Liam stared at the soul essence puddle he was currently sitting in. He was finally accustomed to it, but he could still feel the weight of the numerous lizardmen's souls, just that it was not enough to harm him anymore.
He was stronger than that now. So it was time to move on to the next step.
Though there were several things he could do at the moment, the current path he had chosen to take was very simple and straightforward. What doesn't kill you will make you stronger.
Now that the villagers' souls and the lizardmen's souls had already strengthened him, it was time for the next test that he needed to face.
Liam took out the two black beads that contained the dragon souls. He did not know if he was ready for this or not. He was probably not.
But his main intention here was not to forge these two souls. He wanted them to forge him instead. Just like he used the souls of the villagers and the souls of the lizardmen, he was prepared to throw away these two souls as well to make his own soul stronger.
This was the only way out of his current predicament. If he couldn't break his shackles just yet, maybe his soul just wasn't strong enough. Right now, this was all he had. Just ifs, buts and maybes. So he was going to use everything he had to try and survive.
Liam placed one black bead down and held the other in between his thumb and index finger. He then gritted his teeth and started pulling out the dragon's soul again.
Groan. Liam's body trembled at the enormous pressure which instantly assaulted him. He had only done this an hour back when he brought the entire soul under his control.
But now that he was repeating the same thing again, it did not get any easier. He once again had to go through the same pain and agony as the dragon's soul clashed with his own.
Meanwhile, the time was ticking. Liam downed one health potion after another as he persevered through the ordeal. Soon after the first few seconds, the soul slowly returned back to his control. Of course, not without damaging a part of his own soul first.
Liam winced from the gut-wrenching pain, but he held on strongly to the huge football-sized dragon soul swirling in front of him. This was where he was previously interrupted, and now he was going to forge this soul to perfection.
However, he did not rush things right from the get-go. If he forged the soul as is, it was sure to explode out of his control and mix in with the other soul essence swirling around him, permanently lost to him. He first needed to heal.
This was also one of the very important things that he wanted at the moment. With a smile on his face, Liam patiently felt the full extent of the injury that his soul suffered, thanks to the dragon's soul.
He then started using the surrounding soul essence to heal himself. He seeped the random soul essence into his own and slowly made himself whole again and, in the process, a little bit stronger.
Only after that he attended to the football-sized dragon soul that was squirming in his grasp. However, he only barely started and summoned the mana hammers to bang on the soul when it started once again revolting, lashing out at Liam.
"Damn it." Liam shuddered as waves of pain started assaulting him once more. Instead of going step by step from 1 to 100, he had directly jumped from step 10 to step 100, so naturally, he had expected this. He needed to withstand this pain at all costs.
Liam used every ounce of willpower in his body to muster the strength and courage to keep going on. His mana core also churned wildly to give him the strength that he needed.
He was tapping into the core more than he had ever done. He was pushing himself more than he had ever done. He had no other choice. He needed to do this. He needed to survive and come out alive at the other end.
As if listening to Liam's wishes, the stone tablet was also churning out the dungeon's essence faster than it usually did. Mana inside the stone tablet sky-rocketed, and Liam suddenly found himself with surplus mana that he could use.
BANG! He immediately made the mana hammers a dozen times bigger, and nine giant hammers thrashed the unruly dragon soul from nine different directions.
While Liam continued struggling with the dragon soul and also racing against time, Luna curled up in the fire essence puddle and started her own training.
Meanwhile… the rest of the world wasn't all this calm and steady. Most players were running around like headless chickens. Fights broke out, and guilds started waging wars against each other.
Players crowded around the big cities of the various kingdoms and did all sorts of things that they did not dare think of before. Daylight robbery, unprovoked PVP, cornering, molesting and raping female players and NPCs, all hell broke loose.
Some of the guilds even dared to loot NPC-run shops and, in the end, got pathetically thrown into prison. But mostly, the players got away with whatever they did because the NPC population in the city simply couldn't handle the full population of the player base.
Amidst this mass hysteria, only a handful of guilds at the moment acted sane and sensible. In Crimson Abyss, Shen Yue stepped up and took care of all the administrative duties with the help of Mei Mei, Rey and a few others.
Alex was unfortunately too disturbed to do anything at the moment. Rey, on the other hand, was surprisingly more reliable. No one expected it, but he managed to struggle and hit Level 50 even with his late start in the game.
Not only that, but he also formed his mana core after using the body cleansing elixir and now was helping Shen Yue handle things. With Mia and Alex the way they were, his usual playful nature was completely gone, replaced by a mature, reliable person.
