Suddenly, one of the soldiers in the adjacent cell let out an inhuman cry.

The raw, screeching sound shattered the returning silence of the underground dungeon, making several nearby vanguard officers jump in terror.

The soldier violently collapsed onto the damp straw, rolling around in absolute pain. His limbs twisted into unnatural angles, and his fingers clawed at his own throat so hard that he drew thick lines of dark red blood.

Within a few seconds, his mouth opened incredibly wide, stretching his jaw past its anatomical limits. His dark eyes bulged completely out of their sockets, staring blankly at the ceiling grates before his entire body went stiff.

He died right there on the filthy stone floor.

Before anyone could even react to the sudden horror, another soldier let out a similar muffled shriek. Then another.

Like this, more than twenty elite soldiers died in the exact same gruesome manner within less than two minutes.

Their bodies lay scattered across the cells, their mouths frozen open and their eyes wide with residual agony.

"I don’t do this..." Ayla muttered in complete confusion inside Kenji’s mind.

Her telepathic voice carried a rare trace of genuine bewilderment. She had just finished devouring the parasitic entities from their spiritual pathways, and she was absolutely certain that her Corrosive Abyssal Fluid or her Bloodnet threads hadn’t touched their physical bodies.

She had a very strong feeling that this mass death was an aftereffect caused by the Voidlings themselves.

To truly understand why those humans had suddenly broken down, she needed to properly test her newly acquired racial trait and understand its internal mechanics.

The best option for training and exploring the limitations of the Emptiness trait would be Kenji.

Kenji sat perfectly still against the iron bars. Because Ayla was currently in the form of a Voidling, he couldn’t see where she was located, nor could he read what was moving through her mind.

But the moment he felt a freezing, absolute cold presence entering his consciousness, he immediately understood what she was planning to execute.

A sharp twitch appeared on his lips. He didn’t fight the intrusion, but his clinical mind registered a deeply unsettling sensation as he felt his very soul being pulled away from the driving seat of his physical vessel.

Ayla opened her eyes.

No, it was more accurate to say that she opened Kenji’s eyes. The sensory feedback of his body rushed into her awareness all at once.

She looked down and stared at his huge, calloused palms, turning them over to inspect the thick scars from his weapon training.

She raised his large hands and touched his own chest, feeling the solid, dense muscle structure of his masculine frame beneath the tattered military uniform.

She carefully stood up from the damp straw. The ground was considerably higher than her standard human slate form, forcing her to look down at the cell bars from an entirely new height perspective.

Being inside his body and controlling his physical mechanics weirdly excited her. Her primitive monster brain stems bubbled with a sudden, intense surge of possessive heat, and that sudden psychological spike made his crotch bulge noticeably beneath his trousers.

"Um?" Ayla wore a deeply confused face, using his facial muscles to frown.

She looked down at the sudden physical alteration and moved his large hand downward to investigate the anomaly, but her fingers stopped the very microsecond an invisible, unyielding force pulled her backward.

Her consciousness went completely dark for a single moment, stripping away the sensory feedback of the physical dungeon.

When her awareness opened again, she found herself standing in the center of a vast, absolute white expanse. The space possessed no walls, no ceilings, and no shadows.

Directly in front of her, a transparent, glowing manifestation of Kenji stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Ayla looked down at herself. She was no longer a puddle of liquid fluid or a tiny blue bee.

She was a completely solidified, vibrant blue form that perfectly mirrored her standard silver-haired appearance.

It was her true soul form!

She looked back up at the transparent boy standing across the white space. So that was Kenji’s soul form.

It looked incredibly pure, structured, and beautifully organized.

To her predatory instincts, he looked so cute and absolutely delicious.

’Delicious?’ Ayla quickly shook her head, her silver soul hair swaying across her shoulders.

She had just felt an involuntary, deeply primitive urge to devour his soul right then and there. It wasn’t because she was hungry, and it wasn’t because her core needed biomass.

Rather, it was because her newly acquired Voidling nature whispered that devouring his soul would allow this white expanse to become her own permanent territory.

It was the base trait of continuity trying to override her logic.

She suppressed the monster urge and looked around the blank horizon. "This is your soul place?" Ayla asked aloud, her voice echoing perfectly within the spiritual domain.

Kenji slowly nodded his head, his transparent expression remaining entirely calm and clinical. "Yes," he replied softly.

