Awakened: Evolving to Godhood

The energy ball shot towards Julian, and after reaching right before her eyes that were wet with tears as well as drenched with desperation, it exploded into several streams of golden energy.

"Divine Arts: Imprisonment." Elliot snapped his fingers, causing each wave of golden energy to change into a couple of rings that contracted around the hands, feet, neck, and waist of Julian as well as her teammates, restricting them thoroughly.

'Thank god.' The fact that she didn't immediately die was enough to give her a sense of hope, making her think that she could survive this ordeal, causing her eyes to brighten. Not just her, but rays of hope also flushed the eyes of her companions, even though they were groveling at his feet.

"I believe you guys might be wondering what the heck is going on, right?" Elliot said, his eyes staring at them relayed their crumbling state of mind directly to him.

Of course, they were confused about why he shackled them, and they wanted to ask him about it. However, the spiritual energy pressure acting on their bodies had suppressed them so greatly that they weren't even able to open up their mouths.

"Listen well," Elliot said, appearing ready to clear their confusion. "I have thought about what to do with you guys and girls long and hard, and in the end, I decided that killing any one of you will be a waste. So I am going to give you a chance! Discard your useless pride! Discard the useless thought that you've freedom of speech and actions in front of me! Ingrain the fact that I can decide your life and death in a split second! And promise to become my slaves, work for me, and I will let you live! Otherwise, the ring around you guys will keep on contracting every minute until they crush your neck and your limbs, giving you a painful death."

While saying these words, he pulled out eight magic contracts from his subspace, used the power of the godly matrix on his soul to jot down several rules and conditions in the magic contracts before throwing them at the people who were groveling at his feet. His actions didn't have a slight pause in them. He did everything fluidly, highlighting the fact that from the very start, he wasn't trying to kill them but trying to show them their reality, one in which rules, unfortunately, didn't exist, and he gets to decide who lives and who dies, and whoever goes against his wishes will die.

"Now, decide! You only have an uncomfortable minute to decide." Elliot chuckled as if amused by something dark and humorous, and because only silence permeated the veil of the night all around him and the ones in front of him, his chuckle sounded extremely loud. It entered their ears and crawled down to their hearts, causing them to come term to term with their terrifying situation. As the hair on the back of their neck stood on the edge, he added the final strike to his painting, "A minute because after that, the ring around each of your necks will start contracting, squeezing it, restricting your ability to say a word and giving you a slow but painful death. I believe pain would ravage your souls for five minutes before blessing you with an ultimatum—Death!"

"That I believe you don't want to experience."

He put empathizes on the word "death" time and time again, just so that his words will get to them and land a few hits on their fragile hearts. These sheltered flowers that were born, trained, and grown in the safety of their families couldn't compare to him, and that's why he believed that taming them would be easy after stomping all over them to make them realize the difference between him and them.

As for why and when he decided to enslave all of them?

Well, it's a story of its own!

As luck would have it—here he was—in a place separated from the outside, a place without rules, a place where he was the strongest amongst all the humans, a point that if he were to use to his advantage, would allow him to reap plenty of benefits and gain a major standing in the magician community.

For example, if he manages to enslave all of them, then it wouldn't be wrong for him to say that he would have spies in the Regis, Charlotte, and Smith families! After successfully enslaving all of them and returning to Xavier, it would become easy for him to know what their families were up to, and gaining more information about them would become easy too.

All in all, he was thinking about the future and working towards creating a safe network for himself in the magician community, one that would allow him to dodge bullets he was sure that he would face after coming out of this place, a lot of them.

"This is too much!" Finally able to talk, Oliver retorted in a raised voice. "Boohoo!" Meanwhile, Tia started crying out loud. She looked pitiful at the moment, and the heart of any man heart would turn soft for her, but Elliot's eyes remained as calm as ever. He wasn't a kind-hearted Samaritan, and thus, he didn't carry a single hint of goodwill for Tia and her teammates. While dealing with strangers, he cared only about his benefits. "This guy is a monster!" Her cousin, Julian, kept her calm. Even though she had pissed herself just moments ago, her calm eyes showed him that she was able to remain sane and think about things level-headedly. "What should we do?" The three brothers eyed each other, communicating with the look in their eyes and trying to silently come to a decision. "Oliver, what's your decision going to be?" Arthur wordlessly stared at the broad back of the magic knight in front of him, breathing slowly to calm himself.

Elliot's gaze landed on Oliver, the only one with enough guys to raise his voice against him after all that! "I don't think it is, and you will find out after reading the rules stated in the magic contract."

