Zatiel completely sealed the body and soul of the obsidian starfish before reading its mind.
Accessing the memories and life experiences of Fourth Realm life forms was not easy since no matter who they were or what path they took, all of them had incredibly strong soul defenses. Still, the obsidian starfish fell into his illusion, making everything more straightforward.
It took him around an hour, but Zatiel managed to access the entire life of the obsidian starfish, and its name was Journaloth. It gave itself that name, and in its native tongue, it meant The One that Evolves.
Journaloth was a life form born out of the clash of energy and powerful forces, essentially a member of the Eldar Race. It was born like a small leech-like Rank 4 life form, but its cellular structure was unique from the beginning, with every cell fulfilling the purpose of a muscle fiber, neuron, and photosensory cells all at once.
From its conception, a single goal appeared in Journaloth's mind. Evolve higher and higher, rising above everything else, and took that path by consuming other life forms, making their energy his own, and continue growing stronger.
Never did it consider the need for friends or family, so Journaloth lived alone, seeing everybody else as either treats or food. Such a way of interacting with the world was bound to generate trouble, and in the end, the entire universe rallied against it since Journaloth was starting to consume entire worlds in its quest for evolution.
Unfortunately for the life forms of that universe, Journaloth was very good at schemes and was able to hide and bide its time until it grew powerful enough to face the entire universe alone.
It was a cataclysmic battle, leaving the universe crumbling, but instead of using its power to fix it, Journaloth consumed its nucleus. That massive amount of energy and cosmic forces allowed Journaloth's body to rise beyond the limit of the Initial Stage, granting it a battle power capable of facing an Omnipotent Existence.
After destroying its universe to the point that not even an Epoch Explosion could fix its damage, Journaloth left it to crumble and began to explore the Emptiness.
Those were the memories that mattered to the Samsara Thearch. He might find in them information that could help with his hunt for treasures or at least improve his mental map of the Emptiness.
Journaloth's path through the Emptiness was characterized by one thing, murder. Every single time it met some new life form, it would analyze it to see who was stronger.
If Journaloth found itself to be weaker than the target, it would flee or devise a machination to kill the enemy through sneak attacks or schemes. And if it were stronger, it would immediately attack and consume the target, becoming even more powerful.
Unfortunately for Zatiel, Journaloth was not very interested in exploration, and every treasure it found would end up in its stomach.
"Ahhh."
The Samsara Thearch sighed before shaking his head, no longer bothering about the memories of Journaloth. After completely sealing the obsidian starfish, he sent it into his Inner Universe, where it would be refined until the time he was ready to start constructing the weapons.
After he finished the obsidian starfish, Zatiel turned toward the Winged Whale and continued separating the creature's soul from its body.
Everything went smoothly, and before long, the Winged Whale's soul was dancing inside the illusion without any idea of what had happened.
The Samsara Thearch sent the soulless body of the creature into his Inner Universe as well before compressing the universe-size illusion realm into something not larger than a grain of rice. He also sent it to his Inner Universe, but unlike the soulless body or obsidian starfish, it was stored in a safe place where nothing could damage the Winged Whale's soul.
'I already have the Ice-Fire World's runic formation, Fourth Realm Phenomenon, Oblivion Gate's energy nucleus, Journaloth, and the Winged Whale's body. Those are already five weapons that can help the Sacred Kings raise their battle power to the Late or Peak Initial Stage.'
There were six more treasures to obtain, and luckily for Zatiel, just like with the Winged Whale and obsidian starfish, he could obtain two at the same time on his next stop. The only downside was that it was very far away, even for him, and would not arrive in less than a year.
Not wanting to waste time he did not have, the Samsara Thearch flashed at full speed toward his next destination.
While the Samsara Thearch flashed through the Emptiness at supernatural speed, a massive war occurred inside a powerful super universe.
On one side was a massive battle formation composed of millions of life forms and giant square battleships. All of them seemed to belong to a single race, one of humanoid life forms with cybernetic enhancement covering and improving their bodies.
The name of this race was Terkollek, and they were the dominant power in the universe, having absolute control over it.
Most warriors were inside the battleships, providing energy for its attack as well as fusing with it their soul force to grant it the power to harm even Rank 10 life forms.
There were also hundreds of Terkolleks outside of the battleship, unleashing energy blasts. While their attack lacked variations, they had immense power and were capable of harming Initial Stage life forms.
The one that massive battle formation of ships and cybernetics humanoids were fighting could not be more of a sharp contrast to their technological nature.
Facing the Terkollek was a dark flaming fog larger than Principal World, with a power that could make a standard super universe tremble.
Despite its massive size, the dark flaming fog was able to move at superluminal speed, dodging most of the attacks coming from the Terkollek but not all of them. Pieces of it were still burned when those energy beams landed.
"¡AHHHH!"
A shout of rage and pain emerged from the dark flaming fog when the Terkollek managed to assess a combined strike on the left side of its body, burning around five percent of it. However, that rage only made the power of its dark flames grow stronger, and the next second, it blasted forward.
The Terkollek's battle formation reacted immediately, but not fast enough since two of its massive square battleships could not move in time.
"¡BOOOOMMMM!"
"¡BOOOOMMMM!"
The dark flaming fog inundated both battleships, making them explode and consuming their pieces and all the life forms inside to recover from the previous damage.
Millions of their comrades perished under the might of their dark flaming fog, and they saw how the phenomenon devoured their people to recover. Still, none of them showed anything on their faces, as if they were genuinely emotionless life forms.
Not even a millisecond later, giant tentacles emerged from the fog and flashed toward the other battleships.
Clearly, the dark flaming fog had an impressive battle awareness, but the Terkollek did not fall behind. They were able to combine their minds, allowing them to find solutions to their problems at an impressive speed.
The Terkollek immediately adjusted their battle formation, making it harder for the dark flaming fog to do any severe damage to them before unleashing a new barrage of energy beams.
"¡AHHHHH!"
More power coursed through the dark flaming fog as the Terkollek kept harming it and adjusted to every move it made. Trying to do the same type of attack on them only led to damage, as they were able to adapt incredibly fast.
After forty more hours of battle, the Terkollek's energy beams had destroyed large pieces of the dark flaming fog, but just as the fight seemed lost, it began to shrink until it became the size of a small moon.
The Terkollek concentrated their power on the smaller target. Yet, before they could do any actual damage, the fog moon burst, unleashing an ocean of dark flames in every direction, killing nearly a third of the powerhouses and destroying half of the ships.
Despite the immense damage they received and all the comrades that perished, the Terkollek kept showing no emotion and flew away toward the Universe Nucleus, where their stronghold was located.
The streams of fog dispersed across the Void began to converge, slowly taking the form of a man. The one that had been facing the Terkollek was no other than Venganza.
According to the information the Samsara Thearch gave Venganza, he would come to a universe in the midst of war. What he found was a technological humanoid race that had already assimilated over half of the universe.
It made sense that things would not remain the same as Zatiel had described them since that was information he obtained nearly one hundred thousand years ago.
The Revenge Thearch had attempted to communicate with the Terkollek, approaching things diplomatically, but it was a futile effort from the beginning.
The entire Terkollek Race acted as a collective, and they saw all other life forms as things they had to assimilate.
