Chapter 82. Dark world

Under the night sky illuminated by two white sun's, there was a soul of a foregin being travelling through the jungle of one the two Islands.

Just this soul's presence made the dead insects of the surroundings slowly mutate, or to be more precise, their souls, and not just them, but the other dead animals were experiencing this change as well.

This soul was Tirus's truesoul which had arrived in this world a while ago. He chose to come to this smaller continent first as this may give him the general idea about this world.

'According to the A.I. chip, 6 hours should have passed according to magus world's standards. Judging by the high concentration of darkness energy particles of this world, I guess the nights are much longer or maybe the concept of a day dosen't even exist.' He pondered as he looked at the insects around him. However, his conjecture was proven wrong when a sun rose up in the sky 14 hours later.

Tirus looked at the glowing white sun and then looked at the remanant souls of these dead insects and animals were being affected by his soul's presence and mutating, slowly but steadily, 'Who knows what will happen to these.' He let out a sigh.

The magi at rank 4 and above emitted a tinge of their soul force along with their radiation, this happend naturally. Just a high rank magi's presence was enough to cause supernatural changes in the surroundings. There were instances of places manifesting a spirit of their own just because a rank 4 magus stayed there for a long time and let their radiation out freely.

All this information about such instances came from the memories of the ancient magus, Plaguemancer. When Tirus destroyed that magi's truesoul, he had the A.I. chip record some crucial momories of his, so now, Tirus's knowledge was quite rich even by the magus world's standards.

The remanent souls of the insects were attarcted to Tirus's truesoul and tried to follow his trail. But since the souls of these insects and animals were extremely feeble in the first place, they all grouped together to form a single, cloud-like entity which was as big as a human's head.

'Its kinda like a pet.' Tirus thought as he glanced at the cloud behind him once and continued on his path.

Soon, he arrived at a settlement near a mountian, but he didn't exactly know of which species was this settlement of. Judging from the thatched huts and the boundaries made around the boders of this settlement, it seemed as if it was a human settlement.

But he wanted to wait and observe before reaching a conclusion. This wasn't some random part of the magus world, but was a whole another world itself, so there was a chance that this was simply the settlement of a variant orc or elven species even though the design of these houses were somewhat similar to that of the peasant's houses of the magus world.

He saw something that resembled oil-lamps around the small houses, and felt the presence of two people inside a house.

'Stay here.' Tirus ordered the cloud-like being, to which it reacted obediently, 'Really, much more lile a pet.' He smiled a little and turned towards the village.

This cloud didn't understand the language Tirus used. Actually, Tirus was simply using his truesoul's connecting with this cloud and conveying his feelings.

After a few seconds, he unleashed his soul force and scanned the area.

'Not many strong ones here, huh, as expected.' He thought. The strongest person here was at most at the level of a peak trainee knight. Living in a residence which looked different from others. This residence was not as small as others, but was several times bigger and the overall quality of the materials used were much higher.

'This must be the leader of this village.' He thought as he entered the village. This village was really small, only about 20 km2.

He looked at a random house inside the village and decided to enter it.

Tirus's truesoul passed the walls of the houses like a ghost and observed.

Inside a house, he saw an old man lying on a shabby bed and was wearing the cloths that peasants in the magus world wore.

This old man had his eyes closed and was taking his last breaths. He had black hair and black pupil's like that of a human's and a dusky complexion other than that, his appearance completely resembeld that of a human's as well, '...he is gonna die anyways.' Tirus thought as he scanned the old man's body, along with his bloodline with his soul force.

"Ah." The old man tried to as he felt an intense pain that he had never felt in his entire lifetime. This pain originated from his soul being scanned by Tirus. No matter how careful Tirus were to be with this process, this old man would've felt immense pain from the depth of his soul and died due to him beign a normal human.

And so, Tirus didn't even bother to hold himself back a little.

[Data has been stored]

*Shu*

The sound of wind blowing could be heard from the outside as Tirus left the village.

Outside the village, the white cloud was still there, waiting for Tirus to come back. He looked at this little cloud and pointed in the direction opposite to the village, 'Follow', was his order and the cloud obeyed.

This small village was located near a mountain, and this wasn't just the only village, there were several villages close by, he reached them within 1 and a half hour of travelling at a speed slightly faster than an ordinary human's.

There wasn't much to see except for the lifestyle of the inhabitants. Tirus wasn't really all that interested so he left soon after.

Then, for the next 15 hours, the sun had set and it was night once again, Tirus and the cloud travelled as fast as they could and Tirus scanned the areas with his soul force, but he didn't find any being that had the spiritual power comparable to that of a rank 1 or above magus. But it didn't mean that there were no strong people.

Although he hadn't found a spiritual beast or human with as much spiritual force as a magus, he had found multiple humans with knight cultivation with battle strength were on par with the rank 3 acolytes of the magus world.

Surprisingly, he didn't find many villages as he had expected. He had travelled for many hours without even seeing any human settlement.

But soon, he found seemingly unending plains and hundreds of mortal kingdoms. He didn't create much disturbances but scanned the area of 100 million km2 with his spiritual force.

'So there are indivisuals with the power comparable to that of rank 1 and rank 2 magi, huh.' He carefully soul searched them as nkt to kill them. They were clearly figures of high importance in this place and would have information of high value. And since they hadn't cultivated soul force, they were unable to even sense themselves being soul searched.

After a while, he had confirmed another thing, and that was that it was mostly night time in this world. A day was around 16 hours long and had 20 hour long night. During daytime, the tempreture increased and a sun rose up in the sky, all of it seemed quite normal.

'Ineteresting, really.' He thought he turned around and looked at the cloud. This cloud had absorbed the miniscule spiritual force of any living being that he had killed during the few hours it was with him. Now it looked like a tiny red ball of flesh. It was now able to react to its surroundings without needing much instructions from Tirus and could even attack ordinary beasts.

Of course, the ordinary beast were no match for this red cloud, but if it were to fight a spiritual beast with even the battle strength of a rank 2 acolyte, then it could easily be supressed.

However, after a while, Tirus found a bear-like being which had become magical beast. It was as big as an ordinary hill and had the battle strength of a grade 3 acolyte, Tirus let his soul force flow through the bear, that was all he needed to do to kill it.

'Looks like I'll have to learn a lot more about this place.' He thought as he felt his truesoul reaching its limit, his time was limited in this form of his. Even though he had rigorously scanned everything he could, he still wasn't even able to explore even a 1/10,000th of even just this Island.

'I don't have time left.' He thought as he used his remaining soul force to bury the bear in the ground at the foot of a mountain. The cloud burrowed in the ground and started absorbing the negative energy particles in the surroundings and the spiritual force of the magical bear as well. Eventually, it would transform and become a magical beast of an entirely new variety.

Soon, Tirus's truesoul started fading away.

'I shall return and conquer this place.' He made his resolve as his truesoul flickered with a faint silvery light and he left the world.

To be continued...