John spent a few weeks setting up a formation that hid the stronghold completely.

He also set up a shield that could differentiate between peoples souls.

That's right. He planned to create a brand similar to the native attribute that the world will gave souls.

All of his men would have this brand on their souls.

The hard part was manipulating soul. He would need to set up an excuse to have those in Deathless explore his universe.

After a few days, he had successfully used the astral stone to create a gateway. Normally, a rank 4 would spend years probing chaotic space in order to find another world.

But John was the creator of his universe!

He casually linked his universe as one of the locations that could be accessed from his gateway.

He didn't plan on being entirely honest with Deathless.

John had created a special ring called a 'Return Ring'.

This was a combination of a formation and a fake artifact. He had in truth created a phantom soul and fused it with the ring. He could then use his body in the Infinite Maze to use his power to return the user back to the wizard world.

It could also be used in the wizard world to return the user back to the portal room. It was quite useful.

Getting back from a world was a huge issue wizards faced. Which was why one often had to camp in the other world and build a gateway in the new world to get back.

John would need another astral stone to build another gateway in his universe. Which is why he went ahead and cheated by making the return rings.

John made sure everyone in Deathless had a return ring.

They all gathered in the portal room.

"Today, we all will be exploring an entirely new world!"

Intuition spoke up.

"All of us? Isn't that a bad idea. What if the environment is hostile? What if it is incompatible with life?"

Inspiration then said:

"We are immortal!"

"Oh yea..."

Death then spoke:

"I still think it is a bad idea for all of us to go at once. We each have return rings. Why not send one person in, let them explore for a few weeks and then have them use the ring to return."

John knew it would be a 'bad' idea for them all to go at once. But he was planning on messing with their souls using his authority of his universe.

He would like to get them all at once!

John then spoke:

"Alright. You all make good points. How about this."

"Death. You will stay back and guard the fortress. Everyone else, including me! Let us explore!"

This wasn't a random decision made by John. He couldn't tamper with Death's soul. It was too dangerous, since it was protected by the contamination of the chaos realm. He would deal with Death later.

"After roughly a week, return!"

"If you order it... who are we to tell you otherwise!"

"Let's go!"

John jumped into the gateway.

He felt spatial fluctuations all over his body.

He also felt stress all over his body.

Due to his spatial body, he was completely fine!

He was blinded by a great white light surrounding his entire body.

He then found himself on that familiar lifeless planet he did experiments on.

Around him were Vitality, Intuition, and Fate.

They were half dead.

Blood was everywhere as they were sacks of flesh.

But in an instant they recovered!

"I guess the others landed away from our starting point."

They started to hyperventilate.

Fate looked at John.

"How are you able to breathe normally here!? This environment isn't good... if we weren't immortal... we would already be dead!"

John had completely forgot that although they had become immortal. They lacked his experience.

Drowning for him wasn't even uncomfortable anymore.

But the same could not be said for them.

They still had yet to adapt to their new ability.

"You'll get used to it."

"..."

"Everyone spread out and explore! Report any findings to me in a week."

"I'll be heading back."

John activated his return ring and appeared in the portal room.

Obviously John knew they wouldn't find anything. The whole point of this was to experiment on them since he had authority in his universe.

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John on his stone throne in the Infinite Maze waved his hands.

All 19 of them fell into a sleep.

John used Soul Domain to grasp each one of their souls.

He had their souls go through the afterlife of his universe.

Branding it with a unique native attribute. So now they were natives of his universe and the wizard world.

He created a floating cube with rooms above his infinite maze.

He sealed each of their souls in its own room in the cube.

Souls could exist at multiple places at once.

Traditionally, the soul existed linked to the body and in the Otz Room.

Now their souls existed in the Infinite Maze.

John then created a phantom soul.

This soul would be special. It contained a soulverse.

This soul he housed in the cube.

He called this cube 'The Deathless Network'.

In the middle of the cube was a phantom soul with a soulverse.

He then linked all of their souls to this phantom soul. This would make it so they could tap into The Deathless Network's magic matrix.

This was breaking the rules!

Once John tried to link them to his phantom soul in the cube.

The originator of their bloodlines noticed their descendants souls were being tampered with. Since their bloodlines were diluted over the years, which was one of the reasons they could only get up to rank 1 as warlocks. Not every entity decided it was worth the effort to stop John.

John was attempting to do something legendary. He was trying to cleanse their souls of the contract of their bloodline! This was extremely taboo. It was basically him challenging the foundation of their bloodline.

This would attract rank 7+ beings!

John didn't use his main body for this, he created a soul on the lifeless planet and had it go through tribulation. He once again had a nascent soul! Some of the entities were cautious and didn't dare to enter his universe. They had no idea if it was a trap.

In the end of things. John was surrounded by 2 rank 7's and a rank 8!

They had no idea this wasn't really an important body.

They also didn't know, that they had walked into his trap!

"You dare try to destroy our imprints? Foolish mortal. You aren't even rank 0! Yet you dare try to challenge a being made of laws?"

"You guys are all going to die!"

The rank 8 spoke:

"Where does your confidence from?"

"Silence! Are we going to talk, or are we going to fight?"

John knew that he would have to face beings of laws. This would be a tough fight... Just kidding! The only reason these beings dared to show up, was because they thought he wasn't even rank 0! Who would suspect that a rank 0 could create their own universe? That was something usually only a rank 8+ could pull off...

John was interested to see the gap in strength between him and these supreme beings.

So he didn't use the blessing of his universe to fight them.

Instantly! A rank 7 had appeared in front of John.

