The Phantom Ash Scorpion, trapped within the hardened shell of its own petulantly secreted shadow-resin, was actively projecting a stream of highly compressed, psychic profanity directly into Sunny’s auditory meridians.
"Squash the blood-bag... Rot your mother’s core... Sever the limbs..."
Sunny explicitly could not fathom where his Tier 4 assassin had acquired such a comprehensive vocabulary of demonic vulgarity.
He firmly concluded that the insect had passively absorbed the ambient malice of the Vanguard mercenaries during their slaughter-drills. He casually channeled a microscopic sliver of dark Qi, shattering the resin cocoon.
The massive Scorpion dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. It immediately curled its dual, venom-dripping stingers inward, pressing its armored body flat against the stone, explicitly realizing it had overstepped its bounds. It vibrated with a sudden, localized dread, awaiting absolute punishment.
Sunny explicitly did not care about the insect’s manners; he was merely suffering from a catastrophic migraine. He ignored the shivering beast and began methodically crushing a pile of highly toxic shadow-roots into a thick, corrosive paste.
He fed the lethal concoction to the Scorpion, watching the blue data frames of the Supreme Merge System project the beast’s evolutionary progression.
The System explicitly dictated that the Scorpion required a continuous, fourteen-day cycle of this exact toxic refinement to merely stabilize its current Commander-tier core. However, the final catalyst required to breach the next biological ceiling was a Calamity-grade Abyssal Thunder Core.
Sunny stared at the glowing blue text, a wave of profound, civilian panic washing over his uncultivated mind.
A Calamity-grade core was practically a myth in the Outer Sect. To acquire one on the black market would require an extortionate sum of at least three thousand Corrupted Spirit Stones. The sheer economic reality of the Demonic Path was suffocating him. He explicitly realized that hunting such a beast was a guaranteed death sentence, and purchasing the core would bankrupt him for the rest of his miserable life. The agonizing stress of demonic inflation was pushing his fragile sanity to the absolute brink.
Once the Scorpion had consumed its dark sustenance, it entered a sluggish, necrotic torpor, digesting the violent Qi.
Sunny turned his glowing crimson gaze toward the opposite side of the pavilion. He explicitly needed to establish a deeper, authoritative soul-tether with his newly acquired healer, the Sanguine Void-Leech. The initial tether was too shallow for complex commands during a combat scenario.
He drew a jagged, cursed bone-dagger from his sash and dragged the blade across his index finger. The wound instantly welled with his blood. He approached the glass vessel where the pulsing, semi-translucent crimson Leech was floating aimlessly.
He reached out and pressed his bleeding digit directly against the creature’s fleshy membrane.
Sunny closed his eyes, forcing his consciousness into the spiritual plane.
He was instantaneously dragged into a localized, metaphysical void. This ideological dimension was significantly more fragile and claustrophobic than the sprawling, violent mindscape of the Scorpion.
Deep within the pitch-black spiritual space, Sunny explicitly sensed a minuscule, shivering spark of pale light. It was the core soul of the Sanguine Void-Leech, cowering in the darkest corner of its own mind.
Sunny explicitly attempted to project an aura of absolute calm. He wanted to broadcast feelings of safety, abundant blood-nectar, and protection. He felt like a grotesque kidnapper attempting to lure a terrified infant out of hiding.
However, his innate, world-breaking villainous aura explicitly corrupted his intentions.
The moment Sunny directed his spiritual focus toward the shivering spark, a tidal wave of suffocating, predatory dark Qi flooded the mental dimension. The timid soul of the Leech was entirely overwhelmed by the suffocating sensation that a primeval, apocalyptic demon had just breached its sanctuary to devour its existence.
The spiritual connection violently snapped.
Sunny’s crimson eyes snapped open, and he stumbled backward, clutching his throbbing temples. The psychic backlash of the severed tether caused a sharp, localized pain in his frontal lobe.
He looked down at the physical Leech. The anomaly had darted out of its vessel and was now forcefully wedging itself beneath the heavy base of the obsidian altar, vibrating rapidly in a state of absolute, mindless panic.
