Reborn as an Extra Chapter 565: The Curse of Eternal Suffering. Part-4.

Simply being in the presence of such a colossal abomination was enough to trigger profound existential doubts in anyone, making their own being feel utterly insignificant compared to this immense and mighty entity.

‘It possesses countless faces, and clearly... numerous hundreds of souls dwell within this enormous form...’

Rio, leveraging his exceptional vision as an S-ranker, could clearly discern that this abomination featured dozens of dragon heads perched atop the tree, all directed upward toward the heavens.

Amidst the array of those varied dragon heads, the primary large head belonging to the true shadow dragon king sat right in the middle.

Every one of those heads had their eyes shut, as though in slumber, and none appeared to have detected Rio's presence so far.

Rio gazed toward the foundation of that enormous twisted tree and picked up on recognizable spatial ripples.

‘The opposite side of the sacrificial altar lies here, then...’

The colossal tree appeared to have sprouted around the whole sacrificial formation, with tens of thousands of tentacles dangling there, poised to consume any approaching prey.

‘Fortunately, I chose the challenging route to arrive here instead of using the teleportation array to jump straight to the far end; had I done so, I’d have ended up ensnared within this gigantic tree’s form...’

Rio sensed that the enormous dragon scales enveloping the entire twisted tree were incredibly tough and thick, with miasma continuously coursing through them.

Without unleashing his maximum power, he probably couldn’t even scratch them.

‘A perpetually engaged world authority... what kind of world authority is this?...’

If the twisted tree were merely a malformed mass of flesh and bones, Rio might have attempted to harm it, yet with a world authority shielding it nonstop, even at full force, Rio couldn’t inflict significant damage at the moment.

‘This mastery of world authority feels far superior to what typical deranged demonic entities possess...’

Throughout his travels in the Spirit Realm, Rio had glimpsed numerous formidable SS-rank malevolent spirits from a distance.

Though the majority were already in dire condition from miasmic taint, they remained potent SS-rankers wielding authentic world authorities, albeit with feeble command over them.

‘Could it be that this twisted monstrosity originated from the shadow dragon king’s body, which already commanded substantial control over its world authority?’

‘Yet that raises another issue... does an SS-ranker forfeit their grasp on world authority upon losing their mind to miasma? Would their world authority potency diminish?’

Contemplating this topic, Rio grew increasingly intrigued.

‘Back in my original world, uncovering the answer would have been straightforward...’

Research documents or confidential records addressing this might be archived in the human empire, but Rio had no means to retrieve them while trapped in the spirit realm.

Humans bore the brunt of the battles against demons during the millennium-long demon extinction war, and plenty conducted extensive studies and trials on demonic beings.

Thus, records from that era ought to be preserved somewhere, or the information could reside in classified sections of military supercomputers.

As diverse thoughts swirled in his mind, Rio advanced with utmost care and gradual steps.

‘Who would have imagined such a vast and hideous creature lurked within the spirit realm...’

‘This peculiar tree-shaped entity dwarfs the world tree by several magnitudes!’

Rio had witnessed the towering spire of ascension, the immense world tree, and various other grand and formidable structures.

However, none matched this one in scale or stature.

‘Could this explain why no mature dragons appeared anywhere?’

‘Did the shadow dragon king devour them all, absorbing their souls in the process?’

Not only did Rio detect the auras of countless large and small souls within the beast, but he also observed many attempting to bond and fuse into a singular unified soul.

‘This merging process once more...’

Based on Rio’s personal theories and insights, his soul had blended with the pre-existing soul of the original Rio in this vessel.

A similar phenomenon occurred across numerous spots throughout the spirit realm.

It felt as if miasma persistently conducted trials to forge at least one entity boasting flawlessly integrated souls!

‘Countless combinations of beings and forms have been employed in this grand-scale experimental effort...’

‘Evidently, billions upon trillions of souls have endured torment in these manners at miasma’s hands... Yet one aspect eludes me... why does miasma relentlessly pursue the creation of a merged-soul entity?’

Rio failed to grasp why miasma fixated on cramming dozens of souls into a single form and then compelling their fusion.

‘Is miasma attempting to replicate my accomplishment? But I’ve only existed for roughly three years...’

‘Nevertheless, these bizarre miasma experiments appear far more ancient...’

Whenever unrelated souls get crammed into one body, they clash repeatedly, inflicting harm on each other at regular intervals.

Rio had examined that clash rate in various spirit realm creatures.

By assessing the harm to the clashing souls, he calculated the probable number of collisions needed for such injury levels and determined the duration of this ordeal.

To put it plainly, Rio could estimate how long those souls had been jammed together forcibly.

And he had already determined that most encountered monsters were centuries old, or even several centuries!

This indicated that miasma had conducted this experiment for hundreds of years!

Rio remained entirely uninvolved in it.

‘Even the shadow dragon king and its followers became mere test subjects for miasma...’

‘Such a harsh destiny... alas, King Allen’s retribution is no light matter...’

After all, Rio himself was an oddity who exploited criminals to boost his skill levels, subjecting them to repeated torment, so he lacked the standing to criticize others’ handling of offenders.

All he managed was sympathy for the unfortunate shadow dragon race, who had the audacity to cross someone evidently untouchable.

‘An eerie discomfort washes over me as I circle this abomination...’

While Rio cautiously circled the enormous entity for a better perspective on its structure and to inspect it, he detected assorted soul ripples that remained vivid and highly communicative.

Normally, severe miasma corruption renders a being’s soul ripples utterly disordered and unreadable, with emotions spiraling out of control.

Yet Rio perceived a single emotion emanating from that vast malformed dragon tree, and that emotion was,

Determination.

Unyielding determination and steadfast, resolute conviction! Rio sensed this from those distinct soul ripples originating from the colossal form.

‘Could it be that despite the nightmarish horrors inflicted on its body, the shadow dragon king’s soul clings to lingering fragments of reason?’

‘What drives this determination? Why do you... why do you gaze skyward as though you are...’

‘As though you await something...’

The deeper Rio scrutinized the odd entity, the greater his bewilderment grew, prompting him to tilt his head upward in puzzlement to observe what those dragon heads truly fixed upon.

However, to his astonishment, the sky held nothing remarkable.

It was merely the standard, miasma-laden expanse of the spirit realm, marked by sharp borders and wildly intense spatial turbulences surging throughout.

Rio couldn’t suppress his mounting curiosity with every moment, so he took to the air, scanning for potential hints, and fortune favored him as he discovered one.

After soaring steadily for roughly thirty minutes, Rio at last arrived at the far side of the gigantic tree’s bulk, where a enormous stone stele lay toppled on the earth, bearing extensive damage across its surface.

The inscriptions on the stele were so vast that Rio needed to ascend high into the air just to glimpse the full stele and its etched text clearly.

And fortunately for Rio, this text wasn’t in some foreign tongue but in Ezkina, the universal language devised by King Allen.

Beyond those concluding phrases, the rest devolved into meaningless scrawl that Rio couldn’t decipher.

But Rio detected a distinctive soul ripple signature from this huge stone stele, which aligned with the core and strongest soul of the immense altered dragon tree.

Having perused the inscriptions on the giant stele, Rio verified that the shadow dragon king was truly anticipating something or someone, though its nature escaped him.

Armed with this knowledge, Rio plunged into uncertainty; he had arrived geared for combat, yet his foe languished in such a wretched state that battle was impossible.

And the thorniest challenge was that Rio couldn’t approach closely owing to the world authority’s unyielding defense.

‘Argh, how on earth will I locate Ellie now...’