Chapter 42

For an unknown amount of time, Fred was in the illusion. But only a moment had passed in reality. He finally opened his eyes after dying multiple times by different kinds of tortures.

He looked blankly at Aakesh, who was expressionlessly staring at him. He felt the indifference for his life in the store owner’s eyes. He fell into another illusion, but this time it was the illusion of silence and emptiness. He stayed chained in the void with not being able to see, feel, or speak.

After an unknown amount of time, he came back to reality. He started crying when he saw the expressionless eyes of Aakesh. “Please kill me!” He pleaded while tears of blood streamed down his cheeks. He didn’t want to face the illusion of emptiness again. He would rather get tortured to death.

“Why should I dirty my hand by killing you?” Aakesh casually responded as Fred fell into another illusion. While Fred was going through different illusions one by one, the group of guards that came with him was bursting one by one due to the increase in pressure. With every death, the fear in the other member’s heart increased.

Many of them pleaded with Aakesh, but he ignored them. He instead put a sound barrier on them so they couldn’t scream. He then released Fred’s head and went up to the unconscious Maria. He didn’t have a healing skill, and Lily was also sleeping. He didn’t want to disturb her sleep for somebody’s life. He grabbed Maria’s space ring and took it out.

He then crushed it since only the owner could manipulate the ring. He found the pill he sold her several minutes earlier. He then forced the body healing pills into Maria’s mouth. The pill started acting the next second, and her injury started healing at a visible rate. After it did its work, he pushed the mental healing pill down her throat.

She started gaining consciousness the next second. The first thing she saw after opening her eyes was somebody looking at her. Her vision wasn’t clear, so she rubbed her eyes and saw Aakesh looking at her expressionlessly.

Her eyes became moist, remembering the scene that she went through before losing consciousness. “Forgive me, store owner. It’s all my fault,” She apologized to Aakesh with a slight tremble in her voice.

He ignored her in response and helped her stand up since she was perfectly healthy after eating all the four body healing pills. Her heartbeat rose when he touched her, but the next moment a pure look of horror appeared on her face.

She witnessed the bursting of one of the men that beat her while him trying to scream, but she couldn’t hear a single voice. Her eyes then fell upon the group, and she could see everybody crying and speaking something. She only saw the moving of lips, and she couldn’t hear anything.

She then noticed the man who dragged her here by her hair with a pure look of horror on his face. She could see that the man was going through a nightmare, and whatever illusion he was in was too terrible for him to be able to handle.

She was too shocked to speak anything. She looked at Aakesh to only see an emotionless face with a look of indifference for the death in his eyes.

“Here, take it,” Aakesh suddenly said as numbers of space rings started raising out of the blood pool and moved toward her. This time he was careful, so the rings survived the pressure, unlike the last time. He gave her rings to pay for the injuries she had due to what he did with Ben.

Maria wanted to refuse, but her hands grabbed them. They were out of control. She tried to speak something, but no voice came out of her mouth when she looked into the indifference in his eyes.

“Oh, he died,” Aakesh suddenly said casually. She focused his eyes and saw him looking at Fred.

He still had a look of horror on his face, but his eyes had turned blank. Maria didn’t know why, but she suddenly had the urge to touch him. She acted on her urging and stepped forward. She touched his forehead with just the tip of her index finger, but the next moment she reflexively took back her finger as she felt herself standing naked in a freezing temperature. She felt like she touched the deepest part of the ice.

She looked at the tip and saw a hint of freeze. The next moment, the corpse of Fred started freezing from his head, and in no time, his entire body turned into a giant block of ice.

The next moment, it started breaking into shards like someone poked a finger on the cracked glass. It then started disintegrating into the emptiness. Maria had a horrified face since she had never witnessed anything like this. She couldn’t help but stumble two steps backward.

Aakesh looked at the scene without any change in expression. Everyone who came with Fred was also dead. He couldn’t help but shake his head, seeing the pool of blood in his store. It had only been two days, and he had already killed more than a hundred Humans, and his store had gotten dirty every time.

Maria thought Aakesh was feeling bad about so many deaths when she saw him shaking his head. But the next moment, an astonished expression appeared on his face.

“Damn it, they made my store dirty again,” He said while shaking his head, making Maria almost stumble to the ground. He then waved his hands, and the pool of blood on the hardwood floor started combining. It then turned into a solid ball of blood.

Aakesh then forced pressure on the ball of blood, forcing it to contract even more. He only stopped when it turned into the size of a pearl. “Here, take it. It’ll help you get a breakthrough to Nascent Soul,” He pushed the pearl toward Maria and told her to take it.

She shook her head to refuse, but the pearl forced its way in her hand, and she couldn’t release it afterward. A shocked look appeared on her face as she noticed her space ring missing.

“My space ring!” She suddenly exclaimed.