Chapter 152: Chapter 152

In the next second, a bolt of dark lightning snapped across the small space and hit the goblin right between the eyes.

The bolt flung him backward; his small frame convulsed once before slumping lifelessly to the floor, smoke curling from the wound.

Sokram cast the hypnotic spell, but it failed to entrap the goblin.

“His mind is formidably strong, far exceeding that of a common goblin. He was destined to evolve into a Shaman, a King, or even transform into a Bugbear if he were allowed to continue growing."

“Darling, you know not even Nhiria or Belladona managed to save their race from the Corruption of Chaos, right? You’re not trying to do the impossible, are you?” Hannah joked.

Yet the look on Sokram’s face when Hannah asked was worrying.

The look of a person who knew the cost of the impossible and intended to pay it.

“No, not the same way they did it. But perhaps there might be another way to push their race out of the darkness.” Sokram confessed.

Combining the Mind Illusion with the Hypnotic Spell, Sokram easily put the unconscious goblin into a trance, forcing him to sign a Runic Slavery Contract instead of a normal one.

“You’re truly keeping him?” Kasine seemed surprised, seeing the fancy contract.

Sokram nodded, casting a common lightning spell on the goblin that shot him awake.

The goblin rose slowly, his shoulders trembling, indignation blazing in his eyes as he met Sokram’s gaze. “You… tricked.. me? Slave.. Me? Why?”

“Hahaha! Amazing! He can even speak the common tongue!” Sokram was astonished.

He turned to the goblin with a greedy grin and told him, “Because you are you, just that. You should be thankful I’m not using you as a test subject this time.”

Sokram’s grin broadened as he asked in the goblin’s native tongue, “Do you have a name?”

The goblin had no desire to entertain Sokram with conversation. But he was compelled to answer by the power of the Runic Contract.

“Good, then… How about…” Sokram crouched and stared at the goblin with a thoughtful expression for a while, and finally decided, “The fate you escaped from, Shidreth!”

Hannah’s eyes widened slightly, seeing Sokram give such a dreadful Draconic name to the small critter, but she said nothing.

Kasine, also knowing the ancient dragon tongue, muttered to herself, “Doom Fated, Death Fated, or Fated To Die?”

Sokram looked back at her thoughtfully, “That will be up to him to decide.”

Without a pause, Sokram turned back to Shidreth and ordered, “From today on, feeding the other goblins and the rats locked here is your sole duty. You are also obligated to keep yourself alive and in good health, and you’re forbidden from leaving this room. The food is…” Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novel·fire.net

“There, I know,” Shidreth replied coldly, and the hatred in his eyes never left, but there was no ill intent as the contract suppressed it all.

Sokram nodded, stood up, and then started going from goblin to goblin, knocking them out and putting them into trances with his Hypnotic Illusion spell.

Shidreth, who stood in the corner watching everything happening, asked Sokram, “Why us? Why Gobbu?”

Sokram looked at him with raised brow and nodded, relenting an explanation.

“Why do you, goblins, feel compelled to kidnap women from other humanoid races to mate with them? Why kill and torture the people of the smaller villages? The answer is biology.”

Seeing the goblin’s confused expression, he elaborated. “Even though Chaos had taken over your minds and corrupted them. You still feel compelled to be like us, to seek Evolution. The reason? Because your biology is still very close to ours. This makes your kind the best test subjects there are.”

“We… like rats, but also like you?!” Shidreth tried to understand Sokram’s reasoning, fighting the anger he was feeling at being compared to a rat, which filled his primitive heart.

“No, not exactly like rats, but if what I’m creating can kill someone, I would prefer to kill something that hates me and is trying to kill me than those I can be friends with. So tell me, Shidreth, do you think we can ever be friends?”

Sokram smiled at the goblin, already knowing the answer.

Shidreth shook his head calmly, his gruff voice firm, “We gobbu just want to live, hunt, and mate. Your women… pretty, we mate with them!"

Then his small frame began shaking with fury. "But friends? Never! I hate Drak! Never friends! I rape your women, spit on your corpse! Ahhg!”

As rage and killing intent consumed Shidreth’s mind, the bond formed by the Runic Contract acted and knocked Shidreth unconscious.

