Just standing in front of that monstrosity could give people existential crises, as their own existence would seem far below a being of this size and strength.
’It has dozens of faces, and obviously enough... there are hundreds of souls in this humongous body...’
Rio, with his amazing eyesight as an S-ranker, could easily see that this monstrosity had dozens of dragon heads resting on top of the tree, and they were all facing the sky.
In between all those different dragon heads, the large dragon head of the real shadow dragon king was located in the center.
All of those heads had their eyes closed as if they were sleeping, and no one seed to have noticed Rio’s existence as of yet.
Rio looked at the base of that massive grotesque tree and noticed familiar spatial fluctuations.
’The other end of the sacrificial altar, so it’s located here...’
The massive tree seed to have grown around the entire sacrificial circle, and hundreds of thousands of tentacles were hanging there, waiting for the prey to co and be devoured.
’Thankfully I took the difficult path to reach this place and didn’t use the teleportation circle to directly teleport to other side; otherwise I would have been trapped inside this gigantic tree’s body...’
Rio could feel that those massive dragon scales covering the entire grotesque tree were very strong and dense, and miasma was flowing through them constantly.
Unless Rio went all out, he might not even be able to make a dent in them.
’A constantly active world authority... what is this world authority?...’
If the grotesque tree was just a disfigured pile of at and bones, Rio could still try to damage it, but with a world authority protecting it constantly, even with his full strength, Rio can’t do much to it right now.
’This world authority mastery seems much higher compared to usual insane demonic beings would have...’
During his journey in the Spirit Realm, Rio got the chance to see many powerful SS-rank evil spirits from afar.
Although most of them were in a very bad state to begin with due to miasmic corruption, they were still strong SS-rankers with genuine world authorities, but their control over it was very weak.
’Is it because this grotesque aberration has been created from the body of the shadow dragon king who already had a lot of control over his world authority?’
’But that begs the question... would an SS-ranker lose mastery over their world authority if they lost their sanity due to miasma? Would their world authority levels drop?’
Thinking about this matter, Rio felt quite curious.
’Well, If I was back ho, I could just find out the answer for it easily...’
There might be research papers or secret docunts related to this question sealed away sowhere in the human empire, but Rio currently had no way to access them from inside the spirit realm.
Humans were the ones who fought the demons the most in the thousand-year demon extinction war, and many of them even did a lot of research and experints on demons.
So, the docunts from that ti should still be stored sowhere, or perhaps the data might be stored in secret folders of the military supercomputers.
While thinking about various things in his head, Rio stepped forward very slowly and cautiously.
’Who could have thought that such a massive and grotesque creature exists out there in the spirit realm...’
’This weird tree-like structure is many tis bigger than the world tree!’
Rio had seen the massive spire of ascension, the huge world tree, and many other tall and powerful existences.
But all those things were nothing in terms of height and size when compared to this one.
’Is this the reason why I didn’t see a single adult dragon anywhere?’
’Don’t tell that the shadow dragon king gulped them all down and swallowed their souls?’
Not only could Rio feel the presence of hundreds of big and small souls in that creature, but he could also see that many of them were attaching and trying to rge into one big combined soul.
’This process again...’
According to Rio’s own speculations and thoughts, Rio’s own soul was rged with the original’s Rio’s soul that already existed in this body.
The sa kind of thing is happening in many places inside the entire spirit realm.
It’s almost as if miasma is constantly running experints trying to create at least one individual with perfectly rged souls!
’Many kinds of various combinations and creatures have been used in this universal-scale experintation procedure...’
’From the looks of it, billions and trillions of souls have been tortured in such ways by miasma... But I can’t understand one thing... why is miasma so aggressively trying to create a being with rged souls?’
Rio could not understand Miasma’s obsessing with forcing several dozen souls into the sa body and then trying to forcefully rge them.
’Is miasma trying to mimic what I have achieved? But I only appeared just three or so years ago...’
