Using Oneself as Bait

Outside the Soul Domain, Chen Xu’s gaze pierced through layers of restrictions, looking deep into the domain.

Watching Tal Rasha’s somewhat neurotic performance, he smacked his lips and rubbed his chin, saying with a hint of surprise, "I never noticed Tal Rasha had this kind of personality before. Could it be from spending too much time around demons?"

Hearing Chen Xu’s confusion, Bone Guard One, who was standing nearby, opened his mouth as if to say something, but then held it back.

This subtle movement did not escape Chen Xu’s perception. He turned his head directly toward Bone Guard One.

"If you have something to say, say it. Don't go playing mind games with me."

"My Lord, in truth, whether it is I or the other skeleton heroes, we all have distinct personalities. Perhaps in your perception, only Bone Guard Two has a particularly vivid character, but in reality, the others are the same. It is simply that when we are near you—ah, basking in your glory—we tend to restrain our true natures."

"Oh, so that's how it is."

Chen Xu understood. He could read between the lines of what Bone Guard One was trying to express.

It was nothing more than the fact that when the boss was around, these subordinates felt pressured and acted with professional decorum.

Chen Xu could relate; he had been a working man in his past life and experienced this situation every day. One moment, colleagues would be gossiping and sharing anecdotes in the office, and the next, at the sound of the leader’s leather shoes approaching the door, the entire room would fall into a dead silence. Then, as the leader walked in, everyone would plaster a fake smile on their face and look toward them.

Life is a play, and everyone is performing their own role. Tal Rasha was no exception.

During the previous battles on Blue Star, Chen Xu’s attention had been constant, so the skeleton heroes couldn't truly let loose. However, since the Undead Summoning formula had spread from the Necrotic Archmage Tower into the hands of transcendent beings across the myriad worlds, Tal Rasha had been responding to requests at every moment, traveling to countless remote worlds.

When the mountains are high and the emperor is far away, Tal Rasha liberated his nature and found his passion: listening to the painful wails of demons.

Thus, he had crafted a lantern specifically to imprison the demon souls he hunted. Later, ordinary lanterns could no longer satisfy his desire for collection. Drawing inspiration from the works of the Akhan Archmages in Chen Xu’s collection, he modified a portion of his own soul into a container.

This container was dedicated to imprisoning demon souls, while the lantern in his hand became a mere projection of that container. The true place of imprisonment was his own soul; the lantern was nothing more than a deceptive front.

Therefore, even after the lantern was shattered by Aug’s rays, the demon souls did not disappear. It was only upon entering this Soul Domain that Tal Rasha released those bound demons.

Prolonged imprisonment and torture had long since broken these demon souls. Their sanity was entirely gone, leaving behind only infinite hatred and the urge to kill. They hated any soul more whole than their own, and they sought to turn all other living beings into creatures just like themselves.

"Ahhh—! Roar—!"

The swarm of demons hissed and roared as they lunged at Aug.

Faced with the incoming crowd of souls, Aug instinctively released the hellfire from within his soul, intending to burn the demons to ash. But he quickly realized that hellfire could not effectively stop this group.

These demons were elites handpicked by Tal Rasha. In life, their lowest rank had been legendary-tier; consequently, their souls possessed a strong resistance to hellfire. Without that demonic trump card, the threat the demons posed was significantly reduced.

This was also the reason Tal Rasha could hunt other demons so easily—he used demons to defeat demons.

"Damned trash."

Aug felt not a shred of sympathy for these so-called kin, even though one of the souls was that of a fellow Beholder. If his physical body were still intact and he had the help of the hellfire source residing in his heart, he might have been able to incinerate these demon souls. But now, Aug had to use other methods.

Even without hellfire, he was still an Eternal-tier Beholder, a Hell Archduke who had galloped through the myriad worlds with a notorious reputation. His massive eyeball suddenly bulged, emitting an invisible ripple of force.

The ripple spread rapidly, and the surrounding air seemed to solidify. The demon souls that were roaring and charging were all frozen in place.

Aug flew slowly toward the imprisoned demon souls, elegantly extending multiple blood vessels from his eye socket to bind them. With a slight exertion of force, he tore them into fragments.

Then, the giant eyeball actually split open into two halves, transforming into a massive mouth that swallowed the soul fragments in a single gulp.

"Using these wastes to deal with me might allow you to ignore my hellfire, but it has also completely cut off your path of retreat."

As the souls were fully digested, Aug’s spirit was replenished, and his aura became even fuller.

"The only use for these wastes is to replenish the stamina of a great Hell Archduke. And you, skeleton ant, actually took the initiative to deliver this blood sacrifice to me."

In an instant, over a hundred blood vessels shot out, tearing the demon souls into fragments. Only a few of the more powerful souls, those of demons skilled in magic, instinctively released a spell or two before being shredded, slightly wounding Aug’s tentacles. But overall, it was futile. These demon souls that Tal Rasha had painstakingly collected were all pulled into Aug’s body.

