Michael instinctively felt that the lethality of Extraction had increased rapidly.
After upgrading Extraction to a 5-Star Soultrait, he could instinctively feel that Extraction’s limit expanded to a wide range. The first thing he could tell was that he could use Extraction on things in a range of five meters without the need to pay full attention to it.
Other than that, the potency of Extraction increased while the energy consumption decreased a little. By using Extraction on a few Mercenary corpses he could reach a good conclusion about the improvements of his Soultrait.
‘The drop rate for all loot created by the Will of the Origin Expanse increased by roughly 30 to 40%, while the energy consumption decreased rapidly. It also feels like I can control Extraction much more easily now. It requires much less focus than before. But testing it out mid-battle is still out of option. Experimenting against an invasion of 50,000 opponents is too dangerous…’
In fact, now that Eagle Eyes and Lesser Enhancement had been upgraded to 4-Star trait, their utility was much higher, and their potency was much stronger than before.
Eagle Eyes’ passive enhancement at 4-Star was as strong as the active utility at 3-Star. Meanwhile, activating Eagle Eyes heightened his eyesight and senses even further. As long as he had a powerful long-range weapon, Michael was confident of hunting opponents more than a kilometer away from his position.
But that was not all. Eagle Eyes’ active utility allowed him to see better in the dark after the Soultrait had been upgraded to the 4th Star. That was perfect given that they would attack at night.
Adding Lesser Enhancement, which had been upgraded to ‘Enhancement’ after it became a 4-Star Soultrait, his combat prowess and range of attack increased even further.
Enhancement’s enhancement didn’t receive a boost in strength. A single enhancement was still equivalent to a strengthening of 35%. However, Enhancement could be layered now. Michael could use Enhancement on his Artifacts and body several times and the enhancement effect would stack. The energy consumption would naturally increase with the number of stacks, but Michael also noticed that the energy consumption of a single layer decreased drastically.
Maintaining Enhancement had also become much easier!
Overall, he was satisfied with the progress as they headed towards their opponents. Close to 600 Demon Monkeys, the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team, and almost 200 members of Michael’s army left the Untamed Jungle.
The Demon Monkeys could see in the dark due to the demonic blood coursing through their veins. On the other hand, the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team and the members of Michael’s army had to apply the light source ointment on their eyelids to see in the dark.
Their sight was restricted to a few meters ahead of them but that was better than nothing. It was much farther than most could see in the utter darkness of the late night.
The light source ointment was expensive to produce, and it hadn’t been easy to procure the recipe either, but Michael was glad that he made an investment into ointments, potions, and poisons early enough.
Given his investment, Michael and his people had a much easier time pacing through the plains of the Zentika Empire.
They paved their way toward the dimly lit camp of the Jungle Expedition, unseen by the eyes of their enemies.
The sound of drunken people speaking and growling reached their ears. It attracted Michael’s attention and he looked over to the center of the camp just to see that hundreds of Adventurers and Mercenaries were drinking.
Many were already swaying from left to right, and some were lying on the ground dead drunk.
‘Is that really an expedition into the Untamed Jungle, or a party trip?’ Michael wondered while his gaze moved slowly through the camp.
It was big to fit the remaining 50,000 members of the Jungle Expedition, but it was not enormous. There were less than 10,000 tents, and quite a few Mercenaries and Adventurers were either sleeping on the ground or talking to their comrades.
The camp’s atmosphere was relaxed, which was quite unexpected.
‘Did they not hear that their people died?’ Michael couldn’t help but ask himself. For a minute, he wondered if they had killed all of the mercenaries and adventurers inside the Untamed Jungle, or if nobody reported the happenings within the Untamed Jungle to the others.
However, Michael quickly figured out the reason.
“Are they just not bothered about the truth?” Michael mumbled quietly to himself when he saw two familiar faces.
They were two Jeglaw with large scars on their faces. Michael recalled them because he had seen them at noon. They fought some of his people and ran away after sustaining heavy injuries.
Right now, their injuries had been healed and they were talking to other members of the Jeglaw race. They didn’t seem to be scared of staying near the Untamed Jungle, or at the thought of entering the Untamed Jungle.
‘But why are you guys not scared? Are you confident that you will survive? Why? Is it because of your numerical advantage, or because of the Tier-3 Adventurers?’ Michael bit his lower lip and frowned deeply.
