Sunny maintained a posture of statuesque stillness upon his spine-throne. His dark robes pooled around him like spilled ink. He explicitly focused his crimson gaze on the heavy iron cage in the corner. The Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape, newly ascended to the Commander tier, stood perfectly motionless within.
Sunny was internally reeling. The sheer, physical density of the Ape was deeply unsettling. He explicitly recognized that its current form was the absolute apex it could achieve without requiring materials from the Calamity tier. Calamity-grade resources were fiercely hoarded by the Grand Elders; attempting to acquire them would undoubtedly trigger an immediate execution.
Therefore, Sunny needed to pivot his strategy. He explicitly decided to focus his available resources on maximizing the lethality of his primary assassin, the Phantom Ash Scorpion.
However, the Supreme Merge System had just presented him with a deeply confusing revelation regarding the Scorpion’s progression.
When the Scorpion was merely an Elite-tier fiend, the System explicitly required a moderate volume of toxic flora and a single, low-grade corrosive spirit-core to force an evolution.
Now that the Scorpion possessed a Commander-tier core, the System’s required material list had drastically mutated. The specific variety of the materials remained identical—it still demanded highly toxic flora and corrosive cores. However, the raw volume required had multiplied exponentially. It explicitly demanded a literal mountain of highly restricted dark resources just to stabilize the Scorpion’s current tier, let alone push it toward the Sovereign realm.
Sunny felt a sharp throb of anxiety pulse through his temples. The math was horrifyingly simple. The higher the tier, the more astronomical the resource consumption became. He explicitly realized he could not simply hoard his way to ultimate safety. If he attempted to starve the Scorpion to conserve his extorted spirit stones, the beast’s combat efficiency would drastically plummet.
He had to continuously manipulate the Abyssal Vanguard into funding his System’s gluttony.
"Supreme One."
A timid, shivering voice broke the suffocating silence of the pavilion.
Standing rigidly near the obsidian entrance flap was the young female acolyte, Xue. She explicitly kept her gaze locked onto the ash-covered floor, too terrified to meet Sunny’s glowing red eyes. She had previously witnessed the terrifying, bone-crushing resonance of the Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape, and the memory explicitly haunted her every waking moment.
"..." Sunny offered absolute, freezing silence. He explicitly chose not to greet her, finding that ignoring his subordinates usually accelerated whatever desperate business they had.
"The Quartermaster... he explicitly commanded me to present my miserable fiend for your divine inspection," Xue stammered, her voice barely a whisper. She raised her trembling arms, offering the mutated Four-Eared Blood-Sonar Bat like a sacrificial lamb.
"Tribute," Sunny rasped, his voice devoid of any warmth. He explicitly demanded payment upfront. He had learned that providing free flesh-mending services in the Demonic Path merely invited suspicion and disrespect.
Xue practically collapsed in relief that he hadn’t immediately demanded her soul. With shaking hands, she produced a heavy velvet pouch and placed it upon the obsidian floor. "Sixty high-grade Corrupted Spirit Stones, Supreme One. Exactly as you commanded the Quartermaster."
Sunny gave a microscopic nod. He slowly stood up, letting his innate villainous aura wash over the pavilion. He explicitly calculated that utilizing the System to force a minor breakthrough for this low-tier bat would cost him less than two spirit stones in raw materials. The remaining fifty-eight stones were pure, unadulterated profit.
"Release it," Sunny ordered coldly.
Xue hastily placed the Blood-Sonar Bat upon the ground and scrambled backward, pressing herself against the wall.
The mutated bat did not possess a humanoid intelligence, but its survival instincts were incredibly sharp. It explicitly sensed the overwhelming, predatory death Qi radiating from both Sunny and the silent Ghoul Ape. The bat immediately bristled, its leathery wings flaring defensively. It let out a high-pitched, localized sonic shriek—a concentrated burst of sound designed to disorient attackers.
Sunny did not flinch, though the shrill noise explicitly worsened his migraine. He felt a profound wave of exhaustion. He explicitly did not want to chase a screeching bat around his pavilion.
"Ape. Secure it," Sunny commanded, his voice flat.
The Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape did not roar. It explicitly possessed no concept of restraint or gentleness. It merely obeyed the absolute authority of its master.
The bat immediately attempted to deploy its shadow-evasion array, launching itself toward the vaulted ceiling of the pavilion. It moved like a blur of dark crimson.
The Ape simply raised its heavy, dark-metal arm. It explicitly calculated the trajectory of the fleeing beast with mechanical precision. Its skeletal fingers snapped shut in mid-air, entirely intercepting the bat mid-flight.
The Blood-Sonar Bat struggled violently, its sonic shrieks escalating into frantic, localized sonic booms that rattled the pavilion’s wards. The Ape remained perfectly still, its massive, iron-like grip completely immobilizing the flailing creature.
"The cauldron," Sunny instructed softly, gesturing toward a heavy bronze vat filled with a violently boiling, highly toxic dark-marrow concoction.
Xue watched in absolute, paralyzed horror. She explicitly believed the Young Master was casually commanding his armored nightmare to boil her contracted fiend alive merely for his own sadistic amusement. She squeezed her eyes shut, entirely convinced that she would be thrown into the boiling vat next.
The Ape mercilessly plunged the screeching bat directly into the bubbling, toxic sludge. It explicitly held the heavy bronze lid down, completely ignoring the frantic, muffled splashing echoing from within.
Sunny stood perfectly still, his crimson eyes tracking the System’s diagnostic overlay. He explicitly knew the boiling sludge was highly beneficial for sonic-attribute mutations, but to any external observer, the process looked like pure, unadulterated torture.
After thirty agonizing minutes, Sunny gave a slight nod. The Ape instantly hauled the heavy lid off the cauldron.
A blur of dark crimson exploded outward. The Blood-Sonar Bat had successfully absorbed the volatile marrow. Its leathery wings had expanded significantly, and its four ears now pulsed with a visible, dark-sonic frequency. It had explicitly breached the Elite tier.
However, the beast was entirely consumed by feral panic. It blindly launched itself directly toward Sunny’s face, its fangs bared, intent on shredding the entity it deemed responsible for its boiling torment.
Sunny didn’t even have time to blink, let alone dodge. His uncultivated reflexes were explicitly too slow.
Before the bat could cross the final yard, the Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape’s arm blurred. The Ape backhanded the incoming beast with terrifying, casual force.
The impact sounded like a heavy iron mace striking a melon. The newly ascended Blood-Sonar Bat was violently swatted out of the air. It slammed into the obsidian wall of the pavilion with a sickening crunch, sliding down the stone like a discarded rag.
The Ape resumed its perfectly still, statuesque posture directly behind Sunny, its necrotic eyes burning coldly.
Sunny explicitly forced his racing heart to calm down. He pulled up the System interface to confirm the bat hadn’t been instantly killed by the defensive strike.
[Status: Elite Grade (Sustained Minor Cranial Trauma)]
"The refinement is complete," Sunny stated, turning his cold gaze toward the trembling acolyte. "Claim your fiend and leave."
Xue scrambled across the floor, desperately scooping up the concussed, bleeding bat. She noticed several deep, jagged cracks along the beast’s skull, dark blood seeping from its ears.
"Supreme One... it bleeds," Xue whispered, her voice tight with terror.
Sunny explicitly refused to admit that his Ape had nearly pulverized her fiend by accident. He needed an appropriately terrifying, biological justification for the trauma.
"The influx of dark Qi was absolute," Sunny replied, his voice a freezing whisper. "The beast’s inferior meridians could not seamlessly contain the violent expansion of its sonic core. The cranial bleeding is merely the physical manifestation of its weakness purging itself. Be grateful it did not detonate entirely."
Xue nodded frantically, explicitly accepting the horrifying explanation without question. She bowed repeatedly and fled the pavilion, entirely convinced that the Young Master’s methods were as flawlessly cruel as they were effective.
As the heavy doors closed, Sunny’s communication jade slip buzzed with a low, submissive hum.
He explicitly ignored it. He knew it was Quartermaster Jin, undoubtedly calling to grovel and express his profound gratitude for the successful refinement.
Sunny explicitly chose to let the man sweat in terror.