Aug’s aura gradually reached its peak. Even the exhaustion from frantically firing rays earlier was filled back up, returning him to his full strength.

"The appetizers are finished. It is time for the main course."

Aug’s eye swiveled, and over a hundred blood vessels flew toward Tal Rasha, intending to tear him to pieces as well.

"You like playing with tentacles? What a coincidence—so do I. Soul Lash!"

Tal Rasha raised his hand and unleashed several bursts of Soul Lash. Thorns-covered soul whips lashed out at the incoming blood vessels.

Crack!

Roar!

Aug was struck by the whips, and intense agony surged through the blood vessels. This overwhelming pain caused him to momentarily lose control of himself.

Tal Rasha seized the opportunity, repeatedly spamming Soul Lash. The whips struck Aug one after another, actually causing him to spin in place from the impact.

"Ant!"

Aug let out a furious roar as multiple lasers shot from his eye.

Tal Rasha flickered to dodge, but to his surprise, the lasers changed direction to follow him. He was forced into constant micro-management, attempting to use his positioning to make the lasers cancel each other out.

With a nimble movement, he evaded the lasers, causing them to collide. Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the two lasers merged into one, instantly exploding with even greater speed and piercing directly through Tal Rasha’s soul.

A hideous, giant mouth had quietly moved behind Tal Rasha. Before he could react, the mouth swallowed him whole.

Aug’s eyeball was bloodshot. The pain caused by the Soul Lash had left him incredibly enraged. Now, he was forcefully crushing Tal Rasha within his body. He wanted to grind this disgusting skeleton ant into the finest powder, into something even smaller than soul particles.

"A pity. He still lacks experience in fighting demons."

Inside the heavenly fortress, Netherx let out a sigh of regret. When he saw Tal Rasha whipping Aug like a spinning top earlier, he had thought the battle would be easy—a completely one-sided affair. But his joy had not lasted long before the situation took a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn.

"However, why hasn't that Excellency made a move yet? With his strength, he should be able to easily break the restrictions of the Soul Domain, right?"

Netherx wondered why Chen Xu had not intervened, while Chen Xu was waiting for Tal Rasha’s next performance. Unlike Netherx, Chen Xu could see Tal Rasha’s health bar and knew he wasn't dead. Although he wasn't dead, his condition was indeed poor, with only a sliver of health remaining.

As time passed, Netherx also sensed something was wrong. His gaze was locked firmly onto Aug.

"What is that? Why are skeletons growing out of Aug’s body?"

The enraged Aug had not noticed the abnormality in his own body. He only wanted to use all his strength to crush the ant inside him. This ant, even after being swallowed, was still releasing whips to lash him from the inside.

Controlled by fury, Aug did not realize at all that he had fallen into Tal Rasha’s trap.

When Tal Rasha entered Aug’s body, part of his soul was easily crushed. Those fragments merged with the previous demon souls inside Aug, quietly releasing two skills.

【God-Slaying Poison】 and 【Flower of Death】.

These two skills were not Chen Xu’s original versions, but Tal Rasha’s exclusive, modified versions. The lethality of God-Slaying Poison was greatly reduced, and Flower of Death had changed from parasitizing physical bodies to parasitizing souls.

Tal Rasha had added his own unique requirements to these two skills: the lethality was dialed down to the minimum, while the pain inflicted was dialed up to the absolute maximum. Furthermore, Tal Rasha had added a delay effect to the pain; only when he detonated it would all the accumulated agony be triggered at once.

The reason Tal Rasha had endured for so long inside Aug’s body was to allow the pain stacks of God-Slaying Poison and Flower of Death to build up to a level that Aug could not possibly withstand.

"Heh heh heh!"

Tal Rasha’s slightly crazed laughter echoed from within Aug’s body.

"Legends in the West speak of a great being who, after being swallowed by a demon, burst out from its belly to subdue it and command it as he pleased. You have swallowed me for so long; why don't you let me have some fun too?"

"An— Aghhhhhh!"

Aug could not finish his sentence before Tal Rasha detonated all the accumulated pain. Instantly, Aug’s intellect was submerged by the agony, and he let out a harrowing wail.

Tal Rasha, with only his skull remaining, drilled out from Aug’s body. The God-Slaying Poison had already corroded through Aug’s soul. After the pain detonated, Aug had no strength left to resist the erosion of the two curses.

Tal Rasha carefully manipulated his skull, moving in front of Aug’s eyeball to look into it. Then, after confirming the position, he pressed his eye socket against the spot where the soulstone had been inserted earlier.

"The final act. The ant... wins."

As the words fell, Aug’s pupils dilated, and his soul was decomposed bit by bit into tiny skeletons. As each skeleton floated away, it let out a roar of agony.

Within the arena, the torch representing Aug slowly flickered out, and the shackles of the Soul Domain dissolved along with it.

"Pain, torture, eternity!"