48 Upgrade
It took only a minute to extract the most important loot, but Michael took his own sweet time to return.
Twenty minutes after he left, Michael returned to the Elves.
He dragged the Gogi Lord’s corpse behind him and pushed it through the protection barrier without saying a word.
His face looked pale, and his expression was filled with confusion and doubts.
Michael was deep in thought and didn’t even notice that the youthful Elf called him out to disappear for such a long time.
Even the Elven Leader had grown a little worried when Michael didn’t return after ten minutes. The Elves were unable to figure out what had taken Michael so long when he merely had to access his War Rune to retrieve the Gogi Lord’s corpse.
However, Michael’s entire focus was on the loot he had received from extracting the Gogi Lord’s body.
Some drops were expected while others were just too confusing.
He had obtained a Wisp of Memories, several SoulStar Fragments, a few blueprints, the Gogi Lord’s Battle Axe Artifact, and hundreds of Bilrox feathers.
It was the first time he used Extraction on someone with a War Rune, and it was the second time he had extracted a Wisp of Memories and SoulStar Fragments.
SoulStar Fragments was the name Michael gave the translucent marbles with strands of purple energy inside. They could form into Soultraits, or enhance his Soultraits’ star rating.
Interestingly enough, the SoulStar Fragments didn’t form into a Soultrait upon getting extracted. But that was better.
Michael didn’t want to collect hundreds of low-ranked Soultraits, in the first place. Instead, he desired to enhance the star rating of his existing Soultraits.
When Michael saw the SoulStar Fragments, he didn’t wait long and willed the War Rune to absorb them. It was not difficult to enhance Extraction, which was upgraded to a 3-Star Soultrait at last.
The Soultrait Eagle Eyes may help him more in combat upon being upgraded, but Extraction increased his drop rate and strengthened the resources he extracted.
Thinking about his drop rate made him recall the Gogi Lord’s territory where the corpses of more than 200 Tier-1 Gogis were scattered on the ground, waiting to be extracted by him.
That was also why Michael thought of upgrading Extraction, as the changes his first Soultrait underwent when he upgraded it from a 2-Star Soultrait to a 2.5-Star Soultrait were quite beneficial. Michael had yet to test it out, but he was certain that his drop rate increased even further now that Extraction was upgraded to a 3-Star Soultrait.
Being able to extract SoulStar Fragments and a Wisp of Memories had been great, but Michael had predicted that.
He was more interested in the extraction of the Gogi Lord’s Battle Axe and the Bilrox feathers. The Gogi Lord’s body was not covered in Bilrox feathers, but the storage space of his War Rune might Bilrox feathers stored in it!
This led to the question which tormented him the most right now- Could he use Extraction on War Runes as well?
The answer was pretty obvious. Michael extracted the Battle Axe Artifact that had been bound to the Gogi Lord’s War Rune, and he extracted the Bilrox feathers that could only be stored in his War Rune’s storage space. Gogis didn’t eat chicken meat!
Finding out a new perk of his Soultrait was quite exciting. He didn’t expect that he would be able to take the Artifacts of deceased Lords and Adventurers for himself and that he could even loot their War Runes’ storage space.
However, this brought forth even more questions.
What was the limit of his Soultrait? Could he use his Soultrait on living Lords and Adventurers as well, or was it restricted? Michael could use extraction on the trees in the Untamed Jungle even though they were not dead. With that logic, it shouldn’t be impossible to steal the Artifacts of other Lords and Adventurers.
Michael may even turn into a thief, capable of looting the storage space of War Runes!
Of course, Michael didn’t plan to turn into a thief, but he wanted to find out the limit of his Soultrait. It could be useful for future purposes.
He had many more questions that were waiting to be answered, however, it was better to make mental notes and save those for later to ponder about when he had free time instead of throwing dozens of questions around. Most of them couldn’t be answered easily, either way.
After Michael came to a conclusion, his fogged mind cleared up at last. He realized that he had been rude to the Elves and wanted to apologize.
However, when he looked at the Elves, their body language indicated that they didn’t really seem to mind too much. The youthful Elf glared at him, but the rest seemed unbothered.
‘Are Elves not as difficult to deal with as everyone says?’ He wondered.
Michael felt much better thinking that the Elves were nicer than expected and he recalled something when he was about to see them off.
“You might be able to earn a big fortune by bringing the Bilrox horde back to the merchant. If that merchant is not an idiot, he will give you a generous reward,” He proposed with a faint smile.
The Elves had stored the Gogi Lord’s corpse and were about to leave when they turned back to him. The Elven Leader returned a simple smile.
“If you need help in the future, you can ask for us in the Guild tavern. I am Lilica Balrean from the Tertan Woods. We belong to the Forest Elven, and I’m the leader of the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team,” She introduced herself.
‘Does that mean they’ll take the Bilrox horde back to Xiltra, or not?’ Michael asked himself. He was a little confused because it felt like the dynamic between him, and the EmeraldLeaf Adventurer team had changed.
However, instead of dwelling on it unnecessarily, Michael chose to go with the flow.
“My name is Michael Fang, and I’m a human Lord. I won’t allow the Untamed Jungle to devour me, so we’ll probably meet each other in the future!” He introduced himself, which the Elves acknowledged with a nod before they departed for good.
Even if Michael wanted to make the Bilrox horde his, he didn’t have the means to bring them over. Furthermore, If Michael would have somehow managed to bring them over, he did not have the resources to feed and raise the Bilrox. He didn’t even have enough space to construct a Bilrox farm.
For the time being, raising a horde of Bilrox was out of question. The three Bilrox eggs from Blaire were already enough to start with.
Thinking about the Bilrox horde in the Gogi territory, Michael recalled once again, ‘I have yet to extract their corpses…’
pandasnovel.com
Right now, he was trying to digest the Soultrait’s upgrade and accept the changes in his body. Simultaneously, the lizard mother’s energy share was still not fully digested either. It ravaged inside his body, just like the information he had received from Lilica Balrean.
He was not sure if everything she said was true, but the Wisp of Memories, which he had extracted from the Gogi Lord’s corpse, would probably answer that.
Michael retrieved the white blob of light – which he labeled Wisp of Memories – from his War Rune. He pushed it lightly inside his head where the streams of light scattered.
Then, the Gogis’ memories filled his mind.