After cutting off the blood heart’s connection to the bloody network, they went to meet their slaves.

Their slaves were in a room in an inn. They found out what room the four of them were in. Then they entered the room next to it without informing their four slaves of their presence.

After doing this, they activated Life Bond on the Black Knife while being mentally prepared to kill him if he tries to break free from their control.

Life Bond is a process whereby the mark of bondage fuses with the existence of the slave. At this point, the mark of bondage stops being an external object and becomes a part of the slave.

It is because of this fusion that a slave will die if their master dies. Once the mark of bondage fuses with them, they will never be able to escape, and killing them would be as easy as a single thought from their master.

But during the process of fusion, the previous abilities of the mark of bondage will be impossible to activate. A slave would be able to escape during this period if they resist in the right way.

Black Knife is someone who is always thinking of escaping. So they have to take proper precautions. The best thing they can do to prevent him from escaping is to mark him with other marks of bondage.

Fortunately, they have two marks on Black Knife. So when one of them is inactive, they can activate the other one to subdue him and bring him under control again.

They didn’t tell Black Knife what they wanted to do. But he sensed something as soon as they began to do it.

The spiked snake around his mind first began to change. It retracted its spikes and became slender. Then it began to drill into Black Knife’s mind.

A mind has three layers. The first layer is the layer of thoughts. It contains temporary information such as thoughts and sensory information.

The second layer is the layer of memories. It is the layer where long-term memories are kept. All the experiences of someone can be found in this layer.

The third layer is the layer of ego. It is the foundation of the mind in that it connects the mind to the body. It is the location where the soul and the brain meet to propagate the mind.

The soul provides consciousness, while the brain provides computing power. If the ego is damaged, the person will go crazy at the very least. If the injury to the ego is severe, then the person can die.

Currently, as telepaths, the part of the mind that they have access to and can influence to a certain extent is the first layer, which is the layer of thoughts. But thanks to the mark of bondage, they finally gained access to the ego of a person.

The mark of bondage had become slender and harmless. That way, it didn’t damage anything, and it reduced resistance to the minimum as it sank from the first layer down to the third layer and into the soul.

The process wasn’t painless. Even though the mark of bondage had done its best to reduce its presence, it was still an external object that had no place in the mind of a person. So Black Knife felt pain.

The pain he felt wasn’t like that of being tortured. It was more like a sharp pinprick in his mind.

His mind wasn’t being crushed by the mark of bondage. But it was being stabbed, so he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his mind.

He wanted to take action. He didn’t know what to do, but he felt that he had to do something.

It could be that he would shout or that he would activate an ability. Anyway, he couldn’t sit still and do nothing.

Unfortunately for him, Legion didn’t want him to do anything. They wanted him to do that very thing he didn’t want to do. They wanted to sit still and let his existence be infiltrated without resistance.

To make that happen, they used Mental Probe to touch Black Knife’s mind and then activated their rank 3 divine ability of the pathway of the telepath called Hypnotize.

A spiritual force began to influence Black Knife’s mind from where their Mind Probe made contact with his mind. Then their intention was transmitted to his mind through a voice.

“Sit still. Bear the pain. Do nothing.”

The voice said the same thing over and over again. Black Knife listened to it and did as the voice said.

He didn’t find the presence of the voice in his mind weird because he thought the voice was his.

Everyone has an inner voice, which they have when they are thinking. The Hypnotize divine ability camouflages their mental influence as the inner voice of the target and makes the target think that the external instruction originated from within and is theirs all along.

So Black Knife relaxed and did as he was told. To him, he was doing what he thought. He didn’t even realize that he was being manipulated.

The other three people in the room didn’t notice anything wrong with him.

They noticed earlier when he fidgeted. But he soon calmed down, so they thought nothing of his actions.

Only the traveler felt faintly uneasy. However, he couldn’t tell exactly what was making him uneasy. So he thought that he was simply being anxious because their master asked them to come here.

While he was thinking this, the snake drilled into Black Knife’s ego and came out within the darkness at the core of his existence.

Within this darkness were four souls. Three of the souls were carrying the three pieces of divine flesh of the pathway of the assassin. The fourth soul wasn’t carrying anything.

The black snake chose the target with the least resistance. It avoided the three souls in charge of a pathway and went straight to the fourth empty soul.