Klaus flooded his palm with a concentrated surge of pure white Soul Mana.
He didn’t try to crush her soul with blunt force as he instead used his newly acquired mastery of Soul Configuration.
He mentally reached past the Death God’s decaying blessing.
His divine mana acted like a master key, picking the lock of her spiritual defenses.
He laid his spiritual hands directly onto her soul blueprint, finding the line of code that granted her ’immortality.’
’Found it... That’s quite unique, I don’t think I can replicate it...’
It was too complex but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t do anything with it.
Klaus highlighted it and then he ruthlessly overwrote it.
Klaus manually reconfigured her soul, stripping away the Nether-realm anchor and forcefully rewriting her spiritual status from ’Immortal Entity’ back to ’Mortal.’
The dark runes writhing across Meoni Hand’s pale skin suddenly froze.
They turned from a glowing, brilliant black to a dull, lifeless gray, instantly crumbling away like dry chalk.
Meoni Hand’s pitch-black eyes suddenly snapped back to their normal, pale gray color.
Her breath hitched hard in her throat as a wave of mortal terror washed over her entire body.
For the first time in such a long time, she felt the terrifying hollow chill of true irreversible mortality.
"W-What... what did you do to me?!" Meoni Hand wailed, her voice trembling violently with genuine, unadulterated fear. "My Lord’s connection... I can’t feel the Nether-realm! What did you do?!"
"I fixed you," Klaus stated. "You’re mortal now."
He didn’t give her another second to speak.
Klaus pulled his broadsword free from her shoulder, reversed his grip, and brought the heavy, jagged blade down in a clean horizontal sweep across her neck.
SQUELCH!
Without the divine blessing to heal her flesh, the steel cut through her neck like a hot knife through butter.
Her head was cleanly severed from her shoulders, rolling a few feet across the white snowpack before coming to a stop.
The fight was over.
Four translucent blue system notification tabs instantly materialized before Klaus’s eyes.
[Target Soul Eradicated: Meoni Hand (Death Cult Bishop - Tier 4)]
[Host has defeated a boss-tier entity. Select one skill from the target pool to assimilate:]
[Death Flame Mastery (Tier 2): Ability to summon and manipulate decaying necrotic fire.]
[Nether-realm Anchor (Tier 2): Grants passive resistance against physical decapitation.]
[Soul Protection (Tier 3): Generates a passive spiritual barrier around the host’s soul, mitigating external soul-tampering attacks.]
[Cultic Chant (Tier 2): Increases the mental manipulation threshold of spellcasting.]
Klaus’s eyes locked onto the third option.
’Soul Protection?’ Klaus thought, his silver eyes flashing with satisfaction. ’That’s the defensive barrier I had to pick past during the fight... A passive shield for my own soul? I’m taking that.’
He mentally selected the third skill.
[Skill Assimilated: [Soul Protection (Tier 3)] has been added to the Host’s active passive tree.]
[Remaining Skills Rejected. Converting target parameters into raw foundational metrics...]
[Target Soul Assimilated into the Soul Vessel.]
[Stat Point Conversion Complete: +2 Agility.]
A surge of pure energy rushed through Klaus’s core, permanently expanding his reserves.
Inside his Soul Vessel, a tall detailed stone statue of Meoni Hand materialized, complete with her severed neck, permanently joining the ranks of his harvested subjects.
Klaus flicked the dark blood off his broadsword with a sharp wrist snap and sheathed the massive weapon back onto his shoulders.
"Master?"
Mirela’s voice called out from behind the massive blocks of blue ice.
A moment later, the demi-human maid and Anya stepped out into the clearing.
Mirela looked much better, though she was still walking with a slight careful stiffness.
As soon as her blue eyes swept over the clearing, her jaw dropped in shock.
The clearing was a scene of gory devastation.
Ten headless or crushed cultist bodies lay scattered across the blood-stained snow, surrounded by black ash and shattered weapons.
