The number of events that have shaped the world into what it is today is far from small, but if one were to single out a particular event, it wouldn't be the apocalypse triggered by the arrival of mana, no, it would be something far worse.
Something no one had seen coming. Something that caught every living being off guard.
The opening of the Abyss.
An unexplored realm, discovered by chance, that had a very unpleasant surprise in store for every creature in the world.
No one knows precisely who or what opened that dimension, but everyone knows the consequences of that act, consequences that continue to ripple through the world to this very day.
Many of the important events of the past remain unclear and poorly understood, but even with what little is known, historians have divided the history of the world into three distinct eras.
The Age of Dawn, also known as The Dark Age, when it all began.
The Age of Gods, when the first beings to reach an extraordinarily high level in their evolution began to appear.
The Age of Ashes, the current era, in which the races of the world are slowly rebuilding themselves from the ruins of something that very few still fully understand.
The Abyss is what defined the Age of Gods. It was an era in which everything seemed to be going in the right direction, the hardships of the Age of Dawn had forged beings whose power had reached unimaginable heights, true Gods walking the surface of this world.
But it was precisely during this period that the Abyss appeared, and from that moment on, everything went downhill.
Every race suffered staggering losses, and part of the continent of Aurel was lost, corrupted to a point beyond recovery. That land is now the heart of the Fallen Lands.
If the Fallen Lands are lethal to almost every living being, then their central region is a point of no return.
Even so, the threat of the Abyss continued to grow. Every kingdom, human or not, was struck. The Abyss didn't attack from a single point but from everywhere at once. At any place, at any moment, a portal could tear open and release creatures of the Abyss that would bring chaos and destruction wherever they emerged, spreading corruption to every being they touched and transforming them into creatures closer to the Abyss than to what they once were.
It took the combined efforts of every race and every deity present at the time to contain that threat and finally put an end to it.
They succeeded, but at the cost of losing nearly every single divine being of that era.
No one knows exactly what happened, but since then, no divine being has ever been seen again. Were it not for the fact that their religions continue to exist and their blessings persist, one would assume they had perished.
This is where Luna's situation becomes strange. She had been marked by the energy of the Abyss, what the system referred to as void energy, but that shouldn't have been possible. Contaminated beings usually succumb to the corruption in record time and are normally detected quickly by the kingdom.
And yet Luna, as far as he knew, had never been discovered. What's more, the energy inside her seemed to have only recently begun corrupting her, which would suggest she had been contaminated recently.
But that too made no sense, since the only remaining traces of that energy existed deep within the Fallen Lands, and it was difficult to believe she had gone there and come back unscathed. Even beings at the absolute peak of their power would risk their lives venturing there, let alone someone at the bottom of the awakened hierarchy.
Evan didn't know the answer. But the system did.
[Hollows are by nature beings born within the Abyss, but as you know, they can also come into existence by corrupting other beings with void energy. However, the situation of these corrupted beings is not entirely hopeless, if one acts in time, the corruption can be suppressed within certain limits through various methods.]
[One of these is soul severance, which quite literally means removing the corrupted portion of the soul to prevent the rest from being consumed. However, this causes a permanent wound to the subject.]
[What this girl underwent is precisely that, soul severance. More specifically, she is the corrupted portion of the soul.]
For some reason, a certain chill ran through Evan at the mere thought of that possibility. But it still didn't make everything add up,
f she was the corrupted part, then who did the original soul belong to?
That was the question on his mind, and the answer didn't take long to arrive.
[It is highly likely that she had a close family member who was hosting the remaining portion. Normally the corrupted part is either destroyed or sealed off, but from what I have examined, it appears it was simply suppressed, meaning it was never fully isolated from the original soul.]
[Whoever that person was, they were being slowly consumed by this girl's soul. And the moment that person ceased to exist, the suppression over her was lifted, allowing the corruption within her to run free.]
Evan had no idea who that person might have been, but he was certain they had died recently, especially considering the bodies he had found when he came across Luna.
