In an instant, the nine peak Great Grandmaster phantoms let out a low growl and lunged from all directions, encircling Lance.

  Vrrrrm!

  The phantoms began to erupt with terrifying surges of Soul power.

  "Psions specializing in Soul attacks?" Lance narrowed his eyes. They weren't using telekinesis; they were targeting his Soul directly.

  "You're just ten peak Great Grandmasters. Do you really think you can shatter my Soul?" Lance sneered. While they were powerful, the idea that they could break his Soul was pure delusion.

  Vrrrrm!

  The Soul power from the nine phantoms converged above Lance’s head. Simultaneously, a Void Core belonging to the Void-kin drifted into the air. The torrent of energy poured into the core, carving out complex runic formations.

  They weren't attacking directly. They were building an array.

  As a Tier 5 Legendary Grade Array Master, Lance instantly recognized the strength of the formation.

  "A Tier 6 Low-grade Soul-Slaying Array! One of these phantoms is actually a Tier 5 Peak Array Master... and he knows how to borrow the strength of others to force a Tier 6 formation."

  The intent was clear. The name said it all: it was designed to execute souls. Once active, even their leader, the Phantom Emperor, wouldn't be able to withstand it.

  "He must have identified my soul as a weak point. Those previous attacks were just feelers to test my strength, and this long assault was just to buy time for his subordinates to prep the materials."

  Lance saw through the scheme. Unfortunately for them, they had no idea how much Lance had grown, nor did they realize that while he wasn't a Tier 6 Array Master, he possessed the rare Legendary Grade at Tier 5.

  "If you want to play with arrays, I’ll play with you."

  Lance chuckled. He could break Tier 6 Mid-grade arrays; why would he fear a crude Tier 6 Low-grade one cobbled together by a Tier 5 master? The thing was riddled with Exploits.

  Lance didn't hesitate. He masked his Soul and flooded it into the Void Core.

  "This Void-kin Core is impressive—perfect for array crafting. Its conductivity is far beyond a standard core. If they succeeded, even this trash array could exert decent power."

  Sensing the core's potential, Lance smiled. Without a word, he drove his Soul brand into the deepest layer of the Void Core. With that single mark, the array was his to control.

  The Void-kin master didn't notice a thing.

  Lance began covertly weaving his own runes inside the core. He moved with such speed that, in an instant, his runes outnumbered everything the other master had painstakingly laid down. Since Lance used Tier 5 Legendary Grade runes, their complexity and profundity outclassed the original work by miles.

  As the runic count exploded, the array’s power surged, hidden beneath the surface. The enemy had no idea that every one of their runes was now surrounded by thousands of vastly superior ones.

  With his mastery, Lance could have built a Tier 6 Low-grade array from scratch if he had studied the specific blueprints; now, with the foundation already laid, he just had to refine and seize control. It was incredibly easy.

  What would have been a "trash" Tier 6 Low-grade array was forcibly elevated to a "Qualified" Tier 6 Mid-grade formation. Lance had packed in hundreds of times more runes than a standard formation of that level just to ensure the sheer volume made up for the Tier 5 base.

  Hiss!

  Twenty minutes later, the enemy Array Master let out an excited shriek. The phantoms grew restless with anticipation. Even the Phantom Emperor was pleased, already planning how to reward his subordinate.

  "Hiss!"

  Feeling confident, the Phantom Emperor let out a commanding roar, ordering the kill. The other eight phantoms prepared to sever their Soul links.

  However, as they tried to pull back, they realized with horror that their Souls were stuck. It was as if they had been fused to the core.

  "Hiss!"

  "Hiss!"

  "Hiss..."

  High-pitched shrieks filled the air as they frantically asked the Array Master what was happening. But the master was trembling—his Soul was trapped too.

  Hummm!

  The array activated on its own.

  A terrifying suction force erupted. Before the nine phantoms could react, their Souls were violently wrenched from their bodies, dissolved into pure energy, and absorbed by the Void Core. The core exploded with a blinding, radiant light.

  System Alert: Congratulations! You have constructed a Tier 6 Mid-grade Array above your level!

  Experience Gained: 1,000,000! (Leapfrog Multiplier 50 applied: 50,000,000 Experience Gained.)

  System Alert: Consuming 3,000,000 XP. Your Array Mastery has reached Tier 5 Mid-grade!

