Chapter 156: Another Seed of the Demon God

After assigning their tasks, the group left the secret room directly.

Upon emerging, they discovered that the secret room was actually built halfway up the side of a mountain. Looking downward, a vast plain stretched before them, flanked by connected mountain ranges to the left and a dense forest to the right.

Though the other two terrains were obscured, the plain was densely populated with countless undead creatures, gathered together like scattered communities.

"Since they are all below Tier 6, I don't need to form a team. It'll be more efficient this way. I'll head out first."

The only female among the three upperclassmen said to Lando, "What about you? Do you need to come with me?"

Lando shook his head and refused, "No need, Senior Sister. I'll go by myself. As long as I'm a bit careful, it should be fine."

Once Lando and the other three had departed, the gray-robed man said to Lorell, "Let's go as well."

Lorell nodded and pulled out a gray robe to drape over his shoulders. The two of them headed in the opposite direction, entering the mountain range.

Not long after they left, Lando concealed his presence and tailed them closely. Fearing that the sentinel golem might fail to fool the gray-robed man, he decided to track them in person this time.

An hour later, a nearly imperceptible spatial fluctuation rippled through the secret room, though it subsided in a fraction of a second.

After a short while, another spatial fluctuation occurred.

Realizing that the secret room was empty, Claire stepped out from the void. After noticing Lando and his group mysteriously leaving the academy, he had quietly followed them all the way until they utilized the teleportation array to depart.

Claire had long been curious about Prince Jige and the others' secret, so without much hesitation, he decided to follow and investigate. However, he had no intention of using the teleportation array located inside the residence.

Drawing upon his own knowledge, he unraveled the spatial nexus of the residence's teleportation array. First, he cast a Void Surveillance Eye to briefly scout the situation ahead. Finding it safe, he initiated the teleportation himself—which explained the two successive spatial fluctuations.

Claire first strolled around the secret room with a look of growing interest, his eyes flashing with contemplation before gradually turning into an inexplicable excitement.

"Could I have just reeled in a big fish? Could this be... a god?!"

The moment this thought took root, Claire's heart skipped a beat. Spares no means now, the ring on the pinky finger of his right hand flashed slightly, releasing a profound and decaying power that saturated the entire chamber.

Scene after scene seemed dragged forth from the river of history, recreating the moments right after Lando and his companions had teleported into the secret room. Although there was no sound, this posed no obstacle for Claire, who was proficient in lip-reading.

Once the playback concluded, he immediately withdrew the power. A closer look would reveal that the glow of the ring on his right pinky had dimmed by an imperceptible fraction.

"Culling low-tier undead? What kind of method is this?"

Unable to figure it out, Claire simply stopped pondering and fed the soul-tracking undead the lingering aura he had captured from the group while reviewing history through the power of time. He believed that as long as he found these individuals, he would undoubtedly get the answers he sought.

"If this is truly related to a deity, that brat Stran is going to regret this to his dying breath, haha!"

..........

As they pressed onward, Lorell suddenly felt a sense of unease. He asked, "Is there any chance someone else is here besides us?"

The gray-robed man laughed and said, "Rest assured, this place is practically an independent space. While there is more than one teleportation array that can lead here, activating them requires a special soul gemstone. I checked the array when I entered, and there hasn't been a single trace of activation in recent years. Furthermore, if anyone had used the array after us, I would have sensed it on my end. So there is absolutely no one else here!"

Seeing that Lorell still wore a worried expression, the gray-robed man sighed. "Don't let a single mission make you paranoid. What happened to the confident Lorell of the past?!"

Realizing the gray-robed man had made up his mind, Lorell could only nod reluctantly. "Perhaps I'm just overthinking it, but this is the birthplace of a Demon God's Seed, after all—and this one is far more crucial than the one at the Necropolis. It's better to be safe than sorry."

The gray-robed man dismissively uttered an affirmative, clearly not taking Lorell's words to heart.

After the two walked away, Lando, trailing behind them, curled the corners of his lips into a smile.

"Another Demon God's Seed?! What a pleasant surprise!"

Along the way, the two of them had killed every undead creature they encountered. Lando had found it somewhat strange at the time because the souls of the slain undead inexplicably vanished. Connecting this to the Corpse Mother Queen—the previous entity that nurtured a Demon God's Seed—he deduced there must be a similar mutated undead creature here, feeding on souls to cultivate a Demon God's Seed.

As they walked further and further, the pair soon reached the depths of the mountain range. The environment here was utterly desolate, devoid even of the traces of wandering undead.

They stepped into a circular giant crater. The pit was not deep, measuring only about three meters at its absolute center, but its diameter exceeded fifty meters, sloping smoothly upward from the center toward the rim.

About a dozen meters away from the center of the pit, the two stopped. The gray-robed man produced a black gemstone—the exact same kind Lando had previously seized from Lorell. Unfortunately, the fragment Lando possessed had only worked initially; after a period of time, the aura within it seemed to dissipate, rendering it incapable of attracting undead creatures any longer. Thus, Lando guessed that the black gemstone was merely a vessel, and the aura inside was what truly mattered.

As the gray-robed man brandished the black gemstone, the space at the center of the crater began to warp. Gradually, a slender black fissure materialized in the air above the crater's heart.

Suddenly, a roar echoed out. At first, it sounded as faint as if coming from a vast distance, but within moments, it grew sharp and piercing.

The black fissure continued to expand slowly. Several ghost-blue, translucent tentacles reached out from the fissure, seemingly impatient with its slow rate of expansion. The tentacles gripped the edges of the crack and violently pulled outward, instantly expanding the gap manifold. More tentacles burrowed out, setting off a virtuous cycle where an increasing number of tentacles widened the rift at an accelerating pace.

Finally, a bizarre, tentacle-covered, eyeball-like ghost wriggled its way out of the crack. Through its translucent body, something could be seen curling up tightly at the very center of the eyeball.

Without a word, the gray-robed man allowed the tentacles to reach out and absorb the aura within the black gemstone, while his other hand retrieved an ornate crystal bottle of souls from his robes, pulling the stopper to let the souls inside be consumed.

The aura within the black gemstone was devoured by the eyeball ghost in mere minutes, whereas the souls in the ornate crystal bottle took nearly half an hour to be completely drained. The number of souls contained within it exceeded the total amount Lando had gathered across his three missions by several hundredfold.

Noticing that the eyeball ghost wore an expression of satisfaction and appeared ready to leave, the gray-robed man realized that once it returned through the black fissure in such a well-fed state, luring it out again would likely prove extremely difficult in the short term.

Therefore, Lando prepared to make his move. However, someone else acted a step ahead of him.

"Roar!~"

Accompanied by a thunderous roar, a layer of the void peeled away like a curtain, revealing Claire standing atop a colossal gray skeletal dragon.

Lorell and the gray-robed man cried out in shock and fury, "It's you! Claire! Why are you here?!"

*(PS: Brothers, although I only added one extra chapter, we're finally starting to see some 'money' rolling in, isn't that something worth celebrating!)*