Even though Michael tried not to think too much about Liopham and Pheli, it was not like he could shut off his brain. The harder he tried to think about something else the more he was reminded about the two Forest Elves.
It was even worse since the sorrowful band of Mika, Opars, and Tiara stayed close to him. They clung to him as if he could drain their sorrow and pain. On the other hand, Lilica left the Origin Expanse for a while. She had to report Liopham and Pheli’s deaths and meet their families.
Michael decided to distract himself by looting the spatial rings, spatial pouches, and other objects with isolated pocket dimensions. The first thing he did was transfer all Energy Stones and other useful resources into his War Rune’s storage. Following that, Michael moved to the large complex of warehouses where he began retrieving the corpses of all Adventurers that had been killed in the last two months.
The Savannah Expedition worked hard, but the majority of battles were small skirmishes. It was also impossible to retrieve all Adventurer corpses. Despite that, Michael ended up with more than 3,500 Adventurer corpses that waited patiently to be looted.
More than a third of the corpses had been given by the Trilance. That was a little bit less than expected, which was another reason to start doubting the Trilance’s sincerity, but Michael didn’t let that doubt disturb his focus.
His entire attention lasted on the Adventurer corpses.
Michael summoned the Soul Grimoire and retrieved a Soul Tear to use on Extraction. The potency of Extraction’s power increased temporarily in response. Following that, Michael spent the next few hours looting the Adventurers with Extraction.
Michael put the extracted Artifacts, blueprints, Summoning Scrolls, and Summoning Scroll Fragments aside for later. His attention lingered on the piles of Memory Orbs, Soultrait Symbols, and SoulStar Fragments.
‘Damn’
Michael swallowed hard, his eyes lingering on the massive piles.
Since the drop rate for Awakened that hadn’t been killed by him or his people killed was lowered, Michael didn’t expect a lot. However, that was a grave mistake.
He ended up with 3,095 Memory Orbs, 283 Soultrait Symbols, and a total of 189,529 SoulStar Fragments!
It was the first time that Michael saw such a huge pile of Soultrait Symbols and SoulStar Fragments. Of course, he’d never seen so many Memory Orbs piled up in one spot either, but the Soultrait Symbols and Fragments shocked him the most. 𝘪𝘦.𝘤𝑜.𝒎
Michael has accumulated 122,459 SoulStar Fragments and 188 Soultrait Symbols until now. All of a sudden, these numbers increase more than twofold.
Michael’s mind went blank as he reached out to the piles of Soultrait Symbols and SoulStar Fragments.
“It’s a good thing I procured a larger Sealed Container to keep the Soultrait Symbols,” He mumbled at some point, retrieving the Emerald Box, where his old Soultrait Symbols had been squeezed into without anymore space to breathe, and a new container that was five times the size of the Emerald Box.
Michael stored all…471… Soultrait Symbols into the new container and sealed it with trembling hands. The next thing he did was to store all SoulStar Fragments. That was rather easy. Dozens of energy tendrils burst from his War Rune and devoured the piles of SoulStar Fragments rapidly.
The pile of SoulStar Fragments inside his War Rune expanded, slowly turning into a massive mountain with 311,988 SoulStar Fragments.
‘I have enough to upgrade Extraction to 7-Star!’
Not only did he have enough to upgrade Extraction, but it might as well be enough to upgrade some other Soultraits. That was pretty great, and it was also why Michael didn’t bother continuing to extract the corpses of the 200,000ish Summons that the Savannah Expedition brought back.
Extraction’s potency would increase tremendously upon upgrading it to 7-Star. That also meant Extraction’s drop rate would increase. Michael would be able to gain more loot after Extraction reached 7-Star. Thus, he chose to be a little bit more patient.
He was about to feed the Extraction Symbol with tens of thousands of SoulStar Fragments at a time when he recalled how painful it had been to upgrade Superior Constitution. The changes caused by upgrading Superior Constitution’s Symbol were more drastic than the changes of other Soultraits since it affected Michael’s physique directly.
However, Michael didn’t forget that upgrading his Soultraits to 6-Star had always been rather painful. Upgrading a Soultrait to 6-Star changed his physique, even if it was only a slight alteration. Michael suspected that the same – just more intense – would happen once he upgraded Extraction to 7-Star.
Michael considered the pain and began infusing five SoulStar Fragments into the Soultrait Symbol of Extraction. He added five SoulStar Fragments every second and stopped whenever he felt that his body required more time to assimilate the SoulStar Fragments into Extraction.