  System Alert: Consuming 10,000,000 XP. Your Array Mastery has reached Tier 5 High-grade!

  System Alert: Consuming 30,000,000 XP. Your Array Mastery has reached Tier 5 Peak!

  A flood of memories surged into Lance’s mind—countless years of knowledge regarding every array below Tier 5 Peak. In an instant, he mastered them all, and his innate quality remained firmly at Legendary Grade.

  To the outside world, not a second had passed.

  "Hiss!"

  The Phantom Emperor realized something was horribly wrong. He screeched, halted his attack, and spun around to flee.

  "Leaving so soon? Too late."

  Lance, now fully recovered since the attacks had stopped, spoke calmly. He traced a seal in the air with his right hand and fired it into the Void Core.

  BOOM!

  The array fully detonated. Infinite Soul energy rippled outward, instantly blanketing a ten-kilometer radius of space. The Phantom Emperor, who had just reached the edge of a spatial rift, was frozen in place.

  It wasn't his body that was bound, but his Soul. If he tried to move his physical form, his Soul would be ripped clean out of him.

  "Human... how is this possible? Who are you?! How can the Human Race produce a monster like you?"

  Fear finally took hold of the Phantom Emperor. He glared at Lance, his voice a mix of rage and terror. He couldn't believe a human possessed such power—not just the undying constitution, but the ability to rewrite an array right under his nose. According to his intel, not even the Human Race's Array Sovereigns could reach this level of mastery.

  "You seem to know quite a bit about my people," Lance said, his gaze turning icy. This race was too dangerous. Every member was at the Great Grandmaster level; they would utterly crush humanity if they invaded in force. He had to find out where they came from. "Speak. What are you doing in human territory? If you don't talk, I have plenty of ways to make your Soul suffer."

  "Hmph. Torture me if you want. I will never reveal the secrets of the Void-kin," the Emperor snarled, breaking into a crazed laugh. "Wait for our elites to descend. When that day comes, the Human Race and the other four races will be wiped from existence!"

  He remained defiant, doubting Lance's ability to truly hurt a Soul like his. At worst, the array would simply obliterate him.

  "Tough guy, huh?" Lance smiled. "In that case, I won't hold back.

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  The moment Lance’s words fell, the Void Core suspended in the void detonated.

  BOOM!

  A cataclysmic surge of force slammed into the Phantom Emperor, physically ejecting its soul from its energy-based husk. Without its core consciousness, the Emperor’s massive body began to rapidly dissolve, eventually leaving behind nothing but a pure, Tier 6 Void Core floating in the silence.

  So they really are pure energy organisms, Lance thought, his eyes flashing. No wonder it tried to use brute force to drain my energy. It must have plenty of experience with that tactic.

  Energy-based lifeforms were incredibly rare in human-controlled territory—so rare they were almost mythical. High-level Federation laws actually dictated that such beings should be protected if they weren't hostile, a tradition carried over from the "endangered species" laws of the Ancient Earth era one hundred thousand years ago.

  However, it was painfully clear that the Void-kin didn't fall into the non-hostile category. To encounter them was to ensure their total extermination; otherwise, they would eventually bring about the destruction of humanity.

  Lance had no intention of showing mercy. He channeled the power of the array.

  Vroom!

  A beam of light descended from the void, enveloping the Emperor’s soul and trapping it in a shimmering cage.

  Sizzle!

  The energy of the cage began to aggressively corrode the Phantom Emperor’s soul.

  SCREECH!

  The agonizing pain caused the Emperor to shriek, its soul-form twisting and contorting violently. Yet, under the weight of the array's power, it couldn't break free.

  "Human! Even if you torture me like this, I will tell you nothing!" the creature roared in a desperate, frenzied rage.

  "Scream all you want," Lance replied, his voice cold and devoid of sympathy. "Soon, you won't even be able to do that."

  He turned his gaze toward the spatial rift. On the other side, thousands of Void-kin watched in trembling terror as their leader was methodically tortured.

  I’ve heard that killing even a single Void-kin brings massive rewards, Lance mused. If I wiped out this entire nest and reported it, I wonder what the Federation would give me?

  There were thousands of them—nearly a tenth of all Void-kin killed by humanity in the last thousand years.

  He quickly dismissed the idea. No matter how great the reward, he couldn't afford to expose his true strength yet. Nominally, he was a Grandmaster; in reality, he was a Rank 0 Planetary Class powerhouse. If word got out, the other Great Races would undoubtedly dispatch Stellar Class assassins to eliminate him before he could grow further. He’d be a dead man walking.

