The devastation wrought upon the Ashen Ridge was sickeningly.
Sunny stood at the precipice of the shattered obsidian valley, his pale features frozen in a mask of chilling apathy.
The Orthodox Paladin phalanx, previously a gleaming bastion of extreme Yang-Fire, had been entirely reduced to a churning crater of liquefied flesh and shattered radiant armor.
Standing perfectly still amidst the bubbling gore was the Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape. The towering, dark-metal skeleton was entirely coated in a thick layer of boiled blood. Its necrotic, green eye sockets flared with violent, unstable energy. It had explicitly utilized its Marrow-Shattering Resonance to bypass the Paladins’ holy shields, vibrating their internal organs into bloody soup.
Clutched within the Ape’s massive, metallic fingers was a violently pulsating, golden-hued organ. It was the Sovereign-tier Abyssal Corrosive Core, forcefully ripped from the chest cavity of the fallen Orthodox Commander.
Internally, Sunny was experiencing a catastrophic spiral of panic. He explicitly wanted to vomit. The stench of roasted marrow and vaporized blood was suffocating. Furthermore, he was absolutely terrified that the Ghoul Ape, driven by its insatiable demonic hunger, would simply crush the Sovereign Core and attempt to consume it right there on the battlefield. If it did, the resulting radioactive detonation would explicitly vaporize Sunny and half the Vanguard staging camp.
He had to retrieve the core immediately.
Sunny forced his trembling legs to move. He stalked forward, letting his innate villainous aura billow out in heavy, suffocating waves. He projected the image of a supreme, unbothered sovereign claiming his rightful spoils.
As Sunny approached, the Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape slowly turned its skull. It lowered its massive arm, offering the pulsating, radioactive core to its master with a chilling submissiveness.
"..." Sunny maintained his freezing silence. He explicitly did not want to touch the glowing artifact. He could physically feel the lethal, soul-burning radiation radiating from the core, threatening to blister his uncultivated human skin.
Suddenly, Quartermaster Jin scrambled over the jagged obsidian rocks, his heavily warded robes soaked in cold sweat. Jin was entirely consumed by mortal dread. He had explicitly forced the Young Master into this deployment, and now he had witnessed the apocalyptic, effortless slaughter unleashed by Sunny’s newly ascended fiend. Jin firmly believed that Sunny was currently calculating the most agonizing method to flay him alive for the initial insult of the conscription.
"S-Supreme One!" Jin whimpered, throwing himself face-down into the toxic sludge at Sunny’s boots. His entire body convulsed with terror. "Your dark mastery is boundless! The Orthodox light has been snuffed out! I beg you, allow this worthless insect to secure your divine tribute!"
With shaking hands, Jin held up a heavily inscribed, cursed-lead reliquary. It was an elite containment vessel designed explicitly to quarantine Sovereign-tier radiation.
Sunny felt a massive, crashing wave of internal relief. He explicitly needed that box. If he held the raw core with his bare hands for the trek back to his pavilion, he would die of arcane radiation poisoning by nightfall.
However, Sunny explicitly chose not to express any gratitude. He merely shifted his glowing crimson eyes to stare down at the groveling Quartermaster.
"..."
He allowed the suffocating, freezing silence to stretch for ten agonizing seconds. He explicitly needed Jin to open the box so he didn’t have to touch the latch himself.
To Quartermaster Jin, this unbroken silence was the ultimate psychological torture. The Young Master was staring directly at his skull, his demonic aura pressing down like a physical weight. Jin explicitly interpreted this silence as absolute, murderous disgust. He firmly believed the Young Master viewed the offered reliquary as an insultingly cheap vessel, and was silently threatening to liquefy Jin’s organs just as the Ape had done to the Paladins.
"I am filth! My offering is garbage!" Jin sobbed hysterically, his voice cracking. He frantically popped the latches of the lead reliquary open, his fingers bleeding against the cursed runes. "I will throw myself into the magma-trenches! Just spare my soul-tether, I beg of you!"
Sunny maintained his cold, apathetic facade. He mentally commanded the Ghoul Ape. The massive skeleton casually dropped the pulsating Sovereign Core directly into the open reliquary.
Sunny utilized a minor telekinetic array to snap the heavy lead lid shut, instantly sealing away the suffocating radiation. He telekinetically lifted the reliquary, completely ignoring the weeping Quartermaster.
"Clean the battlefield," Sunny rasped, his voice a flat, emotionless void.
He turned his back on the carnage and began the long walk back to the Vanguard camp. Jin remained pressed into the mud, explicitly weeping with profound gratitude that he had been allowed to keep his life. He resolved to personally scrub every inch of the blood-soaked ridge with his bare hands if it meant pleasing the Supreme Flesh-Crafter.
The procession back through the staging camp was a bizarre, terrifying spectacle.
