That night, the moon was high and the stars were sparse.
A sneaky shadow slipped quietly out of Heim City.
Barefoot, she stepped lightly over every corpse on the battlefield. As she passed, faint blue wisps of light drifted up from the charred bodies. Like starlight, they floated toward the blood-red crystal in her hand, fusing into it one by one until they vanished completely.
That shadow was Hel.
To be honest, watching tens of thousands of beastmen burn to death during the day had made her heart ache.
If only she could have openly drawn a national-scale transmutation circle outside Heim City! Tens of thousands of corpses in one place—what a haul that would have been. Sure, none of them were cultivators, but quantity has a quality all its own.
After all, Hel the hoarder had built her fortune one scrap at a time.
Unfortunately, the Eye of War had been watching the battlefield during the fight. If she didn't want to expose herself, there was no way she could cast any of her rituals.
But now the beastman army was wiped out, the Eye of War had vanished, and she had her own detection wards set up during the day. All the sentries on the walls were her puppets.
Honestly, unless someone used prophecy magic, there was no way she could be discovered.
And prophecy magic? Please—she had a gift straight from the Witch of Fate, the supreme being of the prophecy school herself: [Veil of Destiny].
Even that witch probably couldn't scry a single hair off Hel's head.
So what was there to worry about? Time to joyfully… clean the field.
After a full day, the souls on the field had grown weak, though their energy was still intact. The problem was how far they were scattered. During the day, the city guards and civilians had carried away the corpses near Heim's walls, but most of the bodies still lay far out in the fields.
Hel had run herself ragged the whole night, and only by dawn did she finally finish gathering all the souls.
Over thirty thousand souls in total—and a pile of trash-tier traits.
Seriously, these beastmen had terrible stats.
The black traits were hopeless: all intelligence-reducing junk. To put it simply—none of these guys had two brain cells to rub together.
The gray traits were more… entertaining.
Things like [One Shot, One Kill], [Double Hit], and [Nine Offspring in One Birth].
Hel's eye twitched.
Polite? Was that polite?
Right in front of her, a proud and virtuous witch who hadn't known the warmth of a rooster in years—did they have to rub it in?
Apparently, the only thing these beastmen ever thought about was how to make more babies.
Couldn't they, at the very least, think about being a little lewd instead?
Truly infuriating—it made her chest ache.
So she just threw all those useless traits into the fusion panel at random.
And lo and behold—she actually struck gold.
Two golden traits appeared: [Perfect Marksmanship XVIII] and [A Battalion per Birth].
Garbage.
Absolute garbage.
Hel had never seen such brilliantly useless traits in her life.
These were worse than not fusing at all—they were an insult just to look at.
Scowling, she tossed the two traits into the deepest corner of her storage, swearing that if she ever touched the trait fusion function again, she'd admit she was a dog.
Yet when she lay down that night, she couldn't sleep.
The longer she thought about it, the angrier she got.
Even tucked away, those golden icons seemed to glow mockingly at her from the corner of her vision.
Finally—
Woof, woof, woof.
Hel waved her hand furiously, dragging the two obnoxious golden traits back into the fusion interface.
But to fuse traits, you needed at least three different ones.
And there was no way Hel was going to sacrifice any of her valuable ones.
So her gaze slid toward the pile of black traits.
Fine—she'd throw in a [Death Corruption].
That one wasn't rare anyway. She got a new one every couple of weeks thanks to her connection with the Netherworld.
The problem was, it was almost useless.
Whenever she tried to plant it on someone else, the target would immediately notice something was wrong and realize it was her doing.
And the trait needed time to take effect, too.
So really, the only thing it was good for was fusing. Slightly better than loyalty traits, but not by much.
Alright, time to witness a miracle.
Maybe this time, she'd finally get rid of those two damned traits.
She hit Combine.
A golden flash erupted across the screen—then a new, gold-tinged-black trait appeared.
[Undead Creation (Gold)]: As an undead, you can reproduce with yourself…
Hel froze.
Then exploded.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
Furious, she grabbed her pillow and slammed it to the floor.
Look at this! Look at this! Was that supposed to be human language?
How could something this cold-blooded come out of a supposedly 38-degree warm system?
This stupid system doesn't have a shred of humanity!
But no matter how much she cursed, the system said nothing. It was just a dumb game interface—no tutorials, no responses, nothing.
After stewing for a while, Hel finally calmed down.
To be fair, she wasn't the type to let her emotions control her.
Still, losing her big dragon… that was a wound that never really healed.
Anyway, she decided to check what the new trait actually did.
[Undead Creation (Gold)]: As an undead, you can reproduce with yourself. The offspring inherit your talents. You will enter a weakened state after creation, and cannot reproduce again until recovery. Effective up to King-tier undead.
…Huh.
That actually sounded kind of useful.
Maybe she should test it out.
Of course, she wasn't about to make a "Little Hel" for herself.
No—she had a different undead in mind for the experiment.
And who better than the one most useless minion in her arsenal—the Skeletal Archmage she used to possess earlier?
Its magic was shady, its power underwhelming… honestly, it hadn't been much help lately.
So Hel entered her undead domain, found the Skeletal Archmage, and slapped the new trait onto it.
And thus—the moment of true miracle had arrived.