This pendant was truly worth the choice, without its effects, he'd probably be finished...
Hastily retracting the power of the Holy Spirit pendant, Leon restored the ground, temporarily transformed into a quagmire, and with his eyes filled with relief, he desperately sprinted toward the exit of Ryan Manor, holding his blood-drenched left hand aloft.
Just moments ago, as he abruptly lost his flying ability and plummeted from the sky, Leon instinctively clutched the Holy Spirit pendant. He slightly slowed his fall while temporarily turning the landing spot and surrounding ground into a quagmire.
Although the nature of soil and quagmire was "similar," and not as different as steel and rubber, the energy consumed for a pure transformation was significantly lower than the carriage incident. Yet the scale of this temporary transformation exceeded a hundred times that of the carriage's.
Coupled with the need to reserve some stamina for escape and not completely exhaust himself in one go, Leon had to alter the "terms" of his trade with the Holy Spirit pendant, exchanging easily recoverable stamina and willpower for the more difficult-to-recover body tissue...
*The depletion was indeed significant... It might take two or three months to regenerate.*
Looking at the five missing fingernails on his left hand and the bloodied flesh laid bare from fingertip to wrist after losing a chunk of skin, Leon, having narrowly escaped disaster, didn't bother to treat his hand but instead, while sprinting, shouted at the Black Goat,
"Guide me! Which way is less crowded?"
Using soul vision, the Black Goat guided Leon to the path with the fewest people and awkwardly explained,
"Um... It's not like I didn't warn you earlier, I just realized something was off when he started making his move..."
Without dwelling on it, Leon made a mental note before quickly asking,
"What's really going on with Bobby Layne? Who's dominating whom between you and your heart?"
"Well... I guess 'domination' might not be the right word... He seems to be an incredibly arrogant and ambitious person, and his affinity with my heart is astonishing..."
Hearing Leon's question, the Black Goat pondered briefly before replying,
"To put it simply, my heart should have devoured his heart and replaced its position; strictly speaking, they should have mutually absorbed each other."
"My heart absorbed his existence, replacing Bobby Layne as a person, but his personality and desires also imprinted on my heart.
If, in the future, my heart gathers all its components, my main consciousness might swallow Bobby Layne's will, but for now, they're in a state where they can't be differentiated at all."
*Indistinguishable? Can such an "anomalous object" be used this way?*
Following the Black Goat's explanation, Leon frowned and said,
"So your heart is him, and he is now your heart, meaning I can't disable his ability by destroying your heart?"
The Black Goat nodded,
"That's pretty much it... Wait! You actually intend to destroy my heart?"
Leon stepped off the main path of the manor into a secluded garden and continued toward the entrance with the redwood, countering,
"I only want to destroy your heart, but your heart intends to obliterate your will altogether! Which one do you find harder to accept?"
*In that case, it's definitely more of a bastard.*
Realizing what kind of fate awaited him should he fall into Bobby's hands, the Black Goat suddenly became ten times more "diligent" than before, continuously monitoring the approaching souls.
With its guidance and the capabilities of the parkour badge, leveraging the complex terrain of Ryan Manor, Leon managed to shake off waves of interceptors and successfully burst through the manor's gate, reaching the massive redwood tree. However...
Just ten steps shy of the redwood, he crashed into some invisible barrier, impossible to surmount despite his attempts; the man and goat found themselves plunged into mutual silence.
"Leon... it seems we're done for..."
Watching "himself," surrounded by hundreds of souls, slowly approach the entrance, the Black Goat said with regret,
"This bastard's power is only a third of his peak, yet he hasn't been subdued, and he found a perfectly matched host, exploiting the Ryan family's parasitism to maximize his abilities.
Damn it! If I had known, I should have cozied up to a True God, developed a flock of followers, and aspired to become a goat-headed Holy Spirit myself.
Even if it led to being devoured in the end, I could have at least disgusted it to no end within! Now all my good meat gets damn squandered on a mutt!"
After grumbling for a while and seeing Leon still silent, the Black Goat couldn't help but ask,
"Why aren't you saying anything? We're about to get killed here; won't you curse him a bit?"
Rejecting the Black Goat's cajoling for venting, Leon quietly took out a rope, securely tying the Black Goat next to him, and squinted slightly,
"I'd rather struggle a bit more than curse it a few times."
Using the Black Goat's soul vision, he observed the situation in Ryan Manor. Staring at the hundreds of souls scattered over several hectares, full of the stench of decay, Leon silently pulled up a panel and examined the flickering [Friend of Demons] and [Devotee].
*One needs sin-laden souls, the other Non-Balanced Gold Sect heretics... conveniently, there's no shortage of either here!*
*Hm? Still trying to resist?*
Although his sensory abilities were relatively weak, unlike the powerful Black Goat who could freely incite malice, Bobby Layne, having completed a mutual "absorption" with the Goat's Heart, possessed his own soul vision.
Observing the two souls that had evaded him and began fleeing sideways, the young man scoffed, stopping at the redwood and deploying his own abilities to remotely mobilize the people within Ryan Manor to pursue the two frantically escaping rats.
However, to his surprise, despite the Purification Bureau employee nearing his limits, with soul flames tinged in deep fatigue, he was never caught. Instead, he spread an anomalous frenzy of slaughter throughout the manor.
*Ten, twenty, fifty...*
Watching soul vision display dark flames quickly extinguishing one by one, the young man's soul, especially the "Bobby Layne" part, couldn't remain still.
Merely losing thirty or fifty clan members was insignificant for the entire Ryan Family and could easily be replenished with some effort.
But the other seemed to deliberately target the Ryan family's higher-ups; among the more than fifty killed, nearly half were mid to upper management of family enterprises and public office holders in Kingdom departments.
While individually not particularly significant, these figures formed the foundation of the Ryan Family, pillars supporting the Lionheart Family's status!
If indeed all these individuals were massacred, the Ryan Family would lose its voice in the political arena, lose support from crucial departments, and see half its enterprises come to a halt, plunging the entire family into an unimaginably rapid collapse!