He was not in a desperate rush. The Heart of the Blazing Lion army was on the way, but their army was massive. It would take a while before they crossed the Zentika Empire.
Several hours passed in the blink of an eye, yet Michael didn’t feel any major changes in Extraction. Still, he could tell that the Extraction Symbol pulsated vibrantly and that it was full of vigor.
Michael felt like the Extraction Symbol was excited, but that might as well be him being excited about Extraction’s changes.
He was going to upgrade his first Soultraits to 7-Star. How could he not be excited? Was that even possible?
More than half a day passed before Michael’s body reacted to the assimilation of close to 200,000 SoulStar Fragments. The outlines of the 7th Star had already been completed and the incoming energy of the SoulStar Fragments was used up to fill the outlines.
However, it was only now that the cells in his body began to complain. Extraction’s presence weighed hard on his cells. Michael began to shudder as an increasingly uncomfortable sensation swept over him. The pores all over his body opened and sharp pain spread through his entire body. It felt like someone was trying to rip out his internal organs.
But all Michael could see was dark spots mixed with blood oozing from the pores all over his body. His head thumbed violently all of a sudden and his heart skipped a beat. Michael began to bleed dark blood from his nose and ears. He coughed up clots of impurities and dark blood.
All of a sudden, Michael felt like he was freezing. The warmth of his body disappeared and his view blurred. He stopped assimilating more SoulStar Fragments into the Extraction Symbol for a while and breathed heavily. His condition improved the moment he stopped integrating more SoulStar Fragments with the Extraction Symbol. To test whether it was Extraction’s fault or not, Michael rested a few minutes before he began to channel some Fragments into Extraction again.
The first few SoulStar Fragments didn’t do anything to Michael. However, as the number increased, Michael felt a wave of weakness pass through him.
‘My body cannot handle a 7-Star Soultrait? But that’s not possible. Kaleb awakened a 7-Star Soultraits as a Tierless Lord. If he can do that, why shouldn’t I?’
Michael wondered if it was a big difference to manifest a natural 7-Star Soultrait or upgrade a Soultrait with external help. However, he quickly disregarded that thought as he recalled something else.
‘The Awakening Stone!’
Every Lord was given an Awakening Stone to ensure a secure manifestation of their Soultrait. It was widely known that one could only manifest a Ability trait with an Awakening Stone, but that might not be everything the Awakening Stone was capable of. Maybe, Awakening Stones protected the Lords from the discomfort and suffering one would sustain for manifesting a Soultrait that was too powerful to handle as a Tierless Awakened.
That was merely a theory, but Michael thought that it made sense. Even Awakened with 5-Star Soultraits were usually not powerful enough to unravel the full potential of their Soultrait as Lesser Lifeforms. Only by ascending to Higher Lifeforms would they be able to unleash their Soultrait’s full potential and do magical things that were deemed impossible as Lesser Lifeforms.
This phenomenon was even worse for Awakened with 6-Star Soultraits. They knew that their Ability trait was extremely powerful, but they didn’t possess enough energy to experiment and unleash their Soultraits’ tremendous powers.
Michael sensed something like that with his Soultraits as well. However, even though he couldn’t unleash the full potential of most of his Soultraits, the power he did manage to unleash differentiated vastly depending on whether he used his 5-Star Soultraits or 6-Star Soultraits.
Even if he couldn’t unleash Extraction’s full potential once it reached 7-Star, Michael was certain that it would help him grow stronger…and rescue his brother.
No matter how painful it was, Michael knew that he had to upgrade Extraction. His brother was waiting for him!
Michael grit and integrated more SoulStar Fragments into the Extraction Symbol. He channeled the Fragments into the Ability trait Symbol slower than before. He decreased the rate from five Fragments every second to two Fragments and slowed down even further once he couldn’t bear the pain anymore.
It was good that enhancing Extraction removed some of the additional tenacious impurities that were stuck in some spots for a very long time. However, he didn’t want to risk dying just to remove more impurities from his body. He endured the discomfort of upgrading Extraction as well as possible while coughing up more dark blood clots and exuding more dark blood all over his body.
Michael grew weaker as the hours passed, but he never succumbed. He continued to endure the discomfort until Extraction’s 7th Star was filled.
Once Extraction was upgraded to a 7-Star Ability trait the world around Michael turned dark. He collapsed.
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