The council meeting continued for a while. There was, of course, another method to establish a connection among everyone—the upgraded tokens Kael had possessed. However, Thalion hadn't had the chance to upgrade them, which remained one of his top-priority purchases from the next system shop.
So far, he had handed out 11,043 tokens to his citizens. In this regard, the system had been immensely helpful. Anyone who entered the base was given the option to become a citizen. Every evening, Thalion simply accepted all the pending requests on his status screen, which automatically teleported the tokens to the new citizens. It would have been nice if he had known about this feature earlier, but at least he did now.
After more discussion, the council concluded that the map idea was the best course of action for now. A key suggestion from the guards during the conversation was that stronger parties could mark their current positions on the shared map. This would help lower-leveled survivors coordinate their hunts and ensure that support was nearby in case of emergencies.
The next major topic on the agenda was training areas. Thalion wanted something similar to the Golden Mountain—a facility that could significantly enhance his strength and durability. Combined with his newfound healing powers, this would make him incredibly formidable. The builders were currently debating the best location for such a structure.
However, they also argued against spending too many credits on this project. One of the craftsmen had developed a device that increased gravity, originally intended as a kind of cannon. If scaled up with additional crystals for power, it could fulfill the same purpose as the Golden Mountain. With this in mind, they planned to build two additional body-tempering halls beside the already existing training hall.
The council also discussed constructing new towers and improving guard training. The base had grown so crowded that it was becoming difficult to manage effectively. Mornings were especially chaotic, with the streets packed so densely it was challenging to reach destinations.
Fortunately, many residents could fly or leap across rooftops. Even so, changes were necessary. However, Thalion couldn’t upgrade the base Michael and Garrick had bought for him until the system shop arrived. Those days of waiting would be exhausting.
Some council members even suggested deactivating the signal beacon, but Thalion refused to consider it. With so many people in his base, the amount of credits he earned was staggering, and there was no way he would give up that income.
These were the day’s most challenging topics. The remaining discussions revolved around mundane issues: who could use the inns, how to attract more guards for improved safety, and so on. These matters didn’t particularly interest Thalion.
His priorities were finishing his armor and starting body-tempering training. He had mountains of plants with high affinity for dark energy and hundreds of liters of blood waiting to be consumed.
The looming termite hive in the distance also needed to be dealt with, but Thalion was confident he could handle it. What intrigued him even more was exploring the benefits of the connection he had stolen from the Outsider.
The energy coursing through his body felt like a nuclear reactor in his soul, one that consumed no fuel and generated incredible amounts of power. His spirit core, which he had worked so hard to build, now seemed almost irrelevant.
Curiosity got the better of him at one point, and he decided to test the limits of his regeneration. He cut off his left hand to see how quickly his spirit body would recover. Placing the severed hand back on the stump, he watched as it healed almost instantly.
The regeneration of his spirit body was at least as fast as his physical body—a truly remarkable advantage. His regenerative ability now far exceeded that of the madman he had killed. The only thing he didn't like was the pain from cutting his hand off. It was still as bad as before.
Another topic of interest was the harvesting of plants. The trick was to take only enough from each clearing in the jungle that the plants could regrow within a day or two. There were no traditional fields—just small clearings scattered throughout the dense vegetation. Thalion felt the number of dark-affinity plants was still too low, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
For now, weaker survivors were assigned to farming duty. After a day of farming, they were accompanied by expert hunters to gain experience and levels while hunting. Deaths during these outings, while not common, were also not unheard of. Most beasts were now above level 35, with the majority closer to level 48.
Survivors arriving at this stage were at level 25, making it almost impossible for them to kill such beasts. If a stronger creature—especially a variant at level 60 or 70—encountered them, survival was highly unlikely. Stronger guards or warriors accompanied the groups to buy enough time for the weaker survivors to escape.
This tactic had proven effective so far, and no one had come up with a better solution yet.
One unfortunate aspect was that there were a few more individuals who used shadow magic and could therefore make use of the plants with darkness affinity. However, Thalion believed the available supply should be sufficient for his needs.
One of his definite goals was to purchase a giant basement where he could store everything necessary for body-tempering and cultivate a garden of plants with a high darkness affinity. His hope was to eventually birth a darkness elemental that could merge with the umbral predator. With the growing population of survivors in his base, he was confident he’d earned enough credits to afford these ambitious plans.