Judging by how they were dressed and the rest of the scene, they had been involved in whatever had happened to that other person. He knew too little to draw any real conclusion, not that it mattered much to him right now.
There was something more urgent at the moment: deciding what to do with this girl.
The mission had asked him to suppress her, meaning either kill her or render her incapable of harming him. Which was ultimately what he had done, though not out of mercy, but because he had stumbled onto something unexpected.
The void energy.
Evan could perceive it inside her. He could interact with it, and to his surprise, even manipulate it to a certain degree.
The realization stunned him, and for a moment he wondered whether he had some kind of special affinity with the void element, but he knew that he didn't, at least not directly.
[The Void element falls under the domain of the God of Death, which is why you possess a certain affinity with it.]
That was what the system told him. But when he tried to press for more information, it went silent.
And instead handed him a reward, if one could call it that, for completing the emergency mission.
---
[Soulbound]
Rank: F
Description: An absolute authority over the living. By binding a soul to the user, the target is placed entirely under their dominion, their life, their death, and everything in between subject to the user's will. Both parties grow stronger through the connection, but make no mistake: the bond is not equal. The user holds the thread. The bound holds nothing.
Warning: Soul damage or death of a bound entity risks direct harm to the user. Binding a being of far greater power places severe strain on the soul, a disparity too large may prove fatal.
[Bound Entities: 0/1]
---
A premium slave mark, in other words, or at least, that was how Evan saw it.
He wasn't sure why he had ended up receiving something like this, but according to the system, it was directly tied to the nature of the mission he had completed, so something specifically designed to help him against beings corrupted by void energy like Luna.
He had managed to suppress the void energy inside her thanks to his partial control over it, but it was only partial for a reason, it wouldn't stay calm forever. Most likely within a few days it would become chaotic again, just as it had been before.
That was where the Soulbound came in. It bound the soul to his own, allowing him to maintain control over the subject, and by extension, over the void energy within them.
The damage the void energy had already done to her was done. If he left her as she was, she would likely lose control again, and at that rate, she would complete her transformation into a true Hollow.
Evan had no intention of staying by her side indefinitely to keep suppressing the void energy inside her, but he also had no intention of using the Soulbound on her against her will. It was an important card that could prove extremely useful to him in the future, but more importantly, he had no intention of enslaving anyone against their will.
His experience as a slave had taught him more than enough about what it felt like to live that life, especially when it was forced upon you.
He wasn't a saint, and if doing something immoral would have kept him alive a little longer, he would have done it, but he wasn't a monster either. if he could avoid doing certain things, he would.
So he decided to leave the choice to the girl herself.
If she didn't want his help despite knowing her situation, so be it.
Through his connection with the void energy, Evan had been able to glimpse her stats, and he could tell her growth potential was extraordinarily high, S-Rank, to be precise.
Beings with that level of growth potential were one in a million. And while he didn't know exactly how many individuals of that caliber existed in the world, he knew there weren't many. Reaching that level, even with the right potential, was far from simple.
That was where bloodlines came into play. Almost everyone with exceptional growth potential possessed one, and the higher the bloodline, the greater the individual's potential for growth.
Evan wasn't certain of the exact grade of Luna's bloodline, but given her growth potential, he knew it was anything but weak.
The amount of information the system could extract from his connection with the void energy inside her was limited, and only with the Soulbound active would he be able to get a clearer picture. But even without it, it was clear she wasn't ordinary.
The reason the system had assigned her an S-Rank potential was simple: if the corruption were allowed to reach 100%, that was the Rank she would almost certainly reach. In other words, if she were left alone somewhere safe, simply living her life, she could eventually reach that level on her own, at the cost of becoming a true Hollow, since she had no way of withstanding the effects of the corruption.
But if he could bind her to himself, things would be rather different.
And so, even though he had no desire to force the bond upon her, he held a quiet hope that she would accept.
He shifted his gaze away from the status screen and let it rest on her.
She had been in that state for several hours now, and she was finally beginning to show signs of regaining consciousness.