Chapter 144 Glutton, The Devourer
*[Inside Zerek]*
Silas was taking care of the Archiv in the Adventurer Hall when the news reached his ear.
"Did you already hear that Tilan, the former manager of the Colosseum died? Apparently, the Oracle with the Blessing of the Life Lamp cannot find his Flame of Life!"
When Silas heard an Adventurer say this to another Adventurer, he halted in his tracks.
'Manager Tilan is dead?'
"You really are out of date, dude!" The other Adventurer said, laughing lightly before a sinister expression formed on his face, "Everyone close to Manager Tilan, even the Wildlife Mercenary Group disappeared. They said that they would hunt down the Normie who won the Colosseum Challenge three times in a row, but they never came back.
Everyone says that they died!"
'What? The WIldlife Mercenaries were after Zayn? Well…good thing that they disappeared…' Silas thought, continuing to blatantly observe the Adventurers who continued their chat as he noticed that a third and fourth Adventurer joined the chat as well.
"I heard that close to 400 Blessed, including some retired Adventurers disappeared overnight. I am not sure if all of them were connected to each other, but they disappeared on the same day!" The third Adventurer said while the fourth added,
"All of them were in some sort of situation, and in need of money, apparently. Rumors say that they were all after the Challenger of the Colosseum. After all, that Normie struck it rich. He earned more than 5000 gold coins during these three challenges, his Saber pair are powerful Artifacts, and he won a bet against Manager Tilan, forcing him to hand over the Silvermoon Bracelet!"
"The Silvermoon Bracelet?! You mean the God's Era Artifact…that Silvermoon Bracelet???" The first Adventurer asked in shock, "Appraisers say that the God's Era Artifacts are worth tens of thousands of gold coins…isn't the Silvermoon Bracelet the most expensive amongst the Artifacts in Zerek's God's Era Museum?"
As the Adventurers continued to speak, Silas' pupils contracted. His thoughts were going wild and he couldn't help and worry about Zayn's well-being.
'He will be fine, right? It has already been a few days since Zayn left…Should I just go and ask the Blessed of the Life Lamp to figure out whether Zayn is alive or not? No, that's not possible. Only the Flame of Life of Blessed can be found with the Blessing of the Life Lamp…'
Silas was frustrated. Zayn was probably in danger, but there was nothing he could do.
He was simply too weak, and he didn't know anyone who could search for Zayn to make sure that he was doing fine.
Well, there was Merlin, but the one-armed Adventurer was currently still taking revenge on the Merchant family who betrayed him. They were at fault for the loss of his right arm, which was something he couldn't accept that easily. Merlin Kivan was on a rampage and the news of him having obliterated most of the Merchant family was known by everyone.
Unfortunately, that was not exactly helpful for Zayn.
"But where did Manager Tilan, the mercenaries, and the others go after disappearing? Zayn couldn't have killed them all. Even he cannot do something like that…right?"
**
Back in the wilderness, the young Normie, who caused lots of trouble to Silas, was riding on the back of his Spirit, calmly and unconcerned about life.
Because Glutton had eaten the bodies of the 405 Blessed, a total of 405 Soul Orbs had been generated.
At first, Zayn had been sure that Glutton's special ability would be to generate a Soul Orb whenever it had amassed a certain amount of soul particles from digesting the bodies it had eaten.
That didn't seem to be correct because every body devoured by Glutton turned into a respective Soul Orb, with each having a different amount of soul particles compressed.
It was a little unexpected but also an interesting find that could be abused in the future. After all, he had already a few plans in mind with Glutton's special trait.
These plans were not important for now because Zayn chose to absorb the Soul Orbs one after another. He was traveling on Mocalw's back with his eyes closed as he focused on annexing the soul particles that spread through is body upon digesting the Soul Orbs one after another.
Zayn made huge gains by absorbing the Soul Orbs that had been generated from devouring several hundred Soul Squires and over a hundred Soul Knights.
He could have used the Soul Orbs to increase the strength of his Spirits equally, but that was not what Zayn wanted. Zayn desired to increase his strength rather quickly right now. He was in need of more strength to make sure that he could easily control his register of Spirits.
At the same time, there was a monster that he wanted to turn into his Spirit. Zayn was in need of more strength to make sure that he could manifest and control the Spirit of the monster upon killing it.
After he made a thorough research of the surrounding area, Zayn had already come up with a plan for what monsters to hunt in the future. It was important to make this kind of research, not only to understand what monsters he would face in the surrounding regions, and to know which monsters would be interesting to summon as Spirits.
The monsters he was looking for in the wilderness weren't too far away from Zerek. It would take him only five days on Mocalw's back to reach their habitat. These five days were used to absorb and annex the soul particles within the 405 Soul Orbs.
For a moment he had felt bad for his Spirits because he progressed rapidly, leaving them behind in the dust. However, it was also a fact that he couldn't even absorb soul particles properly. His talent was simply too bad. On the contrary, his Spirits could absorb soul particles for weeks or even months, without taking a single break.
As long as Zayn gave them the opportunity to progress, they would easily be able to reach the rank of a Soul Knight, as long as their talent was not too bad.
Of course, he could accelerate this by supplying them with his soul particles, or the Soul Orbs.
But was there really a need for that?