Since the Sphere of Light increased the number of SoulStar Fragments required to upgrade a Soultrait, Michael didn’t have enough Fragments to upgrade one of his Soultraits to a 6-Star Soultrait. It was unfortunate, but maybe that was for the better. After all, his Soultraits were already quite powerful, and it might be better to save the SoulStar Fragments to upgrade the Forest Elves’ Soultraits once they decided to follow him until the end.
The only thing Michael desired to do with his SoulStar Fragments was to upgrade Glacicle to 5-Star. It was already at the border separating 4-Star from 5-Star, so Michael wouldn’t have to spend too many SoulStar Fragments to complete the upgrade. Therefore, he did just that. He spent 1251 SoulStar Fragments to complete Glacicle’s upgrade to a proper 5-Star Soultrait.
As the outlines of the fifth Star were filled to the brim, traces of information entered his mind. At first, the traces of information were shallow, but the pieces of information quickly evolved into tidal waves. Michael learned various new things about Glacicle, including a new power on how to use it. The latent potential of Glacicle was unleashed, unraveling new powers to use with little to no effort.
Michael tried to use one of the new powers right off the bat. He focused on Glacicle and created freezing mist around his hands. Since Glacicle was upgraded to a 5-Star Soultrait, Michael’s immunity to cold temperatures increased drastically. The cold resistance was heightened with every creation made by Glacicle itself. Therefore, Michael didn’t feel any discomfort as he controlled the freezing mist in his hands. It moved around him at his will and transformed into Glacicles on command. Creating and controlling freezing mist to a certain extent was one of his new powers.
The other new power was to alter the form of Glacicles to a higher degree. He could easily transform the freezing mist into Glacicles, or objects of similar shape. Conjuring a Glacicle Sword was also much easier than before. Even the compressed Glacicle Sword was not too difficult now that Glacicle was a 5-Star Soultrait.
‘Control, a wider variety of uses, and the energy consumption for ordinary Glacicles decreased considerably. Compressed Glacicles cost as much energy as ordinary Glacicles required before I upgraded the Soultrait. That’s pretty neat.’
Now all of Michael’s combat-type Soultrait had reached 5-Star. This left Soul Grimoire as the only 1-Star Soultrait, and Mind Reader at four stars.
That was 9 Soultraits in total, creating a tremendous powerful ability set for Michael. The ability set was more than enough to deal with powerful enemies even if their War Rune was more refined than his. It was exceptional!
With dozens of Soultrait Symbols and more than 30,000 SoulStar Fragments left to use, Micheal had a great starting point. However, he decided not to rush anything. Instead, he diverted his focus to the loot extracted from the Kitsun.
“I extracted a total of 2,496 Artifacts. 469 Tier-1 Artifacts with most of them being either 1-Star or 2-Star, 1,995 Tier-2 Artifacts with the majority being 1-Star Artifacts, and 32 Tier-3 Artifacts. All Tier-3 Artifacts are either useless for me, or they don’t fit anyone’s combat style. What even is a Cloud Enhancing Belt?! I don’t have my own personal Nimbus Cloud!” Michael grumbled a little but the smile on his face widened.
No matter how little use the Artifacts had to him, most of the Tier-1 Artifacts were Weapon Artifacts. It was a similar case for the pile of Tier-2 and Tier-3 Artifacts, even if it was not as prominent as it was in the pile of Tier-1 Artifacts. One way or another, Michael could earn more than two billion dollars by selling the Tier-1 and Tier-2 Artifacts. And that was the bare minimum he could get without negotiating. After a thorough inspection and finding the right buyers, Michael was more likely to get four billion, maybe even more.
This number didn’t even take into account that he had 32 Tier-3 Artifacts. Procuring Tier-3 Artifacts was extremely difficult, especially natural Artifacts generated by the Will. The type of Artifact didn’t even matter as long as its external enhancement was powerful. They were sought after and could be sold for hundreds of millions as long as they found the right customer.
Selling his gains to Kraft Viton was probably the best way to earn a fortune. But then again, Michael was not sure if he shouldn’t try to barter with the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs. They might not be able to give him the same amount of money as Kraft Viton – since they didn’t use the same currency in the first place – but he should be able to purchase a wide variety of goods that were hard to come by in the human market.
