Dealing with the five Lords wasn't as hard as Michael imagined it to be.
He expected them to use powerful Soultraits, but they ended up using Soultraits that were much weaker than 6-Star Extraction.
'How did these Lords procure the Lord Rift Entrance tickets? No sane person would willingly hand the entrance tickets to weak Lords…' Michael wondered, not quite sure why the Zentika Empire was willing to give weak Lords an entrance ticket to the Lord Rift.
He was certain that these Lords hadn't procured the Lord Rift Entrance tickets on their own. Michael was almost 100% sure that the Zentika Empire collected the Lord Rift entrance tickets and that they handed them out to outstanding students.
But then again, the five Lords he fought weren't that strong.
'Maybe they couldn't unleash their full power because of their messed up teamwork? I didn't see the Soultraits of some of the Awakened, in the first place.'
At the end of the day, Michael couldn't be certain how the five Lords entered the Lord Rift. However, it was not really important either. What was important was that Michael and his team killed them and that he was about to obtain a small fortune of loot.
5 Lords, 5 Awakened, and five Tier-2 Summons. They should have harvested quite a bit of loot since the Lord Rift opened more than a day and half ago.
"Let's store the corpses and leave first. The commotion must have attracted monsters or other Lords," Michael ordered, waving his arm to store the carcasses in his War Rune.
Afterward, they left the vicinity of the gigantic Trixata tree.
Once they found a somewhat safe hideout, Michael ordered Masked Saber and Tiara to pay attention to the surroundings. He then retrieved the corpses and started to extract them.
He started with the five summons, which dropped a batch of Summoning Scrolls, Summoning Scroll Fragments, and rare blueprints. The loot met his expectations, which was not much of a surprise. Michael hadn't expected to obtain a Soultrait Symbol or anything preposterous from the Summons.
However, the Lords and Awakened were different. He began to use Extraction on them with high expectations – and he wasn't disappointed.
The first things that dropped were the loot the Lords and Awakened had gathered since the Lord Rift opened. This included the corpses of the monsters they'd killed, the Summoning Scrolls and other loot they collected from the monster corpses, along with the herbs and other plants they had collected.
Their loot was quite high and mostly consisted of monster corpses. It felt like they had focused on hunting monsters rather than playing herb-picker.
But that played into Michael's cards. He used Extraction on the monster corpses, thinking that it was best to dissect them neatly and segregate them. Once properly dissected, more corpses would fit in their spatial storages.
However, what he didn't expect was that the monster corpses dropped more loot after Michael used Extraction on them.
SoulStar Fragments, rare blueprints, Artifacts, and a small number of Summoning Scrolls and Summoning Scroll Fragments dropped from the monster carcasses.
"You can still get loot from the monsters even if you didn't kill them?" Tiara asked, not quite sure if that was how Michael's Extraction Soultrait worked.
Michael was also not certain what happened, but he had an inkling of why that must have happened. Masked Saber was the first to open his mouth.
"Killing the owner of the monster corpses seems to reward you with the additional loot Extraction can get you with its increased drop rate." He summarized, only for Michael to add, "That's probably what the ethereal voice meant with the third remark. The loot of the deceased will be dropped as well. That might mean the Will considers me as the rightful owner of the monster corpses killed by the Lords and Awakened after I defeated them. That means I can still get the additional loot from Extraction when I loot the corpses the deceased collected in the Lord Rift. Nice!"
Of course, that was something Michael was very happy about. There were close to 100 corpses in the five Lords' possession.
Before he diverted his focus on the extraction of the five Lords and five Adventurers, Michael finished extracting of the monster corpses.
He gained a total of 552 Summoning Scrolls, 11532 Summoning Scroll Fragments, 14 Tier-2 Artifacts, 143 rare blueprints, and 55 SoulStar Fragments. That was quite a lot. Nonetheless, the loot paled in comparison to the gains he made from extracting the five Lords and Awakened.
Michael extracted the loot meticulously and did not rush the process. When he was done, he ended up staring at a small mountain of Soulstar Fragments and Soultrait Symbols.
"Six Soultrait Symbols, and a total of 452 SoulStar Fragments from 10 Awakened corpses. Seems like the Will of the Origin Expanse increased the drop rate a lot more than I first thought."
