Michael could have destroyed the settlement alone, but he didn’t do that. He wished for his subjects to gain experience, some energy influxes, and maybe break through one of their bottlenecks mid-battle against the Lords of the Blaze household. And thus Michael let them fight the Awakened and army of the Blaze Lords without intervening too much.
All he did was search the Blaze Lord and his people when the battle erupted. He found them doing the deed – just like Mika had predicted. It was a bit confusing seeing orgy through his Spirit Eyes’ energy vision, but it played into his cards fairly well. First, he erupted a barrier around the building, blocking the vibrations and sounds from the outside. Extraction devoured the vibrations and sounds. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough for distracted Lords and Awakened to keep their focus on their…partners.
Michael didn’t rush anything, but he spread his True Extraction Domain throughout the building. The domain was stretched incredibly thin, ensuring that its golden glow would be dim and not distracting. After that, Michael started infusing curse power, lifeforce, and origin energy into one of his Elemental Spheres, the Sphere of Poison.
Michael’s blood wasn’t poisoned like the Nest Leader’s, but he analyzed a bunch of highly potent poisons when he realized how useful certain types of cursed poisons could be. The Nest Leader’s blood was potent enough to force ordinary Divine Lifeforms into submission. That was what Michael wanted to achieve as well.
Of course, he didn’t attain his goal just yet, but Michael progressed fast. Michael learned a lot after studying a few hours every day over several months. He created Living Poison fusing his lifeforce, curse power, and poison-attributed energy. The poison wasn’t alive and intelligent but followed a simple intent. That was perfect, especially once combined with the essence of True Extraction.
His Living Poison and True Extraction’s Essence were more compatible than Michael had assumed when he combined them for the first time. Even then, Michael used this combination in a life-and-death battle against Olivia’s cousin for the first time. He wondered how it would be worse as he used Insert to unleash the dormant Living Poison-True Extraction Essence into the Blaze Lord and the two Tier-5 Awakened who participated in his little love play.
The dormant poison spread through the three victims slowly. It didn’t do anything, which couldn’t be said about the True Extraction Essence. Michael was exhausted from producing enough True Extraction Essence – using Permute since he couldn’t yet produce it without the Wolf Curse’s help – but the result was great. True Extraction’s Essence wasn’t discovered at first. It didn’t work at full power yet and absorbed bits and pieces of the victims’ origin energy to spread through their bodies, nourishing both the True Extraction Essence and the Living Poison.
However, it wasn’t long before the Blaze Lord noticed something. He didn’t sense what was happening inside him, which was Insert’s fault. Michael had used all the soul power accumulated within the Insert Soultrait Symbol to exert the Soul Arts, Silent Invasion. It was also draining, but the result spoke volumes.
The Blaze Lord sensed the severed Links of Loyalty of thousands. At first, he was too focused on dealing with his partner. He had been about to finish the deed and couldn’t sense anything around him. His hyper-focused mind obstructed his view of the chaos and destruction happening outside. Thus, the Blaze Lord was even more enraged when he realized what was happening.
Michael dispelled the dome around the building once the Blaze Lord was aware of the situation. He revealed the cacophony of death and destruction to the Blaze Lord and his subordinates. Simultaneously, he used Insert to apply ten layers of Enhancement to the Blaze Lord and his strongest allies. Their physical strength skyrocketed as their bodies’ capabilities were enhanced to an entirely new level. But that was only a face. By increasing their bodies’ capabilities, the poison and True Extraction Essence spread much faster through their bodies.
Michael triggered the Living Poison and allowed the True Extraction Essence to reveal some of its power, quickly draining the Blaze Lord and his companions’ origin energy. The origin energy was converted and used to empower the Living Poison, which spread through their bodies, corroding their energy veins and muscles.
It took the Blaze Lord and his people a while to sense the devastating state of their bodies. They’d just been empowered and felt stronger than ever, only for Enhancement’s effect to disperse a few seconds after they charged out of the building. They emerged in the chaos of their destroyed settlement, their eyes flicking to the Minor Typhoon Rocs in the air, the Behemoth Elephant rampaging in the settlement center, and the combined forces of thousands of Ape Monsters working together seamlessly to eliminate one defender after another.
And that wasn’t even all. The Blaze Lord saw Berserkers, Warlock Centaurs, and a few other races, Summons and Awakened alike, tearing through his settlement, destroying everything.
Rage filled the Blaze Lord and his Subordinates, but they quickly sensed something was wrong when attempting to circulate energy through their bodies. One of the Tier-5 Awakened kicked the ground as hard as possible to charge at the Behemoth Elephant and kill it in a single strike, but a resounding snap filled the air. His tendon snapped when he applied too much strength. He screamed out in pain and surprise and fell to the ground. The wound was severe, but only for a moment. The High Awakened didn’t panic and barked a command to one of the other High Awakened, who immediately jumped into action. Simultaneously, the Tier-5 powerhouse retrieved a potion, ready to swallow the content to heal even faster.
However, the High Awakened didn’t notice an earth spike, augmented with Qi, piercing through his back, followed by a highly compressed icicle – the size of a needle – descending from high into the air at shocking velocity. Michael had compressed an icicle as much as possible before using his fire and wind-attributed energy to push the icicle’s descending speed to a new high. The fire-attributed energy’s explosion wasn’t that quiet, but the surrounding cacophony of sounds swallowed it. 𝙛𝒘𝙣𝒗.
The Tier-5 powerhouse wasn’t prepared for the pain in his back and turned around to see what had poked into his back, only for a needle-sized icicle, coated with Enhancement layers and Qi, to pierce cleanly through his skull.
The man collapsed to the ground and stopped moving. The energy content within the ice needle hadn’t been that high, and many had been looking around before the powerhouse’s tendon tore. They turned back to their superior only to find him lying on the ground.
“I cannot heal him anymore…” The healer among the High Awakened announced, his voice confused, yet his expression made clear that he knew why his Soultrait failed him.
“What?!” The Blaze Lord asked, rushing to his friend. He lowered his body, only to see blood pouring out of his forehead.
His friend was…dead.
Shock, anger, and uncontrollable rage erupted from the Blaze Lord, but he didn’t manage to usher an angry command when he was interrupted again. Suffocating noises erupted behind him.
He spun around where he saw a massive titan squashing his Subordinates alongside other unknown Awakened, including Tiara, Legion, and another tall and muscular Silverfang. They dealt with some of the Awakened surrounding the Blaze Lord while he was busy idling around.
“You are weaker than your cousin,” Someone above him snorted, and the Blaze Lord’s head flicked up.
Michael descended from the sky, coated in vibrant gold. Streams of energy in all colors oozed out of him. He grinned and flicked his hand, unleashing the terror of the Living Poison and the True Extraction Essence at full power.
“Fool.”