Void Evolution System

Damien could barely garner anything from the Prison Master's expression. It changed several times. His original response was as expected. His eyes narrowed and he glared at Damien in suspicion, but that only lasted for a few seconds at most.

After that, his face looked slightly inquisitive, serious, curious again, and then turbulent as he frowned deeply.

Still, the look in his eyes didn't seem like it belonged to someone who was planning to reject the request.

"Is it truly for your training that you wish to see the prison?" He asked.

Damien looked into his eyes and tried to understand what he was thinking, but it wasn't possible in the short term. He nodded his head with firm eyes and responded simply.

"Yes."

"There is no other reason?"

"There is not."

"Hmm…"

The Prison Master had a certain quality that allowed him to see through people. When he looked at Damien, he could see that there were hidden intentions laced all throughout his words.

The strange thing was that those intentions, while concealed, didn't seem harmful. The aura emanating from Damien seemed to be one of…a helper?

The Prison Master fell into thought for a second, seemingly debating over something. However, he made his decision relatively fast and without the need for Damien to provide any more justification.

"Very well. You are a promising junior, so I suppose it is not a problem. You won't mind if I come with you, will you?" "Of course not," Damien replied with a smile.

"Rather, how would I be able to walk such a place without the Prison Master himself at my side guiding me?"

"Haha, so you were planning to use me as a guide from the start."

The Prison Master nodded.

"You look to be a busy man, so let us not delay. Please follow me carefully, and from this point forward, only step where I step."

Damien easily agreed.

They were still in the same greeting room where Damien was left when they first entered the manor, but their path seemed to start here.

The Prison Master walked casually so it didn't seem like there was anything special about his movements to an outside observer. Nevertheless, Damien watched him carefully and did as he was told, moving exactly like the man in front of him.

The two of them left the greeting room and entered the long hallway in the center of the manor. They walked it to its end until they reached a living room and exited the doors into the connected courtyard.

Before the bloody landscape that Damien had traversed only moments ago, the Prison Master did something of a ritual. He bowed to the eternal sun and prayed to the corrupted land. Damien stood behind him in silence, watching carefully until he finished.

In his mind, this was a ritual that he would also have to imitate, but he was incorrect. By the time the Prison Master finished his movements, the world was already fading away into a deep and murky darkness not dissimilar to that which existed in the Sacred Abyss.

'I see. This isn't the normal entrance. This must be the ritual that's undertaken when new prisoners are brought to the prison.'

If they entered through this method, then Damien would technically be considered a prisoner. He wouldn't be allowed to leave if he pulled anything that the Prison Master found suspicious.

And, if he decided to sneak back and re-enter, he would be unable to escape. 'It's a little inconvenient for me, but I'm sure it will be fine.'

Damien refocused on the world around him when it came back into focus.

The floor was made of cobblestone. No, the entire structure was made of damp and musty cobblestone.

Damien and the Prison Master were in a very narrow corridor sandwiched on both sides by prison cells that spanned as far as the eye could see. "Welcome to the Eternal Sanctum," the Prison Master said as he turned around.

"This is the place that you have been so eager to see."

Damien was still looking around. Something like this would not slide on his homeworld. The prison cells themselves were small enough to barely fit a grown adult male. They were stacked on top of each other ten high and submerged in eternal darkness.

It was clear that these prisoners weren't granted any sort of human rights. They were thrown here like pigs waiting for slaughter so they could suffer for eternity. 'Eternal Sanctum…I guess it could be called that, but this isn't sacred in the slightest.'

Did Damien feel pity for the prisoners? Of course not.

Some of them may have deserved their sentences and some of them may have been innocent or reformed, but in the end, they all did something to end up here.

To be placed in the Eternal Sanctum meant one's crimes were enough to shake the foundation of the island's peace.

If a murderer appeared here, then they'd killed at least several cities' worth of people.

The Prison Master walked Damien through its halls. He could not see the prisoners through the darkness in their cells, but their occasional screaming and manic ranting made them hard to ignore.

The Prison Master walked Damien through its halls. He could not see the prisoners through the darkness in their cells, but their occasional screaming and manic ranting made them hard to ignore.

Still, his focus was, as he told the Prison Master before, mainly on the structure of the prison itself.

He wanted to see this place and understand if it was a viable method of containing those who could cause harm to society. He didn't care about the conditions of the prisoners, but about the conditions of the mechanisms themselves.

'It's incredibly sturdy.'

Damien could see that even if he reached a level where Area Lords were fodder before him, he still wouldn't be able to break through the Eternal Sanctum. It was designed in such a way that power wasn't the only thing necessary to destroy it.

'If I'm reading it right, then you need a group of maybe ten or fifteen people on the same level as an Area Lord to work in perfect harmony to crack these defenses.'

It was definitely worthy of being the most secure prison on the entire island.

'But…if it's gathering people with platinum badge strength, then someone's already doing that, aren't they?'

As long as both the Earth Temple Master and the Dragon Lord were both involved in some way, Damien could confirm that much.

The Prison Master did give him a tour around the prison despite grumbling about it jokingly. Those near where the two of them appeared were the less serious offenders, which was why their treatment was so "good."

The further they went, the more serious the crimes became, and the more serious the punishment was.

Those at the very end, those who needed to be teleported to because they were so deep in the prison, were undergoing torture that was crueler than even the depictions of Hell present in Earthen civilizations.

Damien did gain some insights by seeing how the prison was upheld, and he was able to confirm that the structure itself wasn't anywhere close to breaking. With that, he achieved everything he wanted to do here. Understanding the state of the prisoners was just an added bonus.

The Prison Master took Damien out of the prison easily when they finished their tour. The man was as genuine as he first said, so there was no reason to still be concerned about him.

Rather, the Prison Master's intentions were elsewhere.

"Young man, I presume you are ready to leave now?" He inquired. Damien nodded and replied, "Yes. I must sit down and ponder the insights I gained. This trip was just as fruitful as I thought it would be."

Damien thought that the Prison Master's words were an invitation to leave, so he spoke frankly. However, he was wrong.

The Prison Master was not ready for them to part yet.

"Come, sit down for a moment," he said, his eyes a bit more serious than before.

"Let us talk."

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