He left the combat ring, leaving the medics enough space to tend to Jeffrey's wounds. On the other hand, Michael was unscathed.
His energy consumption had been quite high, and he had been under tremendous stress, but he was physically uninjured.
Michael consumed an energy pill to replenish his used-up origin energy before he sat down on a bench to rest.
'It was not perfect, but I did a decent job, that's for sure.'
He was glad that he didn't rush to improve his War Rune in the last few weeks.
His opponent's War Rune had a higher degree of refinement but he didn't win.
Why was that the case?
There were multiple reasons, but the most important was that Michael had focused on other things in the past few weeks.
He diligently accumulated combat experience, fixed some flaws, finished his Berserker Physique's first stage, and focused on his Soultraits' control and utility.
That being said, his improvements had already been pretty fast. It was just that his War Rune didn't undergo any significant change.
The last 30 days had been used to focus on his foundation and strengthen the foundations of several things in his territory.
Even if Michael wanted to, he couldn't rush the process.
With a Soultrait such as Extraction, he had to focus on the foundation, otherwise, he would end up becoming a useless fool with countless Soultraits but who was unable to use multiple Soultraits at a time. Simultaneously, he would have a huge paper army rather than a mighty, invincible army if he ended up rushing the progress.
Either way, Michael was excited. Observing the fights in the combat rings while resting showed quite clearly that his first impression hadn't been wrong- there were many powerful students among the freshmen.
Even those with seemingly weaker Soultraits were powerful simply by knowing how to use their powers properly.
The techniques they used were impeccable and a sight to behold.
He watched the fights with great interest and learned a lot about the extent to which certain Soultraits could be used.
First, he watched a young woman summoning a Demon. The Demon was at the same stage as the young woman. They fought together against their opponent who summoned a Bone Armor to cover his entire body.
The Bone Armor had tiny gaps at the joints to ensure high flexibility, but the young woman and the demon weren't able to inflict injuries through them. Whenever the Demon and the young woman were about to injure the young man, he covered his joints in a second layer of another Bone Armor.
The Bone Armor of the young man moved around his body like a tightly knit cloak, seemingly alive, protecting him from most wounds.
That worked fine until the Demon had enough. It let out a shrill cry and ripped out one of its arms.
Black blood oozed out of the arm stump, but it began to heal rapidly. The Demon's extraordinary regeneration was fully unleashed.
The ripped-out arm in the Demon's hand turned into black fumes, which both Demon and the female Summoner could control.
The black fumes shrouded the young man's head, where it tightened and compressed, cutting off the young man's access to oxygen.
He was forced to inhale the black fumes whenever he wanted to breathe.
Slowly, the young man's movements grew heavier. He began to twitch and writhed in pain after five minutes and collapsed on the ground not long after.
The female Summoner won, but neither she nor her Demon Summon were unscathed. The young man had manifest bone spikes all over his armor and shot them out like a porcupine.
The young man didn't go down without giving his all. He fought with all his might and caused both the Demon and the female Summoner to bleed a lot.
After their battle was over, Michael's attention moved over to Annabelle. She was fighting against a freshman, whose entire body was covered in thick metal armor. The freshman wielded a broadsword like it was a thin stick, blocking most of Annabelle's arrows while inching closer to finish her off in close combat.
Annabelle didn't allow the approaching metal colossus to distract her. She remained level-headed and released one arrow after another. Annabelle analyzed the movement patterns of the metal colossus until he was at a distance of eight meters from her. By then, she changed her tactic suddenly.
She activated her Soultrait, and her presence changed at once. In the next five seconds, Annabelle released seven arrows in succession. At first, Michael thought that she sacrificed her accuracy to release seven arrows in such a short time span, but he couldn't be more wrong.
Annabelle's arrows were terrifically precise. The arrows pierced through the metal armor's joints where the defense was the weakest, taking the audience and her opponent by surprise.
Weakened, and slowed down, the freshman in heavy metal armor was fated to lose. Yet, Annabelle didn't show him any mercy. She continued to bombard her opponent with precisely aimed arrows until the referee announced her as the winner of the battle.
Some found Annabelle to be over the top and that she should have shown mercy, but Annabelle couldn't care less about those no-names. If they weren't willing to fight until the very end, they should have chosen to attend a different academy.
