“Aaaaaggghhh!!”

  The mutated arachne screamed in rage and dashed at Sokram again. Before she could reach him, he vanished, appearing on the far end of the gallery.

  “Hey, you old thing! Can you understand words?”

  Sokram studied the arachne's face, but there was no change in the expression of the mutated monster, only hatred and a savage killing intent as she lunged once again at Sokram.

  ‘She doesn’t, hm? But since she tried to protect them, there should be empathy and some level of emotional bonding.’

  As he teleported to the other side, he watched the mutated arachne furiously slashing her bony blade at the spot he previously stood.

  Finally, the light from the runic lines on the scroll around the queen’s body began to change from yellow to green.

  Inside the queen’s mind, she had lost count of how many times she had relived that moment that kept repeating itself.

  It was an unending, maddening illusion, designed to grind the mind into exhaustion. One that would only stop either by Sokram’s will or her submission to him.

  Her mind felt like frayed rope, each repeated death of her last kin pulling another strand loose. The edges of reality blurred.

  How many times had she killed him? Why did he keep coming back?

  The scent of blood was constant, then disappeared, like a metallic phantom that haunted her even when the air was clear.

  The dragon in front of her was a scary and hateful being, but no matter how many times she killed him, he always came back and killed her kin in front of her eyes.

  His words began making sense to her, but she couldn’t give what he was asking for.

  If she did, she would be betraying all of those who died at his hands.

  ‘Infuriating, maddening, tiresome…’ Words that gained meaning in her mind.

  After the thousandth time, her willpower began to wane.

  His speech became even clearer, “Become mine! Let me take you to a new level of evolution! Submit to my will!”

  ‘Maddening!’

  She was a queen, not a pet, not a slave, a queen born to bring freedom and evolution to her kin.

  Yet, she was tired. The effort to resist began to feel heavier than surrender.

  By the ten-thousandth time, she didn’t even try to kill him anymore.

  Her anger was no more.

  Rage, bloodlust, or desire for revenge all disappeared, leaving a hollow ache where hatred had once burned.

  Now, there was only sadness and despair.

  Until she became able to form words like him, 'Why… Why…kill them? Why?'

  “Because I had to, they weren’t like you. They couldn’t choose to stop killing. There was no light in their mind, only maddening hunger. But you are different, and you can start over. I’ll help you. Become mine.”

  The dragon would repeat that same speech over and over until she lowered her head in defeat and submitted.

  Meanwhile, Sokram continued to dodge, teleport, and defend against the mutated broodmother's constant, unceasing attacks.

  His energy reserves were thinning rapidly. His muscles were tired, straining from the continuous evasion.

  His patience was waning, but Nhiria’s will in his heart was clear: The new species of arachnes had to live.

  His breathing barely added any mana to his pool, as it was being consumed by the barrier he was sustaining.

  But it wasn’t just him.

  The mutated broodmother’s movements became sluggish, and the hatred etched on her face began morphing into confusion and hunger.

  At times, she would stop and stare at Sokram, not understanding his reasoning, as if this new predator was refusing to make her his prey.

  He exterminated her children and was using strange magic on the queen she had birthed, but refused to harm or kill her, as he did with the others.

  But then fate smiled upon her.

  Sokram made a mistake while dodging her flurry of attacks, tripped, and fell a few meters away.

  Right at that moment, the queen opened her eyes.

  The dim light emitted by the barrier felt familiar, the golems beside her felt familiar, and the two beings fighting before her even more so.

  Seeing her new Master falling to the ground, a mix of vindication and sadness clashed in her heart.

  But a weight pressed on her heart, and she felt compelled to help him.

  Her body moved before she could even understand the feeling. The mutated broodmother almost didn’t have time to stop.

  In one moment, her eyes were locked onto her target, and in the other, her queen and daughter were in front of her.

  The bony blade froze instantly, hovering inches from the Arachne Queen’s eye.

  ‘Stop!’ A single, absolute command invaded the broodmother’s mind, shattering her bloodlust.

  “Sigh… finally, I thought I would have to give up on you two,” Sokram let out tiredly as he stood up.

  Then his eyes widened as a voice entered his mind.

  ‘Mast..er, …please… not…kill…mother…please…please…’

  The voice sprouted in his mind like an intrusive thought. The thought formed clumsily, as if shaped by unfamiliar tools.

  It was soft, with a humbled and subservient undertone, alien yet familiar, carrying the raw, unfiltered emotion of a regal creature that was lowering herself to beg for the first time in her life.

  Sokram knew instinctively it was telepathy through the Heart-link formed by the Runic Bonding Contract.

  He froze, breath caught halfway through his chest, finally understanding why Nhiria wanted them to live.