He told his people to split up and mark their targets. The first attacks were supposed to be deadly and silent. Instead of creating a big commotion right off the bat, Michael wanted his people to be silent reapers.
His plan worked out better than expected.
He reached the outer area of the camp with his people.
While the center of the camp was lively, certain parts of the outer area were dark and silent. Thus, their focus of attack was the dark tents from where they could hear people snoring, sleeping blissfully after having consumed alcohol to their heart’s content.
Michael and Lilica entered the first tent alone with their Artifacts manifested. Michael scanned the room with a single glance and discovered three Adventurers and two mercenaries.
He moved Seron Voulge in his hands and manifested two layers of Enhancement around the voulge’s blade. With two layers of enhancement, it was sharp enough to pierce the neck of the sleeping enemies without making much of a sound.
Lilica looked over to Michael and attacked when Michael struck down with his voulge. His attack was fierce and precise, not taking much effort to slice through the flesh of his target. Lilica’s motion was rapid and nimble, dealing with her target without causing any unnecessary pain.
They killed their first sleeping targets with a single motion.
But as Lilica pulled her dagger out of the target, one of the other adventurers was woken up. The adventurer heard Lilica’s blade piercing into the flesh of his comrade. Startled, his eyes shot wide open.
However, before he could scream out loudly, a white stream passed through his field of vision. In an instant, he sobered up, realizing that something was terribly wrong. The next moment the adventurer’s world turned upside down. A curse escaped his lips before his head tumbled onto the ground.
A fountain of blood was sprayed through the tent.
Warm blood trickled down the bodies of the sleeping mercenaries, yet they didn’t wake up. They continued to snore loudly.
Lilica was just about to walk over to the mercenaries and finish them off when Michael lifted his hand to stop her.
He shook his head with a sly smile on his lips.
Instead of killing the mercenaries, who were deep asleep and under the heavy influence of alcohol, Michael wanted to make use of them.
He used Extraction on the corpses of the three adventurers to extract their SoulStar Fragments and the other loot created by the Will of the Origin Expanse.
Afterward, he looked down at the golden streams in his right palm before his gaze fell on the sleeping Mercenaries. He tilted his head and gave it a shrug. Michael bent down next to the sleeping Mercenary, his hand hovering above his head.
Then, Michael extracted the Mercenary’s left eye.
The mercenary flinched, but he continued to sleep. It didn’t seem to be too painful for his victim whose eye was extracted from his body which was a big contradiction to Michael’s expectations.
‘Shouldn’t their natural mental defense block my extraction even while they’re asleep? And why didn’t it hurt him if I extracted his eyes? Is Extraction actually painless, or is it just because they’re drunk? Well, either way…that’s good…’
Extraction was a weird Soultrait, and Michael knew that he had yet to learn a lot about it. Nonetheless, his initial plan worked out.
He killed three adventurers and extracted an eyeball out of the mercenary next to him.
Michael placed the eyeball into the hand of the mercenary before he ordered Lilica to leave the tent with him.
Lilica stared at him confused at first, but she quickly understood his intention.
If they wanted to induce fear in the participants of the Jungle Expedition so that they would be too scared to sleep, they had to leave witnesses.
The two heavy sleepers were good witnesses, especially with one of them losing an eye without realizing it. Even if they were dead tired, they wouldn’t dare to go to sleep anymore. Who knew what would happen the next time they fell asleep? Maybe they would become the silent reaper’s next target!
Michael hoped to instill the worst fears in the hearts and souls of their opponents through his actions. He wanted to tire them out and make sure that they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without feeling unsettled or scared at the thought of not being able to wake up the next day.
Michael and his people were already tired, and they wanted their opponents to feel the same. It would be even better if their opponents felt worse.
They should be afraid of the Untamed Jungle, thinking that the region is cursed.
Even staying in the proximity of the Untamed Jungle should inflict fear in the hearts of the invaders and make them subconsciously step back.
That was Michael’s plan for tonight, and it turned out to be highly successful.
Even by the end of the night, Michael and his people had never been found, yet they killed more than 500 sleeping Adventurers, and close to 200 mercenaries – who’d been woken from the commotion of their comrades dying.
Afterward, Michael disappeared into the night, leaving behind the dead corpses and mutilated sleeping mercenaries, who were all missing one eyeball.
“I hope you guys will have a nice morning!”