Michael thought hard for a moment about his next move.
With the monsters swarming outside the community, the decision to hunt felt natural.
To him, they were all experience points waiting to be claimed.
While he doubted he could reach the max level for Rank 1 today—unless he somehow killed every monster in the city—Michael figured that taking down a large portion of the ones nearby should allow him to level up at least twice.
That would put him just five levels away from level 25, the maximum for Rank 1.
Although the experience required to level up increased exponentially, even surpassing the total he had already gained to reach his current level, it was better than being ten levels behind.
Michael made up his mind quickly.
“I’ll leave Lucky here to guard my mom. Prince and a few undead will follow me for speed and strength, while the rest stay behind with Lucky,” he decided.
Since the Association wanted him to protect the public, he would—just not by playing the hero or rescuing people.
Instead, he’d clean the streets of monsters.
For the first time in both of his lives, Michael felt genuinely eager to do what could technically be called community service.
Before leaving, Michael sent a message to his aunt, knowing the network was still up.
[Michael: The crisis is almost over, don’t worry. Everything is fine. Call me immediately if something comes up.]
After sending the message, he switched his phone from vibrate to audible mode.
No one in his family and the other people within his protection currently knew what was happening outside the fortifications he had built for them.
While he could go in and give them a briefing, Michael was far too lazy to bother.
They were safer within the defenses he had created, and that was enough.
As for the Supernaturals inside the dome? Michael figured they wouldn’t want to leave its protection, so he couldn’t care less about them.
He also doubted this would cause trouble.
No one was likely to sell themselves out, and the Association wouldn’t be foolish enough to punish someone who had actively helped keep the public safe at the start of the chaos like these men.
They were also living beings.
Despite their tendency to act like overlords, Michael believed the Association understood that Supernaturals were also people with emotions.
Push them too far, and they might end up siding with the demonic forces instead.
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In the end, things were just as Michael expected—and even less complicated than he had imagined.
The Association wanted the public protected but didn’t expect Supernaturals to sacrifice themselves for the cause.
Their basic requirement was compliance with the command.
How many lives were actually saved? That was left to fate.
As long as the whole city wasn’t wiped out.
Before moving out of the community, Michael finally armed himself, unlike what he had been unable to do at the start of the chaos.
Under the protection of Lucky and Prince, he wore the size-fitting armor he had bought for his undead, along with his spear.
Though advancing had brought great changes to Michael, physically it only made him a little taller with paler skin.
Compared to his orcs, he still looked small, but the armor fitted him properly.
Michael did a little move around and his flexibility wasn’t affected.
“Great!”
Michael was once again happy with his purchase.
Finally, for the last step, Michael turned to inspect his status after so many level ups.
His stats had increased, but they barely brought significant strength to him.
However, overall, he was better than before the level up to level 16.
Also, thanks to his race and class, he now had 18 more attribute points, together with his previous 30, making it 48 in total.
Such an amount was enough to boost his strength in any kind, but Michael didn’t touch it yet.
If one wasn’t about to advance, it was advisable to keep attribute points as one wouldn’t know what situation they could be in the future where they needed a quick boost to a certain stat.
However, this opinion was suggestive, as there were other Awakeners who believed that immediate use of attribute points was better for their own valid reasons.
Then there was the third group that didn’t care and did whatever they liked with their attribute points.
Michael didn’t know which group he belonged to and didn’t really care much about it.
In the end, he did whatever he wanted to do with his attribute points, though he couldn’t deny he liked to only use it when he felt the need to.
Then there was his contract slots; it had increased by another 6.
Seeing his contract slots, Michael couldn’t help but feel it was little.
Though he didn’t know them, he really envied those that had 5 contract slots every level up due to their strong soul.
Perhaps even these existences wouldn’t desire to have a lot of undead, but for Michael, the number of undead he could have was more significant to him than other Necromancers, who increased their numbers for either more flexibility, overall battle power, and so on.
For Michael, it was because of the evolution points each head of undead provided him.
If from the start, he was like those existences that could get 5 contract slots per level up, by now, he’d have at least 90 contract slots, which meant every day he’d be receiving at least 90 daily evolution points.
At this point, he didn’t even need to spend money on looking for items that would give him evolution points and just rely on his daily points and accumulate them.
“There must be some treasure out there in the world that can increase the soul talent of a person. If I can get my hands on one…”
Michael couldn’t help but imagine a future where a random stone thrown at his undead army could hit an extraordinary rank creature.
The future was exciting to look forward to.