  ‘…please… I need her… to… not be…alone…please…’

  Sokram’s gaze met the queen’s, and he saw it.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  A single, clear droplet traced a path through the dust, tainting itself on her cheek, stark against her pale skin.

  It was an unmistakably sapient expression, one born out of jarring submission and complete vulnerability.

  Their new bond played with Sokram's heartstrings, tugging at him insistently, threading her fear and hope directly into his chest.

  His own hatred and fear of her vanished. He could empathize with her. He knew the pain of being alone, missing his loved ones.

  Then his eyes shifted to the broodmother, who was looking down in complete submission to the queen.

  “I wouldn't be going through all this trouble if I wanted her dead, don’t worry. Just tell her not to resist and accept becoming mine just like you did.”

  Sokram stepped forward with deliberate slowness, careful not to let authority become a threat.

  The queen looked at him, surprise filling her gaze.

  She nodded fiercely and turned to the mutated broodmother, giving a mental command. The broodmother could only obey, looking dejected and defeated.

  Sokram summoned another scroll from his glove, and using Force, he wrapped it around the broodmother’s upper body to brand her with the Heart-Link bond as he did with the queen.

  “Tell her to stand in that circle,” He ordered firmly, but his heart was softening, as the link between them would reveal the queen’s feelings.

  The reason he didn’t use a taming contract instead was that they would soon become awakened.

  A taming contract could be broken if they wished to become free from him, since they would become intelligent beings with access to the Records.

  Once they became Awakened, the Records would allow them to choose whether or not to continue living as a tamed beast.

  A willing submission contract like the Runic Bonding Contract, on the other hand, couldn’t be voided by the Records alone.

  Such blood contracts fall within the territory of the Mark of the Judgment and its Tribunal.

  But to the Mark of the Judgment, forced submission was within what was considered just, as it followed the Law of the Mighty, or might makes right.

  As soon as the broodmother was in position, Sokram ordered the queen, “Tell her to stay there a while. I need more mana.”

  The queen eagerly obeyed his orders, and the broodmother submissively obeyed the queen’s wishes.

  Sokram sat down in meditation until he recovered enough mana to cast the spell.

  Once he did cast it, he ordered the queen to tell the broodmother to accept the contract.

  Simple-minded as she was, as soon as she accepted the contract, something changed within her primitive mind.

  The man she carried so much hatred for gained as much authority over her as the queen.

  ‘She is a lot less intelligent than the queen, but I can make her evolve too.’ Sokram thought, letting out a relieved breath.

  He had finally found time to sit and rest.

  But mere meditation wasn’t enough for him to recover the strength he needed to move to the next mission.

  Thus, he decided to camp there for the night.

  Sokram ordered the two arachnes to guard him and went to sleep.

  A good night's sleep would do what meditation could not, restoring strength to his muscles and mind with greater efficiency.

  When Sokram woke up in the pitch-black darkness of the cave, his night vision was still adjusting.

  But once he regained his sight, the first thing he saw was the two arachnes looming over him, staring down at him intently with gazes full of expectation.

  But to him, they looked like vengeful ghosts.

  His heartbeat exploded inside his ribs as instinct screamed danger before his mind and reason caught up.

  “Fuck!”

  Seeing their new Master reacting like that made them scared and sad.

  ‘We… sorry… Master…’ The queen’s voice entered his head.

  “Sigh… Did you two rest?” Sokram ignored their reactions.

  The queen and the broodmother nodded in response, but their faces still showed sadness, “I was just jumpy, alright? It wasn’t your fault.”

  At his words, they relaxed, but their expressions were awkward and uncertain.

  Yet Sokram didn’t expect anything different from evolved monsters who weren’t Awakened Existences yet.

  Then he thought of something.

  “Are there any eggs close to hatching?” Sokram asked, and he could feel their hesitation as they nodded.

  “Look, if not me, someone, or something else will come here and destroy them. I can at least promise they won’t suffer,” Sokram tried to explain, but their hesitation didn’t lessen.

  “Can you promise me you will keep them under control? I’ll need to leave for a while, and when I come back, I’ll need to relocate you both, but if we try to move your nest, the eggs will die,” Sokram explained, focusing on showing his meaning through his thoughts.

  ‘Why… move…master…?’ The queen asked, through their heart-link, and Sokram could feel doubt and fear.

  “Because I killed most of your warriors, and now you need a safer place to live. Even if you’re strong, there are stronger foes out there. And the place I’ll take you to, I’ll be able to see you more often than here and help you evolve faster.”

  In Sokram’s mind, he made the images clear for them to see, so they nodded in agreement.

  ‘Let…try…save…eggs…I serve…they serve…Master…’ The glint in the queen’s eyes was like that of a child begging for something.

