“What do you mean, blocking it?!” Zhukov’s roar cracked through the room like a whip.

  The blond researcher – only yesterday a graduate student – was trembling like a schoolboy dragged before an executioner. One careless comment at the wrong time, and now he stood here, forced to explain something he barely understood himself.

  “That’s exactly what it means…” His voice faltered. “We can see his energy body. We’re extracting energy – a decent amount, comparable to several blue ring holders. But it’s nowhere near enough to match shamans or beastfolk. There are two possibilities: either his source has dried up, or… he’s learned to block it himself. We believe it’s the second.”

  “Explain,” Zhukov barked, and even the air seemed to tighten.

  “His connection to the element… that’s where he draws power from. Most likely through his ring. He calls it flesh magic. There’s a theory that he’s literally converting his body into energy.”

  “Then he’d be nothing but bones by now,” Zhukov snapped.

  The researcher fell silent. Every theory slipped through his fingers, and none of them led anywhere close to the truth.

  A low, predatory growl rumbled in Zhukov’s throat. The brat had decided to play at war and had cut off the source of power Zhukov already considered his. It felt like someone had torn a slab of meat from a starving beast’s jaws.

  The blond man glanced at him from the corner of his eye. For a brief second, something dark flickered there. He wanted the problem solved too. Personally. Torture? Why not.

  But torture brought no results. The boy’s wounds healed within hours. A severed finger took a week, and then a new one began growing in its place, the skin at the cut fresh and pink. A normal person would have rotted for months. The boy barely reacted to pain and still gave them none of the energy they wanted.

  They did, however, find another way to profit.

  The boy could regrow organs – valuable resources that sold for a high price. His body was a factory. Even without a liver, he lived. An eye would reform. Everything else was only a matter of time – time and patience. And the experiments… there were countless experiments they could run on him.

  Eventually, he would break. The flow of energy, blocked for now, would return.

  “Max! Sooner or later you’ll have to do something!” Julia paced around him, snorting in anger. Her feet kept slipping through the floor, which might have looked almost cute if not for her words.

  “I can’t kill them. How many times do I have to say it? That’s murder, Julia. They’re alive. They have families, lives. And even if I wanted to, my power doesn’t work here. It’s tied to the Otherworld,” he replied calmly, studying the elf girl lying unconscious on the nearby cot.

  He knew she was stable. The range of his green ring aura was just enough to reach her and check her condition. A few days ago, Max had even managed to examine her body in detail. It was different from a human’s.

  He didn’t feel fear for himself. Torture was only pain. What mattered was that his brother and sister were no longer in the lab. Kristina had been moved to the recovery sector. From what he had observed, it was far better than the block where he and Ruslan were held. And Ruslan wasn’t at risk of having his magic awakened anytime soon. That alone gave Max some peace.

  For now, he focused on improving himself and quietly supporting the elf girl. Her condition wasn’t critical, but she was severely exhausted.

  “If I were you, I’d have figured out how to kill them already!” Julia stomped her foot, and it slipped straight through the stone floor. “Look at yourself! Look what they’re doing to you!”

  Max still found her bloodthirst unsettling. For her, everything was simple: kill this one, kill that one. What was wrong with her? Or maybe it was him who had changed. Years in captivity left their mark. Yes, his body was covered in wounds, but it was only flesh, and flesh healed. There were things more important than that. Life.

  “They don’t care about you! Or anyone!” Julia shot an angry look at the elf girl. “Look at her! And you still pity them. I think that’s exactly why you got your power.”

  “Because of what?” he asked, surprised.

  “Because you value life. Just look at yourself.”

  He sighed.

  “I’ve learned to dull the pain. And revenge… for what? For choosing their own desires over everything else? They’re human.”

  “You idiot! They’re monsters, not humans! And your pain isn’t gone – it’s just quiet for now! What if they kill you? Will you stay silent then? All you have to do is want it, and this place will turn to dust. And I’ll tell you something – unlike you, others feel pain fully.” She jabbed a finger toward the pointy-eared girl again.

  Max fell silent. Julia’s words were too sharp, too charged with emotion.

  “I can’t. If I use the power of words, every enemy in the world will rush here. I don’t understand how it works. I only know it draws energy from another plane. And that energy is needed for something else…”

  “For your protective structure,” Julia cut in. “And what is it even doing? It doesn’t look like it’s protecting you at all.”

  Max turned inward, focusing on his senses. The energy of both planes was indeed flowing into the structure. Something was being built there – in another world. What exactly, he didn’t know. He would have to check. Later.

  For now, it worked in his favor. He pushed as much energy through his body as it could handle. His channels continued to widen. His flesh ring kept developing.

  When the time came, he would leave.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Julia snorted.

  “Let’s see what you’ll say when they drag your family in here. I’m telling you – use the power of words. Trust me, they’ll regret ever touching you. Here’s a deal: don’t ask me anything. Just give me control over my plane for a while. I’ll show you how to use your power properly.”

  Max looked at her, startled, and caught a strange, almost hungry glint in her eyes. It unsettled him. Where had Julia learned so much about ruling a plane? He still hadn’t dared to have an honest talk about her past. He knew only one thing: when she agreed to follow him, she had somehow consented to let him control her plane. That was how he had created another one. One plane belonged to him, the other to her. It was as if she had joined his Pantheon. The energy of her plane should have been hers – but the authority remained in his hands.

  Give up part of the flow that sustained the protective structure? Not a chance. Not a single drop for “extra actions.”

  Let Julia control her own power? That madwoman? No. Max had seen what she could do even with the scraps of energy that accidentally leaked to her. Maybe it really would be safer if all the dark forces of the world gathered here instead.

  “I don’t think they’ll touch my family,” Max said at last. “And if they do… then we’ll act.”