"W-What happened here?!" Mirela gasped, her hand flying to her staff. "Who were these people?!"
"Just some trash that needed taking out," Klaus said lazily, rolling his broad shoulders.
Before Mirela or Anya could ask another question, a weak, agonized sound echoed from the center of the clearing.
"Gah... h-haah..."
Mirela froze, her ears swiveling toward the sound. She looked down at the deep snow near Klaus’s boots.
Lying there face-down was the light-blue-haired woman.
The shattered, jagged shaft of the heavy ice spear was still driven deeply between her shoulder blades with dark crimson blood actively pooling in the snow around her torn leather armor.
Her breathing was dangerously shallow, rattling in her chest as her life force rapidly ebbed away.
"Oh goddess!" Mirela cried out, her protective instincts taking over completely.
She completely forgot her embarrassment, sprinting through the snow and dropping to her knees beside the dying woman. "Master! She’s still alive! We need to help her!"
Klaus looked down at the bleeding woman.
He didn’t really care about saving random strays, but looking at the ice spear in her back, his tactical curiosity was mildly piqued.
"Stand back, Mirela," Klaus ordered gently.
Mirela obeyed, shuffling backward on her knees.
Klaus crouched down beside the woman.
He didn’t pull out a health potion or cast a standard healing spell. He simply reached out, gripping the shattered, frozen shaft of the ice spear with his broad, calloused right hand.
VWOOM!
Klaus flooded the spear and the woman’s body with a controlled, warm surge of pure Soul Mana.
The divine white energy immediately went to work.
It didn’t just melt the ice spear into harmless, warm water... it actively penetrated the woman’s torn flesh, forcefully stitching her severed muscles, broken ribs, and ruptured blood vessels back together on a cellular level.
In less than three seconds, the ice spear completely vanished, dissolved into steam.
The dark blood stopped flowing, the gaping wound in her back completely closing up and smoothing over, leaving behind pristine unblemished pale skin beneath her torn armor.
The intense, agonizing, throbbing pain radiating from her spine vanished so abruptly that the woman let out a long, shuddering gasp.
"Haah...!"
Her eyelids fluttered open. Her vision was blurry, swimming in dark disorienting circles before slowly clearing.
She expected to see the cold dark void of death however instead, the throbbing agony in her back was completely gone.
In fact, her entire body felt strange... she felt light, warm, and weightless, as if the cold couldn’t touch her anymore.
She blinked her hazy eyes, forcing her head up slightly from the snow. Standing or rather, crouching directly over her was a man.
The woman’s breath caught hard in her throat with her mind completely short-circuiting.
She had seen high nobles, grand mages, and elite knights in the capital, but she had never seen a human being who looked like this.
The man possessed a handsomeness that seemed entirely unnatural, completely defying mortal limits.
He had sharp and perfectly chiseled facial features, a rugged defined jawline, and impossibly long luminescent silver hair that cascaded all the way down to his waist, blowing gently in the winter wind.
His eyes were what truly terrified and mesmerized her.
They were a piercing luminescent silver that radiated an ancient authority.
Standing in the freezing blizzard, he looked less like an adventurer and more like an ancient god of war who had descended from the heavens just to stand over her broken body.
The woman stared up at his breathtaking face in awe.
Her pale cheeks, still partially frozen, suddenly flushed a delicate pink.
"Am... am I in heaven...?" the blue-haired woman whispered, her voice a fragile awe-struck rasp. "Are you... a god...?"
Klaus stared down at the blushing, half-frozen woman staring up at him like a delusional fanatic.
He let out a long sigh as he reached down with his left hand, picking up an iron canteen of fresh, melted snow-water from his belt.
Without breaking eye contact, Klaus unlatched the cap, tilted the canteen, and poured a heavy stream of freezing cold water directly onto her face.
SPLASH.
"Gah! Pfft!" The woman sputtered violently, choking on the cold water as she thrashed around in the snow, wiping her wet eyes in sheer shock.
