Chapter 194: Bold Decision (1)

The traces of fierce battle disappeared one by one.

It was as if they turned time back.

The burnt wheat field swayed with the waves of golden wheat again. The cracked and huge terrain was restored, and the wind smelling blood regained its clearness. The water in the lake was the same. It was as clear and blue as before without any redness.

It was the giant trees that completely blocked the ramp that had been destroyed, but not restored. These were broken, and even what was left behind disappeared into the ground again. This process was also natural, considering the aspect of returning the Garden of Life to its "original condition".

The Garden of Life had been completely restored, even its atmosphere, let alone its appearance.

The wind was cool under the blue sky surrounding the artificial sun.

However, it was only the Garden of Life itself that returned to its original condition before the fierce battle.

Smashed members of the Skull unit littered the Garden of Life here and there. All the undead corps of Bifrost, which the Skull unit first confronted, fell and became nutrients of the Garden of Life, but it was clear that the Skull unit members also incurred considerable damage.

Especially, the undead that could not be healed with the power of life was fatal. Because of this, there were quite a few skulls that perished forever during the battle this time.

It was the King of Gluttony's subordinate spirits and the terrifying monster Ongoliant that damaged the Skull unit whose combat power was well known in the demon world.

Yong-ho, who sprawled to the ground, caught his breath several times. He was bothered by the body of the dead Ongoliant that lay on the ground as if staring at him. He could not afford to clean it up.

It was literally a fierce battle. The King of Gluttony's subordinate spirits were never weak.

It was certainly true that Yong-ho himself and the subordinate spirits of the House of Mammon continued to grow rapidly. Their mana was almost equal to that of the Ten Warriors, who Sabnak preferred to call like that.

However, there was a clear difference between their years of experience.

In martial arts, it was very important how to manipulate one's body perfectly.

What did it take to master that control?

First of all, it was important to know one's own body properly. For example, one needed to know how long one's arms were, or how strong one was physically.

The same was true of mana.

It was only the so-called geniuses who had complete control over the sudden increase in their power.

'I think I'm a genius in some way.'

Murmuring to himself jokingly, Yong-ho raised his upper body. Fortunately, there were a lot with good combat sense among the subordinate spirits of the Mammon family. Most of the time they would make good use of their power that grew rapidly.

The Ten Warriors were all killed. On the other hand, none of the subordinate spirits of the House of Mammon were dead or seriously injured.

Even though the battle was fierce, it wasn't Yong-ho's own power that brought about this outstanding victory.

'The Garden of Life.'

It was the place that Yong-ho had been pondering over since he was first warned by Embrio about the King of Gluttony.

Where would he fight if he were attacked by the forces of the King of Gluttony?

The only place he could think of was the Garden of Life.

Since then, he has secured several more floors of the Labyrinth of Greed, but he stuck with his original plan.

It was not just the Garden of Life that Scathach's power of life restored. Scathach healed the subordinate spirits in real-time, who were injured in the battle.

'She's got the indefinite power to heal.'

It must have been a hellish battleground from the standpoint of the Ten Warriors.

Their enemies were recovered from their wounds and weakened physical strength in real-time. Moreover, it was not just one or two of them but everyone.

Yong-ho, who had fought Embrio with super-regeneration power, knew well how much it could stress out the opponents. Although the Garden of Life's rate of recovering the wounded was not as speedy as Embrio who had super-speed regeneration power, the Ten Warriors must have been more than shocked.

After catching his breath once again, Yong-ho stood up, making a sound that looked like groaning or grunting. When he stood up, he now saw what he had not seen before because of his eye level.

While everyone was exhausted, Skull, who survived in one piece, ordered its surviving members to gather the bodies of the Ten Warriors in one place. Several Skeleton Warriors were seen carrying Opelia and Eligos, who were half-fainted, to Scathach's mansion.

"Skullkull!"

Skull laughed as if it was telling Yong-ho not to worry about the post-battle cleanup. Even though Skull received little help from Scathach because of its undead attributes, Skull ended the battle with the Ten Warriors without any major injuries

Maybe Skull was a real combat genius.

"Dragon bones are really good!"

"Skull Skull."

Skull laughed when Yong-ho cracked a joke then refocused on managing its unit members. Yong-ho stood in front of the corpses of the Ten Warriors collected by the skulls.

To be honest, there was not much to eat.

When it came to absorbing essence, it was usually inefficient for Yong-ho to take it unless the opponent was equal to or stronger than him.

The average strength of the Ten Warriors was about five horns.

In fact, it was a tremendous power, but it was still weaker than Yong-ho himself.

Moreover, the subordinate spirits like them were big after they died.

'Their essence has weakened.'

It was common for the subordinate spirits to be disconnected from their master the moment they died.

Their disconnection was not only fatal to their master. Rather, it was more fatal to their master in most cases.

At the moment they died, the Ten Warriors lost the power of the King of Gluttony.

Their essence would still have been helpful to the old Yong-ho, but as he was reborn as the King of Greed as the owner of Aamon, it didn't help him much.

'Moreover, half of them are undead anyway.'

As many as seven of them were undead. At this point, he was wondering if the King of Gluttony was an undead lover, but he thought it was plausible if the King of Gluttony was rational and thoughtful.

'He did it intentionally.'

Essences with the attributes of death were generally difficult to absorb. Reckless absorption more often brought harm than benefits.

It was evident that the King of Gluttony considered the scenario where his subordinate spirits were defeated by the enemy. Yong-ho felt the king was determined not to do anything that was beneficial to the enemy.

'But...'

But Yong-ho was not one of the typical masters in the demon world.

He was the King of Greed. He was greedy, and he didn't waste anything he laid his hand on.

When he opened his hands, he got greedy. He extracted the essence from the bodies of six of the Ten Warriors. The pile of light that emerged with different colors began to get entangled and rotated, and soon, they became one large ball of light and got sucked into his palms.

His whole body shook for an instant, but only once. He clenched his fist hard then completely swallowed their essence completely.

His 'possessiveness,' which could be called the true nature of greed, made even their essence with the attributes of death his own. He put together their essences to make them bigger and more valuable.

He then took a deep breath.

He felt that his mana grew more than before. Considering that the growth of one's mana was very difficult, starting with the sixth horn, he achieved a lot by taking their essence.

'Is it because of the Ten Warriors rather than their essence?'

Only

The targets of his absorption had lots of things in their essence, including their experience.

But he didn't think about it anymore. He looked aside and watched the body of Bfrost, a Lich in the shape of a skeleton.

'That gives me a headache.'

As soon as he saw Bfrost first, he thought it would be a good idea to make him the target of the combination evolution for Skull.

However, he ran into several problems when he tried to implement it.

The first problem was that Bfrost's ego was strong.

Until now, Yong-ho had carefully selected the spirits for the material of synthetic evolution in order to preserve Skull's ego whenever he evolved him. So, he chose only those that had no ego. Even if they had very little ego, he attempted Skull's synthetic evolution only after he removed their remaining ego with the help of Ophelia's mana.