’These strange experints of miasma seem much older than that though...’
Whenever two unrelated souls are forced into one body, they collide with each other and create damage to each other on a frequent ti span with a fixed frequency.
Rio looked at that frequency in many of the creatures inside the spirit realm.
And by analyzing the damage to both colliding souls, he asured how many tis they might have collided by now to achieve this much damage and found out for how long this has been going on.
In simple words, Rio could tell how long it had been since those souls were forcefully stuffed in one body.
And Rio had already asured that most of the monsters he t were hundreds or even several hundred years old!
Which ans that Miasma has been doing this experint for hundreds of years!
Rio has nothing to do with this.
’Even the shadow dragon king and its subordinates ended up as lab rats for miasma...’
’This is quite a cruel fate... sigh, King Allen’s punishnt is nothing to scoff at...’
Well, Rio himself was a weirdo who used criminals to improve his skill proficiency and tortured them over and over, so he wasn’t qualified to judge others about how they dealt with criminals.
All he could do was feel pity for the poor shadow dragon race that they dared to betray a person who was clearly not to be trifled with.
’I feel a very unsettling feeling walking around this thing...’
As Rio slowly moved around the gigantic being to get a clearer view of its body and examine it, he noticed various soul fluctuations that were still much clearer and very expressive.
Usually, once a being is heavily corrupted by miasma, their soul fluctuations beco completely chaotic and impossible to read, and their emotions are all going haywire.
But Rio could feel one emotion that massive disfigured dragon tree and that emotion was,
Determination.
Unbreakable determination and unbreakable and firm faith! Rio can feel that from those clear soul fluctuations from that massive body.
’Don’t tell that even after all the horrible sh*t that’s happened to its body, this shadow dragon king’s soul is still retaining so final shards of sanity in it?’
’What is this determination for? Why are you... why are you looking towards the sky as if you are...’
’As if you are waiting for sothing...’
The more Rio observed that bizarre being, the more confused he felt, and he raised his head and looked towards the sky in confusion to see what all these dragon heads were actually looking at.
But to his surprise, there was nothing extraordinary in the sky.
It was just the usual, an ordinary miasma-filled sky of the spirit realm with clear boundaries and insanely powerful spatial fluctuations rampaging around everywhere.
Rio could not help but find his curiosity increase with each passing second, and he flew in the air as he started to look around for any possible clues, and luckily for him, he found it.
After flying for about half an hour straight, Rio finally managed to reach the other end of the gigantic tree body, and there was a massive stone monunt fallen on the ground and heavily damaged in many places.
The words on the monunt were so big that Rio had to fly high in the sky to barely get a clear view of the entire monunt and the words written on it.
And luckily for Rio, these words were not in any other language but in Ezkina, the common language of the world created by King Allen himself.
{It’s been a hundred years; I already feel my sanity slipping from my grasp... I hope for your return.
.
It’s been three hundred years; I deserved the pain... but why children too?... I hope for your return.
.
It’s been five hundred years; I cannot protect them from corruption anymore, no new children can make it anymore.... I hope for your return.
.
It’s been Seven hundred years; I have lost a lot. I lost a lot... But I hope for your return.... Please...
.
Please... return ho....}
After those final words, everything else was just so random gibberish, and Rio couldn’t understand it.
But Rio could feel a very unique soul fluctuation mark from this massive stone monunt, which seed to match with the central and most powerful soul of the humongous mutated dragon tree.
After reading the words on the giant monunt, Rio confird the fact that the shadow dragon king was indeed waiting for sothing or soone, but what it was, Rio didn’t know.
Knowing all this caused Rio to fall into a dilemma; he ca here ready and prepared for a fight, but it turned out that his opponent was in such a horrible condition that it couldn’t even fight.
And the most difficult problem of it all was that Rio couldn’t get too close due to the defensive power of the world authority protecting it.
’Ugh, how am I supposed to find Ellie now...’
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