Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 293: Admiration.

Back in The Wolf’s Cage which was littered with the scars of the recent explosion and the tremors of the massive light pillar, Ozul looked around with an unreadable face-nothing Raven would’ve found strange, but this time she had a feeling that something had changed.

When Ozul’s eyes swept past Raven and Blaze, they couldn’t help but hold their breaths unconsciously.

After a few moments of silence, a small smile broke out Ozul’s face, instantly brightening the atmosphere with it.

Blaze wasn’t so bright to notice anything amiss, but Raven pursed her lips. She felt her throat dry at the sight of that smile. It was all because she could easily notice the difference between how Ozul used to smile and how he did just now.

‘Why the forced smile...’ Raven thought to herself in worry. Others might have missed it, but how could she?

“What... happened?” She asked softly to which Ozul raised his brows a little before relaxing again, his smile disappearing along with her words.

It was almost as if he was surprised that Raven could tell the difference.

.....

Meanwhile, Blaze was clueless. He thought that Raven was inquiring about the recent events.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry,” Ozul tried to reassure Raven but it had almost little to no effect as he didn’t go into any details.

Raven wanted to speak. She wanted to ask him what was going on, but words were struck at the back of her throat.

‘He will not answer what he does not want to answer...’ she thought before nodding her head reluctantly.

Ozul ignored the looks on the duo’s faces and instead focused on his hand.

Repeatedly stretching both of his hands, he wondered how reattaching his limbs felt so normal to him. He didn’t even feel an ounce of strangeness while moving his limbs as if they were never severed from his body in the first place.

“Again and again... it is not the time for this,” he muttered before shooting a glance at the tall mountain temple which had half disappeared now, replacing it was the gaping pit that seemed to be leading to the deepest depths of the ground.

Following his eyes, the duo also moved their eyes towards the pit in which the Rank-10 Beast was supposed to be in right now.

A silver of worry flashed past their eyes but they immediately calmed down afterwards. There was no way it could have survived the massive light pillar. Even if it did, the current appearance of Ozul gave them enough confidence to stand without any concern.

Just then, the ground started shaking furiously.

The sky was clear by now, the Beasts had long fled and only the half dead corpses remained in this wasteland. Raven and Blaze didn’t quite get the reason behind this earthquake now.

Before they could act though, the earthquake grew larger and before their eyes, a shower of burning hot lava shot out from the pit.

“What-”

Realization dawned upon Raven and Blaze, but they didn’t have any time to cast Spells.

Before they could think of anything to protect themselves with, they felt a little light for an instant and their eyes unconsciously blinked.

“...What?!” Blaze couldn’t help but mutter again with a dumb face. All because now he was standing with Raven to watch the same rain of lava pouring out of the pit but from hundreds of meters away this time.

On the small hill, near the few remaining members of the Rogue Crew, the duo moved their gazes towards Ozul with surprise visible on their faces.

They had known Ozul was strong and understood just how powerful he had to be to survive what a Rank-10 Mage and the Rank-10 Beasts couldn’t, but it still shocked them since they had only blinked once!

The surprise gasps of the members of the Rogue Crew a few feet away woke the duo up from their daze. Raven immediately stood up and took out a white shirt and black pants from her Spatial Ring.

Ozul took the clothes and calmly wore them, not concerned about his naked body being exposed in front of everyone.

Everyone just kept their eyes on him, awaiting his orders when Ozul pointed his finger to his side and spoke, “Bring her here.”

Following the direction in which he pointed in, everyone was startled to see that they were not alone here. There was someone on the ground, soaked in blood!

“T-t-this-... She is the ancestor of the Church of light!” someone from the Rogue Crew suddenly shouted as they recognized Darcia’s face.

Immediately afterwards, looks of admiration and shock were thrown at Ozul. After all, he had just defeated one of the strongest people on the continent!

Ignoring their overly respectful stares, Ozul continued to look towards the rain of lava that didn’t have any intentions of stopping anytime soon.

