"Wait."
Lucas raised his hand to stop Hela.
"The spiritual bodies here are not real, they are merely mimetic forms created from the power within the original spiritual bodies. Their souls are incomplete, essentially just a mass of energy, not actual souls."
"What?!"
Odin, Hela, and Thor exclaimed in surprise.
Hela reached out and casually drew in a spiritual body. After channeling divine power to inspect it closely, she made a judgment.
"Although it looks very similar and is hard to distinguish, it is indeed not a real soul. It's somewhat like a fake."
After saying that, Hela glanced at Odin and said mockingly, "Just like some people, who like to put fakes in their treasury to keep up appearances."
Odin ignored Hela and said with a sudden realization, "No wonder I saw Heimdall when I arrived. I distinctly remember that his soul had already entered Valhalla."
Immediately, Odin raised another question, "But as I recall, Heimdall's soul was not damaged. The souls of warriors who entered Valhalla in the past was also undamaged. What's going on?"
Lucas smiled slightly.
This question was right up his alley.
"Thor, how about you cooperate?"
Hela and Odin looked at Thor, their eyes full of curiosity.
Thor nodded.
He also wanted to know the answer to this question.
Astral Projection!
With a bang, Lucas's palm struck Thor's chest, knocking his soul out.
Thor wasn't surprised or flustered by his soul leaving his body. Instead, he said quietly, "Lucas, I can do this myself."
He felt a bit of pain, but it wasn't convenient to say so.
As the former First Prince of Asgard, the first in line to the throne, and the current presumptive King of Asgard, Thor, in addition to his thick skin and high resistance to blows, also had some soul defenses. When Lucas's palm struck his soul out, various soul defenses were triggered, then easily disintegrated, which in turn injured Thor himself.
"I'm used to it."
Lucas gave an awkward laugh, then pointed to Thor's soul, motioning for Odin and Hela to pay attention.
Energy Absorption!
Lucas activated his talent, and with a gesture, he extracted some of the energy around Thor's soul—energy that was not only invisible to the naked eye but also difficult to perceive with a mystical eye.
Lucas asked, "Thor, did you feel anything just now? Did your soul feel weaker?"
Thor pondered for a moment and said, "I felt a little something, like I had a beautiful dream and felt a bit lighter all over."
Odin and Hela both frowned, their gazes shifting between Lucas's palm and Thor.
What exactly had Lucas taken from Thor's soul?
They couldn't see anything, nothing at all.
From their perspective, Thor's soul had actually grown a bit stronger.
"Brother, are you really not feeling weak?" Hela couldn't help but ask.
She could accept not being able to defeat Lucas, but she couldn't accept being inferior to him even in her specialized domain of death and souls.
"No." Thor affirmed.
"What's going on, Sorcerer Lucas?"
Seeing that Thor couldn't provide any further information, Odin asked Lucas.
Lucas smiled slightly, absorbing the mass of energy in his hand and converting it into visible points.
A magical and powerful energy.
"A soul is like a person's skin. Just as skin attracts dust, a soul also attracts various free-floating energies."
"Just as sweat excreted from the body remains on the skin, a portion of the energy dissipated by emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness also remains on the soul. Even some microorganisms and parasites are the same."
"However, just as it's difficult for the naked eye to detect attachments on the skin, attachments on the soul are equally difficult to detect."
Looking at the dense energy in Lucas's hand, Thor asked, confused, "But if it's so little and hard to detect, why is there so much of it, and still hard to detect?"
Lucas shrugged, "That I'm not entirely sure about. However, the proportion of energy attached to your soul, relative to your soul's strength, is much greater than that of a normal person."
Odin suddenly asked, "What about Laufey? You fought him. How was the energy attached to his soul?"
"Hmm... a bit more than Thor's." Lucas replied after a moment of thought.
He had only learned this technique of stripping attached energy from living souls after his perception ability advanced further. Before, his perception ability couldn't easily distinguish between a soul and its attachments.
Lucas added after some thought, "Not just Laufey, but Malekith, Surtur, Sindr, the Angel Queen and you. The proportion of energy attached to all your souls is much greater than that of normal people."
Thor asked, "Is it because we've lived longer than ordinary people, and our souls are stronger?"