  “Sigh… Fine, but just the ones your mother laid, and from today on, your name is Blanca, and she is Amarah.”

  Hearing his decision about the eggs and their new names, the tension left their bodies instantly.

  Their jaws relaxed, and the crushing weight of their anxiety in the bond dissolved into a warm, bright flutter of gratitude.

  Then, something that looked like a smile appeared on their faces, and the heart-link confirmed their feelings: it was joy.

  “Good, now go. I have something to do. Don’t go outside this cave until I call for you. And here…” Sokram gave Blanca a crystal.

  “If someone or something you cannot kill attacks you, crush that, and I’ll rush here as fast as I can. See you in a few days.”

  Sokram began heading out, but the heart-link didn’t weaken. Instead, it became stronger when they weren’t in sight.

  It felt like an extra organ or a phantom limb. A nagging in the back of Sokram's mind that tugged gently, showing him their feelings.

  He could feel their fear, their relief, and their unwavering submission and loyalty buzzing in his subconscious mind like a constant reminder of their existence and dependence on him.

  It was a weird feeling, but Sokram needed to get used to it because there was no going back.

  ‘Once again, even in this timeline, here I am… The things I do for you, Nhiria…’

  By Nhiria’s will, they were now his responsibility.

  Before leaving the cave, Sokram returned to the secret passage and carefully pressed the pressure plate, ready to teleport away at any signs of a trap being triggered, but there were none.

  He walked into the secret passage, only having a vague memory of the hallway.

  The air there was stagnant and manaless. It felt heavy and sultry, weighing on Sokram's lungs.

  His footsteps echoed too loudly, the sound bouncing off walls that had seen no light for centuries.

  But the only thing on Sokram's mind was the embarrassing memory of his own weakness.

  He had to swallow a chuckle as he remembered how frightened he felt, how weak he was, and how dumb he was.

  Because of what he found here, he almost sold it.

  The truth was that he sold it, but to someone who would never steal from him, Hannah.

  But at that time, she hadn’t revealed to him that she was his grandmother. She made him believe she was only a traveling merchant alchemist whom he kept encountering on his journeys.

  At the end of the hallway, there were spiral stairs leading down. Sokram walked carefully but didn’t detect any traps.

  By the end of the stairs, he found an unlocked door. A door that was left unlocked because the owners of this place were all inside, all very dead.

  Sokram entered what resembled a lab, a tomb of science.

  Thick webs draped like shrouds over decomposing furniture. Broken glass crunched underfoot was the only sound in a room that had been silent for millennia, besides the crittering of the countless crawling bugs.

  The equipment was beyond dusty, rusty, and corroded by centuries of abandonment beyond recognition or repair.

  Brass gears had turned green with verdigris, fused together by time. Glass beakers were opaque with grime, containing the dried, black residue of experiments abandoned centuries ago.

  Everything added to its post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

  The effect was intensified by the presence of three High Elf skeletons.

  The bones didn't look like calcium; they shimmered with a metallic luster. They lay perfectly preserved, not a scratch on them, silent statues forgotten by time.

  Beyond their soul being sucked into the void, Sokram couldn’t tell, even after all he had seen, what could have killed them.

  There weren’t any marks on the wall, any indication of a struggle or broken bones on the skeletons.

  The furniture that was unlike anything he had ever seen, a mix of futuristic and ancient, was too decomposed for him to be clear if there had been any fights.

  But thinking again, it could’ve been poison, maybe even suicide, which he doubted. But either way, it happened at least over eight thousand years ago by the looks of it.

  Finally, he saw it. There they were, three spatial rings, the first three he got his hands on in his previous timeline, even before he found the Void Glove.

  After stripping them from the skeletons, he checked their contents.

  He found a few random books and some notebooks filled with research notes from whatever the elves were working on before dying.

  There were gold coins with Meriande’s face engraved on them, which proved they weren't older than her rule over the Central Continent Elven Empire.

  And finally, Sokram found what he could only call a very special pill recipe book, and a bottle of pills that were faintly red.

  These were the treasures he was looking for: the pill recipe book and the red pills.

  The pills didn't glow with an inner light. Didn't shimmer with energy. They looked like common pills. But the feeling they gave didn't change.

  Even through the glass, Sokram could sense the potent energy swirling within them, the biomantic spell, the chaotic energy of change, condensed, volatile, and priceless.

  Something that, just like his cultivation boosters, would reshape evolution in Nhiria’s galaxy.

  He only discovered these pills' utility much later in life, and by then, it was too late for them to be truly useful.

  This time, he would make full use of them.

  Because these pills would not only serve him and his family now, but also give him enough of a foothold when he reached the Ascendant zone and even the Transcendental zone.

  To the untrained eye, it was a simple notebook. But Sokram was carrying the key to Transcendence itself.

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