章 19: Second Soultrait
The energy influx Michael received from killing Fenrir increased his refinement degree. His War Rune also increased slightly in size, and he officially became a Low Tier-0 Lord on his second day inside the Origin Expanse.
He had already accumulated quite a bit of energy from the 29 Low Tier-1 Monsters Fenrir had hunted.
Michael should be happy that his strength increased and that the War Rune's storage space expanded, however, his expression was grave.
He could only stare down at Fenrir's corpse, feeling nauseous at the sight.
'Get your act together! You knew that this was bound to happen the moment you found out about his identity! If you wouldn't have killed him, Fenrir would have ended you eventually!' Michael mentally chided himself.
He squatted down at last and activated his Soultrait. His hands were already glowing in a faint golden light, but the luminescence intensified later.
The energy inside Michael was drained rapidly as he targeted Fenrir's corpse with extraction. Sweat beads trickled down his temples and Michael's breathing grew unstable in the next few seconds. Nonetheless, Michael fought the urge to stop exerting his Soultrait. He continued using Extraction until the last bit of energy inside his body was used up.
'Please give me something good!' He pleaded with little hope.
Even though he had killed the parasite inside his territory, Michael had also lost his entire combat force. It was not an exaggeration to say that he had to start again from scratch.
Who would hunt Tier-1 Monsters now that Fenrir was dead? Michael had to do it alone or ask Tiara to help him. He was not sure if Tiara had ever been trained in martial arts, or faced with the dangers of life-and-death combat, but she was a Tier-1 Maid. Her physical strength was incomparably higher than his!
"Huh? What is that?" Tiara suddenly asked. Michael looked at her, just to see that she was pointing at the drops that had manifested next to Fenrir's body.
Michael had extracted the items, but he had yet to pay any attention to them. Using his Soultrait was already taxing enough and required his complete concentration. Separating his attention to do other things alongside the exertion of his Soultrait was not possible for him, at least not yet.
'Oh?'
Upon looking at Fenrir's drops, Michael was a little astonished.
Several items had dropped after he used Extraction, but Michael was only familiar with the summoning scroll. However, it was a Specific Summoning Scroll because it had the occupation 'Tracker' labeled on it.
'A Warrior would have been better…but I guess a Tracker isn't too bad either,' He thought.
Trackers were pretty good at scouting the surrounding landscape. They were better than scouts and could track the lair of monsters using the smallest clues and spotting them at places nobody would even think of looking. All-in-all, Trackers were useful as long as you could use them well.
It was only a slight bummer that a Tracker Summoning Scroll manifested from the corpse of a Heroic Summon.
'...Whatever…' Michael told himself, thinking that the other drops were much better.
Other than the Tracker Summoning Scroll, Fenrir's body rewarded three more types of items. The first was a fist-sized wisp. Michael was not sure what exactly he had extracted from Fenrir but he knew that he would find out soon enough.
The next unknown item were a bunch of small transparent marbles, seven of them. Purple streams of energy swirled inside the hollow marbles, attracting his attention.
He wanted to crush them to find out what would happen to the strands of energy, but he held back sensing that the War Rune was reacting to them. The War Rune began to itch, and it began to glow much brighter than before.
'Is that energy to strengthen the War Rune?' Michael wondered, subconsciously moving one of the marbles closer to the War Rune. In response, a tentacle-like white strand shot out of the War Rune. The strand coiled around the marble before pulling back, disappearing with the marble inside the War Rune.
"What the…" He blurted out, closing his eyes just a second later.
To understand what just happened, he focused on entering the deepest part of his consciousness. After doing that, Michael was able to see the white light in the center, surrounded by the wisp of Tigerfang, and the Extraction Emblem.
'Nothing changed?' Michael wondered. He clearly felt that something inside him changed after the white strand pulled the marble inside the War Rune, but it looked like there was no change in the War Rune.
'No…wait!'
Upon paying more attention to Tigerfang and the Extraction Emblem, Michael could make out a difference. It was an insignificant change, but something had changed about his Soultrait. The Stigma of Extraction had only two stars before. However, now that he looked at it more in detail, Michael realized that faint outlines of a third star were beginning to form!
'These marbles increase my Soultrait's star rating?!?' Michael nearly shouted aloud. Goosebumps sprang up all over his body, and the things that happened in the next few seconds seemed like a dream.
He picked up the remaining marbles with the unknown purple energy streams and allowed the white strand of the War Rune to take them all. Meanwhile, Michael never left the deepest part of his consciousness and continued to witness everything first-hand.
'A third star is actually forming…' He realized in shock upon seeing that the purple strands of energy shot inside the Stigma of Extraction the moment they were released.
The marbles he extracted from Fenrir's body were not enough to form a complete third star, but a third star was on its way.
'I am not dreaming, right?!'
Michael wanted to figure out the reason why these purple marbles dropped to make sure that he could mass extract them in the future when the tentacle-like white strand of the War Rune shot out once again.
It moved faster than Michael could think and tightly grasped the third unknown item that had dropped after Fenrir's body had been fully extracted.
It was a small coin-sized emblem with an eagle's eye. Two purple stars were beautifully carved on the top of the emblem.
The moment the white strand touched the stigma, it began to glow vibrantly. At the same time, the white light in the deepest part of his being began to shine brighter as well. They reacted to one another!
Slowly, a new symbol formed inside the bright light of the War Rune. It showed the same Emblem of the Eagle Eyes he had seen on the item that dropped from Fenrir!
'Wait a moment…' He thought, slowly realizing what was going on when he was surprised by a flood of information swamping his mind.
"This has to be a dream," He mumbled when he comprehended what had just happened.
He had just extracted another being's Soultrait and made it his own!!
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