  As the torture continued, a third of the Emperor’s soul had already been dissolved. The intensity of the pain had increased tenfold. For a Void-kin—beings who rarely experienced physical sensation—this was a torment far worse than death.

  SCREECH! "Human! I'll talk! I'll talk!"

  Finally, it broke.

  On the other side of the rift, the remaining Void-kin shivered. Some were filled with rage, but most were paralyzed by a fear so profound they didn't even have the courage to flee.

  Lance, however, only smirked.

  "You lost your chance the first time you refused. I’ve already decided to search your soul. You might lie to me, but your memories won't."

  The Phantom Emperor and the shadows behind the rift were struck with horror. Soul-searching? Did this human have no idea what the consequences were?

  "Wait! Wait!" the Emperor pleaded, its voice frantic. "Human, think this through! A soul-search forces an entire lifetime of memories into your mind at once. You aren't even a hundred years old, but I have lived for seven thousand years! If you do this, my seven thousand years of history will overwrite your tiny spark of existence. You might still have your body, but your thoughts, your personality, your very soul will become mine! You will cease to be you!"

  "I’ll tell you everything you want to know! Just give me a quick death!"

  The Emperor was genuinely terrified. A soul-search meant certain death preceded by agony dozens of times worse than what it was currently enduring. It had no confidence in its ability to resist. It just wanted the pain to stop.

  "Is that so? Seven thousand years is a lot of data," Lance said with a mysterious smile. Without further hesitation, he slammed his palm onto the creature’s soul.

  BOOM!

  A titanic surge of soul-force hammered into the creature's Consciousness Hub.

  Wait... there's a seal?

  The moment Lance’s consciousness entered, he hit a barrier designed specifically to prevent soul-searching. It was a Tier 7 seal.

  Anyone else would have been stumped. Even the Martial Paragon might have struggled to crack it without destroying the memories inside. But Lance was using a specialized soul-scouring secret art from the Eternal Soul Protocol. He didn't need to break the seal; he simply bypassed it with ease.

  Lance’s consciousness slipped past the barrier and plunged into the depths of the creature’s mind.

  BOOM!

  He launched a direct assault on the Emperor’s core consciousness.

  SCREECH! SCREECH!

  The Phantom Emperor’s agonizing howls were so wretched that the Void-kin watching from the rift felt their own forms beginning to flicker and dissipate from sheer terror. In human terms, they were literally being scared to death.

  As the creature shrieked, seven millennia of memories flooded into Lance’s Consciousness Hub.

  For any other human genius, this would have been a death sentence. The sheer volume of alien experiences would have warped their personality and replaced their identity with that of the Phantom Emperor.

  But to Lance, these memories were but a drop in a vast ocean.

  Every time Lance leveled up his mastery of a skill, he received tens of thousands of years of cultivation memories. Even those were minor compared to his knowledge of arrays. Each Tier 5 Legendary Grade array he mastered contained the weight of hundreds of millions of years of continuous cultivation and study.

  His Consciousness Hub was packed with so many aeons of data that seven thousand years of a Void-kin’s life were processed and filed away in an instant, leaving no trace on his personality.

  Through these memories, Lance learned the truth.

  The Void-kin originated from The Phantom Sector, a galaxy seventy million light-years away from The Milky Way. Their galaxy spanned a million light-years across, and their race was its undisputed master. They were led by a Void Overlord, a terrifying Galactic Realm powerhouse.

  Their goal in human territory was simple: they were the vanguard of an invasion fleet sent to conquer The Milky Way.

  They were all Great Grandmasters because they were the elite scouts—the warriors of their race. Void-kin were naturally powerful; a commoner reached the Silver Rank just by reaching adulthood. They were far superior to humans in individual quality, though their total population was significantly smaller.

  The Phantom Sector spanned a million light-years—ten times the diameter of the Milky Way. If one calculated by volume, it was easily a thousand times larger.

  Despite the staggering scale of their territory, their population was roughly equivalent to that of the human race. However, Lance felt a chill as he processed the sheer density of their power. Within the human race, only one in a hundred people became a warrior, and only one in a thousand warriors ever reached the Silver Rank. Among the Void-kin, reaching the Silver Rank was simply a byproduct of hitting puberty.

