Chapter 657: Jumping Again
....
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Sargeras finished his corruption of Argus’s world-soul, but the world-soul didn’t wake up completely and remained in a deep sleep.
The so-called sleeping state referred to the fact that the world-soul could not transform into a t.i.tan and appear in front of others. However, Argus’s consciousness could already have some limited soul communication with many creatures.
How should it be put? It was obvious that Sargeras had ‘accelerated the maturity’ of Argus’s world-soul!
If a planet nurtured a world-soul, it would stay in the core of the planet before completely awakening. Due to the thick crust, the soul fluctuations of the sleeping world-soul couldn’t be detected. Therefore, even demons, who had a very strong perception of souls, couldn’t sense if there was a world-soul in a planet when they landed on the surface. In other words, it was very difficult for the outside world to notice the existence of world-souls when they were asleep. Only by going deep into the core of the planet could they accurately determine whether a planet had given birth to a world-soul.
This was also why Old G.o.ds could only blindly choose random planets to land on and take root underground after parasitizing them. It was impossible to judge from the appearances of planets, and they could only verify it personally.
However, Sargeras, or rather, the t.i.tans of the Pantheon of Order were different. They had a special method to sense their kind, so it was easier for them to find world-souls than other races.
It was difficult to detect sleeping world-souls, but it was different for world-souls that were beginning to awaken. Originally, Argus’s world-soul had to continue sleeping for a long time before he could awaken. But Sargeras had used a special method to accelerate his maturity, causing him to enter the awakening state in advance. Therefore, the moment Sargeras completed the maturity process, Roy and all the demons on Argus sensed the colossal soul consciousness under their feet!
The sense of existence of this soul was so strong that it was everywhere. Everyone on Argus could feel his existence, as though a pair of eyes were staring at them all the time.
This was a little different from when Roy first came to this universe and landed on Argus. At the time, although Argus’s world-soul was in Roy’s perception, his presence wasn’t so strong. This might be because Argus had just woken up. He felt novel about everything on his body, so he was observing the world. After he gradually became familiar with it, his presence might not be so strong.
Although Argus’s world-soul had awakened, there was still a process from awakening to condensing a t.i.tan body. This required a long time, which was something Roy only learned after seeing Sargeras.
Of course, this wasn’t a big deal. He was just a little curious about why Sargeras ‘accelerated’ Argus’s maturity. It had to be known that the growth process of any living being had its own rules. What Sargeras did was clearly interfering with the growth of Argus’s world-soul, which would definitely have a tremendous impact on Argus’s future strength. It was impossible for Sargeras not to know the consequences of doing so, but he still did it. Roy didn’t understand why.
Sargeras looked exhausted after returning. It seemed like corrupting Argus consumed a lot of his energy. He didn’t hide anything from Roy and told him the real reason.
It turned out that, as mentioned earlier, if Sargeras wanted to make the planet Argus the headquarters and Crusade outpost of the Burning Legion, the demons of the Twisting Nether and the newly joined eredar demons had to bind their souls to the planet. This way, the resurrection time and process of the Legion demons would be greatly shortened, ensuring that the Legion had sufficient military strength to carry out the Crusade.
It wasn’t easy to bind the souls of so many demons to Argus. The knowledge and power that Sargeras had mastered in the past did not meet such conditions. Neither fel energy nor arcane power could do this.
But not long ago, someone had helped Sargeras obtain a new kind of knowledge about ‘spiritual magic’!
The spiritual magic here wasn’t the so-called necromancy. In fact, necromancy was only a small portion of spiritual magic. True spiritual magic was the power of magic to communicate with souls!
The resurrection of demons involved the power of the soul. In order to achieve this, spiritual magic was definitely a necessity. Sargeras only dared to do this after obtaining the knowledge of spiritual magic… But there was another very important condition to bind so many souls to Argus’s world-soul. It was to ensure that the soul consciousness of Argus’s world-soul was awake. Otherwise, Argus’s world-soul would instinctively devour and digest all the souls that entered its soul field.
Sargeras didn’t know how long it would take for Argus’s world-soul to awaken. He didn’t have the time to wait patiently, so he could only use the opportunity of corruption to awaken the consciousness of Argus’s world-soul and make him the so-called ‘soul administrator’.
Hearing what Sargeras said, Roy immediately understood. Some time ago, Sargeras and the dreadlords had mysteriously disappeared for a while. It was probably during this time that a ‘person’ had given Sargeras the knowledge of spiritual magic.
As for who this ‘person’ was, Roy had already vaguely guessed it. It was impossible for there to be anyone else other than the forces of the Shadowlands… He could even think that it was likely Jailor Zovaal or his ally Sire Denathrius who had handed over the knowledge of spiritual magic to Sargeras. Of course, it was impossible for these big shots to appear personally. In all likelihood, it was the dreadlords being the go-between.
Since it involved the Shadowlands, the state of Argus’s world-soul was worth pondering…
However, Roy couldn’t be bothered to care about this. There were so many forces and worlds in this universe, and they each had their own needs and plans. If he fussed over everything, he would really be overwrought, so he was too lazy to care much. He took out the souls of Archimonde and Kil’jaeden and told Sargeras about his conflict with them.
After hearing this, Sargeras said nothing. He had long seen that Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were not convinced by Roy, so he wasn’t surprised by the conflict between the two sides. It was fine as long as there was no major turmoil in the Legion during this time.
In fact, Sargeras’s mentality was easy to guess. With his strength, be it demons or other races, they were actually all ants in his eyes. At his level and height, he no longer needed to care about the thoughts and feelings of lower-level creatures. Even though he had formed the Burning Legion and recruited many demons, it was only to carry out his Crusade. In other words, as long as there was no hindrance to the Burning Crusade, it wasn’t a big deal to him whether his subordinates fought to the death or killed each other.
