The original nascent soul of a demon cultivator was different from that of a human cultivator. A small deer jumped out of the deer man instead of a dwarf. It looked like a projection of his animal days.
“Even a monster like you used to be cute,” Grid said bitterly as he caught the deer, who tried to run away.
The cultivators were pure evil, and one could even compare them to Baal. Since they weren’t religious and only dreamed of eternal life, they were obsessed with keeping themselves alive. This terrible selfishness of theirs that they showed all the time was quite creepy. Even this being, who was born as a deer, stepped into the cultivator world and became a monster…
Grid sighed as he remembered the insidious malice he felt from the deer man.
“It’s troubling to think that such beings can exist in reality. I can only hope that Lauel’s predictions are just speculations.”
“Reality? Are you saying that this place isn’t real?”
The nascent soul of the deer man had felt hopeless ever since Grid captured him. But now, he was showing some genuine interest. He listened carefully to Grid’s monologue without missing out on any of the details.
Grid had crushed the deer man in battle, even though he was only in the qi refining realm. The deer man needed to understand how such a thing was possible. He hoped that Grid was hiding a huge secret.
Grid caught a glimpse of the strange anticipation in the little deer’s eyes and snorted.
“This world is real, indeed.”
“But is there a true reality that embodies this dimension?”
“……?”
Grid tilted his head. The deer seemed very sharp, as if it understood the concept of virtual reality.
The deer murmured, “There is a reason why some reacted as if they were conscious of the observer’s gaze…”
“Observer? Who is that?”
The deer sneered. “Who else could it be other than the creator of this world? Since I am also a being who has reached the level of great ascension, I can vaguely understand the providence of the universe. Don’t mock me as if you don’t know. Out of the countless dimensions that exist in the universe, many are artificially created, just like this one. People with uncivilized perceptions associate the observers with religion and call them gods…
The deer paused for a moment before glancing at Grid and shaking his head.
“You have been worshiped as a god even though you aren’t one. What I’m telling you right now, you should have already known this very well. Gods don’t exist. Making dimensions and creating civilizations is something that someone can do once they become a great immortal. They aren’t gods. Of course, I’ve never heard of a dimension as vast and near-perfect as this one. However, it’s not impossible for someone to create one with the help of a Super Galaxy Treasure, no, an Insurmountable Treasure.
“Great immortal? Insurmountable Treasure? What are you talking about?”
“I will answer your questions if you promise to renew the contract and spare me.”
This was the deer’s only hope to survive. He had to try his luck. Fortunately, Grid nodded.
“Alright. However, this pouch is now mine.”
“That is my storage bag…! It contains all the treasures and elixirs that I’ve refined throughout my life. You’re going to take them away? That’s no different from killing me!”
“Why do you say it’s yours? The way I see it, this is loot I won by fighting fairly and winning our duel. Are you shameless or stupid? Now that I think about it, you attacked me first. I saved you and you don’t even want to hand over your bag?”
“…I’m sorry, but I really need those things…”
“You’re going to make it out alive. What’s the big deal if you give me this?”
The deer made a desperate request. “That’s right… Everything you said is true. But I beg you to at least return my precious treasure. If I lose the treasure that I have cultivated and refined all my life in my spiritual root, I will lose even the hope of restoring my spiritual training, which has dropped significantly since I lost my body.”
He was a small and cute deer with tears in his eyes. He slowly bowed his head. If others saw this, they would think that Grid was bullying this poor deer.
Of course, Grid didn’t blink at all. He placed the subspace pouch containing the cultivators’ belongings in his inventory.
He asked the deer to make a final choice.
“Do you want to live or die?”
“……”
Grid was one of those adamant people who didn’t care about others’ opinions and did whatever he wanted.
The deer knew that there was no way out of this, so he gave up, his shoulders slumping. His tone became even more polite as he pleaded, “Spare me.”
He didn’t want to risk dying. It would be difficult to recover the cultivation he had lost, but surviving was better than dying.
Grid nodded and rummaged through the deer’s storage bag. There were several unusual technique books and mystical arts books inside. Among them, there was also the latter part of the Golden Soul Technique.
[The Golden Soul Technique has reached 8 stars.]
[You can create the ‘Breaking Soul Contract.’]
“……?”
The deer was confused. Grid took only one quick glance at the Golden Soul Technique and immediately made the Breaking Soul Contract.
‘He didn’t know anything about the contract until now. Did he really just learn it?’
No, that was impossible. The deer brushed off his wild speculation. Instead, he thought that Grid had been deceiving him from the very beginning. He believed that Grid had already learned the latter part of the Golden Soul Technique and pretended not to know. This was the only explanation that made sense.
‘What a very thorough guy.’
The deer shouldn’t have harbored bad intentions. Grid handed out the contract to the distressed deer.
[Breaking Soul Contract]
If either side violates the rules of this contract, their souls will be destroyed and they will die.
1. The signatory shall answer the writer’s questions without lying.
2. Under the premise that the signatory fulfills clause one, the writer cannot harm them.]
The stronger the terms of the Breaking Soul Contract, the less restricting it was. This was why Grid didn’t write in the clauses that the signatory must obey the writer no matter what this time.
The deer signed and the effect was immediate. The paper tore in half and flew to Grid and the deer’s chests. It connected them in the form of invisible chains.
Grid grabbed the deer by the neck and immediately got to the point. “What is a great immortal?”
The deer felt a powerful wind pressure crush his face. Grid was already on the move. He flew in the direction of a Full Moon Fortress, which was his initial destination.
“They’re the strongest immortals, the ones who reached the highest realm. I know that the realms of an immortal divide them into true immortals, golden immortals, and great immortals.”