For now, his mind was preoccupied with numerous tasks. He wanted to upgrade his skills and modify his amulet, transforming it from a soul-saving device into a power source capable of absorbing the souls of the beasts he killed.
This project was particularly urgent, as it would be his most valuable asset in tackling the termite hive. He expected the hive to provide an abundance of souls for his amulet. Regarding his garden, Thalion hoped to acquire plants with a stronger dark affinity than those currently available in the tutorial phase.
“We need more skyships to gather more resources. Those crystals will be vital, and we need to stockpile as much as possible before advancing to the next stage,” Caelan, one of the smiths, said, interrupting Thalion’s thoughts.
“I’ve got too much on my plate right now to fly to the mountains, but I can assign it to Kaldrek,” Thalion offered. There was no way he would waste his valuable time hunting while he had so many critical tasks to complete.
“I’ve got a lot to do as well,” Kaldrek admitted, after considering for a moment, “but I can head out tomorrow and return before the system shop arrives.”
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“Just remember—no scratches on my ship,” Thalion said firmly, irritated at the thought of others damaging his possessions.
“Good thing the ship has a repair enchantment,” Lucan chuckled. “As long as it’s not completely destroyed, it’ll always restore itself to peak condition.”
After a few more minutes discussing safety protocols, the council meeting adjourned. Thalion and Lucan flew back to the smithy, where Thalion immediately began working on the amulet. The armor he had crafted was currently in a magic circle, steadily absorbing mana to enhance its properties. Meanwhile, Lucan was working on teleportation circles to make travel around the city more efficient or to enable instant access to the skyship. These would be crucial in the fight against the undead.
Thalion inspected the back of the amulet, focusing on the intricate runes etched into its surface. At its core, the amulet resembled the device he had used to trap Rylak’s soul, with one key difference: unlike Rylak’s prison, this amulet could allow a soul to enter Thalion’s body. It essentially functioned as an open gate capable of holding one or possibly multiple souls. Thalion’s task was to transform it from a gate into a prison—one that could draw in the souls of defeated enemies and prevent their escape.
To start, Thalion copied the amulet’s existing runes onto a wooden plank and began adjusting them. It took almost an entire day of painstaking work before he was satisfied with the new design. The modified amulet would not only trap souls securely but would also increase its suction power and overall effectiveness with each captured soul.
The next phase involved erasing the old, redundant runes—a process that required nearly a full day. Then came the addition of new runes. Thalion had considered using his own blood as an inscribing medium but decided to use something even better.
In the last system shop, Lucan—whom Thalion hadn’t taken any credits from—had purchased a formation capable of liquefying crystals. Although this process diminished the crystals’ power significantly, it vastly improved their conductivity, making them ideal for Thalion’s amulet.
Carefully, Thalion carved the new runes and filled them with the liquid crystal. Once removed from the formation, the crystal took only a few minutes to harden fully. The process was laborious, as he could only use a small amount of liquid crystal at a time to fill the intricate runes.
One critical aspect of liquefying crystals was that it stripped them of their wind affinity. This drawback made the process unsuitable for crafting equipment for wind mages or cultivators who relied on wind-based energy. While the crystals could eventually regain their original affinity—or be imbued with a new one—the process was prohibitively expensive, and most found it unnecessary if their power sources retained the desired affinity.
For Thalion’s purposes, the lack of wind affinity was perfect. By the night of the second day, he had completed the amulet. It was now a powerful artifact, capable of absorbing and storing souls while growing stronger with each one it captured.
Over time, the former wind crystals would gradually regain their original affinity—or adopt whatever affinity was required. For Thalion’s purposes, however, the lack of affinity suited him perfectly, and he successfully finished the amulet by the night of the second day.
You have forged an amulet of rare power
Amulet of the Soulbinder (Legendary)
The message was identical to the one he had received after crafting his sword. In that instance, the weapon’s activation had blasted him against the wall—a reaction common to all items with integrated power sources. Anticipating this, Thalion had summoned a mana barrier in front of himself to absorb the shock. Amusingly, the process also granted him a small amount of experience, though it was hardly worth mentioning due to his title reducing the gains. Additionally, he hadn’t crafted the amulet entirely from scratch. He had merely modified it.