“Sigh… Well, this goblin is highly intelligent, but the critter will have to learn how to control its anger and hatred.” Sokram lamented, but was truly intrigued as he had never seen a goblin like that below the Uncommon Level of Existence.

“Intriguing indeed, you should be careful with it,” Hannah warned, finishing binding the last goblin to the regular slavery contracts.

“Well, either way, we can start testing the working vials from tomorrow on.”

Sokram stood up, stored the contracts, and didn’t bother placing Shidreth back in his cage.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Under the influence of the Runic Slavery Contract, his orders were absolute.

If Shidreth forced himself to break it, he would be knocked out by the power of the slave bond.

And to prove his point, he even left the door to the lab open.

Sokram didn’t go back to the tower that night, as he wanted to be well-rested for the training the next day.

But during that night, something peculiar happened that forced Sokram to rush back to the lab, not to intervene but merely to watch.

Sokram activated a concealment runestone.

The air around him rippled slightly.

He slipped down the stairs, the silence of the empty lab floor amplifying the soft rasp of his own breathing as he watched from the shadows.

What he saw was Shidreth trying to go up the stairs, his small, furious body repeatedly halting at the threshold, an unseen wall repelling him.

No matter his willpower, he couldn't break the invisible, agonizing grip of the Runic Slave Contract.

Then something peculiar happened: The bond hummed faintly in his mind, and Shidreth’s thoughts bled through like whispers carried on static.

‘Drak said... no leaving...' Shidreth nodded, scratching the back of his head in contemplation.

'But Drak did not say not to let others leave. Or carry Shid… No, not my name! Drak’s name, not my name! Not my name!’

Shidreth, consumed by anger, opened all the cages.

But the simpler slavery contracts didn’t allow the same autonomy as the runic one Shidreth was bound to.

So even with the cages opening, just by Sokram’s will for the goblins not to leave, they wouldn’t.

Shidreth screamed and ordered, going as far as telling the goblins that Sokram had ordered them to leave.

Frustrated, Shidreth seized one of the female goblins and dragged her into his cage, intending to vent his frustration on her.

Sokram didn’t want to see that scene at all, so he left before it even started.

Sokram returned to his upstairs lab instead of heading straight home.

Pretending to have randomly picked the working sample, knowing no one could prove he hadn’t.

He decided to make an alteration to it and mix the new, more powerful formula he had hidden from Hannah and Kasine into the one he knew would work.

It didn’t take him long to concoct it, and soon the new working formula’s sample had been replaced with a stronger one.

What he didn’t know for sure was how much stronger it would be on humanoids.

Sokram went back home and slept in a good mood until it was time to go meet Leona and Kamus.

Arriving there, Sokram greeted them as usual, but noticed that there was no steel pole piled on the ground.

Instead, there were many of them on top of a reinforced wagon.

Sokram counted fifty before Leona interrupted him and handed him the arm and ankle rings.

Kamus, after Sokram wore the rings, sat on the wagon’s driver seat with Leona beside him and told Sokram without offering even a suggestion, “You will pull the wagon back to the formation. Go.”

“Yes, Grandmaster,” Sokram said with a nod, then, looking around the wagon, he found a rope.

He didn’t even ask if he could, as the purpose of it was easy to see.

Sokram tied the rope around the wagon’s tongue and then around his shoulders as if it were a backpack and started walking, pulling the wagon.

With his mana reinforcing the rope, it didn't even make the slightest snapping sound, as if it were made of steel.

Seeing Sokram solving that so easily, Leona frowned and asked Kamus, “Do you think Mother might have leaked something?”

But just then, Kasine’s voice came from above, “You unfilial brat of a kitty, I’ll teach you some manners!”

Leona tried to escape, running into the woods, but Kasine was a lot faster.

Soon, both Kamus and Sokram heard Leona screaming, “Forgive me, mommy! I didn’t mean it like that!”

Sokram looked toward the woods with an amused expression before turning to Kamus, “Grandmaster, should I wait until my Master returns?”

“No, that might take a while. Go on.” Kamus's tone was firm, but he gazed at Sokram with curiosity.

Sokram could sense Kamus's gaze at the back of his head, but also notice his curiosity.

“Grandmaster, did Nana Kasine tell you about what we found during the weekend?” Sokram tried to start a conversation with a very humble tone as he pulled the wagon one step at a time.