Sunny rubbed his face, explicitly realizing he had been too forceful. Establishing a complex soul-tether required a foundation of mutual alignment. The Leech possessed extremely high emotional insecurity, entirely defined by its status as absolute prey. Sunny firmly concluded that he needed to passively exist near the beast for a longer duration, allowing the sheer proximity to desensitize the creature to his terrifying presence.
The next cycle, the Vanguard High Command initiated a mandatory assembly for all elite factions within the scorched outer courtyards.
The ambient temperature of the sector was agonizing. The subterranean magma-vents were fully open, baking the obsidian tiles and filling the air with a suffocating, sulfurous heat.
To endure the searing environment without collapsing from heatstroke, Sunny explicitly commanded his other spatial anomaly, the Abyssal Void-Sac, to float directly inches above his crown. The Void-Sac’s thick, bruised-purple membrane effectively blocked the harsh glare of the soul-fires, acting as a bizarre, pulsating parasol.
As Sunny marched out of his pavilion and toward the assembly grounds, he glanced upward.
He was internally bewildered by the sight.
Resting perfectly balanced atop the floating Void-Sac was the Phantom Ash Scorpion. The lethal assassin, which had explicitly despised the spatial anomalies just yesterday, was now utilizing the Void-Sac as a floating, living palanquin. Even more confusing, the Sanguine Void-Leech was lazily tethered to the Scorpion’s armored tail, completely unbothered by the apex predator.
Sunny explicitly did not understand the hierarchy of demonic friendships. It made absolutely no logical sense, but he was far too exhausted to question it.
Sunny arrived at the perimeter of the assembly, standing at the edge of the blood-drills. The grotesque sight of the Supreme Flesh-Crafter wearing a living, pulsing halo of dark veins explicitly horrified the surrounding cultists. They murmured in terror, explicitly believing the bizarre hat was a cursed artifact designed to passively harvest their souls.
"..."
Sunny ignored the terrified whispers. His throat was agonizingly parched from the volcanic heat.
Disciple Zhao approached from the flank. The subordinate was sweating profusely, his face drained of all color. He was absolutely terrified of being murdered by the Young Master for approaching unbidden, but his assignment dictated he report the status of the beast-pens.
"S-Supreme One," Zhao stammered, his body bowed so low his spine threatened to snap. His eyes darted nervously toward the pulsating, fleshy halo hovering above Sunny’s head.
Sunny maintained his freezing silence. He slowly raised his pale right hand and plunged his entire arm directly into the fleshy membrane of the Void-Sac hovering above his skull. His arm explicitly vanished into the spatial distortion up to the elbow.
Zhao gasped, his heart nearly stopping in his chest. He explicitly believed the Young Master was utilizing a forbidden blood-ritual to draw a jagged executioner’s blade directly from the abyssal plane to punish him for the interruption.
Sunny calmly withdrew his hand. He was holding a jagged skull-goblet filled with a chilled, restorative blood-elixir that he had stored inside the beast earlier that morning. White, freezing vapor rolled off the rim of the bone cup.
He took a slow, deliberate sip.
Zhao stared at the chilled goblet in absolute, paralyzed horror. The sheer, unfathomable depth of Sunny’s dark arts broke Zhao’s remaining mental fortitude. To casually bend space simply to retrieve a beverage in the middle of a slaughter-drill was an explicit display of god-like arrogance.
"Y-your... your spatial mastery is peerless, Supreme One!" Zhao babbled frantically, desperately trying to prove his worth before he was liquidated. "The beast pens are secure! My fiend... the Iron-Tusked Boar has fully regenerated its shattered ribs! It is stronger than before!"
"..."
Sunny merely lowered the skull-goblet, his glowing crimson eyes boring directly into the disciple’s sweating face. He offered absolutely no validation, explicitly refusing to release the crushing psychological pressure. He just wanted Zhao to leave so he could drink in peace.
To Zhao, this unbroken, terrifying silence was the ultimate judgment. He firmly believed the Young Master was disappointed by the trivial nature of the report, and was silently threatening to demand the newly healed Boar as a live sacrifice for his next dark ritual.
"Please! Do not harvest my beast!" Zhao wept, falling to his knees and pressing his face into the scalding obsidian.
"I will offer my own fingers as tribute! I will sever them now!"