The amulet had already been of legendary rarity before the alterations. Thalion wondered how many souls it would require to ascend to mythic rarity, as every soul it absorbed would enhance both the amulet and his own strength. Tomorrow, the system shop would arrive, and the following week, he would likely be drawn into the effort to exterminate the termites. Given the approaching challenges, it wasn’t such a bad idea to focus on finishing his armor until then.
Thalion planned to use liquid crystals for the runes on the armor, which would be a time-consuming task. He had already prepared cavities in the armor for three small crystals, which would serve as its power source. Now, he only needed to connect everything and complete the final, most critical piece: his mask.
He had several ideas for incorporating his current mask with the crown of the madman. Thalion was particularly drawn to the concept of a design that instilled fear in the hearts of his enemies, granting him a significant advantage in combat.
To achieve this, he had placed three former wind crystals and the crown into the pillar of fear, where the madman had once imprisoned and tortured his victims. Over several days, the pillar had transmuted the crystals from wind affinity to something completely different, intensifying their power and their resonance with the crown’s own properties. They now put the familiar pressure on him, similar to the madman's mental attack, just not as powerful.
When properly constructed, the mask would emit a constant aura of fear, affecting his enemies while leaving him untouched. This was thanks to specific runes on his armor that flagged him as an ally, shielding him from the sinister energies.
After nearly a week of exposure to the pillar, Thalion deemed the transformation complete and decided to integrate the tainted crystals into his breastplate. However, completing the mask would require dismantling most of the crown and combining its materials with other enchanted components he had prepared earlier.
It was unlikely he’d finish the mask before the system shop arrived. The process was intricate: first, he needed to craft the mask’s structure, and then he had to etch the complex network of runes that gave it its extraordinary properties.
The armor’s runes were relatively simple by comparison, consisting of three interconnected types spread across its surface. The first type enhanced the armor’s toughness, significantly increasing its durability. The second amplified the armor’s aura, boosting its ability to unleash mental attacks. The final type allowed for self-repair, enabling the runes to restore themselves within minutes if damaged.
Tests had shown the armor’s self-repair system to be highly effective, and with the power of three crystals in the breastplate and one in the mask, the process would be even faster.
The mask would feature additional runes for enhanced vision and would connect seamlessly to the hood and the black cloak he intended to wear over the armor. This cloak, crafted by a skilled artisan, contained multiple powerful runes similar to those on his previous robe. However, these runes would deactivate whenever Thalion chose to reveal his aura—or the armor’s.
Even the soles of his metal boots had been inscribed with silence runes, ensuring that no one would hear his footsteps. He wasn’t entirely certain how effective they would be but was eager to find out.
The next few hours were spent carefully extracting the crystals from the crown without damaging them and dismantling the crown itself. Thalion combined the materials from the crown with those he had prepared earlier, placing them into a container above the forge’s roaring flames. To expedite the process, he used his flame skill, melting the materials faster.
Nearby, Lucan was engrossed in his own project, engraving runes onto a helmet. The runes were designed to release a shockwave upon impact, giving the wearer a brief window to recover. While Lucan doubted the effect would work perfectly, he was eager to test it for the fun of it.
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Back at the forge, the powerful materials took nearly an hour to fully liquefy, a testament to their potency. The process gave Thalion valuable practice with his flamethrower skill. Once liquefied, he poured the molten substance into a mold he had crafted for the mask.
The intense heat of the forge was no longer a concern for him; since entering the system, his body had adapted to such extreme conditions, eliminating the need for traditional safety measures. On Earth, he would have quenched the new item in cold water to harden it, but in the system, patience yielded better results. Lucan often grumbled about this inconsistency, finding it illogical, but Thalion didn’t mind as long as it worked.
While the mask was still warm, Thalion began engraving its intricate rune network. The mask had to perform multiple critical functions: it needed to stay securely on his face without straps, maintain the hood’s precise positioning, and support the fear-inducing properties of the tainted crystals. To achieve this, Thalion replicated runes from the mask he had received during the tutorial.
After hours of meticulous work, Thalion had to pause—the system shop had arrived. It was time for shopping.