Usually, Michael wouldn't have obtained a single Soultrait Symbol and only a third of the SoulStar Fragments. However, it looked like he had been quite lucky.
Not bothering about the Soultraits the Lords and Awakened used before, Michael used Extraction on them once again. Michael gained a large batch of SoulStar Fragments from tearing the Soultrait Symbols apart. He allowed his War Rune to devour them all, keeping them safe in front of the white pillar in the deepest parts of his consciousness.
After the SoulStar Fragments had been taken care of, Michael was left with more than 20 Artifacts and a dozen Memory Orbs. Interestingly enough, some Lords dropped more than one Memory Orb.
Michael stored the Artifacts in the spatial storage of his War Rune before he devoured the Memory Orbs of the Lords.
The information provided by the Memory Orbs wasn't intense and did not bombard him. On the contrary, the streams of information entering his mind were slow and calming.
Most of the information was related to the Lord Rift, including information such as the Lord Rift's structure, monster types, forbidden zones, and more. However, the streams of information also included detailed information about the other Lords, what Soultraits they used, and which Lords teamed up with others.
Of course, not all pieces of information were about the Lord Rift. Michael also learned a lot about the Zentika Empire, and the council hierarchy and was certain that the information would help him in the future. He was thankful and ready to make use of them once the time was ripe.
"Senator Keltos…it looks like you lost quite a bit of prestige in the Council. I would say sorry, but that's clearly a lie," Michael murmured before he turned around to look at Tiara and Masked Saber.
They were vigilantly observing the surrounding and patiently waiting for Michael to finish digesting the Memory Orbs.
"I am done. Let's go to the mountains," Michael said, pointing to the mountain range further ahead.
Masked Saber and Tiara agreed without a second thought and followed him immediately.
Their small team encountered a few monster groups on their way to the mountain range, but they defeated them quite easily.
Being able to cripple one monster with two five-layer enhanced Spirit Whips and a spear thrust with the Wyverntooth Spear after it had been coated in four layers of Enhancement and Extraction's golden streams was not further difficult. In fact, it could be considered quite easy.
After the first monster was mentally crushed and physically severely wounded, Michael could use Extraction to extract the origin energy and lifeforce within the monster. That way, he kept using his Soultraits in an extravagant way without feeling drained mentally, or in terms of energy.
Defeating groups of ten Superior Existences with their small team was not a dream anymore. It became a simple task.
A few hours passed in the blink of an eye, and they finally reached the mountain range after clearing all the obstacles in their way.
While observing the surroundings, Michael could tell that there had been a few fights at the mountain range. However, Michael chose not to pay it too much attention. He was more interested in the ores he could extract from the mountain range.
With that in mind, Michael used Extraction to release a single thin golden stream that shot deep underground. By releasing a single thin stream, Michael could expand the range of Extraction drastically. He could search for ore deposits with the thin golden stream to pinpoint the best location to extract ores with the lowest energy consumption. Afterward, he could get started for real.
Michael's second day in the Lord Rift passed swiftly as well. After his encounter with the five Lords, he focused fully on the extraction of rare and unique ores, which was also why he got to extract several tons of ores that were used for high-ranked Tier-2 and Tier-3 armaments.
The second night passed but nobody felt like sleeping. Tiara and Masked Saber observed the surrounding area and conducted thorough research to pinpoint the location of potential enemies.
They killed a few monsters, who found Michael while he was fully occupied with the extraction of ores.
Roughly 50 hours after the Lord Rift opened, Michael and the others noticed something odd.
The stone of the mountain range was hotter than before, and the surrounding temperature seemed to have increased a bit.
To be precise, the temperature continued to increase. This attracted Michael's curiosity, and he began to seek answers.
However, instead of finding answers, Michael found two Lords at dawn.
"That's Tac Lec," Michael realized when he recalled one of the figures fighting more than a kilometer away from his current position.
Tac Lec was glowing silver indicating that he was using his Unique Racial Ability, and his Artifacts had been triggered as well, allowing Tac Lec to unleash powerful elemental attacks.
Yet even then Tac Lec didn't seem to be gaining an advantage against the Beast-like Lord he was fighting.
A deep frown appeared on Michael's face.
"Who the hell is that?"