"This speed!?"

They flicked their finger and John's head exploded.

John's immortality instantly restored his head.

"This isn't a normal mortal... I suppose that is to be expected from someone that can manipulate soul!"

Waves of energy then hit John... his body started to fall apart.

The rank 7 was using their heartbeat to destroy John...

John became bloody mist.

But he recovered.

They clicked their tongue.

"This mortal is annoyingly hard to kill!"

John was grabbed by his leg and thrown so hard that he traveled at the speed of light and combusted as he smashed into a planet destroying it.

John couldn't help but think:

"The amount of force needed for this... these guys are on an entirely different level..."

John's body had been completely vaporized.

Luckily, his immortality was linked to his souls, not anchored to his blood.

John reformed in space.

"You're still alive? You...are immortal?"

"Bingo!"

The rank 8 instantly appeared in front of John and was about to hit him with an attack that would target the soul and the body.

The perfect way to kill someone that was immortal was to attack their soul, this was often their weakness.

But the rank 8's fist was caught by John's skeletal body!

"Alright. Play time is over!"

John blessed his skeletal body using the entire universe's authority.

The rank 8 hit John thousands of times.

But John was completely fine.

"You do realize, that this is my universe right?"

The rank 8 narrowed her eyes.

"You're bluffing!"

John then spoke:

"You know... one of my fears use to be being sealed. The funny thing is. I did all of this on purpose for you to show up. All of this was according to my plans..."

The rank 8 began to laugh.

"A ant plotting against an elephant. Your schemes won't work, try again in a million years!"

John then touched the head of the rank 8.

"What are you doing?"

"Sealing you!"

"You see... I plan to use your body as the energy generator for my Deathless Magic Matrix."

Millions of runes surrounded John and the rank 8.

"This... your comprehension in runes... Who the hell are you!?"

"What are you guys doing... attack him!"

The two rank 7's flew over to attack John.

But his new nascent soul body intercepted them.

He crushed his fist and cracked his neck.

As he was also blessed by the entire universe.

"Don't interrupt your father!"

"Let the adults talk."

John then got into a battle with the two rank 7's as they clashed thousands of times across the solar system. Planets were getting destroyed from a single attack of these rank 7's.

John wasn't able to hurt them. It was as if they were invulnerable. But he was able to distract them. That was enough! He just needed time to set up his formation.

Millions of runes and thousands of magic circles filled space as the rank 8 tried to pull themselves from his grasp.

"Want to run away? It's too late!"

"You fool! This is a mere avatar. It doesn't matter if you seal me."

"Free energy, is free energy. I don't care if this is an avatar. You shouldn't have offended me."

"You're the one that messed with my bloodline imprint!"

"Bla bla bla."

"It is time for my new spell. Dimensional Seal!"

This spell was tier 8!

The highest tier spell he had ever cast!

John didn't even have enough mental energy to cast it!

He was stressing his source for this spell. He wouldn't be able to use this spell for centuries again.

The rank 8 started to panic.

"I'll give you-"

John cut them off.

"You disappoint me..."

"A supreme being begging? Nonsense! You can't be trusted..."

'Dimensional Seal'

A blackhole appeared.

Then another.

Then another...

Then another.

Eventually... a cube with blackholes at each point had formed.

The rank 8 was trapped in the middle of it. This was called dimensional seal, because it trapped the target in thousands of layers of multiple dimensions.

John let go of them.

The rank 8 tried to teleport out, but they were completely trapped.

This wasn't really trapping a rank 8. This was just an avatar. But the energy it produced could be quite useful.

John's other body then caught both attacks of the other rank 7's at once and bluffed.

"You two will also power my matrix!"

They looked at the rank 8 and saw that she was completely sealed.

They instantly retreated.

John sighed in relief... he had stressed his source to pull off that tier 8 spell. It would take years to be able to cast it again.

John looked at the rank 8's avatar with greed in his eyes.

He pointed his finger at the rank 8 and she began to compress.

Until he held a black cube in his hand.

John skeletal body then appeared in his Infinite Maze.

He then trapped it inside the soulverse of the phantom soul in the Deathless Magic Matrix.

John then cleansed the souls of those in Deathless.

This was something legendary! This was breaking the bloodline shackles!

They no longer had the bloodline of that entity.

In a sense, the contract they had as warlocks was broken.

Their magic cores completely dissolved as they became mortals.

But John had linked their souls to the Deathless Magic Matrix.

Although it wasn't as good as his.

John had made his phantom soul house the soulverse in his main body with the nascent soul.

While he didn't create each of them their own soulverse like he did for himself.

He instead allowed them to have a shared one.

This meant a few things.

Firstly... John was capable of tapping into a backlog of mana generated from his infinite energy generation.

He had some of his Qi generated from his consciousness nourish his phantom soul. He then had that energy converted to mana in the magic matrix of his soulverse.

This created a backlog of mana that he could pull from.

Since they all shared a single soulverse.

It meant that they would have to fight for mana...

Also, they weren't nascent souls... so they lacked Qi to nourish their souls. So no energy was being fed to the soulverse.

So they couldn't get any mana out of it.

But this problem was fixed thanks to that rank 8.

Although it was just an avatar and only was generating the energy of a rank 7.

This was enough to supercharge them.

But this meant they could now progress past rank 1!

They just needed to form a magic core again. It would be blessed by the matrix in their soul.

John planned for them to each have a phantom magic core that was linked to their soul. He would have this soul bound and have their cores transported to his Infinite Maze!

"That went better then expected..."