  These spatial rifts they hid in were actually miniature secret realms purchased from other advanced cosmic civilizations. Each one was roughly a thousand kilometers in diameter. At a price equivalent to a Tier 6 weapon, they were affordable enough to serve as perfect hidden outposts, capable of housing ten thousand kin apiece.

  For a thousand years, they had been funneling Great Grandmaster elites into the Milky Way. Their plan was to wait for the opportune moment to strike from within, coordinating with an external invasion to collapse the human race and the other four Great Races simultaneously. Once the Milky Way fell, its inhabitants would become nothing more than livestock for the Void-kin.

  The occasional Void-kin "sightings" over the last millennium—the ones human forces had managed to kill—were just undisciplined individuals who had snuck out of the outposts to satisfy their hunger for human souls.

  Over ten centuries, they had established a hundred thousand of these outposts. Every single one was guarded by a Planetary Class powerhouse. That meant a hundred thousand Planetary Class entities and a billion Great Grandmaster warriors were currently lurking within human borders.

  Lance was momentarily stunned by the data.

  A thousand-year setup. One hundred thousand Planetary Class bosses. One billion Great Grandmaster elites.

  If they all struck at once, the four Great Races wouldn't stand a chance. And that was just the internal strike force. The main army would be coming from the Phantom Sector, led by hundreds of Stellar Class powerhouses. The Milky Way would be conquered in a matter of years.

  Lance felt a heavy weight on his chest. "I hope they take their sweet time," he muttered. "I need to hit the Galactic Realm before this powder keg blows."

  He checked the data for this specific nest. There were five thousand Void-kin left; the rest had died of natural causes over the last thousand years. According to the Phantom Emperor's memories, when a Void-kin died, their kin would consume the remains to increase their own strength.

  The Emperor had arrived here as a Rank 1 Planetary Class. By cannibalizing over a thousand of its subordinates over the centuries, it had reached Rank 3.

  "No wonder they risk exposure to sneak out and 'eat' humans," Lance thought with disgust. "They’re probably terrified of being eaten by their own kind if they don't get stronger."

  A race that fed on its own people was a race that would never let humanity survive in peace.

  Pop!

  The Phantom Emperor’s soul finally detonated, dissolving into fragments. Its consciousness had been completely erased by the soul-search; the soul-husk was now nothing but waste.

  "Time to clean house."

  Lance turned his gaze toward the spatial rift.

  SCREECH! SCREECH! SCREECH!

  The remaining five thousand shadows were in a state of total panic. Having watched their leader be systematically tortured and unmade, they scrambled toward the exit, desperate to flee into the void of space.

  "Run? If your boss couldn't escape, what makes you think you can?"

  Lance smirked. He raised his right hand and gave a casual wave.

  Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!

  In an instant, thousands of dark-gold fireballs, each a kilometer wide, manifested in the sky. Space warped as the spheres compressed, shrinking from a kilometer to a mere ten meters in diameter. Their destructive potential skyrocketed tenfold.

  Against these targets, he didn't even need the Nine Heavens Starfire.

  Within a single second, over five thousand spheres were prepped. Though they appeared identical in size, each carried a precise payload of energy tailored to the specific target it was tracking.

  "One for each of you. Don't be shy."

  Lance’s eyes flashed with lethal intent.

  "Solar Flare Blast!"

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Five thousand beams of black-gold light erupted simultaneously, lancing through the void like the fingers of a god. In the span of a heartbeat, every single beam found its mark.

  SCREECH—!

  The agonizing shrieks of five thousand dying shadows filled the star sector. A moment later, silence returned. Nothing remained but five thousand Void Cores drifting in the vacuum.

  Not a single core was damaged. This was the pinnacle of Lance's energy control. These Void-kin ranged from Rank 1 Grandmasters to Rank 10 elites—a power gap of over 512 times—yet Lance had calculated the exact amount of force needed to kill each host while leaving the core intact. If any master of the human race had witnessed this, they would have been paralyzed with shock.

  Lance beckoned with his hand. A tide of fire energy swept the Void Cores back to him, and he vanished them into his Subspace Ring.

  He then flew toward the rift itself.

  "So this is a miniature secret realm? A thousand kilometers across... it's a shame these things are anchored to the local space once they're opened. Otherwise, I’d take the whole pocket dimension with me."

  System Notification: A massive stockpile has been detected!

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