"Although I'd like to squeeze a bit more information out of you, villains die for talking too much — hand over your elemental crystal."
Hel shook her head; she had no intention of prying further. Her purpose was clear: to obtain King Frey's elemental crystal. She had no interest in Frey himself or his soul.
He had already been stamped with the mark of the Underworld Witch, and Hel couldn't be sure the Witch hadn't left some contingency in him. A pure elemental crystal — a simple energy body — was far safer to take.
Hearing Hel's order, the old king, no matter how unwilling, removed his breastplate and began to dig the elemental crystal from his body bit by bit. He respectfully handed it to Hel.
"The Underworld Witch will not let you go."
"Is that so? I hope she can find me."
Hel answered casually while taking the elemental crystal. She casually tore the soul within out and placed the crystal into her storage space. The soul she ripped free began to disperse, and the king's body started to collapse — it wouldn't be long before he was nothing but a lump of rotten flesh.
At that moment, the king's dim eyes suddenly brightened; a flash of red light appeared, and his entire demeanor shifted.
"You're so sure I can't find you? Youming."
"What?"
Hel stared at the old king in shock, but she quickly understood what was happening and immediately uninstalled the storage-space trait. As she prepared to sever the soul link with Little Archmage No.4, the old king grabbed Hel's skull. A force of will violently established a link to the portion of Hel's soul that remained lodged in that body.
"I remember I made myself clear: I'll let you go once. If next time we meet, I won't be merciful. But someone's been disobedient — returning to my territory and even daring to harm my people. For such disobedient children, should I capture them and teach them a lesson?"
He lifted Hel's skull by one hand and held it before his face, staring into the faint azure soul-flame within, as if attempting to see Hel's true body through the skull.
Hel had already tried to withdraw that portion of her soul from the archmage body, but Huangquan's mental power forcibly pinned her soul in place. To pull it out would take time — time enough for Huangquan, a death-magic specialist, to trace the soul network back to Hel's true body.
There was no avoiding it. Hel sighed and decided to abandon that shard of soul. Fortunately, the soul fragments she had sent out were produced by resonating the soul-energy sealed in the Philosopher's Stone with her own soul; they were not truly an irrecoverable part of her essence. Even if Huangquan seized them, it wouldn't be disastrous. Hel had anticipated this risk — self-destruct runes were already engraved within those soul fragments, making capture effectively impossible.
Still, she would not give up a whole archmage body for nothing. So —
[Entry Granted: Mark of Corruption (Black), Curse of Corruption (Black), Corrupt Contamination (Black)].
"Good luck."
Hel grinned and finally abandoned the body. The remaining soul inside flared and burned, and the skeletal shell ignited with it. Little Archmage No.4 turned to ash in short order, but the flames did not stop; they leapt toward the old king's body.
"What is happening?"
Huangquan — who had not fully grasped what had just occurred — inexplicably felt a chill. She failed to notice the little body's spontaneous combustion at first, and when she snapped back to awareness, the flame had already reached her hand.
"Good run."
Huangquan spat a vicious line, then cut the connection with the old king. The poor king's body, not yet fully collapsed, was engulfed by the scorching fire and, after struggling, was reduced to a heap of ashes.
…
"That was a close call."
In Heim Castle, Hel's true body slowly climbed out of bed. The maid Anna rubbed the sleep-sourness from the leg that had served as Hel's pillow and brought a cup of milk tea over.
"Was the young master's mission successful?"
"More or less."
Hel grabbed the cup and drank deeply, calming her racing heart. The moment when Huangquan had seized the skull had nearly made her forget she'd left a contingency — she almost believed the witch would trace the soul-network all the way to her. Fortunately, Hel had outplayed her.
The incident taught Hel a lesson: a soul network was not an inviolable invention unique to her. Ordinary necromancers couldn't usually penetrate another mage's soul network, but witches of the death divinity could. They could break a soul network and trace it back to the origin. Soul-network encryption needed urgent attention.
Her plan: identify every soul that connects to the network. If a stranger's soul contacts a node, that node should self-destruct. Also, building a soul network purely out of undead bodies would no longer be reliable. Hel had abandoned the Snow Velvet Principality's network; the Free Nation's had been wiped out by Imperial forces. The only remaining foothold was in the Mandrake Principality. But when the returning lords reorganized their armies, the network she'd placed there would also be purged.
She needed a different approach. The relay stations she'd once supplied to Witt were good, but relying on people to physically deploy enough relays for a large-scale network was unrealistic. She would need another way — for example, creating a batch of alchemical devices that could rapidly deploy relay nodes.