Alice’s individual teaching was a little bit different from what Michael expected.
He thought that Alice would set up a training course according to the information from his second aptitude assessment.
Other than Spirit Whip, which he had hidden, the information of his second aptitude assessment was correct.
However, Alice didn’t seem to trust the information, or she simply didn’t care about it.
The two of them met up in a large training hall, which Alice had emptied for them to use.
The hall was more than a hundred meters long and wide, giving the two enough space for their training.
Michael stood in the center of the hall as Alice told him to stand there and wait.
What Michael didn’t expect to experience was what happened afterward.
“Escape or die!” Alice shouted from a distance before she began utilizing her Soultraits, Frozen Kingdom.
It was the first time Michael witnessed the power of a Tier-5 powerhouse. He would have been excited to see a Tier-5 powerhouse using her 6-Star Soultrait because it was something one couldn’t see every day. It was a rare occurrence to witness the precise utility of a high-ranked Soultrait with the usage of a tremendous amount of energy.
However, this was the first time in his life that Michael wished he wouldn’t have to witness Alice’s display of power. After all, he was forced to not just witness it but experience the whole thing.
The entire hall turned into a domain of ice. Everything froze in an instant, glistening faintly.
The next moment, pillars of ice shot out of the ice covering the inside of the hall.
The ice pillars shot out of all directions. They moved around like glacier dragons, slithering through the air with a horrifying velocity. At this moment, time seemed to freeze around Michael. He instinctively used Lesser Enhancement on his eyes and the Eagle Eyes Soultrait, which he exerted as well.
Yet, even after using all of this, Michael could hardly follow the rapid movements of the ice pillars around him.
The temperature in the vicinity dropped far below zero, and Michael began to shudder. Michael felt like his body started to freeze even though Alice had yet to attack him directly. The domain of ice was more than enough to affect him that much.
Michael subconsciously summoned the Onyx Dragon Armor Set, and he began to use Lesser Enhancement on the Armor Set’s protection enchantments. He imbued origin energy into the protection enchantments to shield himself from the cold, but it was far less helpful than he’d hoped.
‘So fucking cold!’ Michael screamed in his heart. He instinctively entered his consciousness and used 25 SoulStar Fragments to increase Lesser Enhancement from a 2-Star Soultrait to a 3-Star Soultrait.
In his fight against Lincoln and Zeke, Michael didn’t get the chance to enhance Lesser Enhancement and he simply forgot to enhance Lesser Enhancement afterward.
He felt a little foolish for forgetting about the 121 SoulStar Fragments revolving around the white pillar of his War Rune, but he was glad to recall them right now.
Lesser Enhancement became a 3-Star Soultrait, and its potency increased by a large margin. The white hue around his Artifacts and eyes intensified and the enhancement of his Soultrait increased from 20% to 35%
Michael’s presence grew stronger and the freezing cold in the hall became easier to endure.
However, with the change in Michael’s presence, the ice pillars reacted.
The pillar of ice shot up through the ground all around Michael, restricting his movements. Before Michael could even think about reacting, the ice pillars covered the ground, and air around him. creating a tightly sealed ice prison all around him.
Michael could barely move in the tightly sealed ice prison, but that was not the most worrisome aspect.
He felt like he was on the verge of death.
The ice pillars exuded a chilling aura. It was colder than anything Michael had ever felt before.
‘Fuck!’ Michael screamed in his mind.
‘Is she serious about killing me?!?’
For a moment, Michael’s mind blanked out. It was too cold to gather his thoughts properly. The only thing on his mind was the chilling aura that spread through every cell in his body.
He felt that he was getting weaker by the second and could only respond by manifesting Seron Voulge. Thus, the next second Seron Voulge moved through the narrow space and collided with the ice pillar closest to him, yet nothing happened.
Not even the upgraded version of Lesser Enhancement was strong enough to cause a tiny scratch in the ice pillar.
But what did he expect? Did he really think that he could damage the ice prison manifested by a Tier-5 Lord using her 6-Star Soultrait?
Was he dumb? Probably a little.
His fingers were ice-cold, and it felt like his feet were frozen to the ground. Michael couldn’t tell what was going on anymore. Everything around him was glacier-white, and his body temperature dropped quickly.
His entire body began to shudder, and it grew increasingly more difficult to stay awake. His brain seemed to be malfunctioning as thinking became more and more difficult.
He did his best to come up with a plan to escape, but neither his physical attacks with Seron Voulge nor Spirit Whips seemed to work out.
Spirit Whip dispersed the moment it collided with the ice pillars, while Seron Voulge’s collision caused Michael’s hands and arms to shake violently.
By now, Michael could clearly tell that the origin energy inside him oozed out of his body much faster than usual. Something was wrong and Michael quickly figured out what it was.
The chilling aura exuded from the ice pillars all around him was rapidly draining his origin energy!
At that point, Michael knew that Alice would either leave him to die or that she would terminate her Soultrait when he was close to death.
But he didn’t want to end it like this. Even if Alice wanted to teach him a lesson and would release him from the ice prison before he froze to death, Michael didn’t want to give her the gratification of being able to overpower him so easily.
Michael didn’t know what was going on in Alice’s mind, but he knew that he couldn’t give up like this.
He desired to escape the ice prison and surprise her with his comeback. Michael wanted to be the protagonist!
At that moment, Extraction was activated.
If he couldn’t destroy the ice pillars around him, he might as well just extract them all!
The entire hall was frozen and he was covered in several layers of thick ice pillars.
