Awakening：The Infinite Evolution of My Talent as a Low-Level Awakener - Chapter 615

Chapter 615: Chapter 615: The Unimaginable Soul Aggregation!
It took a long moment for Sterl to recover from his shock. The scene before him had entirely surpassed his imagination. He had entertained the idea earlier, comparing the mastermind to ants, but to see it in reality was staggering.

The colossal creature beneath him, over a hundred meters long, was the queen of this ant-like colony, while the ordinary Silver Spiders swarming around were akin to worker ants under the queen’s control.

Yet, compared to normal ants, this monstrosity was far more sinister, far more powerful, and infinitely more terrifying. It bore no resemblance to any ordinary ant colony—it was a living nightmare.

If Sterl was this stunned, Boris and the others were utterly dumbfounded. Their wide eyes and slackened jaws reflected their disbelief as they stared at the horrific sight below. Their very understanding of the world seemed to crack and crumble under the weight of what they were witnessing.

Boris hailed from the nation of Orichalcum, while the other nine divine followers belonged to the Ashen Temple. Both were ancient and powerful divine factions, existing for countless years and preserving endless records of arcane secrets and extraordinary phenomena, including histories of the Endless Void.

Yet even with all this knowledge, none of them had ever encountered anything like the horrifying and bizarre species before them. It was something that should never have existed—an abomination, a forbidden presence in this world.

Not only did it exist, but it had begun extending its sinister tendrils into the depths of hell itself. The next step? Surely, it would invade the Prime World.

At this realization, Boris and the others felt as though they had been struck by lightning. Their minds raced, recalling fragments of information about the Great Calamity.

Even as divine beings, revered as supreme by mortals, their knowledge of the Great Calamity was limited. They knew only that it was a world-ending disaster, a catastrophe so immense that even gods could fall like ants, their lives snuffed out in an instant.

Beyond this, the specifics of the calamity remained shrouded in mystery. Only the upper realms’ gods possessed deeper insights, and they guarded this information with impenetrable secrecy.

Now, as they watched the massive worm-like creature beneath them spawn millions of Silver Spiders—each as strong as second- or third-class soldiers—in mere seconds, they couldn’t help but connect it to the impending Great Calamity.

“This… How can such an abomination exist in this world?” Boris’s voice trembled with fear, his mind consumed by an overwhelming urge: to destroy it. To obliterate this grotesque monstrosity, to crush it utterly, and to seal it away in the depths of the endless abyss.

However strong this impulse was, the followers of Sterl, being his most loyal and disciplined adherents, prioritized his command above all else. Without an explicit order from Sterl, they dared not act rashly.

As for Sterl, after regaining his composure, a sudden realization struck him. He recalled the faint, cryptic soul wave that had emanated earlier from the worm-like creature beneath him.

It was shortly after that wave of soul energy that the Silver Spiders had begun devouring the silvery liquid on the ground, growing stronger with each passing moment.

The wave had been incredibly subtle—so faint that without Sterl’s immensely powerful soul, coupled with the augmentation of the Eerie Eyes of the Soul Prison, it would have gone entirely unnoticed.

“Could it be… all these Silver Spiders share the same soul? And it originates from this thing?”

Sterl’s gaze lingered on the eerie worm beneath him, scrutinizing it. At the same time, he felt an overwhelming and vast will focusing its attention directly on him.

This will carried no emotion; it enveloped him with an unsettling calm, as if it were probing his very being, inspecting every fiber of his essence.

“It’s you…”

Sterl’s eyes narrowed slightly as the realization dawned on him. The source of this immense will was none other than the worm itself.

But how could such a will be so incomprehensibly vast?

He had never encountered any creature possessing such a colossal soul presence—not even the upper gods could compare.

Taking a deep breath, Sterl hesitated no longer and activated his Soul Insight ability.

In an instant, the worm’s soul essence was laid bare before his perception.

At that moment, Sterl’s body trembled involuntarily. His gaze froze, his thoughts coming to an abrupt halt as he stared, stunned, at the revealed soul essence.

“This… How is this possible?”

He was utterly dumbfounded. His Eerie Eyes of the Soul Prison transformed his pupils into deep, swirling vortices like black holes, but his expression betrayed pure horror and disbelief.

The soul essence of the worm was a conglomeration of countless twisted, agonized faces!

Among those faces, he recognized the features of Two-Tailed Lizardmen, Venomous Mist Serpentfolk, Swamp Giant Crocodiles, Corrupted Treants, and nearly every other race that inhabited this layer of hell.

From a single glance, it was evident that an untold number of souls had been warped, compressed, and fused into a single massive sphere.

At the core of this grotesque sphere was a deep-gray mist, pulsating like a black hole, absorbing and compacting every soul into its swirling center.

