Michael was given a luxurious room to rest, but he wasn’t in the mood to rest just yet. He wasn’t tired either. Too many thoughts flashed through his mind.
‘Offering Soultraits to the Warlock Centaurs and Berserkers shouldn’t be a problem. I trust Palika. He will pick the most loyal Berserkers to gain Soultrait Symbols as well. The Chieftain wouldn’t be stupid enough to strengthen his competition. No Berserker will go up against Palika once he and his trusted subordinates receive a bunch of Soultrait Symbols.’
It was important to note that Palika Mavenham didn’t like being indebted to others. Michael had noticed that during their first few meetings in the past already, but he could only make use of it now. Since he would help Palika remain Chieftain for a long time, since adding two highly compatible Soultrait Symbols would help him remain the strongest Berserker, Michael didn’t have to worry about a betrayal.
In the first place, betrayals weren’t a thing for the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs. They were respectable races, worthy of trust and loyalty.
‘Since they can take revenge on those who’ve harmed them, they wouldn’t attack the innocent either. An all-out war would have harmed the citizens as well, but this is different. We will remove the root of all problems and change public opinion afterward. If someone bothers to say that the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs are at fault for the Lepodya disease, I’ll just extract Lepodya from everyone infected and remove the disease once and for all.’
Michael didn’t consider Lepodya too troublesome. He could prove that the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs weren’t at fault for the spread of Lepoyda, but that was a thing for the future. For now, nobody would pay attention to him. Thus, some people had to die soon.
But before that, the dead had to be ransacked. Michael retrieved the corpses of the 17 Dark Heavens members and activated all Cursed Seals. He summoned the Soul Grimoire and used a Soul Tear to augment True Extraction’s potency further.
Once that was done, Michael released several golden tendrils, which lunged for the human corpses. True Extraction’s efficiency was extremely high, and it took only a matter of minutes before mountains of goods that had been stored within the Dark Heaven members’ War Rune storage appeared before him.
Michael had to store most goods to keep using True Extraction to procure a small pile of Soultrait Symbols and Memory Orbs alongside a larger pile of SoulStar Fragments.
“That should be good enough,” Michael murmured to himself, his eyes locked on the piles of loot. He procured 9 Soultrait Symbols, 36 Memory Orbs, and 25,349 SoulStar Fragments.
The SoulStar Fragments alone were enough to upgrade the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs’ Soultrait Symbols to 4-Star. Even if they brought more than three dozen trusted allies to give two 4-Star Soultraits, Michael would have enough SoulStar Fragments. But Michael doubted Palika would bring so many trusted people. If anything, Palika and the War Priestess’ son would bring no more than two dozen trusted allies to obliterate the traitor alliances and burn the root of all evil in the Lumina Stellar System and the solar system.
‘Now, what do we have in here? You guys had a bunch of weird-ass techniques in your War Rune Storage, some Energy Stones, other stones, blueprints, Artifacts, and…corpses? Really? Are you guys some weird-ass necrophilia or what?’
Michael shuddered and retrieved the corpses. If they looked somewhat closer to human beings, he would have considered searching for the deceased’s family via facial recognition. Still, Michael sincerely doubted that any family would be happy seeing their dead family member in a state like…this.
The faces of the dead were no more. Even the skull was crushed and partially black and deformed beyond recognition. Only a little skin was left on their bodies, but it was sickly yellow with poisonous green tint spots everywhere. Their bodies were torn apart in several positions, and Michael couldn’t help but wonder how some of them had been ripped in half.
Yes. It didn’t look like they had been cut in half with a blade, but it was closer to them being ripped into shreds by…something. Michael knew how much strength it required to tear someone apart, yet he shuddered upon inspecting the corpses.
He decided to use Swallow Domain to get rid of the poor deformed corpses alongside the Dark Heavens corpses.
Swallow Domain didn’t leave a crumb of the corpses behind. Even the pungent smell of the rotten bodies and the odd smell lingering on the Dark Heavens members disappeared. Michael accessed his other Major Seal right after using Swallow Domain. Permute jumped into action, ready to transform the corpses into origin energy, lifeforce, or one of the other things Michael could form with the Wolf Curse’s power.
“Maybe I can try something,” He murmured when his eyes caught a SoulStar Fragment in the corner of his eyes.
It was time Michael tried creating SoulStar Fragments using Permute. If that was possible, Michael’s future path of progression would change drastically. He would start hoarding everything since almost everything would be of immense value – as long as it could be transformed into SoulStar Fragments.
Michael jiggled his head to disperse the greed, which clouded his thoughts and distracted him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. Michael wasted more than ten minutes to clean his mind and focus on Permute.
The corpses were falling apart, transforming into countless mots within Swallow Domain. They transformed slowly and formed…something. Michael tried focusing on the sensation of SoulStar Fragments, and their components – or what he thought to be the components of SoulStar Fragments –, but noticed that he missed something. The translucent frame of the SoulStar Fragments came into existence but they missed something. There was no purple wisp inside the empty fragment.
Michael was willing to spend several hours trying to find out what he was missing, but he had to give up at last. He had to accept that he was not ready to create SoulStar Fragments with Permute. However, Michael learned one important thing.
“It should be possible to create SoulStar Fragments.” The problem wasn’t that it was impossible to produce SouLStar Fragments using Permute, but that Michael didn’t comprehend the components of SoulStar Fragments well enough just yet.
That was fine enough for the time being.
With that in mind, Michael used Permute again, transforming everything Swallow Domain had stored into healing serum instead.
**
Less than 24 hours passed since Michael entered Piloq when he was informed that the Warlock Centaurs and Berserkers were ready.
A young attendant guided Michael through Piloq into an inconspicuous building, where he found seven Berserkers and eight Warlock Centaurs.
Michael wasn’t surprised to see 15 powerhouses, the cream of the crop of the Berserkers and Warlock Centaurs, standing before him. Spirit Eyes detected them two hours earlier when they first gathered, probably to hold a meeting to decide what they would do.
Michael didn’t thoughts that in the slightest. In fact, it would have been good if they had held a meeting before calling him to join them. They had to come to a conclusion, and it would be bad if they had discussed their plan with Michael.
“The Chieftain told us you desire to eliminate the Supreme Human Alliance’s corruption. He mentioned that you would pay us with Soultrait Symbols to eliminate the root of your problems,” A Warlock Centaur, probably the War Priestess’ son, stepped forward, his emerald-green eyes piercing into Michael.
“That’s not how I worded it, but if it makes you feel better, we can put it like that,” Michael shrugged nonchalantly.
“All I want is to eliminate the traitors and the people who’ve been corrupting the Tritan Alliance. I want to avoid an all-out war and mend the issues of the Tritan Alliance so we can focus on our real enemy.”
“The Supreme Human Alliance,” An old Berserker next to Palika said.
Michael nodded. “Correct. The Supreme Human Alliance is our enemy.”
He turned to the War Priestess’ son.
“I don’t mind how you word it, but the fact is that you, your people, and the Berserkers want the traitor alliances and everyone affiliated with the Supreme Human Alliance to be removed as soon as possible.”
“I want the same. Thus, I’m willing to grant you the power needed to achieve your goal.”