Roy had killed Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, but Sargeras didn’t care about it. Instead, the souls of these two could be used for the first resurrection experiment.
Souls were actually very mystical. Roy had realized this a long time ago. For demons, souls could increase their strength, so many demons were brainlessly plundering and devouring them for power. For angels, the growth and purity of their souls also increased their strength, so the way for angels to improve their strength was to purify their own souls. This purification process was usually completed with firm faith. Apart from the two races of angels and demons, other races were similar. But there was no doubt that the growth of their strength was more or less linked to their souls.
Roy’s own system was the same. It used souls as currency, so he had never stopped researching souls.
As Roy came into contact with more worlds, he came into contact with more races. He found that every race seemed to have their own unique understanding of souls, but in general, he could still summarize some commonalities.
First of all, souls contained energy, a very special kind of energy. Roy didn’t know about other universes and worlds, but the Shadowlands in this universe called it anima. Let’s not discuss whether this name was correct or not. But the first consensus was that souls had energy. This was also the key to demons being able to increase their strength through devouring souls. It seemed that the physique of demons could effectively absorb and use this energy.
Another commonality was that souls had a very special ‘recording’ ability. Just like the DNA of living organisms, a soul often contained the memories of a being’s self during its lifetime, as well as the memories of various knowledge. If the soul was complete, then the soul could be resurrected through a resurrection ritual, and the restored body would be exactly the same as when it was alive and would retain relatively complete memories.
The third commonality was based on the second commonality. Perhaps it was precisely because the characteristics were similar to genetic material that souls could be split. Moreover, every fragment after splitting contained almost the same memory information. This was also why, after demons used their soul fragments to create clones, the clones would be similar to the main body. Of course, there would gradually be greater differences as the clones developed.
If DNA was regarded as the material genetic factor of lifeforms, then souls could be regarded as the spiritual genetic factor of lifeforms. It was precisely because of the special characteristics of souls that the more mysticism flourished in a world, the deeper the exploration and application of souls. Spiritual magic was an example.
Reshaping the bodies of living beings through the genetic information in souls was the principle of resurrection. But this resurrection process definitely required energy. This was the origin of the ritual. What Sargeras needed to do was to use the immense energy of Argus’s world-sould to replace the energy supplied by the ritual.
The Burning Legion had hundreds of billions or even trillions of demons. If he wanted to resurrect all these demons, the energy required was astronomical. Although Argus was a world-soul t.i.tan, and the energy he possessed exceeded the total energy of the entire planet, this energy wasn’t endless. So Roy felt that Argus’s world-soul couldn’t support the energy of so many demons resurrecting.
However, it had to be said that so many demons wouldn’t die together and resurrect together. Moreover, after awakening, Argus’s world-soul would slowly absorb energy from the outside world to replenish himself. Even if there was a deficiency, he could quickly recover, forming an effective cycle.
Therefore, the power of Argus’s world-soul could completely support the energy required by the Burning Legion.
The first resurrection experiment was very successful. The process of reconstructing the bodies of Archimonde and Kil’jaeden was not fast, but it was not slow either. About half a year later, their bodies were reconstructed, and even their original strength didn’t change.
The energy in these bodies was naturally provided by Argus’s world-soul. After awakening, Argus had power at the Deadly Sin level. Even though he was much weaker than Sargeras, it wasn’t a problem for him to provide a portion of his energy for the resurrection of existences at the demon king level. In fact, after resurrecting Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, Argus’s world-soul didn’t even fluctuate…
After Archimonde and Kil’jaeden opened their eyes again, the first thing they saw was Roy waiting beside them. Archimonde roared angrily and rushed at Roy. After Roy killed him, his soul still had consciousness and could sense information from the outside world. Unfortunately, Roy had stored their souls in the system s.p.a.ce. It was a completely empty world for souls. For conscious souls, it was an extremely painful torture, and their souls had been inside for twelve years.
This was why Archimonde was so furious after his resurrection.
But before he could reach Roy, a tremendous slap sent him flying. It was Sargeras who took action. He lowered his huge head and roared at Archimonde and Kil’jaeden, “You d.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Do you want to continue showing your ridiculous selfish desires in front of me?!”
Archimonde didn’t dare to say anything, while Kil’jaeden lowered his head and remained silent. After Sargeras finished scolding them, he turned his head and spat at Roy. “And you, Osiris! I don’t want to see you fight in front of me again. Do you understand?”
“I don’t care!” Roy crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. He bared his teeth and grinned sinisterly. “Anyway, it won’t be me who gets killed in the end!”
Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were furious, but they couldn’t flare up. Sargeras’s suppression was one, and the disparity between them and Roy was another. In fact, it wasn’t until they were killed that they realized that Osiris, the commander who kept a low profile in the Legion, had strength far beyond theirs.
It likely wouldn’t be easy to get back at him…
Roy couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to them. He thought that it was a great honor for the two of them to die in his hands. After all, in the future, they would die in the hands of the natives of Azeroth, who had yet to leave their mother planet. This was what was called humiliation…
After Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were resurrected, Sargeras began to bind the souls of the demons of the entire Burning Legion. This was a ma.s.sive task, but it only required time. With the cooperation of Roy, Archimonde, and Kil’jaeden, this work progressed rapidly. But as more and more demon souls were bound to Argus’s world-soul, Roy’s premonition became stronger and stronger. So he instructed Julia and Benia not to be too far away from him during this period of time.
Sure enough, after the demons’ souls were completely bound, a strange s.p.a.cetime fluctuation appeared around Roy again, and the three of them disappeared from Argus…