“Yes, she did more or less, an amazing pill or something like that, right? I’m not very good with alchemy stuff, but she said it would speed up cultivation many times.”

Kamus spoke absent-mindedly, still suspecting Sokram may have some information about their training.

“Yes, Grandmaster. If I can figure out something like that, something no one else ever did, do you truly think I can’t see through your and Master Leona’s antics? Because the geniality of your training method is in how fast it brings results, not in how mysterious it seems.”

Sokram’s tone remained humble but firm, despite sensing Kamus squinting his eyes at the back of his head.

“Besides, I have a good mind, one most magicians can only dream of, so to me it’s not hard to find out that this rope was there for this purpose, as it wasn’t hard to find the entrance of the formation sensing its mana.”

Sokram looked back, flashing his Grandmaster a sheepish grin.

“I could solve the most complex puzzles known to all at the age of four. I can even recite line by line the first book I ever read, do you think I would forget something as essential as the Right, Left, Breathe method?”

Realizing where Sokram was getting at, Kamus asked, “I understand that, Sokram. But can’t you pretend and entertain us a little bit?”

Kamus’s face twisted into theatrical tragedy, even producing the most pitiful pair of fake tears Sokram had ever seen.

A shiver ran through Sokram as memories of his past timeline surfaced. “No, I can’t. You keep staring at me with those evil grins plastered on your faces, that is scary!”

“You mean disciple! You know what? What you want doesn’t matter! I won’t be unfair. But if you take more than an hour to reach the formation, you will have to do five thousand push-ups and sit-ups! Now go!” Kamus assumed a silly pose on top of the wagon, pointing toward the clearing over a hundred meters ahead.

“Yes, Grandmaster!” Sokram pushed the wagon, but instead of relying solely on physical strength, thanks to the results of last week's training, he could now empower his steps with Force without getting out of breath.

Once Sokram started using the Right, Left, Breathe Method at a good pace, Kamus realized he was playing checkers against someone playing chess with golden pieces.

“You?!” Kamus started at Sokram in complete disbelief.

“Thank you for the training, Grandmaster!” Sokram shouted as he sped up.

The strain on Sokram’s muscles was still more than his passive recovery gifts could deal with. The exercise was excellent to elevate his muscles to the next level of density, as the wagon weighed over ten tons.

The only tricky part was to find a path for the wagon through the woods without breaking its wheels.

Yet, Sokram’s pace was so fast that he even passed Lymus, who was struggling with his wagon halfway there.

And as he passed Lymus, he shouted, “Good morning, Sword Uncle! Try using Invisible Force: Flowing River Steps, with Right, Left, Breathe!”

“Sokram! Not fair! He is supposed to figure this thing out by himself!” Kamus shouted as their wagon passed through Lymus’s as a walking hare passes a slug.

From behind, Sokram heard Lymus shouting, “Thank you, Sokram!”

The real reason Sokram aided Lymus was so Lymus wouldn’t be late, and subsequently, cause him to be late.

When they arrived, Leona and Kasine were already there, Leona rubbing her bottom with a crying face, but once they saw Sokram appearing and the rhythm of his Flowing River Steps, they frowned.

“This damn kid has seen through everything from the start!” Kamus jumped from the wagon, but then Sokram made the most innocent face as if Kamus had just wronged him.

“But, Grandmaster… It was thanks to your tip that I…” Sokram covered his mouth as if he had just said something he shouldn’t.

“So it was you from the start?!” Kasine and Leona glared at Kamus as they shouted in unison.

“Kid, you'd better clear this mess up or…” But Kamus’s words got caught in his throat as he saw Sokram laughing. “You… Shameless!”

Kasine and Leona looked confused for a second or two before they realized what was happening.

Leona stared sternly at her disciple, “Soookram?!”

“Hahaha, sorry, Master. But you guys are so easy to mess with, Hahahaha.” Sokram couldn’t stop laughing.

A sudden chill ran down his spine. He spun around, but Kasine was already there, a predatory smile stretching her face.

Before Sokram could even flinch, her arm was hooked around his neck, cutting off his breath in a playful yet threatening embrace.

“What do you mean? Explain. Won’t you, dear child?” But Kasine’s sweet and polite words didn’t match her chilling and menacing tone in her voice.