"No," Klaus said deadpan, hanging the canteen back on his belt as he stood up to his full, towering height. "You’re not in heaven. And you’re very much alive. Now get up."
The blue-haired woman sat up abruptly in the snow as her eyes went wide with sudden panic.
The lingering shock of the ice water on her face had thoroughly shattered her disorientation, and her survival instincts kicked right back in.
"W-We need to run!" she gasped, her hands desperately scrambling against the frozen snowpack as she tried to force herself onto her feet.
Her voice was trembling and hoarse.
"You don’t understand! The Death Cult... they’re hunting me! There’s an entire unit of them right behind me, and their leader—"
Klaus let out a long, heavy, deeply exasperated sigh, crossing his heavily muscled arms over his broad chest.
"I already dealt with them," Klaus said deadpan, his silver eyes completely unbothered as he gestured lazily with his chin toward the bloody carnage painted across the snow behind her.
The woman blinked with her frantic babbling cutting off mid-sentence.
She slowly turned her head, her gaze sweeping over the scene.
Ten headless, crushed, or severed cultist bodies lay scattered among the towering blocks of blue ice, surrounded by dark ash and shattered weapons.
Meoni Hand’s pale, severed head was sitting fifty feet away, completely motionless.
She stared at the slaughter in speechless shock.
The terrifying women that had relentlessly driven her through the freezing blizzard for days had been completely eradicated without her even hearing a struggle.
"Turn over," Mirela ordered gently, stepping up beside her with a small, wooden jar of alchemical ointment in her hand.
The blue-haired woman blinked up at the demi-human maid, still completely bewildered, but she obeyed the soft instruction.
She shifted her weight, turning around in the snow to present her back to Mirela.
Mirela unlatched the back of the woman’s shredded leather armor, exposing the freshly healed skin between her shoulder blades.
She dipped two fingers into the cool, medicinal salve and rubbed it firmly across the tender entry wound.
"Eeeek! Ah!" The woman squealed sharply with her shoulders jumping as the cold, stinging ointment hit her hyper-sensitive skin.
"Hold still," Mirela chuckled softly, smoothing the salve over the area. "Your wound was extremely deep. The ice spear pierced straight through your flesh and chipped the bone. To be completely honest, if Master hadn’t closed it up with his magic, you would have bled out in less than a minute. You almost died."
The blue-haired woman let out a shaky shuddering breath, her shoulders slowly relaxing as the medicinal heat of the salve began to soothe the deep ache in her spine.
She looked over her shoulder, her dark blue eyes shining with genuine overwhelming gratitude.
"Thank you," she whispered softly to Mirela, before shifting her gaze up to Klaus’s towering, silver-haired frame. "Thank you both. But... why did you help me? We’re complete strangers in the middle of a dead zone... You didn’t have to risk fighting a Cult for my sake."
Mirela smiled warmly, opening her mouth to reply. "Well, Master is actually very—"
"You’re obviously a noble," Klaus interrupted smoothly, stepping forward and cutting the maid off before she could paint him like some kind of selfless saint.
He looked down at the woman with a cold expression.
"You’re wearing high-grade leather armor, your mana core is refined, and you carry yourself like someone with money. We’re heading back to civilization. If we go out of our way to save a high-born stray in the Winterlands, we will most certainly receive a handsome reward from your father once we drop you off, right?"
The blue-haired woman froze.
The warm grateful expression on her face instantly thinned out, replaced by a hollow deeply pained shadow.
Her lips pressed into a tight line with her gaze dropping down to the blood-stained snow beneath her knees.
"Uh... I’m sorry," she murmured, her raspy voice dropping into a small whisper. "But... my dad died."
Klaus raised an eyebrow, keeping his face flat. "Died?"
"Yes," she swallowed hard, her fingers digging tightly into her torn trousers. "And my noble family went bankrupt immediately after... The merchant guilds seized our assets, and our estate was stripped to pay off his campaign debts. So... I can’t actually compensate you for any of this. I don’t have a single copper piece to my name."