  “Oh, you think?” Julia put her hands on her hips. “Then keep thinking.”

  Max answered with silence.

  A week passed. He remained calm, as if time no longer affected him. Zhukov, meanwhile, kept trying to figure out how to extract more power from the boy. In his twisted logic, he was convinced that the strength didn’t belong to Max at all – it belonged to all of humanity.

  From the corner of his eye, Max watched as the bastard entered the room again. As usual, he didn’t come close. Ever since the incident when Max had briefly cut off his carotid artery and forced him into unconsciousness, Zhukov kept his distance.

  For Max, only two things mattered now: the work of the protective structure, which allowed him to block the flow of energy from the Otherworld, and the development of flesh magic – the ability to heal his body and influence it within the limits of his aura.

  Every day he strengthened his green ring. His channels widened, his core grew denser, and his personal “immortality technique” continued to evolve. Max called it the Aura of Life.

  There was also the power of words. It lived inside him like a buried flame. He felt it, but he was afraid to touch it. That power could alter the laws of the world, and because of that, it remained a weapon of last resort.

  He understood perfectly what drove the scientists: money, knowledge, the hunger for discovery. He didn’t care. They used him like an object. He used them in return. The streams of energy flowing through his body were something he could not sustain anywhere else. His limits were defined by his own channels and flesh.

  The only thing that truly irritated him was the inability to simply walk outside. In spirit form, he could do almost anything. But his body remained here – in the underground bunker.

  Today, Max decided to visit Marvin’s plane again. He chose not to stop by Vialon. The endless arguments had grown tiresome. Vialon believed in his own “correct” way of building a plane and only listened to Max when the boy threatened to throw the elf into the void. Sooner or later, he might have to replace him. But many important souls followed Vialon, and for now, it wasn’t in Max’s interest to start a conflict.

  “Marvin!” Max called as soon as he arrived in the plane.

  “I’m here,” the white-haired youth replied almost immediately.

  It was hard to look at him. Dark circles hung under his eyes, his face looked drained, and his hair stuck out in every direction. His clothes were torn. Clearly, Marvin wasn’t doing well.

  Max raised a brow.

  “I’m actually exhausted!” Marvin blurted out, as if defending himself from that look. In just a week, he had realized that the position he’d received was closer to hard labor than an honor. The previous rulers hadn’t been saints. They destroyed souls and dealt in dark matters – but at least they hadn’t drained power from him personally.

  “Marvin, you said that out loud,” Max noted dryly.

  “Oh… did I?” The boy went pale. “See? That just proves I’m exhausted!”

  “The plane is stable? It’s not falling apart? Have you found all the wardens? Is the protective structure being built?” Max asked.

  “They’re all in place. Megera is building her fortress,” Marvin replied with a tired sigh.

  “Who’s Megera?” Max frowned.

  “Your dragon. Well, the structure. That’s what we started calling it. Oh, right – you haven’t even seen it. It’s a real dragon. Walks on two legs like us, but with wings and scales. A terrifying thing.”

  “That’s… impressive,” Max said, genuinely surprised. “I’ll have to see it myself. I thought it was just a diagram. And if everything’s working, that means we’re on the right track.”

  Marvin only shrugged, then slowly sank to the ground as if the last of his strength had left him.

  “Actually…” he muttered, “if you look at the energy circulation scheme, you’ll notice not all fortresses are supplying energy.”

  “What do you mean?” Max frowned and immersed himself in the structure of the plane. He hadn’t paid attention before, because fortresses that didn’t provide energy simply hadn’t appeared in his awareness. But once he focused properly, the imbalance became obvious. One fortress stood completely empty, and another functioned at the bare minimum. That meant certain gates weren’t working – and there were fewer Messengers in the plane as a result. And there were already far too few.

  “What happened?” Max asked, his voice turning cold.

  “Georg said you’re demanding too much. He… refused.”

  Max pressed his lips together.

  “He thought he’d receive an endless stream of energy and live however he pleased?”

  “Not exactly,” Marvin replied quietly. “He was assigned the Fortress of the Black Dead. And it’s cursed. There are no gates there. Everything is sealed.”

  “You’re telling me an entire sector of the plane was left unused because of some curse?” Anger crept into Max’s voice. The plane was divided into a limited number of sectors, each centered around a fortress. That fortress housed the control core and the gate arch used by the Messengers bound to it. The number of Messengers directly depended on the number of these fortresses.

  “It’s not just a curse. The seal there is so heavy that even an Overlord would struggle to endure it. And that’s not the only dead sector.”

  “There are others?” Max narrowed his eyes.

  “Yes. One more. Well… not completely dead. The Emerald Fortress. It used to have endless gardens. The previous ruler cultivated strange plants from the Otherworld there.”

  “Absurd. An entire sector turned into a greenhouse? We could house millions of souls there and build a fortress with capacity for additional Messengers. And he just stored souls instead?”

  Marvin spread his hands helplessly.

  Max clenched his fists.

  “Is the sector warden still there?”

  “Dryad Flora,” Marvin confirmed. “She’s bound to the forests and won’t allow them to be destroyed.”

  “And she doesn’t populate the sector?”

  “She does… with plant-souls. They live in her gardens.”

  “I don’t need a greenhouse. Souls can live perfectly well in separate chambers without interfering with one another. Tear the gardens down,” Max said flatly.

  Marvin let out a heavy sigh. Another sector to dismantle. He hadn’t even finished restructuring the previous ones. There was already more work than he could handle. And yet Max, like a precise mechanism, had already shifted his focus and begun dismantling the greenhouse where rare plants from across the universe had been gathered for thousands of years.

  For Max, it was a matter of efficiency.

  For Marvin, it felt as though the last traces of beauty and wildness that made the Otherworld feel alive were being erased.