“Are you sure? You don’t sound very certain.”
“Over the past millions of years, every trace of the immortals that have fallen into the cultivation world have been left behind by true immortals. They say that the ancestral realm is endless, way bigger than any other dimension. The immortals wouldn’t just live in an area as small as a dot on the map.”
“But you haven’t met someone with a higher realm than a great immortal, so you don’t know if someone stronger than that exists. You lack information. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“…Can the great immortals create dimensions?”
“Yes. Normally, they create small dimensions to safely set up and manage medicine fields or puppet laboratories. They bring mortals there, establish civilizations, turn them into slave races, and steadily supply them with necessary resources, such as medicine… I heard that a small dimension is as big as a kingdom, but the creation of dimensions can vary greatly depending on the capabilities of the great immortal.”
Grid recalled Chairman Lim Cheolho and the thirty-three scientists. They were the ones who created this world. If he placed them into the settings that the deer man told him about…
“…So, for someone to create a world as huge as this, they’d have to be even more powerful than a great immortal?”
“Yes. However, it’s difficult to confirm this. The vast majority of cultivators don’t even know that there are more realms after the immortal one…”
“Then how did you find out about the realms of the immortals?”
“One of my ancestors was a cultivator who became a true immortal. He once came to ask us for some resources that were hard to obtain in the ancestral realm. We had an opportunity to learn from him.”
“It seems that cultivators who ascended will still use the ones weaker than them, even after becoming immortals.”
“That’s because we’re very useful to them. Therefore, the cultivators who have a higher chance of ascending will value and care for their sect even more.”
Cool story.
Grid nodded and asked about the Insurmountable Treasure next.
“The Insurmountable Treasure is superior to the Super Galaxy Treasure. There are only around a hundred of them in the entire universe. According to legends, the weakest Insurmountable Treasure is way stronger than the most powerful Super Galaxy Treasure.”
“Um…”
Grid was the owner of the Falling Moon Sword, which was listed on the second row of the Super Galaxy Treasures list. Nevertheless, he wasn’t disappointed when he heard that there were more than a hundred more valuable treasures.
The God Incarnation Body and the Falling Moon Sword were both deemed Super Galaxy Treasures, and they were both made by Grid himself. Maybe he would even make his own Insurmountable Treasure in the future. There was no need to unnecessarily worry about obtaining one.
Besides, the owners of the Insurmountable Treasures were all immortals. It was very unlikely that Grid would ever meet the very few high-ranking immortals… Unless he made it to the immortal world.
‘If the ancestral realm is that big, there must be a lot of immortals there. But this guy said that the only ones who have appeared in the cultivation world were the true immortals.’
It seemed that the higher ranking the immortal, the less they relied on the middle world. This was why they must have cut all ties with the lower worlds.
Before he knew it, he was getting closer and closer to his destination.
Grid asked the deer a few more questions before finally asking the one he’d been wanting to ask the most, “Have you established a solid alliance with Asgard?”
Grid didn’t want the cultivation world to expand. He and his colleagues were desperately trying to destroy all of the Full Moon Fortresses. He was determined to stop the demon cultivators from constructing their Full Moon Fortress replica in Asgard.
“…Yes.”
“Then I will smash you and Asgard to pieces.”
“Bah.” The deer forgot the position he was in and sneered. He couldn’t help it. Grid was amusing. “Haven’t I told you enough about the demon cultivators in Asgard? You might have bested me in a duel, but you will be no match for them.”
“Are you provoking me?”
“No… No! But I am bound by the Breaking Soul Contract and can’t lie.”
‘It’s funny how his attitude keeps changing.’
Well… This wasn’t something to laugh at. Had Grid had only one life like the NPCs and the cultivators, he would have also done anything to keep himself alive, just like the cultivators, and that included changing his attitude in an instant if it assured his survival. If a meteorite fell and the whole world changed…
Grid would have to fight with only one life in reality. There was nothing funny about that.
Grid sighed and looked down at the deer. “Now that you’re done, leave. We will meet again later in Asgard.”
“…I understand.”
The deer didn’t act rashly and instead flew hastily into the sky. Noe stared at him as he was becoming a dot among the clouds before he faded into a white light.
Noe asked, “Why didn’t you just break the contract and kill him?”
“The contract wouldn’t break unless he disrespected one of the clauses. And anyway, I didn’t intend to kill him right away.”
He would need the deer man alive for later, when he’d return to Asgard. Grid wanted to make sure that the deer man would have a front row seat to the slaughter of the demon cultivators.
Since the deer was frightened for its life enough to cooperate, Grid judged that it would be easy to sign a Breaking Soul Contract with the other cultivators’ nascent souls.
“Let’s go.”
Grid stared at the Full Moon Fortress rising like the moon in the distance. Noe dealt with the cultivators who came out in groups. Noe had learned a number of techniques and mystical arts and was now several times more powerful than before. He was now stronger than a Transcendent.
***
The outskirts of Innsbruck, Austria.
The gates of the old castle, which had been tightly closed for a long time, gradually opened, making a strange noise.
Trudge, trudge…
A man staggered out of the castle like a child who just began walking on two legs. His long green hair fluttered in the wind and blended into the bushes.
“Agnus…!”
A middle-aged man had been guarding the place with all sorts of surveillance devices for the past month. He couldn’t help but sigh at the sight.
“……”
The green-haired man with brilliant golden eyes immediately noticed the middle-aged man. A chill went down the middle-aged man’s spine at the eye contact. He was stationed in his base two kilometers away from the old castle.
He was so startled that he dropped the binoculars in his hand and held his breath.