He raised his severed leg and aimed the broken end of his knee at the black smoke.
Kelsos sucked away his life force, and he shattered. Then the third person, the fourth, the fifth... Kelsos ate them one by one. It ate one, and one shattered.
The line slowly moved forward like a dark crimson river. Its waters vanished ahead, while those behind continuously filled the gaps.
But Kelsos soon realized something was wrong.
It was not full. There was simply too much life energy in the air.
That energy was not pouring from the immortals' wounds. It was emerging from the air itself.
Like countless tiny, invisible worms, it burrowed through the gaps between Kelsos's fragments, squeezed in around the edges of its scarlet points of light, and seeped into the spaces between its soul threads.
It came uninvited. It did not need Kelsos to open its mouth or devour anything. It entered on its own.
Kelsos's soul body began to swell.
It swelled in pulses, like a beating heart, as though someone were constantly blowing air into its body.
The fine black-smoke fragments had originally been barely stuck together by soul threads. Now, those threads were stretched taut, like rubber bands pulled to their limits.
The fragments' edges began to thin and turn transparent, because more and more was being crammed into the same volume.
Its dozen or so scarlet points of light dimmed. They were not about to go out—they were being drowned out by the light bursting from within.
There was so much light that it became impossible to see!
Kelsos panicked.
It did not want to eat this much. It had not even digested what it had already consumed.
It wanted to stop, to hide, to find somewhere without life energy and catch its breath.