‘The Forest Elves might give me a good price as well. I should have someone appraise the Artifacts before collecting the offers from the Forest Elves, the Berserkers, and Kraft Viton to figure out from where I can gain most.’
Putting the Artifacts aside, Michael looked at the stash of blueprints. There were a total of 18,724 blueprints spread out in front of him. Michael saw a few familiar blueprints, but most of them were unknown.
Interestingly enough there were three types of wells, and fountains that were empowered with the energy accumulated within monster cores. They were quite interesting and could be used well in his settlement. It was worth taking into consideration to construct one of them since the Water Elemental Mage of his territory died in the Elementals Cave as well. Michael had to provide enough food and water for tens of thousands of subjects. Therefore, an abundant source of water nearby would be welcome. That was for sure.
“Sort the blueprints and write down every single one of them. I want a report about the blueprints once you’re done,” Michael ordered the workers, who immediately started to organize the blueprints right off the bat.
‘Now to the most important part of the day!’ Michael ticked off one item off his to-do list, letting the workers do their jobs without paying too much attention to them.
A huge pile of Summoning Scrolls and Summoning Scroll Fragments emerged in front of him. Michael took a deep breath and smiled vibrantly as he released his energy to engulf the Summoning Scrolls and Fragments to count them properly.
“27,040 Summoning Scrolls, and 1,331,200 Summoning Scroll Fragments. That’s what I call a jackpot!” Michael exclaimed, rubbing his hands in excitement.
In fact, the number of Summoning Scrolls he extracted was a little less than what Michael expected. He thought that he would easily obtain more than 30,000 Summoning Scrolls since most Kitsun were already at the 2nd Tier. Despite that, the Fragments were the reason why Michael was truly happy.
The Summoning Scroll Fragments were enough to form exactly 53,248 Summoning Scrolls, or 133 Mythic Scrolls with an extra 1200 Summoning Scroll Fragments. That was quite exciting, and it made Michael’s heart do a little happy dance.
133 Mythic Scrolls should be enough to summon a dozen 3-Star Summons. The probability of summoning a 4-Star Summon was also not too low. One 4-Star Summon should appear within 133 Mythic Scrolls. At least, that was what Michael was hoping for. .
Losing 1,500 trained combatants had been quite harsh on Michael and his people, but that could be solved with 133 Mythic Scrolls or more than 50,000 Ordinary Summoning Scrolls.
However, before Michael could decide whether he wanted to transform the Summoning Scroll Fragments into 133 Mythic Scrolls or 50,000+ Ordinary Summoning Scrolls, he noticed that the Summoning Scroll Fragments began to stir.
Some Fragments escaped his shroud of energy by force and ascended high into the air where they revolved around each other. More and more Summoning Scroll Fragments escaped Michael’s grasp. They revolved around each other as thousands, no, tens of thousands of them began to swirl around in a circle.
The number of Fragments shrouded by Michael’s energy decreased rapidly. Several minutes passed in the blink of an eye before less than 350,000 Summoning Scroll Fragments were still in his shroud of energy. There were exactly 331,200 left now.
As for the one million Summoning Scroll Fragments that revolved around each other… they pulled closer to each other and merged with one another. The merging process was similar to how Mythic Scrolls were formed from 10,000 Fragments. But it was not the same. It was on a completely different scale!
The parchment of the fragments changed in color as the million Summoning Scroll Fragments were sucked into each other until there was only one left.
A single Summoning Scroll conjured from the merging of one million Summoning Scroll Fragments.
The Scroll was golden in color and had a vibrant ruby seal that contained the tremendous power of the Summoning Scroll.
“Is that…What is that?!?” Tiara blurted out as goosebumps appeared all over her body. She had never seen, let alone felt something like the golden scroll. Its presence was enough to stir her heart and force her to retreat.
It was terrifying, yet a vibrant smile appeared on Michael’s face. He glanced over to Lilica, whose expression was filled with shock. She barely regained her senses and her gaze flicked to Michael, only to shudder ever so slightly.
“Is that what I think it is?” Lilica asked uncertainty in her voice.
“I guess it is,” Michael responded, his eyes shimmering brightly as he stared at the golden scroll that was engulfed in a golden hue. The golden hue felt heavy which made it hard to approach it. However, Michael ignored the heaviness as much as possible.
“It is a Legendary Summoning Scroll!”