Thin whisps of a dark fibre all collected on the Knights hand.
Soo, the extremely dangerous dark knight was dead.
His soul had collected straight from the Knights inventory. The soul was so ragged that the whisper didn't even bother mentioning ways to use it – so the Knight just eradicated it right there – it was still not enough to surmount to a void unit.
This confirmed what the Knight had thought about when facing Avarice. If it had forced a rush of souls, including Mugaw, into her soul, they would have been all wiped out, just a pointless struggle. It was right – nothing could survive inside the soul of a void dweller without permission. Meaning no spirit could possess them, well, excluding divine spirits – the Knight didn't know enough about them, only what the book of souls mentioned.
The Knight was a little disappointed.
It hadn't even gotten the chance to face their opponent, and the battle was over – and this was the first ever extremely dangerous it had met. Sure, the battle was no joke, this entire area was actually so radioactive that anyone weaker than level 50 would die immediately.
'Good thing Guilos wasn't here for this one.'
The Knight had learned a lot from this battle, but it still could not make a full structure for the elemental of darkness.
'The abilities conjured by this, must be different from light elemental – but the powers themselves are too versatile to understand them without understanding their property.'
The Knight then teleported away from the site – Red Scorch had split into a legion. It was going around the misty peaks near the town the Knight was visiting next. It got to where Kitrino had teleported the others, upon arrival it stared at Cathina.
'She possesses one of these versatile elemental powers – hers is decrease – while more straightforward, it also possesses a set of versatile uses. I'll have time to look into it later.'
They all spoke aloud, the first in ages, since they could all speak telepathically.
"Is everyone okay."
Kitrino jumped at the Knight, still at six metres, so the Knight had to look up. She had taken off her helmet. "what was that!?"
"That's the true power of your senior."
She kept asking more questions, still as relentless as usual. Then the Knight looked at Forg – "How did the nearby town fair?"
"Not too bad – you should be able to fix it, but it will need more energy."
By energy she meant the Knight had to consume more souls and turn them into existential energy. [Desire] is so draining that the Knight had to consume a dozen monster souls. The stronger the desire it is making the more it needed. For example, making the void solid did not consume anything, making the air solid was easier, but reforming an entire town took a few dozen.
The Knight could probably do more that it had been using the power for, but it chose to stick to manipulating the desires of the living, and making objects conform to its desires.
"when should we go?"
"Right now, is fine. The longer we wait, the more solutions they'll make."
'And thus, the weaker and less clear their desires will be.'
She had said the last part in thought after years on these instincts.
The Knight then teleported throughout the continent, restoring the towns and cities alike, even a few of the villages that had not already rebuilt their houses.
After just a month of this, and some monster hunting, the Knight went to the dragons and told them to clump up for teleport. Then the Knight consumed them into the void, to stop its fire from perpetrating more damage on Adon, it had taken enough.
This was time for them to leave the southernmost continent Adon, there was no more dark knights occupying this continent – the Knight had thoroughly wiped all of them out.
The Knight arrived shortly after teleporting the dragon(s) near the next base – part of its regular warnings to the dark knights – it also helps flush some of them out of hiding. This was also the continent they had left Guilos on.
It had actually copied a few pages from the book of souls, since touching and opening the book would drive mortals insane. Cathina was against letting her do anything, but the Knight would rather get more use out of her, and she'd rather not push the point. Kitrino was still unwavering in her desire to protect her.
It's not like the Knight gave her for free – this was more of a reward after she gave the Knight a bit of information. The Knight had actually grown to forget something. The whisper does not randomly blurt out free information – it waits until the Knight has a simple understanding and elaborates to a further extent using slaughter points.
Take a few months ago after facing Soo. The Knight had been so embroiled in thoughts about how much more destruction breeding the disasters are, that it offered to help clear this up by further separating Type into Type and Class. It usually just displayed the more important of the two.
Vagrant – this was Soo. This just identified that along the path he had chosen – his Type – he was more like a lost man – having long lost his ways – thus he could not fully draw upon the strength of his existence.
The information that Guilos had provided the Knight was about its power.
***
She had been observing it and was making a self-observation out loud – expecting to be ignored, when the Knight asked her to explain. She was so shocked to hear the Knight asking something from her that did not include research information or the tools used by the dark knights.
"As I was saying – most of us researchers have once or twice, okay, maybe a thousand times, wondered about what exactly separates most things and makes others more prominent. An ancient philosopher and researcher theorised that this must be longing. And I just noticed that you seem to do a lot of things that sound like this, making things from the desires in the hearts of people."
This was her simple observation, yet she managed to surmise the Knights third power. The part she had mentioned about longing had prompted the whisper to offer more information on the subject, like how it had done in the Knights conversations with the Yiril.
Confirmed acquisition of primary information. 500 Slaughter points consumed. When it comes to the property known as desire – it is miniscule but yet fundamental of all that is. As noted in the general history information section within the book of souls – the Beginning and End had created everything from its desire – thus forcing everything to possess desire within it.