After a while, as if he got bored of it, he turned around and crouched near Darcia’s corpse who was brought next to him by one of the Rogue Crews.

Although he had a lot of things to figure out right now, examining Darcia’s body was a priority now. He could guess that she had large amounts of his ‘Scent’ inside of her. He wanted to test if he took it out before it gradually dispersed, what would be the effects on her body?

If he didn’t do it right now, he might never find the chance to later.

That was also the only other reason to save her besides that she had a few Spatial Rings on her hand which would most likely contain heaps of rare resources.

Just as he willed it, a part of the Ball of Purity poured out of his body before entering Darcia’s.

Unlike before, Ozul didn’t need to put his hand on the other person’s chest to scan their insides. He could simply just will the Ball of Purity to enter their body and he could instinctively scan their everything without needing physical contact.

Moving the Ball of Purity towards Darcia’s heart, he noticed a large amount of his Scent crazily spinning around her heart.

This was the first time he had seen it in such excessive amounts and moving with such speed.

‘So she really had been trying to absorb the Scent as well,’ Ozul pondered over it for a while before he noticed that the Scent was gradually disappearing into thin air.

It seemed that since Darcia was already dead, the Scent didn’t bother to stay either.

But considering the amount of Scent in Darcia, the process was a little too slow. He had also noticed the slightly reddened eyes of hers previously.

‘There should be some drastic change in her body if I take it all out at once,’ Ozul contemplated before slowly wrapping the Scene with the Ball of Purity.

All the while his eyes were closed, so the members of the Rogue crew and the trio didn’t understand why he was staring at Darcia’s corpse with closed eyes for so long.

“Did... something happen?” Tatsuo, the temporary leader of the Rogue crew asked with hesitation.

Him breaking the silence drew all the eyes to him, but Tatsuo stood his ground firmly, facing Raven and Blaze.

“Don’t disturb him,” Blaze spoke after a while, realizing that Tatsuo was only asking out of worry.

“Alright,” Tatsuo could only nod his head and back away quietly.

Meanwhile, Ozul had already wrapped all of the Scent inside a sphere of the Ball of Purity.

He produced a small blade out of some more Ball of Purity and cut open Darcia’s skin to take the sphere out of her body.

Only after he had cleanly taken out his Scent did Ozul realize that nothing happened to Darcia’s body. There was no change at all. It was as if this thing being inside her body had no effect on her whatsoever.

Having it or not having it were all the same then.

However, there were still quite a few other possibilities and he couldn’t be sure of this until he did more experiments like this, and on living people instead.

He tried to look all over Darcia’s body again, but he couldn’t find anything.

Not even a single point hinted at having involved his Scent before.

Not discouraged at the fact that he couldn’t gain anything even while testing on Darcia, Ozul stood up with an unreadable face.

The Scent he had wrapped in the sphere of the Ball of Purity dispersed in the air after he had opened the sphere, and there was no obvious change to Darcia’s body from inside out.

Ozul only needed a few moments to understand this and move on as he looked towards Raven and spoke, “Get anything from her that you can.”

Hearing his orders, Raven didn’t waste a moment and instantly took away all of Darcia’s Spatial Rings first and then searched up the rest of her corpse to look for any other valuables. She was a Rank-10 Mage, after all, so even her trash could be a rare resource for others.

Raven took a few minutes to complete her search. She didn’t find anything else useful except for the three Spatial Rings on her fingers.

Only until she was done did Ozul step forward again as the small amount of the Ball of Purity floating beside him suddenly took the shape of a sharp blade.

The blade flew towards Darcia’s corpse and created another cut in the middle of her chest.

“Uhm... What is he doing?” Blaze asked subconsciously.

Raven heard his barely audible question and answered, “Harvesting the core.”

“Harvesting the core? Oh yeah! The core-” It seemed Blaze had almost forgotten that Ozul didn’t discriminate between Beasts and Humans when it came to harvesting the Magical Cores.