In the next battle held in the same combat ring, an even more terrifying scene unfolded.
A young man transformed the moment the referee started the battle with a signal. Crimson scales covered his body, a long lizard tail extended out of his tailbone, and large dragon wings grew out of his shoulder blades.
A single flap was enough to create strong gusts.
The ground beneath the young man began to melt as the temperature in his vicinity increased rapidly.
The young man's presence changed. It was altered by the tinge of Dragon Might that swept through his entire being.
Once his transformation was completed, the young man was overwhelmed by the emotions sweeping through him. He issued a terrifying roar that affected the audience and some combatants in the other combat rings.
While the young man's transformation to a Dragonoid was striking and majestic, the young woman opposing him wasn't impressed.
She retrieved a pitch-black dagger and a few dark vials of blood from her War Rune.
The woman cut herself deeply with the dagger before she threw the vials into the air. A single slice was all it took to cut the vials open.
The glass vial shattered and the glass fell to the ground. Meanwhile, the black viscous liquid inside the vials was now levitating in the air.
The young woman's eyes glowed bloody red. The blood gushing out of her body shot toward the black liquid, defying gravity. It fused with the black liquid and was pulled back inside her body.
Not a single droplet of blood was left behind as the young woman retrieved it inside her body. She could control blood using her Soultrait and used it to merge with the black liquid.
In response to taking in a strange liquid, the woman's veins turned crimson. The glow in her eyes intensified, adding an eerie and deadly aura to her appearance.
But her body's transformation and acceptance of the foreign substance was not yet over. Claws grew from her hands and her tanned skin turned into a mix of black and bloody red.
She clawed herself a few times, inflicting tiny claw marks that were deep enough to pull blood out of it.
The black dagger disappeared in the woman's War Rune, but looking at the huge black claws she had, nobody thought that she required a dagger to fight.
She condensed tens of blood needles by pulling blood out of her body. The blood needles were darkish-red in color and rotated rapidly.
Then, once fully condensed, the blood needles burst forward.
The young man, who had transformed into a Dragonoid couldn't evade all of the attacks. However, he didn't deem that necessary, in the first place.
He coated his wings in origin energy before folding them in front of him, creating a shield.
Most blood needles were blocked successfully. Yet, the moment the first blood needle pierced through the layer of origin energy and the young man's dragon wings, everything changed.
Michael was not sure what happened, but less than half a minute after the first blood needles entered the young man's body, he burst apart.
The young man wasn't even able to do something before his body burst into countless pieces.
He died, just like that.
Or so it looked at first.
Two Medic teams rushed to the combat ring the moment the young man burst into countless pieces. Two Adventurers unleashed white and silver lights from their bodies. The pieces of flesh and organs of the young man stopped in their tracks, hovering in the air.
The next moment more than ten high-ranked healing traits were utilized on the young man.
Michael was not sure what kind of miracle he was watching, but in less than two minutes, the young man opened his eyes once again – his body fully intact.
The young man had been healed and pulled back from hell after the Grim Reaper reaped the young man's Soul.
'Is that the power of high-ranked Soultraits? Being able to pull someone back from death?!'
Michael figured that this kind of Soultrait could only be used when the deceased died not long ago. Maybe, a few seconds was the limit.
Nonetheless, the ability to resurrect someone from death was already terrifying enough to throw Michael and most of the audience into a state of shock and awe.
They couldn't believe what they were witnessing just now. Despite originating from big families, none of the descendants had seen something on the same level as resurrecting the dead.
Michael stared blankly at the young man, who had just been resurrected. The young man's body trembled in shock, but his eyes were clear. It was obvious that he hadn't realized what had just happened.
"Damn. Isn't that woman too fierce?!" Someone near Michael asked.
Michael turned around to see who had already regained his composure to burst out loud.
However, what he saw surprised him quite a bit. Three young men, looking exactly the same, stood next to two young men, who stared at the battlefield without a tinge of surprise.
Neither the young woman's fierceness nor the miraculous resurrection of the young man seemed to have fazed them.
They were looking ahead impassively as if they had seen worse things in life.
'Who are these guys?' He wondered.
"I could defeat this woman in a single strike. This is nothing special," One of the two nonchalant guys said without a change in expression, "You guys have a lot to learn to realize that this is nothing in the world we're stepping into by entering the extraterrestrial!