At that moment, Sterl understood why the soul presence of this worm was so incomprehensibly vast. The answer was right before him, horrifying and undeniable.

This was not a normal soul at all—it was a soul aggregation, a horrifying amalgamation of countless twisted and compressed souls!

In other words, this grotesque abomination had not only devoured the flesh and energy of all living beings in this layer of hell, but it had also absorbed every one of their souls!

No wonder the flesh and souls consumed by the Silver Spiders had vanished without a trace—every bit of it had been funneled into this monstrosity.

Sterl’s heart pounded in his chest as he stared at the writhing mass of faces within the soul aggregation, his mind a tangled mess.

Although Sterl himself possessed the ability to absorb and refine souls through the Soul Devourer Sphere, he could only process them by refining the souls into pure soul energy before absorbing it.

What this creature was doing—directly fusing countless living souls and forcibly combining them into one entity—was something Sterl wouldn’t even dare to imagine, let alone attempt.

Every soul represents its own memories and individuality. If one were to simply fuse them, their conflicting wills would relentlessly assault the host’s consciousness. For someone like Sterl, whose soul willpower was exceptionally strong, merging a handful of souls might not pose much risk. But to merge tens of thousands, millions, or even hundreds of millions of souls—just like this grotesque worm had done—would instantly overwhelm and obliterate his consciousness. The chaos of conflicting wills would render him mindless, his own will completely annihilated, effectively ending him.

Yet this grotesque worm had achieved it. Not only had it accomplished this impossible feat, but it also somehow divided these fused souls into countless blank, will-less fragments. These fragments were then integrated into the Silver Spiders it birthed, serving as the control core and the fundamental essence of their existence!

“It’s that energy again… that mysterious power!”

Sterl forced himself to remain calm as he stared intently at the core of the massive soul aggregation. He immediately recognized that the densely concentrated, deep-gray mist at the center was the true reason this worm could fuse so many souls.

But what exactly was that gray mist? Sterl didn’t know. He only understood that it was extraordinarily dangerous, with an energy level far beyond anything he had encountered. And now, he realized it had yet another terrifying property—the ability to aggregate souls!

Quickly analyzing the situation in his mind, Sterl estimated that each Silver Spider contained a soul fragment equivalent to just one percent of a typical living being’s soul.

Given the sheer magnitude of the worm’s soul aggregation, combined with its ability to consume all matter and produce the silvery liquid that nourished the spiders, the implications were staggering.

In other words, if given enough time and resources, this abomination could easily spawn an army of hundreds of millions—or even billions—of Silver Spiders!

An army of a billion, each reaching the pinnacle of second class or even third class!

Sterl could hardly fathom what such a scene would look like.

The Ashen Temple’s army of over ten million cannon fodder soldiers had already left a deep impression on him. Coordinated with their formations, they could effortlessly slay multiple gods at once.

Even if these Silver Spider legions couldn’t form sophisticated formations, the faint mysterious energy within their bodies alone would unleash destruction that might surpass that of any formation!

Sterl imagined himself facing such a legion. Perhaps they couldn’t kill him outright, but if he wanted to annihilate them completely, he would need to exhaust all his strength and spend an immense amount of time to succeed.

And these were only the most basic Silver Spiders. He strongly suspected that the Silver Mantises, which could threaten gods themselves, were also birthed by this abomination. The only difference was that creating a Silver Mantis likely required more time and consumed far greater resources.

But aside from the time requirement, those additional challenges were practically negligible!

At this thought, an ominous vision flashed in Sterl’s mind.

In it, an endless swarm of Silver Spiders, interspersed with assassin-like Silver Mantises akin to the God of Ghosts, launched a ferocious invasion on Alpha-8. Countless beings were consumed amidst their despairing screams. Even the gods were overwhelmed and drowned in the relentless flood, until the entire world was devoured into oblivion.

Sterl shuddered, forcibly pulling himself from the horrifying image. Looking at the grotesque worm again, he could feel its malevolent intent emanating toward him.

Fortunately, while this creature could rapidly spawn Silver Mantises—potentially birthing millions of soldiers in just a few minutes—it still required some time to achieve such numbers. If it could produce them instantaneously, defeating it would be utterly impossible.

But then another chilling thought struck Sterl. If this thing truly represented the essence of the Great Calamity, then there was no chance it was the only one of its kind.

In fact, these grotesque creatures might be nothing more than the tiniest tendrils of the calamity.

After all, the true force driving all of this was the mysterious gray energy. And whatever entity controlled that energy was undoubtedly the mastermind behind this apocalyptic event!

Sterl shook his head violently, his sense of urgency multiplying. If his suspicions were correct, then his current power was far from sufficient to contend with such a threat.

To face an enemy of this magnitude, he needed to become stronger—far stronger!

…