Lucas said, "That's related, but it shouldn't be the only reason. Thor, your age is roughly twice that of the Ancient One. The Ancient One's soul is stronger, and she needs to constantly train, absorbing free-floating energy from the Multiverse."
"Normally, the energy attached to your souls should be similar, or even more for the Ancient One. But in reality, the result is the opposite. In fact, the energy attached to your soul is dozens of times more than the Ancient One's."
Lucas frowned, somewhat unsure.
He was at a disadvantage due to his limited experience. After his advancement, the only powerhouses he had encountered, besides the gods and giants of the Nine Realms, were Knull, and the Ancient One.
Although he had excellent insight, he lacked comparative subjects at the moment.
"Could it be related to Ragnarok?" Hela suddenly interjected, out of nowhere.
"Just think about who benefits most from this anomaly, and the answer becomes obvious, doesn't it?"
"The Gods behind the World Tree want to harvest the gods and giants, so they naturally have to find ways to fatten them up."
"And I suspect that too much of this energy will also affect lifespan. Look, Odin, after more than a thousand years, I am still in my prime, while you are old and withered."
As Hela's words sounded, Odin's expression immediately turned grim.
"Horrible, that is the truth."
Odin gritted his teeth, wishing he could immediately drag out the Gods behind the World Tree and slaughter them.
"Hela, I forgot to mention, there's a lot of attached energy in your soul too." Lucas leaned close to Hela and whispered.
"How does it compare to that old man Odin?"
Even knowing that these attached energies might be harmful, Hela remained unconcerned.
Lucas said, "Quantitatively, a bit less."
Hela frowned, seemingly dissatisfied with the answer, and asked again, "If we convert it to a ratio, what is it?"
Lucas replied, "Around 1 : 3.6."
Hearing this answer, Hela put her hands on her hips, raised her chin, and faced Odin. "Odin, you're just a few years older than me. If we were the same age, I'd show you what true power is."
Lucas looked at Hela strangely, not understanding why.
Odin, however, seemed to see through Hela's thoughts, but simply pondered and said nothing.
Perhaps, after imprisoning Hela for a thousand years, he felt guilty.
He calculated in his mind and came to a conclusion.
Perhaps, there is an upper limit to the energy attached to a soul, and it doesn't grow infinitely with age in a linear fashion. Once the upper limit is reached, it's time to die.
Just like when pigs and sheep are fattened, it's time to slaughter them.
Thinking of this, Odin's eyes grew cold, and he urged, "Lucas, let's begin. I look forward to you finding the bastards behind the World Tree. We'll slaughter them together."
"Alright."
Lucas nodded, no longer chatting idly.
After noting the positions and energy strengths of the various warriors in the giant pit, he activated his Energy Absorption talent, absorbing these energies and converting them into points.
He then mimicked and transformed the points back into the appearance of the various warriors before they were absorbed.
In this back-and-forth, the spiritual bodies of the various warriors appeared unchanged, but in reality, he had imprinted them with his own mark.
"It's done already?" Thor asked.
He only felt a blur before his eyes, and Lucas had already stopped.
"Not yet. This little bit won't have much effect unless it's all absorbed by one person. We need to add more to catch them all in one go. Otherwise, if they scatter, it will at most serve as a positioning tool at the beginning."
"Once they escape, they might find a way to conceal or remove these energies."
Lucas explained as he walked towards the towering tree symbolizing the threads of fate.
The roots of this towering tree were dense and intertwined, spanning time and space to connect with numerous extraordinary warriors across the Nine Realms.
Its top, however, grew infinitely, piercing the sky and disappearing into the void without a trace, its crown invisibly distant.
If not for the initial impression, it wouldn't look like a tree at all. Instead, it resembled the aerial roots of a banyan tree, or perhaps the root system of another tree.
Reaching the side of this towering tree, Lucas touched the trunk, separating a wisp of divine power, disguising it, and sending his consciousness upwards to explore.
Every deep pit burying the warriors of the Nine Realms was a blood bottle for the Gods behind the world Tree.
If one bottle of poison wasn't enough to kill them, Lucas would find a few more bottles. Once enough poison accumulated, he would suddenly strike and catch them all.
As this wisp of divine power continuously explored upwards, Lucas confirmed his suspicion.
This thread of fate before him was not a tree, nor was it the root system of the World Tree. Instead, it was an "aerial root" of the World Tree, sprouting from its branches.
(End of Chapter)
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