Contrary to his expectations, Aito had absorbed five bags of soul cores out of the ten bags at his disposal using his new skill. Amongst them were mostly level 1 souls and a few level 2 souls. Logical considering some berserkers had been harder to deal with than others.
Now he felt stuffed. Aito knew he could absorb more, but storing that energy was another matter altogether. There was something blocking him, like an invisible wall barring entry to his mana well.
He had previously thought there would be a limit to how much he could take in, but he hadn't expected it to be such a deep pit. Two full bags were already a lot, even if most of them were level 1.
But 5 bags? Belmand shit! Apparently, something kept using the digested souls as fuel.
Of course, it was his injured soul core.
Soul power, mana, and soul essence kept being used to repair the injuries his soul core had endured because of his forced creation of a 2nd auxiliary core.
"One must know that the Flood vastly differs from your common quest. The Woodcutter has to face 2 days' worth of berserkers in just half a day on both floors with much shorter breaks in between fights, even that is an understatement. During a normal quest, there would be fewer berserkers to kill. Otherwise, challengers would never be able to reach higher floors."
Extract from "Yggdrasil Chronicles, The Woodcutter of Iris," by Roan the Merchant.