Even if Alice could see, or sense him, she wouldn’t be able to tell what he was doing. After all, Michael willed the golden streams of Extraction to coil around Seron Voulge’s white hue.
He used Lesser Enhancement on the Symbol of Extraction to give it a white touch, before coiling the streams around the white hue shrouding Seron Voulge’s blade.
Then he slashed out once again, using the last bits of strength and energy inside his body.
Considering that Michael had already three Soultraits, it was more likely that the golden hue was a special effect caused by the combination of multiple Soultraits – rather than it being a fourth Soultrait.
One way or another, the voulge’s blade collided with the ice pillar. Michael’s hand felt like it was crumbling apart like ice shards, but he kept using more strength to cut into the ice pillar. When Extraction’s whitish-golden streams came in contact with the ice pillar, shards of ice split apart.
It looked like Seron Voulge dug through the ice pillar at last. Yet, in reality, it was Extraction that merely removed three grain-sized shards of ice before his entire energy was drained at once.
The chilling aura intensified the moment Seron Voulge’s blade scratched the ice pillar, and Michael blanked out.
The next thing Michael remembered was waking up to a soothing feeling that spread through his entire body. He groaned in exhaustion and from the pain of nearly freezing to death, but he savored the soothing warmth that reached every nerve of his body.
It showed him that he was still alive.
Michael opened his eyes, just to see the hall’s ceiling.
Nothing was frozen anymore, which made Michael feel like Alice’s Frozen Kingdom Soultrait had merely been a nightmare – a terrifying and bone-chilling nightmare.
Unfortunately, Alice’s beautiful face looking down at him showed quite clearly that the terrifying nightmare had been nothing but the brutal reality.
It made him feel bitter – especially because he recalled only now that he had used Extraction.
On one hand, he was a little frustrated about having used Extraction, but on the other hand, he was also a little surprised about the way he’d utilized Extraction.
‘If I utilize Extraction like this in a life-and-death battle…what would happen?’ Michael wondered.
The thought of extracting his opponents’ blood and organs mid-battle made his heartbeat wildly.
Michael had once attempted to use Extraction mid-battle. It didn’t work well because his opponents’ willpower restricted the utility of Extraction. However, there were certain ways to create a loophole. Michael just had to find them.
‘It drains too much energy to use it in the middle of the battle if I combine it with Eagle Eyes, Spirit Whip, and Lesser Enhancement. Using 3 Soultraits is already too much…’
Michael was deep in thought. He felt that new opportunities were slowly unraveling themselves in front of him, and he wanted to grasp them all.
“So that is your current level? Looks like your determination is your best trait. You won’t give up even if it’s impossible to escape,” Alice noticed while blowing air on her nails. “That can be good, but it can also be disastrous. It’s a double-edged personality trait in all honesty.”
“Double-edged?” Michael asked in between two heavy breaths.
He was exhausted and drained of all his energy. The mere thought of using his Soultrait caused him to feel like vomiting on the spot.
Nonetheless, he was glad that Alice didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd about Extraction’s golden streams that had appeared at the end of his desperate escape attempt.
“As an individual, your personality trait can save your life. It’s something you need to survive in helpless situations,” Alice praised, but her voice didn’t sound like she was dishing out compliments, “However, as a Lord, you’ll get your people killed because you believe that you can overcome the impossible.”
Michael frowned as she continued, “At the end of the day, you will witness the miserable death of your subjects even though they could have survived if you hadn’t been that ‘determined’ to win. There is a thin line between determination and foolishness, idiocy, stubbornness, and arrogance.”
Alice dropped the bomb without showing any mercy.
There was a huge difference between being an Adventurer vs a Lord. First of all, the power of their Soultraits was different. But that was not all. The most important difference lies in their responsibilities, and numbers.
“Your determination would suit an Adventurer. It is still great while being a Lord, but we’ll have to do something about it to make sure that you know when you’re going over the top. After all, I doubt that you want to see your subjects dying miserably when you encounter a helpless situation!” Alice continued to speak.
The coldness in her voice dispersed slowly, and she let out a disappointed sigh.
‘Did I crush him too much just now?’ She wondered as her gaze landed on Michael.
To her, Michael looked like a lost child right now. It was not nice to look at.
However, Alice knew that someone had to tell Michael that certain personality traits were good for some people, while they could make his life miserable as a Lord. Lords were not the same as ordinary people. They had to protect their territory, their subjects, and being strong enough to know when to fight, and when to retreat.
“Alright, I get it,” Michael said after a while. He thought that his determination was a good thing, and that it allowed him to achieve everything. However, thinking about the Blood-eyed Minotaur and a few other encounters he had in the past, Michael could only acknowledge that things could have gone south real quick.
The fight against the Blood-eyed Minotaur had already been miserable, but much more could have gone wrong. Thinking about it gave him the chills and he could only thank his subjects and his luck for a close shave with death.
“Your Soultraits are not bad, and it looks like you have yet to comprehend a few unique features about your Soultraits. Your last strike was pretty good. I didn’t expect you to inflict a scratch upon the Glacier Pillars. You are still young, Michael. Just learn and improve. That way you’ll be ready for the battles that await you in the Origin Expanse, and when the war in the extraterrestrial starts!”
Michael nodded his head meekly. It seemed like Alice didn’t notice anything about Extraction.
“Wait…war in the extraterrestrial? What was that about again?” Michael blurted out, his expression filled with confusion.
‘Wasn’t the upcoming war a rumor? Why does it sound like a war will erupt the day after tomorrow the way Alice speaks about it?’