The suffering was a billion times crueller and tormenting than he had initially expected and could have ever imagined. But he could not give up just yet, because his soul needed to be strengthened until he had developed his first strand of soul sense or else, he would not be able to find the goblin village entrance.
Outside of the soul space, his real body was already shaking slightly, his eyes were completely bloodshot and his entire body was drenched in sweat due to withstanding this unimaginable torment. It was just lucky that no beast was approaching him or attacking him at this moment because in this condition he would hardly be able to defend himself.
Just as Thiago was on the brink of becoming unconscious, he felt that his soul had been strengthened enough to bear one strand of soul sense and without hesitation commanded the demons to stop imbuing their energy into his soul and thus paused the cultivation of the "Heavenly Demon soul transmogrifying Art".
"Whew- That was close, I almost fainted. I couldn't have imagined such a great agony just at the first time of soul tempering." Thiago exclaimed after having been able to just barely stay conscious while having to bear this tormenting and agonizing pain of his soul being corroded and then regenerated, in an endless cycle.
Slowly recovering, Thiago, still with his soul sense in the soul space, turned to look towards his soul, who was still sitting on the throne as if nothing had happened just now. But he quickly realized a small difference, being that some red and dark patterns were still faintly visible on his soul's shadowy body, that were rapidly disappearing as if they had never been there in the first place. But he did not think too much about those patterns because they might just have appeared because of the demons' energy and made no difference.
What he did not know was, that in the moment those patterns were still visible, the eyes on his real body outside had faintly shone red...
Additionally, he also noticed that his soul body had become slightly larger, from the initial size of a toddler to the size of a, well... larger toddler.
This was a clear sign of his soul having become stronger than before and now he also could use his own, albeit still weak, soul sense after he went back from the soul space.
Seeing that there was nothing else to do at this moment inside his soul space, he decided to leave and ultimately deal with this damn goblin village entrance, that had cause him so much trouble already.
A short time later and having already left the soul space, Thiago found himself back in his own body, where he also directly noticed the current state, his body was in. "Hah, I sweated quite a lot just now, I guess." Thiago chuckled after realizing how much his body was soaked in sweat and how all of his fur was completely wet.
Not caring about this matter anymore, he swiftly decided to at long last try out his through agony and sweat acquired soul sense.
"Alright just as the technique instructed, I just need to think about expanding my senses and then theoretically the soul power should be mobilized and extend a strand of my soul sense to the outer world." Thiago mumbled while carefully trying to do exact said thing.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
And to his delight it actually worked and he could abruptly feel how his senses had been heightened and he seemed to be able to extend this strand of soul sense forward up to 10 meters and everything in a radius of five meters would be transmitted to him as information. This was quite a novel feeling for him but it was actually incredible useful, because you could use this to spy on others or to investigate a certain situation up ahead without actually being there.
Normally you would not be able to straight away do those things with the lower level of soul sense just how Thiago had, because the soul power would not be enough to support these actions.
But Thiago was a special case and his soul power was way stronger than usual people in the same realm or even above, because of his cultivation technique that required this above-described agonizing process of tempering which no cultivator on Red Star would do, because a soul was way too fragile in order to do something like that. It's just that Thiago had no idea how crazy of a thing he did with his way of tempering the soul, what in turn brought him greater soul power in the same realm than other cultivators.
Because for normal cultivators that had just developed their first strand of soul sense, they weren't actually seeing those things like him and in contrast only knew what there was and how it looked and sounded without actually hearing or seeing anything. Another thing was that their range of soul sense wouldn't be nearly as far as his. Comparing these two it was very clear how much more powerful and useful Thiago's soul sense was.
Now after seeing that his soul sense was working, Thiago immediately marched towards the previous rock and with his soul sense activated he promptly saw that there was a gate inlaid into the rock, which he had previously been unable to see due to the illusion that made him think that there was nothing there even though he had completely looked at the exact same position as he was looking now. This clearly showed the might of illusions, were they used in the right place and moment, which also made Thiago think of buying an illusion technique in the near future should he have enough points at that time.
The gate was made out of wood and was around 5 meters high and 3 meters wide, which indicated that some of the goblins living inside of the village were probably rather large. Not that this would matter for Thiago, because he would enter the village anyways.
Now having found the entrance, he did not take any precautionary measures, and tried to push open the gate which unexpectedly opened just on his first try. It seemed as if the goblins were very sure of their illusion, so that they did not even bother to lock their gate leading inside their village. Well Thiago was nevertheless grateful for their mistaken sense of security and safety and sauntered inside the gate as if it were his own place, without any regard of being seen by the goblins.
After stepping through the gate, a huge and wide-open place came into his view, in which there were various wooden and stone hut in which the goblins were probably living.
The only thing that gave him a slightly unwell feeling, was the sheer amount of such huts which in turn indicated a large population of goblins. Despite that he did continue to march forward, simply because he had grown to arrogant these days and thought nothing of his enemies, which could be a fatal error later on.
Soon the first goblin noticed him and instead of directly attacking him, which was what Thiago had expected of such creatures as goblins that did not have a high intelligence normally, the goblin made a loud sound which was probably a signal that the goblins used to communicate when dangerous enemies were breaking in through their hidden entrance and attacking them.
Thiago had not expected that they would be so well prepared when thinking back on how the gate was only hidden with an illusion and wasn't even locked. Now it seems as if these goblins were smarter than he had thought.
Quickly dashing forward, Thiago slapped the little goblin with his paw, who was only around one meter tall and in the Novice realm, and made his sharp claws insert into his flesh and then threw him off his feet and sent him flying a few meters, due to the massive force that lay behind his slap, while also literally ripping him apart due to his claws gripping into parts of his flesh, which made these parts unable to be sent flying with the rest of his body and therefore instantly kill him, but that did not make a difference, now that the distress signal had already been sent out by said goblin.
Thiago already had a feeling of having slightly miscalculated the goblins power as a whole, and he was right, just a few moments after he killed the goblin, he saw goblins after goblins emerge from all sides.
There were hundreds of them with most of them being in the novice realm and only some of them in the Student realm, which was an incredible powerful force.
"Damn why did so many of them appear at once!" Thiago cursed out loud while solemnly letting his gaze wander through the masses of goblins slowly approaching him.
'I guess this will be my toughest battle since my appearance in this forest.' He though inwardly while also simultaneously blaming himself for his stupidity of not taking any precautionary measures and being more careful when entering the Gate of the village.