Nyx haphazardly threw one of the wooden draws, having already upturned its contents onto the desk, onto the marble floor with a loud crash.

The resulting noise echoed off the walls of the small office, yet it didn't seem to bother her as she flipped through its contents with a tired, somewhat bored expression.

She had already gathered the documents that had been strewn across the floor, ordering them by their title and page numbers, into a neat pile at the side of the desk and was making sure that none of the missing pages were hidden anywhere.

There were far too many documents for Nyx, especially since she only could take what she could carry with one hand, so she planned to skim through them and only accept those of interest.

After double checking the room to see if she missed any, Nyx piled up the gold and silver coins, the markings on them looking somewhat familiar, before sighing and turning to her next opponent.

A stout looking, leather chair that had been tipped over, probably by the fat man as he grabbed anything of value, and while she would be able to manage, the thought of lifting anything heavy made Nyx want to cry tears of blood.

Nyx had been somewhat hoping she would find some painkillers in the room, but apart from the few potions she already consumed, the office was barren of anything that might bring her any relief causing her mood to be pretty low for someone who had just escaped captivity.

After a brief struggle, uprighting the chair wasn't nearly as big of an ordeal as Nyx imagined it would be and quickly dragged it to the desk before sitting down. Adjusting the chair so that its high back wouldn't block out the light filtering through the window, Nyx moved her gaze to the pile of paper.

Lifting the first document into the moonlight, Nyx sighed, lamenting that her unique sense couldn't be used to read words on paper.

The document turned out to be just as useless she expected. It contained the records of the upkeep of the house, and while she held a small hope that it might list those employed, enslaved or residing in the mansion, her expectations were quickly dashed.

"Life wouldn't be as kind as to actually provide a physical kill list, with names and addresses, maybe even a little picture, would it?" Nyx let out an exhausted breath.

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Tossing the piece of paper to the floor, Nyx picked up another, only to quickly repeat the process, building up a small pile of trash to her side.

There were a few documents that caught Nyx's attention, mainly around the use of damaged soul crystals and their applications in medicine.

It seemed while most believed they could never be repaired and were thus, useless, someone had worked out that a cultivator could extract the energy of the soul bound to it to heal and bind weak souls to their bodies, sometimes even reversing death.

However, even that didn't really enter Nyx's eyes until she got to the part where it explained the methods used.

With some idea of how and why she had come to inherit her current body, Nyx was quietly relieved that those that had summoned her were probably genuinely unaware they had done so, but something unsettled her, causing her to pay more attention to the following, linked documents.

Discovering that the process could only be done when the soul hadn't been summoned Nyx started to relax but after she finished and began to collect her thoughts, her heart trembled at the unmentioned implications of such a method.

The energy extracted to heal the patient was unmistakenly taken from the soul. While on the surface this seemed harmless, the soul losing some strength in exchange for the life of another, to those who understood the true nature of the energy and its origin, it was nowhere near as simple.

The energy was the power that a soul used to maintain its form in the void, preserving its identity and enabling it to grow. If this power were restricted, at worst it would stifle the development of the soul. However, if it was overused, the soul could be drained dry and dissolve into nothingness.

Slamming the desk with her fist, Nyx cursed loudly as she lost her temper.

Knowing this, it meant that if she was killed and her soul returned to the abyss, there was a possibility the old man that held her crystal would continue to use it, stealing her energy and killing her slowly.

It was akin to death by a thousand cuts, something she couldn't do anything about unless she had another lucky resummoning.

Nyx closed her eyes, trying to sense her soul and couldn't find anything amiss but the fear of what could have been had already settled.

Opening her eyes and grinding her teeth, Nyx started to calm her raging emotions, mainly as it was causing her injuries to flare up and generating significant amounts of pain.

"Fine then, I just won't die until I destroy my soul crystal. It's not like that wasn't what I was planning anyway," huffed Nyx.

Though she spat out these words, moving the documents relating to this subject to a neat pile on her opposite side, Nyx's heart was full of anxiousness.

Being able to find peace after death, and be resummoned if she died, Nyx had developed a careless attitude during confrontations. However, with this new information, she felt that for the first time in an age, she was worried about dying.

If Nyx thought what she had just learnt was fearful, after picking up and reading the first few paragraphs of the next document, her anxiousness was replaced with nerve-tingling dread.

It was a theoretical paper, one that outlined in great detail on the methods used to summon wandering souls and completely extract their energy.

And for the soul from the abyss, it only continued to get worse.