When Liam opened his eyes, in front of him there was a small red color vine that was curled up on the barren grounds like a snake. Interspersed on this vine, there were tiny red fruits, Fire Persimmons!
Liam grinned. It actually worked. He had only half-expected it but this was good. After observing the plant, he plucked the small fruits on the vine and then started making juice out of them by smashing the fruits together in his palm.
He then fed this juice to the little fox who was happily laying in the puddle. A drop fell down her cheek which was quickly retrieved by a small tongue.
"Are you getting better?" Liam smiled. He fed the fox some more of the juice filled to the brim with fire essence and then allowed the little creature to rest.
Everything was going great but his main problem still remained. He did not have any fire resistance potions. Only one ingredient probably could be grown in this type of atmosphere so it was not possible to make the potion at the moment even with the stone tablet.
So Liam dropped that idea and decided to just spend some more time here before leaving for another dungeon. He wanted to give Luna enough time to recover and see if her condition improved.
Meanwhile, there was something else that he wanted to try out. He sat down close to the puddle near the stone tablet where the fire essence was slowly and steadily accumulating and grinned. "Come out."
The next second, his group of soul minions popped out with Crawford standing front and center.
"Damn it. Is he going to torture us more?" Gu Donghai worriedly looked around, not recognizing where they were. Gorak also showed a similar expression as he cautiously studied the surroundings.
It was a strange sight that they had never seen before, except of course for the demon Liam and the little dead fox. Ever since Luna had fallen ill the two were cursing her relentlessly and hoping for her to die just so that Liam would suffer.
But now that was not their problem. The problem was this lunatic. Every time he summoned them when there was no battle, they could tell that something else was going to happen. Was it their turn?
As this thought crossed their mind, Liam's gaze landed on them for a moment and then flitted away ignoring them. Instead, he once again focused on the chickens and rabbits.
Liam ordered one of the three-headed chickens to come over. By now, it was a habit for him to start experimenting with these beasts first before proceeding to the higher-order soul beasts.
All the soul minions watched as the three-headed chicken innocently walked over because it did not know better.
Liam smiled at the chicken and then without any warning condensed it back into the soul bead form. He then started churning his mana core and forging the soul bead once again.
This time he was not combining this soul bead with another soul bead. Instead, he wanted to try and combine it with the fire essence swirling in the puddle near him.
Liam gritted his teeth feeling the familiar pressure of the soul thrashing against his grasp to disperse and then he started slowly fusing it with the essence from the pond.
Though the process seemed simple enough, actually doing it turned out to be troublesome. Controlling pure essence was very difficult and the whole thing was brutally slow putting that much more pressure on Liam.
In the end, it took him five hours to get a grasp and completely reforge the soul. Thankfully, he got the notifications that he wanted.
<Ding. Soul forging successful>
<Ding. You have now acquired 61% of the legacy>
Liam wiped the sweat off of his forehead and nodded contently. "Not bad." He then quickly opened the status screen to check the new and improved version of the three-headed chicken.
[Name: Chicken1
Type: Undead
Level: 41
Health: 3700
Mana: 100
Strength: 39
Agility: 35
Physical Defense: 69
Magic Defense: 18
Special Skill: Hurricane Peck; Fiery Pursuit]
"This is too good!" Liam's grin continued widening as he scrolled up to down and noticed all the new changes in the status screen. Not only had the chicken gained mana stat, and increased magic defense, it had also gained a new skill.
[Fiery Pursuit: Create streaks of fire while chasing after the enemy; Cool Down: 3 minutes]
The skill did not make sense as it could affect the chicken as well, it was extremely weak and the cool-down was horrible. However, Liam didn't care about that.
Though this skill might be useless, the fact that this was even possible was very big news! It opened up several avenues for him to reinforce the others!
Liam took a deep breath, closed the system interface, and called over the guy next in line. The huge rabbit arrived in front of him in a single jump.
And thus… the long day started. Starting from the chickens and the rabbits, Liam started reforging all the soul minions one after the other in the presence of the fire essence.
The puddle next to him that was being constantly filled up by the essence from the dungeon was slowly being sucked clean by him from the side.
One by one all the minions received their baptism. Liam as well was very satisfied with the overall results. Even if not many special skills popped up, everyone's magic defense improved a lot.
This was important because the magic defense was one of the main weaknesses of his soul minions. With a higher magic defense, their health wouldn't get drained as fast as before.
And not everything was so low-key. Some of the minions gained notable skills. One, Two, and Three who were all werewolves now gained [Fire Slash], where fire essence enveloped their claws and increased their attack power.
The imps and the lesser dryads as well showed huge improvement as their soul beads underwent a qualitative transformation with their attacks now a lot stronger.
The entirety of the next twenty-four hours was spent in this madness and of course, the little fox was happily resting on the side throughout all the ruckus.
Liam let out a deep breath as he tiredly looked at the group of minions in front of him. He had worked very hard but it was going to pay off in the upcoming days.
He observed all of his creations one by one and now the only ones that were left unforged were the lackeys from the Gu clan, Crawford, Gu Donghai, and Gorak.
Except for Crawford, all the other guys were shivering in fear. Was it their chance next?
Liam did not have any plans for them at the moment but hearing them curse Luna repeatedly made him want to teach them a lesson. "Perhaps I should give it a try?" Liam gave a sinister smile.
He called the lackey number one whose name he did not care to remember and everyone's face fell. This was it. This was the end.
The lackey number one stepped forward hesitantly though he did not want to and everyone else watched in dread as Liam made the familiar hand motion.
And just as things were about to take a turn for the worst, suddenly something started happening. The world was shaking. More precisely, the land they were standing on was quaking.
Liam immediately became alert as his eyes went to Luna first and he grabbed the fox. He then turned to look at the stone tablet which was vibrating visibly.
"Hmmm?" Before he could begin to wonder what was happening, the stone tablet glowed and the next second everything around him darkened.
When Liam's vision cleared, the group found themselves standing on the outside. The special world was no longer there and the stone tablet was also lying on the ground.
"Hmmm?" Liam picked it up and tossed it into his inventory space. "What happened? Why did I get kicked out?" The obvious question appeared in his mind as he looked around and saw the familiar dungeon's location.
However, something was different. It took Liam a second but he soon saw what was different. The dungeon was missing! The entire damn dungeon was missing!
"Fuck!" He looked around hurriedly, moving here and there, and saw that the tall mountain peak had really vanished. There were only dry cracked lands nearby. The white mist, the volcano, the lava, everything was gone.
Liam couldn't believe his eyes. For the thing that he was seeing, there was only one explanation, but... could that really be possible? It frightening to even think about it.
However, the truth was right in front of his eyes.
He had only planned to borrow, and take a little mana from the dungeon, but now it looked like the stone tablet had ended up swallowing the whole dungeon, the entire goddamn place!
Wasn't this just a bit too much? How could a significant landmark of the game disappear just like that?