"Bullshit!" Oliver said, "I will not betray my lady and my family! I swear that on my name. If the last deal stands, then take my treasure and let me go. If not, then I am not afraid to die."

Oliver belonged to the Charlotte Family, and he was extremely loyal to Lisa's mother. His grandmother was her nanny. His mother was not only her servant but also her childhood friend. He was nothing more than a child of a servant, but she noticed his talent and took him under his wings, gave him resources, and allowed him to awaken and train in the family technique, even going as far as bestowing him the surname of Charlotte! How could he agree to leak her secrets to the others?

"Loyal to a fault, but loyal indeed." Elliot's eyes narrowed as he looked at Oliver. 'A loyal person like him is hard to come by. I meed him on my side!'

Elliot closed his eyes in silence, then said, "Let me advise you, the clock is ticking, and you shouldn't be wasting any time to bicker with me."

He wasn't wrong at all.

They were in a situation where every second counts!

"What to do?"

"We will die if we refuse to serve him."

"However, we will live if we agree to his demands."

"Nothing matters more o us than our lives."

"Then, isn't it obvious?"

"Let's sign the magic contract."

The two twins and their elder bit their lips, causing blood to leak out, and they smeared it on the end of the magic contract. The three of them belonged to the Regis family, but they weren't loyal to it to a cause. That's why they didn't find it hard to agree to serve someone else than their family, especially when their lives were concerned.

"How could you guys agree to something like that?!" The ninth member of the team said, scolding the three bastards who had signed the magic contract.

"Oh, shut up!" Finley shouted back at him.

"You're not even a Regis," Harvey said to Jay.

"I advise you to do the same that is, if you don't want to die," Sean advised while glancing back at him.

Jay gritted his teeth. Yes, he wasn't a Regis by blood. He was but an orphan picked up by the current master of the Regis family, but he was more loyal than the others. However, he didn't want to die!

[Congratulations! You've enslaved four members of the Regis Family! They've agreed to serve you to the best of their abilities and gather information for you.]

That notification just rang in his mind when another popped up, bringing with it good news.

[Congratulations! You've enslaved Tia and Julian!]

"Is this the right thing to do?" Tia said while sniffing.

"I'm sure father and uncle wouldn't blame us." Julian comforted her cousin that was more like a little sister to her.

Meanwhile, Arthur patted Oliver's shoulder. "I'm sorry, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have landed in this position."

Oliver looked back at him. Both of them were magic knights, an honor granted to a select few. Both of them had the same mentality and were ready to prove with their own life that they would honor the knight creed to their last breath.

"You weren't at fault," Oliver said.

"I never thought that we would escape danger only to land in a lion's den," Arthur said with a meek smile on his face.

Oliver could tell from the look in Arthur's eyes that he would follow the magic knight's code to the end.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Arthur nodded, ready to give up his life but not betray his beliefs.

After ten seconds, the collars around their necks started to tighten, signaling the start of their execution. Elliot had gained the daughter of the Smith family head as well as the daughter of the smith family vice head as his slaves. He had also gained four magicians of the Regis family as his slaves. A deed none had managed to accomplish except for himself, he believed.

However, he still felt a bit of a loss swelling up in his heart as he failed to acquire the two magic knights as his slave.

Anyway, their death plenty has already begun, and their end would be enough to instill terror in the heart of his slaves.

"Foolish mongrels!" He cursed at them but with a smile on his face.

"Let their upcoming death be the lesson to all of you!" Elliot said, his narrowed eyes sweeping over all of them. "If you fail to live up to my expectations, I will give you a death thousand times more painful than theirs!"

They flinched when his eyes landed on them and looked away. Tia didn't want to watch their death, but she was afraid that if she were to look away from them, then the demon would punish her. However, Julian placed her hands on her eyes, blocking her from witnessing their death.

"It's too damn painful!" As the rings around their body tightened, large waves of pain rouse from different parts of their bodies and assaulted their senses. They found it hard to breathe. It was as if they were mere plastic bags, shut close to the point no air was left in them.

"Umm, what's going on here?"

Lucy Love's confused voice sounded from behind Elliot.

He turned his head around and saw her sitting up and looking at him and the others in bewilderment. "Oh, you're awake?"

Lucy nodded her head.

"How are you feeling?" Elliot asked.

"Fine." Lucy shook her head, "More importantly, what's going on here? I mean, what are you doing to them?"

Elliot raised his thumb and drew it across his neck, "Execution."