The Tale Of The Void Emperor

"Give me two minutes," Athan said as he sat down crossed-legged and focused on refining the soul to get the pure soul energy from it using the new way that he had developed.

Lily, Huarin, Mimi, and Dreevindo stayed cautious while Athan was meditating.

Inside Athan's void region...

The soul of that devilish man was currently submerged in a black and white whirlpool that was above Athan's soul.

From the bottom of the whirlpool, pure-white glowing drops were continuously pouring on Athan's soul and making it stronger from a fundamental level.

Athan had discovered that his soul's depth was even more complicated than his body. Not just him, but every soul had a complicated structure, even more than the physical body.

While fully studying the soul to its fundamental level, Athan created a way to make his soul stronger from its roots. This way, as long as there was soul energy that could affect his soul, he could use it to strengthen his soul. 

He created that whirlpool for this method, which could purely refine the soul and extract its pure power that would easily make his soul stronger. 

Previously when Athan refined the souls of other beings and devoured them to get stronger, he was wasting a lot of pure essence during his crude refinement. That's why he needed to get more souls to reach on the same soul wavelength as them and more if he wanted to make his soul stronger.

However, with this new method, which he called, Purity Soul Whirlpool, he could purify and refine any soul ultimately, extract it completely, and recieve pure soul power without wasting even a single bit of it.

The Purity Soul Whirlpool was something that was closet to the union of Abyssal darkness, voidpulse, and his soul energy. All three looped together inside and refined the soul to produce pure soul power from their target.

The only different thing about this whirlpool was that he had to consume 11% of his soul energy to make the whirlpool do its work. Naturally, the whirlpool required that much soul energy to do its work on that devilish man's soul. 

However, with that small price, Athan's soul was getting stronger at unprecedented speed, and since Athan allowed it, Dreevindo and others could clearly sense Athan's soul power rising as well.

Unlike other people who had to break through their soul's limit when they break through to the next stage to receive more power and make their soul stronger, Athan didn't need to do such a thing because his soul had already broken its chains and was at a much higher quality each time he comprehended more percentage of Abyssal Void of Fabrication and went through a qualitative transformation inside the cocoon.

So he just needed soul power that could affect his soul to make his soul stronger, and that could be gained from more powerful people.

"He finally stopped," Dreevindo wiped the sweat from his forehead when he saw that Athan's soul finally stopped getting powerful.

'Now his soul power is almost as powerful as me, geeeeeeeeeeeeez,' Dreevindo internally thought with a sigh.

"Woah, brother Athan, your soul power that you released is now almost as powerful as my soul power, hehe," Mimi chuckled and said, "It looks like brother Athan is going to get stronger at light speed."

"Here, Athan, I have improvised the Umbra crystal with Ark's power. See if you can use it to make your body stronger," Lily said as she gave the black crystal with red patterns inside it to Athan. The crystal had become smaller, but it was exuding more power than before.

Athan hurriedly took the crystal and put it inside the void region before smiling wryly, "I wouldn't be able to use my Abyssal Blood Crystal to use my full power for the next thirty minutes, so let's move cautiously."

After saying that, Athan turned to Dreevindo, "how do we leave these Dimensional rifts?"

"The exists would appear randomly here. The exit portal is the same as the entry portal," Dreevindo said.

"Let's move now. Since we are here, then we better gather some resources as we also want to get stronger," Lily said with a pout, "Athan is cheating right now by getting stronger this quickly, but we can't stay behind."

Huarin rolled her eyes and said to Lily, "we are also cheating with that Ark's power."

Athan nodded as when he wasn't using even 1% of the Ark's power; he was able to skip stages when he got it. So, now that Lily got full control of it, he didn't know how much benefit it would provide.

"You guys are calling Ark, Ark, Ark.....don't tell me you are talking about that Firmament Artifact, Ark of Exordium?" Dreevindo asked in a joking manner, "hah, forget it. There's no way you can acquire one of the ten Firmamemnt Artifacts that had birthed at the same time as the creation of Orchos Firmament."

Dreevindo shook his head with a wry smile, "however, the treasure you got should still be at Supra-Legendary grade since nobody was able to sense us when we were inside it."

Athan patted Dreevindo's shoulder and smiled, "let's go and continue our journey. Don't think too much about the Ark."

Lily, Huarin, and Mimi nodded with a smile as they followed Athan. 

"No way, right?" Dreevindo muttered before he also followed them.

Dreevindo had already sworn an oath, and Lily forced him to do a soul-bound contact that should he ever betray them or do anything that could directly or indirectly harm them intentionally, his soul would scatter. Lily used the Ark's power to do this, so Dreevindo had no way of resisting this forceful contract.

Since this was a contract, both sides had an agreement. They also can't hurt or harm Dreevindo or betray him.

...

After traveling for ten minutes, they encountered a beast, but it was taken care of by Dreevindo as it was an early-stage Hexa-grade beast.

The grades of the beasts were ten. Mono-grade, Di-grade, Tri-grade, Tetra-grade, Penta-grade, Hexa-grade, Hepta-grade, Octa-grade, Nona-grade, and Deca-grade.

Naturally, Athan didn't waste the body of that deer-like beast with gigantic horns and wings. He had to consume blood and flesh physical power to produce more Abyssal Blood Crystals.

After half an hour, everyone was traveling on a mountainous region while searching for resources, and suddenly, they saw a sparkling purple beam shooting off in the sky a few kilometers away.

"Birth of a Catalyst!" Dreevindo shouted, "let's go, let's go!"

"It should help me and Huarin progress, right?" Lily asked.

"Yep!" Dreevindo nodded with a smile, "however, you both are still at Raisor-stage, and I don't know if that catalyst can be used by you, hehe. If it's an Atomix-grade catalyst, I can use it to reach the peak of the Atomix-evolution stage."

Lily shook her head with a grin and spoke, "don't worry, I know how to make use of it. For your information, I...can use anything, even if it's more powerful than my capacity. Using it will simply make me adapt and increase my capacity for it."

"Let's go," Athan said as he produced his normal wings from his body and shot off towards the beam.

Lily, Huarin, and Mimi also followed behind while Dreevindo smiled wryly and shook his head as he remembered Lily's power before following them as well.

...

When they were one kilometer away from the beam, Athan told everyone to descend, and they all entered inside the Ark space.

Inside the ark space...

"I sensed several presences at that beam already, so let's move while staying in the Ark," Athan said as he sat down at the table while watching everything through the permanent cloudly screen that Lily decided to create.

"I sensed presences that were more powerful than me and also two presences at Epic-evolution stage," Dreevindo said as he looked at Athan with a somber expression.

"Brother Athan, I can use my genome bloodline ability to defend against one attack of Epic-evolution powerhouse, even if that powerhouse is at the peak of Epic stage," Mimi said with a thoughtful expression, "however, I can only use this ability once every three days."

"It's fine, we will see how everything goes first," Athan said with a smile.

Huarin also stood at the table while Lily controlled the Ark while standing in front of the table.

They soon saw the scene where the sparkling purple beam was released in the sky. 

It was actually released from a fist-size sparkling purple flower. 

There were four groups of people at the flower. They all stood several meters away from the flower.

"We are leaving!"

"We as well!"

Two out of those four groups retreated with dark faces because both of their groups only had Atomix-stage powerhouses, while the other two groups had an Epic-stage powerhouse each.

One had four people from the remaining two groups, while the other group had three people.

The Epic powerhouse in the group of three, who looked like a middle-aged man with long white hair and two dark-green horns, spoke as he looked at the Epic powerhouse in the enemy group, "let's decide the ownership of this flower with a duel between us, what do you say?"

"Alright."