Hel once again drew a massive amount of soul energy from the Philosopher's Stone. After she helped Niv's six avatars each form a blank soul, she began installing her own innate ability tags and magic tags onto them.
That way, even though Niv's own tag slots were already full, she could still freely control her avatars to use different kinds of magic.
Once that was done, Hel and Niv returned to the data core. Now, the vast crystalline chamber looked noticeably emptier.
Reentering the inner section of the crystal, Hel quickly began merging the remaining brains. Those of similar races she directly fused together, and the resulting brains were often from species Hel had never even heard of before.
Eventually, she reached the last remaining dragon brain. She swiftly extracted its tag data and began the fusion process — combining the newly synthesized tags with the original dragon bloodline tag before reinserting them.
Just as she expected, the result was a demigod-grade dragon brain.
With that complete, the crystal chamber now contained — aside from the dragon brain — twenty-seven holy-tier brains of various races.
Hel decided to pack those up and take them with her, using the same method she had used for Niv's crimson orbs.
Once she had stored all the brains, she turned her gaze toward the half-pool of red liquid that remained.
Thanks to the knowledge provided by her Desire Energy Tag, she now understood what it was —the condensed product of refined Desire Energy, known as Refined Desire Essence. It had excellent nourishing effects on both the body and the soul.
As for the dense red primal matter settled at the bottom of the crystal pool, Hel didn't forget about it either. She used some of that primal material to craft several large buckets, then filled them with the Refined Desire Essence and stored them all in her Undead Space.
"Now then," she murmured, pressing her hand against the transparent crystalline wall, "you're the only one left."
This material — the very crystal itself — was a special kind of Desire-Energy Compound, forged by fusing raw desire and souls together into crystallized form. It was known as a Desire Crystal, capable of both storing Desire Energy and providing incredible defense — its hardness comparable to Xuanwu Stone Bricks.
Fortunately, the massive crystal structure was a single, independent entity, which made it easy for Hel's spiritual power to envelop it completely.
With a thought, she shattered the enormous prison — it disintegrated into a blizzard of glittering fragments before crashing heavily onto the pedestal below with a thunderous boom, sending clouds of dust billowing into the air.
Hel shielded herself from the falling embers with her spiritual power and calmly flew out from the smoky center. Once she reached the edge of the pedestal, she used her mind to reassemble the scattered fragments.
Before long, a massive hexagonal crystal reformed — though this time it was much smaller than before.
Hel entered the crystal again and began installing the stored brains inside. After a long session of careful assembly and fine-tuning, the new Ascension Brain was finally complete.
"Let's test its performance," she said.
"Yes, Master," Niv replied.
She attempted to link her mind with the new Ascension Brain. After a few moments of diagnostics, she gave her report:
"Its performance is equivalent to 3.7 standard demigod-class brains — about 85% higher computation capacity than the original Ascension Brain that housed edwina."
"Looks like a success," Hel remarked with satisfaction.
With the help of several mechanical octopuses under Niv's command, they transferred the massive core into the Undead Space for storage.
"Alright, let's go check out the Desire Energy Station and see how those elves are doing," Hel said. "Once we deal with them, we can finally go home and eat."
"Uh… about that, Master," Niv said awkwardly, tugging on Hel's sleeve.
She led Hel to the back exit of the data center and pointed toward a towering wall in the distance.
"As time went on," Niv explained, "the numbers of the half-blood goblins and snow elves gradually grew. Edwina became increasingly wary of them. That's why, when she decided to handle the six-tier elven queen, it was actually part of her strategy to keep both races in check.
After that, she intentionally sowed discord between the two races while secretly capturing their people to use as materials for Desire Energy Stations.
Originally, her plan was to keep their populations under tight control. But about three thousand years ago, the Ancient Tree of Life underwent a massive surge in productivity — in just a few decades, it created countless new elves.
That caused both races' populations to spiral completely out of control. To suppress their numbers, Aedwina intensified her captures — which in turn exposed her actions to the elves.
The half-blood goblins, in particular, saw this as an unforgivable betrayal. They had some goblin blood, but they were still elves at heart. So they joined forces with the snow elves and launched a rebellion against Aedwina.
And the result…"
Niv pointed again toward the massive wall ahead.
"Both elven races suffered catastrophic losses and were imprisoned within these walls. If not for edwina's need to use them as energy producers, she would've wiped them out entirely.
That's why, Master, using my old permission protocols to control them won't work this time."
"That… is indeed a problem," Hel said grimly.
According to her knowledge, there were at least two sixth-tier powerhouses among the elves. If things went wrong, her own forces could take heavy casualties.
"Still," Hel continued, "we'll see what their attitude is first. If they're willing to submit, that's ideal. If not… we'll just have to turn them into undead."
While they spoke, they had already arrived at the base of the towering wall that surrounded the Desire Energy Station.
This was the western station of the city — and there was another of equal scale to the east. Together, the two stations provided all the energy the city required, with plenty of excess output besides. Edwina had refined that excess into Desire Crystals, now stored safely back in the data center.