Through the entire walk out of the valley, not a single word passed between them.
Roman kept to his own path and Rena kept to hers, the distance between them deliberate and maintained. But where Roman's attention had moved entirely inward, Rena's had not. She had been watching him the whole time, quietly and without making it obvious.
Roman didn't turn once. He was deep inside the Legendary Dominion System, working through everything his Talent had to offer now that he finally had the time and silence to look at it properly.
[Soul Bank], [Soul Slot], [Soul Collection], [Soul Craft], [Soul Skill Extraction], [Memory Extraction], [Soul Attribute Enhancement], [Soul Forge], [Soul Summon].
Nine Talent Skills laid out before him, and just reading the names alone was enough to set something alight in his chest.
[Soul Bank: The Soul Bank is where all Souls collected through the Soul Collection skill are stored. Every Soul has its own dedicated space within the Bank, which is supernaturally vast and self-adjusting.]
[Soul Slot: Displays the Soul Collection allowance at any given time. Once the limit is reached, the Soul Bank will no longer accept incoming Souls until space is freed.]
[Soul Collection: The foundational skill that enables the collection of Souls.]
[Soul Craft (Locked): A Talent Skill that allows the user to craft weapons from Souls stored in the Soul Bank, relative to their traits and ranks. (Unlock at Level 30.)]
"Craft weapons from souls???"
Roman stared at it for a moment.
Back at the academy, they had been taught clearly that the moment an Entrant died in the Badlands, their soul was consumed by the mysterious forces that governed the territory. That was accepted as fact. No exceptions, no recovery, no return.
And now he was standing here with the ability to intercept those same souls before those forces could take them?
"Won't those forces be mad at me?" he muttered under his breath.
[Soul Skill Extraction (Locked): A Talent Skill that allows you to extract the Skills or Traits from any Soul in your possession, whether human or monster. Note that once extraction is performed, the Soul is permanently lost. (Unlock at Level 30.)]
[Memory Extraction (Locked): A Talent Skill that allows you to receive and experience the memories of any collected Soul, human or monster alike. The target must have been killed and their Soul collected before this skill can be applied. (Unlock at E Rank.)]
[Soul Attribute Enhancement: A Talent Skill that allows you to convert collected Souls directly into Attribute Points rather than storing them in the Soul Bank. The conversion yields a precise valued amount relative to the Soul's rank and strength. For example, converting the Soul of a Soldier Blade Ant yields five Attribute Points.]
[Soul Forge (Locked): The ability to combine two or more compatible Souls to forge a single stronger one. Compatibility must be well above average for the process to succeed. (Unlock at E Rank.)]
[Soul Summon: The ability to summon any Soul stored in the Soul Bank to fight or perform advantageous functions on your behalf. Summoned Souls manifest as a figure of their former self, but bound entirely to your will as servant and minion. The longer they serve, the stronger they become.]
Roman's mind was running at full speed, his chest tight with an excitement he was actively trying not to show because Rena was still somewhere behind him.
Every single one of these skills was remarkable in its own right, and the more he pictured them in action, the more eager he became to reach the levels and ranks needed to unlock the ones still waiting behind their locks.
Soul Summon had captured him the most. He could already see how it set itself apart from a standard Summoning Profession. A regular Summoner pulled beings from elsewhere, and to summon anything truly powerful, they needed to be at a considerable rank first.
Roman's Soul Summon worked differently. The strength of what he could summon was entirely dependent on what he had already killed and collected, not on what rank he had reached.
Which meant that if he ever managed to kill a dragon, even at the F rank, that soul would sit in his Soul Bank waiting.
A dragon soul at F rank.
Roman had to physically stop himself from smiling too wide.
He checked his progress before putting the interface away.
[Level: 6 {6032/8500 EXP}.]
The fierce resistance from the Goblin Raiders and Guardians had delivered far more EXP than he had anticipated going in, and the Goblin King itself had added a number he hadn't dared to hope for. If Territory Bosses consistently paid out at that rate, ranking up was going to be a very different prospect than the gruelling, slow climb he had been mentally preparing for.
Level 50 was the threshold for the E rank. He wasn't close yet, but he wasn't as far as he had feared either. And if he didn't reach it before Privilege Day, he could always return.
As for the drops, the Blade Queen's Mandible Shard and the Stone and Bone Armor were both staying with him for now. The plan was to hunt again the following night, accumulate more drops, and then trade them for money.
One thing was clear... He wasn't going back home empty-handed. That much decided.
...
He was nearly at the outer edge of the valley when his name broke the silence for the first time since they had left the castle.
"Hey, Roman."
It was the first time she had used his name.
He turned. Rena was moving toward him at a light jog, clearly trying to close the gap before he got too far ahead, and the expression on her face was nothing like the sharp, combative one he had grown accustomed to over the course of the night.
Roman watched her approach with quiet curiosity.
"Yeah? What do you want?" he asked.
Rena came to a stop a short distance from him and placed both hands behind her back. The hardness in her face had softened into something that looked, if Roman was reading it correctly, like the expression of someone working up to asking for something they weren't entirely comfortable asking for.
"Nothing much. I just wanted to have a word with you," she said, and a small, genuine smile crossed her lips.
Roman blinked internally.
*She just smiled. The same person that had been tearing into him all night.*
"Oh, okay. Go ahead," he replied, keeping his tone flat. He was not about to let her see that the change had caught him off guard.
"First of all, I owe you an apology for how I acted earlier. That's not really me." She paused briefly, then continued. "I was just genuinely surprised to find someone of your standard out here alone in the valley after dark. It's not something you expect to see, and I reacted badly to it."
Roman said nothing and let her keep going.
"But you didn't back down regardless of any of it. You took down an entire Blade Ant Colony by yourself. Not everyone at your standard has the nerve to attempt that, let alone finish it. And then without even hesitating, you walked straight into a Goblin Castle." She held his gaze steadily. "That isn't just remarkable, Roman. It's rare. People built the way you are don't come around often, and..."
She stopped mid-sentence.
Roman raised an eyebrow, the pause doing exactly what she probably hadn't intended it to do.
Rena exhaled slowly and folded her arms across her chest. She didn't strike him as someone who shied away from much, and true to that, she didn't let the hesitation last long.
"I'm proposing that you become my hunting partner. A friend." Another brief pause. "And not just that."
"What else?" Roman asked.
"Roman, I want you to be my..."
"HEY! You two goddamn rookies! We have been searching everywhere for you!"
The voice came crashing in from the western side of the valley like a bucket of cold water, and both of them turned sharply toward it.
It was a group from the outpost.