The only exception being The One Of The Void. It had lacked this of which the Beginning and End had – thus all its attempts at making souls cumulated into mock soul – souls incapable of true emotion and longing of any kind – and even as they do things they lack the fundamental of desire. They manipulate the void through this connection – however due to the strangeness concerning your existence – you soul possesses and lacks desire.
This made it harder for the void to obey your commands to take form – but by using [Desire] you gained this capability. Regarding the true extent however – this means you not only possesses the capability to make the void take form – but so can you shape the worlds desires. Currently the Knight is insufficient at creating new desires or reforming into being those that do…
The explanation even had details of which made the Knight feel that that steep price of 500 slaughter points was not as steep. This basically meant the others of the void can easily turn their voids into objects, just like Kiyun – only the Knight had been incapable due to the state of its creation.
This was similar to how the vermin was unable to consume Kitrino – it had met an unfamiliar territory – the void was not recognising the vile soul – and needed [Desire] to be persuaded to fold.
Other than that – this confirmed things the Knight had observed about this power.
Even still – the information did save the Knight a lot of time. But this made the Knight realise, if it had someone as high as it in knowledge stats, continuously making such observations – this would give the Knight more access into the boundless resources contained within whisper. Kitrino did as well – but the vermin in her made her mostly useless in terms of becoming aware about such.
***
This was a few years ago, and Guilos had finally gone through all that the Knight had copied. The Knight gave her another stack of information on papers made by Forg – so she could speed read without burning them – but since she didn't have much else to do, she just read slowly – enjoying her surplus of information while it lasted.
She looked at the pages as the Knight gave her to read. Her fifth stack.
'I was wrong back there.'
She was referring to her first encounter with the Knight, when she assumed that their assailant – the Knight – had an informant or even accomplice who helped in the assault. She had realised this shortly after their talks. The assailant was also the mastermind – a strange thing since pursuing both knowledge and power was impossible.
It had been noted that even the destroyers rarely possessed both through reports made by the knights. She soon learned it had done the same thing to Kitrino; she was so powerful that not even the guards back at Abio could defend against her as she is now.
Even though she had been surprised the first time she got her first stack of information after years of just being a lugged around like a pile of flesh. She had come to just take it and enjoy. The more she learned the more she feared.
'I knew that my research was still tracking far behind, but this was even leagues and bounds beyond. I'm sure of it – it must have one of those books on hand – the same one the chairman had. Funny, isn't it… this time, my employer has given me more in a single stack than all that I had gotten from them.'
She flipped through the pages softly.
'Sometimes I wonder… I had lost so many researchers on that day – I won't even think about whether or not they deserved their fates – each of us had known that we would never be praised for it – the research only progressed through sacrifice after all.
But here I am now – with the same one who had brought all of it down, and in the last seven years with it – I have learned and even pieced more together than I have my entire life. Strange considering I have spent most of my long-life learning. I have pushed further – does this mean I achieved my mission from the raid?'
During the raid on Abio, her single goal was to save as many researchers as possible she could – but their research and information they possessed in their respective fields. Even though all this was not the same information – it was way more that she could have ever hoped to cover in her whole life. And now she was asking herself – did she save more information by learning than she lost from their deaths?
'Sure, much of our research died with the researchers, but I have gained more than enough to compensate for all of it – really, I have. They would all have lost their minds thinking about how much I have learned… This has stopped me from just killing myself on the spot as I had tried so many times before – but yet I can't help it… I can't help but miss all of them… I can't help but think they should have lived…'
She then began crying onto the pages – no-one was around, the Knight and the others had left again, leaving Sirus – the flame elemental to watch over her. She cried not trying to – they had been gone for almost a decade now – she just couldn't stop.
She cried because, even though back there, she had told herself she wanted to save them because they had information, she really just didn't want to watch them die. She might have been mean to most, but they had all been together for over two centuries. She had even asked a few of them to join C.C. herself.
She could still see their faces on the pages as she paged over again.
She got a paper cut, making her such her blood until her finger healed. She had almost forgotten that the creator of this book was way stronger than her, in fact, this might as well be a weapon to someone at her level.
A few more seconds passed, she pushed the thoughts away as she continued reading. After all – this information she was supposed to be used to create beings strong enough to combat the destroyers – too bad her captor was one of them.
The Knight had broken what she had mostly understood about destroyers, but there was no denying what was right in front of her – unlike Cathina and Forg, she saw it in the tunnel – partly the reason the Knight wants her dead.
Many strange things had changed about her since then. She had started adding assumptions into her thinking – even if it was just a single or three in her entire life – it was still too many. She had also spent years not learning being idle – a first for her. Above all else though, she had actually fully lost her desire to escape, even at the cost of suicide – almost like a strong strange foreign desire had been planted in her.
She was still not sure why she had been fed information so freely after being ignored for so long, but she did surmise one thing – more like a reflection on oneself – a cruel and simple one – made through the heart of a researcher – one interested more in information than in the world.
'I guess – I really have changed sides – I thought I'd rather die before that happened…'