"You want these uncooked?"
The shopkeeper was surprised, but seeing Liam take out a silver coin, he did not ask any further questions and quickly took out the two cages and handed them to him.
"Thanks." Liam received them. His speed then increased rapidly as he rushed out of the city at top speed.
He found an isolated spot in the forest, well out of the way of the often traveled path. It was also hidden among a group of tall trees.
"This is good." He settled there, placing the cage on the moist forest ground.
He then bent down and took out one chicken from the cage, grabbing it by its neck and locking the door back afterward.
BA BAK BAK BAK
Immediately, the chicken started clawing at him, trying to escape his grasp.
"Wait. Wait. If everything goes well, you and I will be fighting together for a long time." Liam patted the bird.
BAKA BAK BAK BAK
The chicken once again started struggling. It did not like the creepy look on Liam's face or his creepy smile one bit.
And the next second, what it feared happened.
Liam twisted its neck effortlessly and the chicken was dead with its tongue sticking out and its eyes unbelievably wide.
He immediately dropped the corpse down and sat down in a mediative posture, staring at the dead chicken in front of him.
Its small bead-like soul slowly started seeping out of the corpse.
And Liam was exactly waiting for this!
His gaze locked on to this small bead-like soul and then summoned all the mana that he could from the air around him.
Since he was back in the Xion realm, he could only use this. There was no nether present around him.
Liam actually forgot to think about this factor so he cursed himself, realizing it only now. Nevertheless, he continued with the process and decided to see where it went.
He gathered all the mana that he was capable of commanding and then choked the bead-like soul with this surplus mana.
"Hmmm… this is a lot simpler." He was now dealing with only mana and not nether and mana, so Liam was able to control everything better and it was also a lot easier.
It was as if he had been trying to lift 100 kgs and now suddenly that had halved.
He was even easily able to move the soul bead from the corpse to his palm, carefully enveloping it in mana on all sides.
Liam focussed and controlled the mana, feeling the bead-like soul with patience. This was the farthest he had progressed in his training.
In his previous attempts, by now the soul would have disintegrated and disappeared, resulting in a failure.
But this time, he was still able to hold on, and for this long!
"So what I guess is…"
Liam was suddenly too nervous.
He thing that he had in his hand was a live soul of another being and if he was correct… then this would be…
"I have already seen life and death… why am I nervous about this…" He chuckled and then the next second he finally began the process.
The whirlpool of mana gathered around the bead-like soul suddenly transformed into two giant hammers that banged the soul orb from both top and bottom.
"No. This still won't do." Liam gritted his teeth and gathered even more mana, making the two giant hammers into four big hammers.
Now the soul orb was getting beaten up from all sides.
DING. DING. DING. DING.
He started rhythmically swinging the hammers at the soul orb as if he was forging a weapon.
So far, Liam had tried several methods to do this step. But somehow this was the method he was most comfortable with. Perhaps because he enjoyed forging the most.
And the vague description he read about the inferior soul forging technique and the name of the skill name itself kind of got stuck in his head.
So now he was literally forging the soul bead with mana hammers until something happened.
This was it. This was his limit. This was all he was able to comprehend from the bits and pieces of knowledge he had obtained so far.
It is said that half knowledge of anything is dangerous, but he did not have any other option at the moment.
He really needed this to work.
Especially, now that he could feel the soul being alive once again in his palm, he really wanted this to work.
He was so close that he could feel it in his blood.
"Come on. Come on." Liam whispered, sweat trickling down his forehead because of the exhaustion that was slowly accumulating.
…
…
…
Near the Yleka city gates, two cloaked figures arrived, followed by a group of others. All of them were covered in black cloaks as if it was their uniform.
They seem to be gathered together, silently standing, waiting for someone.
A few passersby glanced at them as they went in and out of the city, but other than that there was nothing special about them and no one gave them a second look.
So just like that, the group continued waiting for a few more minutes when suddenly one person stomped her feet on the ground.
"Why is he making everyone wait like this? Aren't we on the same side now? Shouldn't he respect our time more? What? Does he think only his time is valuable?"
"That guy has an ego the size of this world… I am telling you… grrrr…" Alex whispered to Mia, making sure that she was not overheard by the others standing beside them.
The thing was that… only when they ran some dungeons together, she realized that there were two other players in their group who had actually signed no contracts or anything of that sort.
Apparently, they were trustworthy while she was not. This slightly ticked her off so Alex was grumbling, chewing her sister's ears off.
Mia, however, was calmer. "Keep quiet, Alex." She simply said, absent-mindedly staring at the crowd of players bustling about within the city and crossing them ever so often.
Within that crowd, her sharp beautiful eyes were keenly searching for a certain someone.
She did not even hear what Alex said as she was deeply engrossed in her thoughts. She wanted to know why Liam had called them over.
Were they going to run a dungeon together again? After so long?
She couldn't help but anticipate such a thing.. She wanted to know just how strong he was and how they fared when compared to him.