“For real?” his eyes shone brighter, and this time it was threatening or domineering light. It gave me the feeling of loneliness and hope… Like someone who was living all his life abroad and finally got the chance of going home.

“But…” I gave him hope, but he had to understand how things worked here, “this comes on the premise of you serving me quite well. Without going through big wars and conquering everyone, I’d have no way to help your race.”

“I see…” I laid everything in front of him, showed him everything and told him facts. I even sincerely spoke about my dreams and gave him my word to revive his race.

And it was his time to make a decision. Would he wholeheartedly pledge his allegiance to me? Or he would keep his obedience bound by the contract?

“Lord…” he finally made the choice, knelt on his knees and bowed his head to me, “I swear to serve you with my heart and soul till the end of my time.”

“Great,” I wanted to pat him on the shoulder, but I paused as he was shrouded all over in black fog.

“Tell me, you were in a deep slumber so your strength…”

“I’ll just need a few souls to feed on and be alright,” he stood up when I motioned him to do that..

Such a giant and fierce souler was standing by my side, giving me the impression I was nothing compared to him.

Anyone seeing the two of us right now would mistake me for being his servant, not the opposite.

“Souls? Not stat points?!” I looked at him in doubt.

“Stat points? These were used by the common people of my race. No, someone in my calibre will need a much stronger form of energy to restore my power.”

“What about this?” I took a piece of the godly essence I had. After all this time, the amount I had shrunk in size.

I needed to find an illusionist archlord or even a paragon, fight with him to force any higher up from his side to show up.

Or else in less than a couple of months, I’d lose such a precious material from my inventory.

“This…” the moment I took it out, his eyes shone brightly.

“What about these then?” I took out a few orbs and crystals of the higher grade that I got from the lady.

“Not like this one,” but it seemed compared to the godly essence I got first, they didn’t pick his interest, “can I have it?”

“Will it help?” I stored the crystals and orbs away, while pointing at the small piece of essence in my hand.

It was in the size of thirty centimetres square at most. Not that big indeed.

Since I had few left, I had to be more cautious while using these. As for my fallen gods, I’d start shifting to use the crystals and orbs instead to power them up.

“It’s enough to make me restore one third of my power… At least,” he said in such craving and hunger towards this small piece, “is this how lord is keeping us alive?”

“Can you be alive using energy?” It was a new thing to learn about.

“Indeed, that was how we used to survive back in our days,” he seemed to nod, but his fog only swirled for a moment before adding, “we consume souls as soul is the purest form of energy. But in peace times, we depended on a special kind of energy ore, one of a kind in the entire universe.”

“Then? It got depleted?”

“It can’t be depleted,” he said in a voice filled with hatred and anger, “it was taken away from us!”

“Taken away?!!” I was surprised to hear that. Who was this domineering to come and take something from such a mighty race?

“It’s… Sigh! It’s complicated! Things started when we did great at the alien battleground. At first, we didn’t take part in such useless fights. That alien universe wasn’t even fighting with its full strength and attention with us.”

“I know that,” it was something I learnt about.

“But the system higher ups pushed over our leaders and made us take part in that fight. The promise of getting stronger and letting our boys train and evolve was irresistible! So we fought, and created a deep impact there.”

“I can imagine that.”

“And that is what caused our demise.”

“How so?” I still didn’t get it. Yet it seemed talking about the past stirred up deep memories, memories he seemed to bury a long time ago.

So his voice came filled with rage, remorse, hatred, anger, and regret.

“Doing this great came as a surprise for that alien universe. We… We were kind hearted back then, innocent in dealing with all this mess. I thought… We thought back then that this fight wasn’t a big deal at all for our enemies. Yet we… I was wrong…”

From his tone, words, and his conflicted and self blaming emotions, I could tell he had a big role in taking up such a decision back then.

Well, he was a sovereign back in his prime. So it made sense for him to take part in such big decisions, right?

“The alien universe seemed to fight us in such a way because they were biding their time for another plan. They weren’t taking us lightly or not focusing on us like we imagined, they were recruiting traitors from all over the corners of our universe…”

“They tried to bring us down, turning the worst of us against ourselves, right?”

“That’s true. And using such traitors, even from my race, they managed to start a big revolt and take control of that big mine.”

“Why didn’t you go and take it back?” It was the first thing that jumped up in my mind. Even if they got defeated once, it didn’t mean they would lose the war, right?

“That… That mine is an entire world on its own. We were the only one gaining access to it. But… As the revolts got control over it, they crushed any established connection between our world and theirs…”