"So..." Ayla paused, her golden pupils narrowing as the pieces of the puzzle finally connected inside her mind.

"Those Voidlings that were sitting inside the soldiers must have also possessed the exact same urge that I just felt. Some of them might have successfully devoured the souls of those twenty soldiers before I could even reach them. That is why those humans died so horribly outside. Their soul containers were completely emptied out from the inside."

"Can you fight me while you are in here?" she asked, stepping a bit closer to his transparent frame.

"I can’t even move my spiritual limbs in this state," Kenji gritted his teeth, a flash of irritation breaking through his stoic composure. "But I can perfectly see everything that is currently happening with my physical body outside. My physical eyes are still feeding data to my brain."

"Ahem..." Ayla cleared her throat, using her small hands to pat her blue soul dress. She looked up and down at his tall, transparent soul form without displaying a single shred of human shame. "You have such a healthy body, Kenji. It functions very well."

Kenji suddenly smirked, his eyes locking with hers in the white expanse. "If I am not healthy, how can I eventually make you completely submissive to me?" he said without an ounce of shame, throwing her own blunt style right back at her.

The unexpected counter caught her completely off guard. Her golden eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she let out a bright, melodic laugh. "True..." she conceded, her dimples showing clearly.

A moment later, Kenji’s expression turned entirely serious. The playful atmosphere vanished from the white expanse as his clinical mind resumed its strategic deductions.

"I think this external threat might not be targeted only at humanity," Kenji communicated, his transparent form radiating a cold resolve. "This kind of parasitic power... if it is left unchecked by the major factions, it will be completely catastrophic even for the Solgrace sector. The Ghouls are just the tip of the spear. I think we better notify the Lightlings immediately."

"But how?" Ayla asked, tilting her head in confusion. "The trait suppressors are still locked around your neck outside, and the entire barracks is crawling with crimson enforcers. Going out of this dungeon will instantly alert those thoughtless monsters on the upper levels."

"We aren’t going out together," Kenji said, looking straight into her vertical golden pupils with an unyielding intensity. "You are going alone."

"And?"

"You are going to take a physical proof of the infection and go directly to the Solgrace Nexus system terminal," Kenji slowed down his speech, emphasizing each word with profound gravity. "But listen to me carefully, Ayla. No matter what happens inside the terminal, don’t ever reveal your true secret to the System."

"Oh..." Ayla mouthed, her blue soul lips forming a small circle. "Is the Nexus system really so scary? Is it scarier than these delicious Voidlings?"

Kenji took a deep, heavy breath within the spiritual expanse. "Yes. The Nexus system can literally erase any existence across the Crusade realms within a millisecond. It can systematically control any mind and override any regional faction laws. Except for one boundary.

The system is programmed to never forcefully read or reveal the hidden secrets about a Crusader’s unique, foundational trait.

It respects the privacy of the soul container’s core traits to maintain balance.

That is why your trait is safe, as long as you don’t actively show it to the interface."

Ayla nodded her head seriously, her golden eyes blinking as she processed the warning. Inwardly, her primitive monster brain was wondering if her Perfect Assimilation would ever grow strong enough to allow her to literally devour the Nexus system itself.

The sheer scale of such a meal made her mouth water. But the idea of going outside right now excited her even more, because a massive war on the upper levels meant there would be hundreds of fresh Voidlings for her to harvest, allowing her to rapidly evolve her Emptiness trait past the D+ tier.

"Ayla..." Kenji’s voice interrupted her private thoughts.

"Mm?"

"Can you please leave my mind now?" Kenji requested, his transparent eyebrows twitching slightly. "It is incredibly exhausting for my consciousness to stand at one single coordinate like this while you are piloting my physical muscles outside."

Ayla looked at him and let a very bright, mischievous smile spread across her face.

"Is that a yes?" Kenji asked, a sudden, deeply text-book bad feeling blooming inside his mind as he noted the playful glint in her pupils.

"I suddenly wanted to pee..." Ayla replied cheerfully.

Kenji’s transparent face completely froze. "Please no..." he pleaded, his stoicism entirely breaking down at the terrifying prospect of her using his physical body for it.

"Please yes," Ayla smirked, her blue soul form suddenly dissolving into a cloud of sparkling stardust as she prepared to dive back into the driving seat of his physical body.