Sunny marched with slow, aristocratic deliberate steps. Hovering directly above his crown was the bruised-purple Abyssal Void-Sac, casting a localized shadow over his pale features. Trailing silently in his shadow was the Phantom Ash Scorpion, its venomous stingers clicking rhythmically. Flanking him was the towering, blood-soaked Iron-Forged Ghoul Ape, carrying the floating lead reliquary.
Every demonic cultist, mercenary, and slaughter-captain in their path immediately ceased their activities. They explicitly threw themselves against the obsidian walls or fell to their knees in the ash, entirely terrified of accidentally meeting the Young Master’s crimson gaze. The rumors of the Ape’s instant-liquefaction ability had already swept through the camp like a plague. Sunny explicitly appeared as a walking god of death, though internally, he was merely plotting how quickly he could get into his bed and sleep for a week.
However, Sunny explicitly knew he could not simply return to his pavilion. The Vanguard High Command still considered him an active combat asset. If he retreated without official authorization, they would continually summon him to break Orthodox shield walls until his luck ran out and he was assassinated by a stray incantation.
He needed an official writ of isolation.
Sunny bypassed his own pavilion and marched directly toward the Grand Command Hall.
The heavy, bone-wrought doors of the inner sanctum were guarded by two Elite Enforcers. The moment they saw Sunny’s terrifying procession approaching, they explicitly scrambled to open the doors, deeply afraid that the Ghoul Ape would vibrate their armor into shrapnel if they delayed him for even a second.
Within the suffocatingly dark chamber, Grand Elder Shen He stood over a massive, glowing blood-map, surrounded by his veteran lieutenants. The air was thick with the stench of burning incense and tactical desperation.
Sunny stepped into the chamber. He explicitly did not bow. He let his villainous aura flood the room, snuffing out the ambient soul-fires.
"Young Master," Elder Shen He stated, his aged eyes narrowing as he took in the horrific, blood-soaked Ghoul Ape standing behind Sunny. "The scouts report the Ashen Ridge is secured. Your intervention was... devastatingly efficient."
"My conscription is fulfilled," Sunny stated, his voice dropping the temperature in the room. He telekinetically floated the heavy, lead-lined reliquary onto the center of the blood-map. The cursed box hummed audibly, radiating a suppressed, apocalyptic energy.
Sunny explicitly wanted to convey that he had done his job, retrieved his loot, and was now taking a heavily mandated vacation.
Elder Shen He stared at the humming reliquary. He explicitly recognized the unique, radioactive signature leaking through the lead. A Sovereign-tier Corrosive Core.
"The crusade is at a critical juncture," Shen He replied carefully, his voice betraying a hint of political tension. "The Orthodox armies are rallying. The Vanguard explicitly requires your flesh-mending genius on the frontlines. You cannot retreat into isolation now."
"..."
Sunny offered absolutely no argument. He simply stared back, projecting an aura of bottomless, freezing contempt. Internally, he was screaming. He explicitly refused to go back out there. If the Elder forced him, Sunny resolved to simply stand there in silence until someone backed down.
Elder Shen He scrutinized the boy’s unblinking crimson eyes. He looked for a trace of petulance, or perhaps a negotiation tactic. Instead, he saw only an abyssal, terrifying certainty.
Shen He shifted his gaze back to the humming reliquary, and then to the monstrous, newly ascended fiends surrounding the Young Master.
The Elder’s paranoid, battle-hardened mind began to race, filling in the blanks of Sunny’s silence with terrifying strategic assumptions. The boy had just effortlessly slaughtered a Paladin Commander and harvested a Sovereign core. Now, he was blatantly refusing High Command’s orders, placing a weapon of mass destruction directly onto the tactical map.
Shen He explicitly concluded that Sunny was not asking for permission to rest. The silence was a definitive, apocalyptic threat. The Young Master was silently stating that if he was forced back to the frontlines, he would simply detonate the Sovereign Core within the staging camp, erasing both the Vanguard and the Orthodox armies in a single stroke of maniacal dark arts.
"Your... hunger for the profound dark arts is absolute," Shen He finally murmured, a cold sweat breaking out across his wrinkled brow. He explicitly did not want to test the sanity of a youth who casually utilized world-ending artifacts as paperweights.
"The Vanguard formally recognizes your supreme contribution," the Elder conceded, his voice rigid with suppressed terror. "You are granted an absolute writ of isolation. No captain or executioner shall disturb your pavilion for the remainder of the lunar cycle."
"Acceptable..." Sunny whispered.
He telekinetically retrieved the reliquary, turned on his heel, and walked out of the Grand Command Hall. He maintained his imposing, predatory stride until the heavy bone doors sealed behind him. Inside his mind, however, he was frantically weeping tears of pure joy.
He had successfully bullied the highest military authority in the sect without uttering a single threat. He was finally going to get some sleep.