The flame that the spark created was a golden flame with intense brightness and power. It erupted out of his body and burned him inside out.
Every inch of his body was burned. Even his clothes were turned into ashes.
But his body wasn’t burned to ashes by the golden flame. Instead, the golden flame melted his body and reshaped it like one would melt metal before reshaping it.
This was the same process that he had undergone when the fourth layer of force was filled in with vibrating strings and completed. But this time, the process wasn’t painful.
In fact, the process was pleasant. It felt as if he were in a hot spring. All of the aches and injuries in his body from years of abuse were melted away by the water in the hot spring.
However, even though the process wasn’t painful, it still needed a lot of lifespan. It needed far more than the meagre 41 years of lifespan that he currently possessed. So if he didn’t find a way to gain lifespan soon, he would surely die.
Because of this, he activated the Devouring Ability. He didn’t let the black force cover everyone in the city, though. He only let it cover the people in the awakening room with him.
This was to avoid causing trouble so soon. But something surprising happened to him. Actually, two surprising things happened to him.
He expected to devour a few years of lifespan from everyone since they were so weak. In the past, he usually devoured a maximum of 1 year of lifespan from rank 1 beings, 2 years from rank 2, 3 years from rank 3, and so on.
That was the maximum. In fact, he might get lower than this if he didn’t eat them alive.
But this time, he was able to get their full lifespan. That is, he was able to get up to 90 years from them.
As he perceived what was going on, he realized that this was because the Devouring Ability had become more efficient in determining that it should extract from the target.
It seemed in the past, the Devouring Ability was always trying to eat the body, mind, and soul. Unfortunately, it couldn’t eat all of these efficiently, so while it was wasting time digesting, most of the lifespan from the target would leak and escape into the world.
However, the Devouring Ability was now prioritizing lifespan above all else. So it only extracted the energy within the target. This allowed him to gain lifespan with minimal loss.
The second surprise was that he could now control what the black force field could devour. So even though the black force field had covered everything around him, he could decide to spare some people.
Or instead of devouring both the people, the ground, and the house around them, he could devour only the people. That way, the ground beneath them and the house around them would be left intact.
Because of his plan for the future, he decided to leave Slav alone. He knocked the boy out with a flex of his will. But he devoured everyone else.
Unfortunately for him, this many people weren’t going to be enough for him. According to his estimates, he needed approximately a million years of lifespan to complete his transformation.
So even if a single person gave him 100 years of lifespan, he would still need to devour 10,000 people. In comparison, there were only 100 people within this room to provide him with some lifespan. And they provided an average of 85 years of lifespan each.
Since this wasn’t going to be enough, he decided to extend the black devouring force field to the rest of the city. He had done something like this many times before, so he didn’t think he had much to worry about.
He didn’t let the black force field cover the whole city at once, though. He still showed some restraint by letting the black force expand slowly to cover more and more ground based on his needs.
On his command, the black force field disintegrated every living thing it touched. Aside from a few people, he let the Devouring Ability eat everyone it touched.
The black force field was a silent eater. Even the prey it fed on became silent as soon as it started munching on them. Someone could be shouting at the top of their lungs, but once the force field covered them, they would become silent.
The Devouring Ability was also a neat eater. It didn’t leave messy bits of flesh and blood behind while eating. It left everywhere it had been pristine.
Loki liked eating this way. Unfortunately, the people of the city had other ideas about eating etiquette. Instead of standing still and quiet as they wait for the black force field to cover them, they ran away shouting in fear.
He thought their shouting was a nuisance, but he would have allowed them to shout so long as they stayed still. But they were insatiable and refused to stay still. So he had to keep extending the range of the force field to cover more parts of the city and more people.
Eventually, all of their shouting got to him. He became too frustrated by the noise, so he said, "Fuck it. I’ll just finish it once and for all."
Then he made the black force field to cover the city. This silenced the city immediately.
So he nodded in satisfaction and said, "I should have done this right from the start. All of their noise will attract attention, so it is good to shut them up."
"Plus, this way, they won’t be able to send messages out for help. The only one I have to worry about now is the sect grounds and the reaction of the sect to what I’ve done."
He ate most of the living beings in the city, but he kill everyone. He also didn’t destroy any of the city’s infrastructure.