The battlefield was a strange and silent stalemate ever so briefly. Li Yu hovered in the air with his devouring field a relentless invisible vortex, pulling at the energy of the Xylarri. The twelve Praetorians and their purple leader stood their ground. Their formation was a perfect impenetrable defense. Their collective will nullifies his soul attacks and their shared energy nullifies his physical blows.

A portion of the energy he was drawing was being used to heal the minor injuries he had sustained. He was in essence operating at over 90% of his strength and holding. It had been an ugly battle for him so far but it was fine as long as he could win.

The Xylarri, however, were not okay. They were being bled dry. The purple leader knew it and was clearly devising a plan

‘Are they going to try and run? A new attack perhaps? Their previous attacks are no longer that effective against me’ Li Yu was thinking.

The Xylarric knew they could not wait any longer. They had to break him or their entire squad would be drained into husks.

The purple one let out a final desperate screech.

The formation flared into life once again. The twelve purple soul-balls and the leader's Nascent Soul blazed. They were pouring their remaining energy into one last attack. The soul-beam lanced out again.

As usual, Li Yu felt the lock. He void-stepped but the beam tracked him down eventually. It slammed into his spiritual sea.

He was ready for it as before. He braced his mind. The 'Leviathan Soul-Shield' flared. The impact was agonizing, his head pounding but his shield held. It merely shook now, only a few superficial cracks appearing before the constant influx of siphoned energy began to mend them. The attack which had once staggered him was now just... a very painful jolt.

But that jolt was all the time the Xylarri needed. This was their final, all-or-nothing gambit.

The instant the soul-beam hit him, the formation broke. But they didn't flee. The twelve Praetorians charged forward. No, eleven of them charged. The twelfth, a Hunter-type, hung back. Its hands were glowing, clearly preparing some other technique.

With his mind still rattling from the soul-jolt, Li Yu saw the eleven-pronged assault. He was also ready for this as they had done before and was about to void-step and flicker away. The Xylarric used their previous combination to trick him.

As he tried to void-step away, nothing happened. He tried again.

Nothing.

He pushed against the void and it felt... wrong. Thick. Immovable. Like trying to swim through congealed crystals. He was trapped.

His eyes snapped to the purple leader. It was hovering behind its charging Praetorians. In its small hands was a dark pulsating crystal-like object that it had taken out from somewhere. It was not a talisman but some kind of unique treasure. Waves of spatial-locking energy radiated from it, solidifying the void around him.

They had anticipated his escape. The eleven Praetorians were on him.

"You vile creatures! Just die!!" he finally roared in frustration. He brought his staff around in a devastating arc. It smashed into the chest of the first Praetorian, caving it in. The creature died instantly.

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But its corpse, which was still propelled by its final momentum, slammed into him. And the other ten continued to try to grab him and bog him down.

A Juggernaut brute took a full-power blast from his re-summoned Abyssal Sentry orb. Its carapace was cracking but it got its massive arms around Li Yu's torso. Its claws then tried to dig deep into his body but it couldn’t penetrate his skin.

A Hunter wrapped its slender and powerful legs around Li Yu's own. Doing so locked Li Yu’s leg in place. Two more grabbed his staff arm. Another seized his free arm. He was entangled, pinned in the air by a mass of pale, struggling and self-sacrificing bodies.

He was smashing them with his techniques but they didn’t seem to care at all. Their only goal it seemed was to lock him in place and keep him here.

It was a suicide attack.

He thrashed, his monstrous physical strength on full display. He broke the arms of the demon holding his staff but the creature's other set of limbs simply grabbed on tighter. He smashed the head of one of them in with a brutal elbow strike but its body in its death throe only clamped down harder, its grip like a steel vise. They were ignoring their own destruction with one goal in mind.

That's when it came.

The twelfth Praetorian, the one that had held back dissolved and its body and soul erupting into a cloud of pure purple energy which then flowed into its leader. It was a final sacrificial offering of some kind.

The purple leader, now blazing with restored power, activated its purple Nascent Soul. The miniature version of itself detached from its physical body. It was glowing with a cold ancient malice and floated out in front of Li Yu.

It raised its tiny crystalline hand. And it pointed at him.

Li Yu felt... a pull.

It wasn't on his body. It wasn't on his Qi. It was on his soul.

His eyes widened in abject terror to this feeling he had never felt before. This was something new. Something infinitely more terrifying. It was using a new technique in this battle and it was a technique that Li Yu had never seen anyone do. Something that pulled at the soul.

'What is this? What is it doing?' His mind raced, a bit of panic setting in. 'Is it trying to take my soul? Is it trying to draw my soul out and then kill it?'

A more horrifying thought struck him, born from the Xylarri's all-consuming nature. 'Take over my body perhaps?'

"And these damn bastards keep holding on to me!" he roared aloud, the sound muffled by the press of bodies. "I can’t escape!"

Frustrated and deeply worried about the situation, he was feeling a bit more panicked as time went on. He didn't understand what was happening but he could feel his Leviathan Soul stirring in his Sea of Consciousness. It was being tugged, being drawn by that purple ethereal hand.

He didn't know what it would do. Kill him? Take over his body? Maybe something worse? Could there be anything worse than death or someone taking over your body? He didn't know. He continued to smash at the bodies around him but even if he could, he was ultimately locked in place by that special artifact as well.

He was trying to resist the pull with all his might. To reach out to his Nascent Soul to anchor itself inside his body. However, he couldn’t seem to move it or do anything with it. The leviathan for the most part wasn’t doing much, as though it was waiting there.

Li Yu could feel the soul pull from the purple nascent soul but it seemed like his leviathan couldn’t. The purple Nascent Soul seemed to... strain. This human's soul was stronger than it anticipated.

That's when the purple leader did something. Its physical body went limp, all its energy focusing into its Nascent Soul. The miniature purple figure began to glow, an even more intense and destructive bright energy. The drawing power increased exponentially.

A feeling of dread washed over Li Yu. He felt his Leviathan Soul slowly moving now. The fear of the unknown was a scary thing. The fact was he didn’t know what was about to happen but most of it would likely lead to his death.

He felt the Leviathan Soul slowly leaving his body.

'Is this it?'

'Is this the end?'

His mind flashed back to his entire journey. The fish farm. His first few friends. Meeting Khaos. Meeting his other followers. His parents. The 'burden' he had just accepted only to end up here.

'Is this why my nature was yelling at me to go and hide this entire time? It somehow knew... it somehow knew this was going to be my fate?'