus imdiately responded, and a flurry of notifications flew before his sockets.
[Congratulations on this grand achievent!]
[As the first bearer of Null Life Essence, a few pre-evolution options will be granted to you as a reward]
[Personal Configuration has been granted!]
[Flaw De-demonization has been granted!]
[Class Reinforcent has been granted!]
[In-Verse glimpse has been granted!]
Replicus stared at all these options in awe.
He didn't know what any of them ant, but it seed they did more good than bad. Infinitely more good!
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