A Tale of Two Lovers

Mayton's vision blurred as he teleported. Once his vision cleared up again what greeted him was a simple living room with a few chairs, a coffee table and a big divan. It looked like there were still people living here with its clean and tidy appearance.

''Go ahead and sit down. I will impart you a technique.''

The soul slave pointed at the divan as he said, jingling the ornaments dangling from it. Mayton, after checking the place for a little and not finding anything suspicious or even interesting for that matter, did as he was told and sat down.

''No need to feel tense, just relax and take a good rest...''

The soul slave said softly, mesmerizing Mayton with its voice. Mayton felt his eyelids get heavy and fell asleep shortly after. He didn't try to resist it since he knew it would be most likely futile.

In his dream he saw a gorgeous woman shedding tears at the very same sofa he was sleeping on. She was raving about her lover practicing a devilish technique and losing himself in it* in a bid to gain power quickly and save her life.

Then the scene changed to her building a lab in the shape of a tower and buying a very powerful soul slave to assist her. She caught various souls to experiment on them and filled the tower with them. She was trying to shave off the foreign bits of souls mixed in her lovers soul and isolate the original one. She hoped that way he could gain his personality back.

She used ghosts in her experiments but each and every time the whole ghost got destroyed instead of the part she aimed to destroy. She stored the crumbled souls of the ghosts back in the tower and bred even more ghosts from them only for them to get destroyed again. This cycle continued on and on for centuries.

Finally, after countless experiments, she devised a technique with high enough accuracy to cut off one part of the soul while leaving the rest intact. She immediately went on to use it on her lover whom she confined in a cell without losing any more time because she knew that the more time passed, the harder it got to make a distinction between the original soul and the additions due to the technique.

Another few centuries passed with most of her time spent on her lover but she, using ghosts, still continued to try and perfect the technique more. Unfortunately, the number of ghosts were declining steadily for a long time now since not all of the destroyed ghosts ended up as soul pieces. Some straight up dissipated.

So she came up with a plan. The soul pieces she cut off from her lover weren't worth that much for her, but it was a valuable treasure for devil cultivators. By opening the tower for everyone once a year and offering the soul pieces as rewards**, she successfully continued to procure enough strong ghosts***.

With every operation on her lover, he seemingly became better until one day she decided to let him out of the cell. That was the day all the hopes of the owner of the tower got snuffed out.

They sat down side by side on the divan as they hugged each other and whispered sweet nothings into each other's ears but from the devastated expression on the owner of the tower's face, Mayton understood that things weren't as they looked.

And indeed they weren't. At the first moment owner of the tower let down her guard completely, her lover immediately stabbed her heart with his fingers. She with a sad smile reciprocated in the exact same way. A stab to the heart.

In a minute they were both dead. One had a sad smile lingering on her beautiful face while the other with a confused expression. It was unknown what he was confused about; her finding out the truth about his condition and killing him, or his own attack on the person whom he previously sacrificed himself for.

This was the end of Mayton's dream as he woke up with tears at the rims of his eyes and a terrible headache. What greeted him was the soul slave with its silver-plated body and all the adornments on it.

Looking at the adornments on it all he felt was sadness this time. He knew that those were the soul pieces that were shaved off with hope and love, only for all the efforts spent on them to end up in disappointment.

''How long did I dream for?''

The first thing Mayton asked was the time he spent because he was afraid of getting stuck here after the tower closed down once more. It was known that the Tower of Screams stayed open only for a single week every year after all.

''At has been less than an hour. Don't worry, you can stay here as much as you want. One week rule is for the ones outside the living quarters in case they meddled with the experiment. Did you understand how to solve your problem? That's the most important thing.''

The soul slave asked excitedly. Soul slaves shouldn't have their own emotions normally since their owners prevented it but this one after being left unattended for countless years slowly developed its own personality and emotions.

''Yes, I think I know how to do it.''

Mayton witnessed the whole experiment from the start to the end. It could be said that he knew it very well but without actual practice, he wasn't too sure of his knowledge.

''That's perfect! Then let's start immediately! I will also help you with it using the formation set up by the mistress. Don't worry your situation is much better since there is only one piece we have to get rid of. We will definitely succeed!''

As the soul slave ended its words, Mayton's vision once again blurred, indicating that he was in the midst of another teleportation.