Hidden deep within a fortified mansion on the outskirts of Silverport, the Hogue Guild’s temporary headquarters was the complete opposite of Thalendor.
The air there was heavy, saturated with the stench of feces, blood, and Mana so warped that it would make any nature-loving elf recoil in horror.
In the center of a circular hall, surrounded by dozens of cold iron cages, stood Brynnear.
After her humiliating death as Queen Beetle at the hands of Halon and Lisa, Brynn had regained her human form, but the fury in her chest had only grown.
Her long black hair with purple undertones fell over her shoulders as she watched the work of her new allies. Her vibrant purple eyes glowed with malice as she gestured toward the prisoners.
Before her, seated in an expensive but slightly worn faux-leather armchair, sat Ernesto Hogue. The leader of Hogue wore a weary expression, with large bags of exhaustion under his eyes, but the greed in his gaze was palpable.
"Time is running out, Brynnear." Ernesto growled, adjusting his high-end suit that looked out of place in that slaughterhouse-like environment. "Astralis Requiem has already completed the first dungeon, and even though they haven’t shown up again, that damn Halon’s reputation just keeps growing on the global forum. I didn’t spend millions of credits to come in second place. Where is the power your class promised?"
Brynn smiled, revealing her perfect teeth. "Patience, Ernesto. Real power can’t be bought with money; you should know that better than anyone..."
As she said this, she looked at him with a cold gaze, but inside she viewed this man with a touch of disdain, since despite all the power he had in the real world, in Elysium he was merely a Rare Class.
She walked over to the first cage, where a Level 11 Gray Wolf was growling frantically. Brynn reached out, and from her slender fingers, translucent silk threads—a distorted, shadowy version compared to Lohan’s weaving—shot out, piercing the animal’s hide and flesh.
The wolf didn’t even manage to howl. The moment contact was made, Brynn activated the Vital Essence Injection. But unlike Lohan, who used his biomass to heal and strengthen Lisa, Brynn was performing the reverse process: she was draining.
"Watch..." she whispered.
The threads glowed with a dark light as the wolf’s vitality was sucked away.
The creature’s body withered within minutes, turning into a dried-up carcass. Brynn then directed the threads toward one of Ernesto’s elite soldiers, a Level 12 human who stood motionless beside the cage.
As soon as the essence was injected, the soldier’s muscles swelled violently. His veins bulged beneath his skin, and his eyes glowed with an unstable red light.
That Player’s system beeped with a notification of a temporary 15% boost to all physical attributes.
"Boss, she’s right... for the next 24 hours, all my attributes will be boosted by 15%!" the man said excitedly, snapping his fingers in excitement.
"That’s just the beginning," Brynn explained, ignoring the animal’s corpse. "Common animals and monsters provide raw energy, but the quality of the energy I can extract from them is very low and inefficient; we need something more complex. We need Sentience."
Ernesto stood up, interested. "NPCs?"
"And Players," Brynn confirmed, her purple eyes flashing. "Players from the Lower Zone with ’Potentials’ wouldn’t be bad choices. They could act as high-density batteries that the Elysium system has personally refined. The quality of energy that a Player with a Rare Base can provide us could give us permanent strength gains, and by accumulating that little by little, it wouldn’t be difficult to give you the strength of someone with an Epic Base."
Hearing that, Ernesto’s eyes shone even brighter, excited at the prospect of transcending from the Rare Base to one higher!
What he didn’t notice was the gleam in Brynn’s eyes. ’Maybe I’ll let you reach the strength of an Epic Base when I have the power of a Legendary Base...’
She didn’t trust Ernesto, and she knew he didn’t trust her either, so caution needed to be exercised in their relationship.
Then she signaled to the guards, who brought in three prisoners. Two were Silverport NPCs, merchants who had been kidnapped on quiet roads, and the third was a Level 11 Player from the Lower Zone, captured for believing he would receive a good job at the Hogue Group.
Which wasn’t a lie, since $1,000 credits were transferred to him in the real world.
The Player screamed desperately, begging for mercy, swearing he would delete his account if they let him go. But in that hall, mercy was a non-existent resource.
"This Player possesses an Uncommon Beast-Man Race," Brynn analyzed, touching the boy’s neck with her silk threads. "His mana density is unstable, but his will to survive is strong. This will make the essence even more potent."
Ernesto walked over to the Player, looking at him with the same disdain that the Upper Zone students used to show him in college. "Consider this your contribution to the greatness of Hogue, brat. At least your existence will serve a purpose now."
Brynn began the ritual. This time, she didn’t use just a single thread, but a complete web of [Matriarchal Weaving].
The filaments wrapped around the three prisoners, connecting them directly to the bodies of Brynn, Ernesto, and the four main soldiers beneath him.
The slaughter began.
The NPCs were the first to succumb. As beings of Elysium, their life essence was rich in Natural Energy, something Brynn channeled directly into her circulatory system and a little into Ernesto’s.
The Hogue leader let out a scream of pain mixed with ecstasy as he felt his own Magic Core being forced to expand qualitatively, even if only slightly.
But the real "feast" was the Player.
As Brynn drained the boy’s life, the sensation of power they received from it was tremendous, far more intense than the sensation of draining the NPCs, as if a different energy were also being absorbed, but Brynn couldn’t identify what it was.
The Player from the Lower Zone vanished into particles of blue light, undergoing the Stellar Recollection, but before his consciousness was sent back to the real world, Brynn ensured that every drop of his potential was filtered out.
Ernesto felt his muscles become denser than before, and his perception of the environment became much sharper.
"Huff... Huff..." Ernesto gasped, looking at his own hands, which were now emitting a reddish smoke. "I feel the power... I feel like I could crush a Level 13 monster with my bare hands."
"Don’t get carried away; the power boost isn’t as great as you imagine. We’ll need to hold sessions like this a few more times for your combat level to rise that much, but yes, you are now definitely more powerful than a normal Rare-tier Player." Brynn said, feeling invigorated herself by the process, despite having spent a lot of mana. "With this method, your Level 12 army will soon be as powerful as a Level 15 one. Unlike other guilds that will increasingly rely on killing monsters to get stronger, we’ll have a much more powerful shortcut!"
She walked over to a crystal table where a holographic map of Elysium was projected.
"Right now, the three Vance brothers must be locked in an intense war of attrition, giving us time to continue our development without attracting too much attention, and by the time they realize it, instead of the Vance Group, it will be the Hogue Group that dominates Elysium." Brynn painted a beautiful, colorful picture for Ernesto.
Ernesto smiled wickedly, his thirst for revenge finally finding a worthy tool. "Siena! Order the scouts to capture more ’Potentials’ on the outskirts of Thalendor. I don’t care if they’re humans, elves, or Players. I want every soldier in my guild to be saturated with this energy by nightfall."
Hogue’s group, now united by Brynnear’s forbidden technique, began to move and transform, heedless of the lives of people in this world or the next, using everyone merely as stepping stones toward their glorious future.
Meanwhile, in the shadows of the laboratory, Brynn reviewed the memories she had captured while draining the last Player, further refining her own power.
Ernesto was already awed by the power, unaware that he had received only a small portion of that energy, while Brynn quietly directed most of it toward herself.
She had to control the pain so as not to show any discomfort, since Ernesto would definitely notice if something were wrong, but feeling the power she now possessed, a sinister smile spread across her face.
’Halon... you turned me into a corpse once...’ Brynn thought, her purple eyes glowing intensely in the twilight. ’Now, I’m going to turn your entire world into a morgue. I want to see just how delicious it must be to drain that blue jelly of yours, condensed into magic...’
-xXx-
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