Maybe I really am a Villian

After making every suitable demon corpse into one of his vessels, the number of vessels had increased considerably, with each one carrying the characteristics of a different demon species.

However, Asher still couldn’t properly use most of their abilities. Simply possessing a demon’s body didn’t grant him complete mastery over its innate abilities.

All the demon vessels then moved toward the sections where the human corpses were stored.

Once they arrived, they began extracting the mana cores from the corpses and absorbing the mana within them. Their cultivation began increasing at a remarkable speed, and within a short period, their ranks started rising one after another.

However, the rapid increase in cultivation came with a price.

Their bodies became increasingly unstable with every breakthrough. Although demons could naturally devour other beings and use their mana to strengthen themselves, even demons normally couldn’t increase their cultivation at the speed Asher was forcing them to.

Asher’s extremely precise control over mana allowed him to accelerate the process far beyond what a normal demon could achieve. The enormous amount of mana being forced through their bodies placed tremendous strain on them, causing their bodies to become increasingly unstable.

Even healing magic could only repair some of the damage. It couldn’t completely eliminate the instability caused by the continuous breakthroughs.

Despite this, Asher didn’t stop.

He had no intention of keeping these vessels for a long time. As long as they could temporarily reach a higher rank and accomplish what he needed, the damage caused to their bodies didn’t matter to him.

The demon vessels continued increasing their cultivation until all the mana cores from the human corpses had been completely consumed.

However, the mana cores ultimately provided less mana than Asher had hoped. Most of the human corpses were low-rank cultivators, so their mana cores contained only a limited amount of mana.

There was another problem as well.

There was no natural mana present in the area.

The demon vessels were able to increase their cultivation rapidly at first, but once they reached the Platinum Rank, their progress slowed down considerably. The remaining mana cores were no longer enough to support another rapid breakthrough, especially with the amount of mana required to advance into the higher ranks increasing drastically.

But even after reaching the Platinum Rank, Asher’s demon vessels continued absorbing the mana cores of the lower-ranked humans.

They kept moving through one section after another, collecting and absorbing every mana core they could find. Although each individual core provided only a small amount of energy, the sheer number of them gradually allowed the vessels to continue increasing their cultivation.

After nearly four hours of continuously absorbing mana cores, there wasn’t a single human corpse with an intact mana core left in any of the sections they had searched.

Every mana core from every human corpse had been completely absorbed.

By the end of it, all of Asher’s demon vessels had successfully reached the Diamond Rank.

However, the rapid increase in cultivation had placed even more strain on their already unstable bodies, making it clear that they couldn’t maintain this state indefinitely.

There were now a total of 217 vessels at the Diamond Rank.

However, Asher knew that if he truly wanted to eliminate everyone in the facility, Diamond Rank wouldn’t be enough. He needed vessels capable of reaching the Master Rank.

With that in mind, Asher made a decision. He extracted the mana cores from some of his vessels and had the remaining vessels absorb them, using the concentrated energy to strengthen themselves further.

After the mana cores had been absorbed, only 54 vessels remained. All of them had reached the Peak Diamond Rank and were now standing at the threshold of the Master Rank.

However, none of them attempted the breakthrough.

Breaking through to the Master Rank caused a far greater reaction than advancing through the lower ranks. If too many vessels attempted the breakthrough at once, the disturbance could easily alert the people throughout the facility.

More importantly, even 54 Peak Diamond-rank vessels weren’t enough to deal with everyone here.

There were nearly 200 Master-rank cultivators in the facility, along with four Grandmaster-rank cultivators.

Asher could deal with many Master-rank cultivators with a single powerful vessel, but fighting a Grandmaster was an entirely different matter.

With only 54 vessels available, Asher wasn’t confident in killing everyone here.

So, Asher decided to move on to the next part of his plan.

For that, all of his vessels regrouped at the place where his first vessel had originally been sent from Room 4.

Going back into Room 4 was out of the question, since the demon stationed there was still keeping watch.

Instead, Asher moved toward a nearby underground section where the corpses were stored. Those sections were most likely connected to the other seven rooms, where the remaining seven demons were probably being kept.

And since it was already midnight, there was a good chance that no one was present inside those rooms at the moment.

So, seven of Asher’s vessels moved toward the nearby compartments, which were most likely connected to the other seven rooms, based on what Asher had observed during the past few days while working in this section of the facility.

One of the vessels reached a nearby compartment that was most likely connected to Room 8, according to the layout of the facility that Asher remembered.

Since the walls prevented Asher from sensing anything beyond them, the vessel couldn’t determine whether anyone was inside the room directly.

Instead, he carefully sent his mana through a small opening in the wall, using it to establish a spatial connection with the area on the other side.

Once the connection was successfully established, the vessel immediately used his Spatial Element and teleported directly into the room.

Inside, the room looked almost exactly like Room 4 had before the demon there was brought under control.

There wasn’t much inside the room. Most of the space was empty, with the main focus being a large test tube positioned in the center.