Chapter 22 Manipulation

To breakthrough from level 10 to level 11 one would need to cause chaos in someone's soul and make them lose themselves. The more chaos you can cause the better would be the essence of the victim and hence when one consumes it their soul would have a qualitative transformation along with an increase in essence.

The reason Lucifer did not call Taro was because he did not want him to think that he was planning something. By not taking the initiative and letting Shawn discover the truth he let Taro believe that he was in control as he knew the truth. Also, their agreement was over as soon as his human body died so he could not even pass orders to them. That was the reason he set the trap for Shawn and pretended that he was testing the doors. He also kept the power of the doors weak while testing Shawn so that Taro wouldn't feel any threat. However, as soon as Taro got sucked by the doors he used the feature of the throne to increase his aura to level 14 and used the trap set in the door to create an atmosphere of mystery. These things together made Taro lose his senses.

As Taro's soul was slowly falling into a pit of nothingness, Lucifer started consuming his essence. Due to various emotions, the quality of essence was great and as Taro turned to level 11 temporarily before coming to the castle to keep guard against Lucifer, the quantity of essence was also much more.

After he was done with consuming Taro, he reached the peak of level 10. He then looked at Shawn, unlike Taro, Shawn showed no emotions. It was as if he was empty. His misjudgment cost his King his consciousness. That was the last thought he had before his consciousness got destroyed in fragments. Lucifer slowly started consuming his essence and started forming an energy core in his body. Steadily the energy core of dark elements formed and with it, he broke through to level 11. Generally, he would have needed a lot more souls but due to the gates the quality of Taro and Shawn's souls was much higher and hence he was able to break through. The gates were celestial. They belonged to the previous King of the City of Ether.

By activating the gates, ghosts would feel powerless as their consciousness was sucked away. The gates were not that great alone. However, with the throne, they could be used to level up by wreaking havoc in the victim's soul. The previous King spent a fortune to make them so that he could level up and break through further.

After reaching level 11 instead of consuming Taro's army he let them practice along with the human ghosts and he focused on increasing his combat strength as a ghost. With Light it was easy there were various sword techniques and with them, he could create illusions and attacks. With dark energy one would form more hallucinations instead of illusions. The fundamental difference was illusions would work on a majority of people whereas hallucinations would attack the minds of enemies.

With hallucination, ghosts can be overwhelmingly powerful if they have a strong will. When a ghost has a strong will they can form strong wills in the consciousness of other ghosts making them hallucinate and making them live in a false reality.

The other aspect of power was using dark energy to destroy the souls of other ghosts. In this, they would create destructive essence and then would make a weapon or energy blast and then would hit it to their opponents. As soon as the energy blast or weapon would come in contact with a soul it would destroy a part of that soul by destroying the essence. Some ghosts were capable of forming destructive essences along with wills. They would use destructive blasts to form a gap and would use that gap to infiltrate opponents' consciousness.

If a ghost runs out of its essence it would become defenseless against will attacks. Some ghosts with strong will can resist such attacks even without essence. However, the opponent would destroy their soul and with it, they would die.

Lucifer wanted to create a technique where he could penetrate his opponent's soul and transfer his will with that. The quantity and strength of will would be minuscule but it would have the ability to replicate and spread silently. That slowly before his opponent can realize he wants to kill them by slowly taking over their consciousness while distracting them with his sharp attacks.

Currently, he was thinking of a way to replicate wills silently. To make such a will his will need to be not chaotic. Should look harmless but should replicate. He was thinking and thinking, and after some time he got some ideas but all of them needed testing. So he called 10 of Taro's subordinates to experiment.

Four days were already over since the wall came up. Lucifer was in his castle experimenting on Taro's subordinates. Finally, on the fifth day, he came up with a will that would work he inserted a will with a desire to grow and become powerful. That will, would give some essence as well to the victim and would make the victim's consciousness think that it is a friendly will. However, after acceptance, it would rapidly grow with the intention to grow and then would slowly consume the essence of the victim and release it continuously giving the victim a sense of power while in reality draining them of the very essence. Once it would spread all over it would empty the complete essence in mere seconds.

On the other hand, the ghosts and humans from the cave were done with their preparations. After long planning, they concluded that they would send three humans all of them would have a trap inside them just like Roan and they would threaten Lucifer in a fight with ghosts. Once they see the result of that fight they will activate the trap and kill humans as well as ghosts with it. Making the whole region devoid of any life.