This dude was a giant! Soulers weren’t that big in terms of body size. Yet this dude here was at least seven or eight metres tall.

He had his body covered up in black fog like my soulers. However my soulers reached this stage once they consumed stat points.

Even with his black fog, two red ruby-like gems shone in his head. They were his eyes, and they gave me such a dangerous feeling when I looked at them.

“You are… My new lord?” a deep and hoarse voice, a voice of someone who didn’t speak for a long time, came from him.

“I’m Hye,” I said, introducing myself, “do you have a name?”

At least he could speak like any sane race.

“I’m Lucias,” he said, “I never thought someone would awaken me from my deep slumber. Don’t they tell you about how dangerous and cursed my race is? I was?”

Deep slumber? So they kept these soulers alive using such a trick? It made quite sense indeed. And that was the reason why Silverlining was acting in such a nervous way before..

As long as this dude was sleeping, he wasn’t a threat to anyone. But to make him mine, they needed to awaken him. I checked my soul number. They lost almost one million points.

So damn fierce! Just to awaken him and bring him here, he consumed what he usually would consume for a day.

“I know all about your race curse,” I shrugged, “a cursive for others is nothing to me.”

“Are you sure? It’s your life we are speaking about here,” he said in a tone that held more judgement than just stating facts, “you are a human, a weak and useless race in this vast universe. I can tell you were driven by greed for power and showed up, asked for me to come to serve you, not fully knowing what you are dealing with.”

“Is that so?” I grinned, and with a wave of my arm, hundreds of thousands of soulers appeared covering a large stretch of land around us.

I used actions to prove my point, as it was useless to speak and explain things to him.

“This…” just seeing the huge number of soulers covering the ground beneath the chariot made him startled.

“All soulers… Heed my command and kneel!”

*Thud!*

The mighty sound of their knees hitting the ground echoed all over this part of the world.

“You… You have my kin… My people… They are serving you… A mere human! A worthless human! Dammit! We can kill you with just a thought! A mere thought and you are dead! How can they serve someone like you?”

“Because I’m their lord,” I didn’t take what he said as an offence. Human race’s reputation across the universe was really low. He was just speaking out of his past experience, not judging the hegemony standing in front of him.

“And I’m the only one in the universe who can revive your old race’s glory.”

“You?!!” he asked in such shock and doubt. The more he spoke, the more his voice became human-like.

I could now feel his emotions from his voice. “I have a way, a way to solve the crisis you have.”

“Hahahah! Do you think I’ll buy that? Do you believe me, the mighty Lucias, the one who was once hailed as a sovereign of my race, will fall into such a childish trap?”

“I’m just stating the truth.”

“Kid, you might not know that, but if you die, we also will die.”

“The contract thing?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Not only the contract. It runs in our blood. Once we swore to serve someone, then we will live and die with him. And I can tell you are just a kid who got some luck in this forsaken apocalypse, ended up trying to play with fire as if it was a toy.”

“You are underestimating me,” I evilly grinned, “these are your people, right?”

“Indeed. They are the lowest grade ones in our race, but they are part of my kin.”

“Fine, go and ask them yourself then,” as I expected, that lady brought to me the lowest scum of the souler race and sold them to me as if they were treasure.

But if such mighty soulers were the lowest grade in his race, how fierce and mighty his race was? How the hell did such a race fall from such height, and end up in such a way?

I didn’t buy that curse thing. A race born with such harsh requirements would get adapted to such conditions. Something must have happened back there. Something big must have happened.

“And if you are lying?”

“And if I wasn’t?”

The two of us kept looking at each other while his two red rubies glared and shone like they were blazing embers.

“Ok, I’ll go down there and ask them myself,” in a flash, he vanished. Or to be more precise, he left behind a long trail of black fog, thick enough to cover up two of his size.

A black fog tube appeared while arching over my chariot, flying for a distance in the air, before moving in between the souler army down below.

“Answer whatever question he has with honesty,” I shouted, raising my voice in order for him to hear that.

I didn’t want him to come complaining about me using the contract authority to force them to lie. I had nothing here to hide. I was able to make all of these serve and survive under my command.

He was a sovereign! Damn lord! He was a mighty sovereign in such a mighty race before!

How strong was he in his prime? He said he was in deep slumber, meaning this wasn’t even close to half of his power.

What was his true power like when he was in his golden days? Damn! Just thinking about that made my heart race up!

One general? No, I’d go all out and ask for more later on. The more souls I’d collect, the more generals I’d have.