Although Voss failed to corrupt him, he gave him quite the scare.
"Pathetic." Voss didn't feel a thing when he saw the righteous Knight cut down the wisp of his soul. His soul could be separated into thousands of pieces. Losing one wasn't a big deal to him. "I haven't even gotten serious, and you are like that. I expected more from you. But I guess I overestimated you."
Voss took a step forward, vanishing into the void.
A moment later, the space behind the Righteous Knight rippled like water, Voss's hands coming out of it and going for his throat.
Voss failed to grasp it as the Righteous Knight shot towards the sky.
He turned around and looked down at Voss, saying to him tauntingly, "You tried to do the same to my previous master, and it ended up being your worst mistake. Like a dog, Ninam dragged you across the Far West and stripped you of your rights and body and had your Eternal Soul pinned to the Ashen Land."
"From the king of dark mages, you were forced to become a little slave bound to a mountain by stainless steel. How can you still be arrogant and look down on others?"
The righteous knight taunted Voss, pouring ten thousand bags of salts on the latter's wounds.
Voss felt so pained after hearing his words that words couldn't describe. If he had it in his veins, he would have puked out buckets of blood and died on the spot.
"You-!! How?! That's not something anyone can know!"
Voss stared at him in shock.
Getting defeated by Ninam was his most shameful history.
However, the way Ninam defeated him, the person who sealed him, and the fact that he was the king of dark mages were known only to two people, one being Ninam and the other being one of his shadows!
"Are you Ninam or his shadow?"
Voss didn't know, but his voice was trembling.
"It's been only a hundred and ninety years since we last met."
The Righteous Knight took off his helmet, revealing a face with refined features, thin lips, and a sharp jawline.
His eyes and hair were dark and shiny like countless twinkling stars in a dark sky, and his face carried a hint of feminity and excluded intense masculinity.
He was so handsome that even the moon would pale in comparison to him.
"Don't tell me… have you already forgotten he who put a spear in your heart?"
The Righteous Knight revealed a smirk to Voss.
"You are… Alkheim of the Dark, Ninam's third shadow!"
Voss's eyes widened at the sight of him. This man he could never forget. He was the reason why he was trapped in this God-forsaken place It wasn't Ninam, but this shadow of his that sealed his soul to the Ashen Land!
"Ninam's third shadow?" Alkheim laughed, hearing his words. "You really are ignorant about a lot of things. He doesn't come close to being my source of origin."
"If you aren't his, then whose shadow can you be?"
A terrifying possibility popped into Voss's mind, scaring the shit out of him.
"No… that can't be. You can't possibly be his shadow!"
"Enough talk!"
Alkheim of the dark raised his glaive, and all the things in the cave, including Voss, lost their shadows.
Their shadows fused with his raised weapon, shrouding it in darkness and transforming it into a 10-meter tall spear, which excluded sharpness from every inch of its body.
"This power…"
Voss gaped at it.
The sight of it filled his eyes with endless terror.
In front of this power, one could only run away, whether they be a self-proclaimed God like him or the king of the undead.
Voss shot downwards as Alkheim hurled it at him.
"You can run to the end of the world, but even then, it will find you."
Voss buried himself underground to escape it. This was the third time that he had been buried in a day. However, the spear of death still found him, gorging into his flesh. Arrow-like beings flashed out of it. All of them had a mouth at their tips, and they bit into him, eating him alive.
He tried to pull it out but failed.
The very next moment, Voss raised his right hand, a blade protruding out of his palm, growing up to become 5-meter large.
Then he brought it down on his other shoulder, which was struck by the spear of death.
He couldn't pull it out, but he could cut his arm!
"Kuargh!"
Ruthlessly, Voss chopped it off.
As a result, he was freed of the spear of death.
"You can't survive it even if you cut off your limbs. It's like Agony's curse. There is only end after getting struck by it, and that's death."
Alkheim of the dark laughed at him, and Voss felt that something ominous was going to happen to him.
He felt death's hand creeping up his spine and grabbing his neck, his stomach inflating like a balloon.
Boom!
Endless arrow-like shadowy beings burst out from within Voss's guts, stabbing every part of his body, gnawing on his flesh like ghouls.
"My descendant…. Red-feathered Knight... I leave Ninam's… in your… care."
Casting the spear of death exhausted Alkheim's soul energy, resulting in his immediate disappearance.
The last words he said were shocking enough to even rock Yulran and the Water Celestial, much less Roy.
"I curse myself to survive!"
Voss used a curse to fight off the curse of death assaulting him.
The two curses clashed, resulting in his body exploding to smithereens, pieces of white flesh falling down the air like feathers.
And then white strands of flesh stretched out of them, intertwining and expanding into a huge lump of white. This was Voss's third form, a form he created by sacrificing another three portions of his soul. Now, he was left with only 5-10th of his Eternal Soul.
"I will destroy what you tried so hard to protect."
Before the portal could close, Voss's avatar disappeared into it.
