This was the day he had been thinking about since he first read the Soul Summon description. Three souls sitting in his Soul Bank... Four actually... Doing nothing, while he had been running around the valley cutting things down with his own hands every single night.

That was going to change today.

He stepped out into the mid-morning air of Blood Trail Outpost, Queenfang at his side, and headed straight for the valley entrance. The gatekeepers gave him their usual look, and he gave them his usual unbothered nod, and that was the end of that conversation.

Once he was inside the valley and the outpost walls were behind him, he pulled up the Soul Bank.

Four entries...

[Soul 1: Soldier Blade Ant. Warrior of the Shredding Ground. Leveless Ordinary Monster.]

[Soul 2: Blade Ant Queen. Ruler of the Shredding Ground. Level 15 Ordinary Monster.]

[Soul 3: Blue Goblin King. Ruler of Stone and Bone Castle. Level 35 Ordinary Monster.]

[Soul 4: Dire Wolf Alpha. Ruler of the Wild of Howls. Level 55 Ordinary Monster.]

Roman stared at them for a moment.

"Alright. Let’s see how this actually works."

He had decided to leave out the Blade Ant Queen in the conversation for now, since it wouldn’t be of no great use for his plans at this moment.

His first stop was a territory he had spotted during one of his night hunts but had not yet cleared. A moderate one, sitting in the eastern stretch of the valley where the ground turned rocky and the air carried a faint metallic smell.

[Location: The Cracked Flats. Home of the Stone Beetle Colony.]

[Inhabitants: Stone Beetles.]

[Chances of Survival: 50%.]

The Stone Beetles were squat, heavily armoured insects about the size of a large dog, with thick stone-like shells that made direct strikes largely useless unless you hit the underbelly or the joint between the shell and the legs. Roman had read about them on the Forum. They were slow individually but moved in coordinated formations that made approaching the colony centre genuinely dangerous.

Roman stood at the edge of the territory and looked out at the rocky flats ahead of him, at the dozens of Stone Beetles moving in their slow, organised patterns across the cracked ground.

He opened the Soul Bank and selected the first entry, actually it was what he already had on mind.

[Soul Summon: Blade Ant Queen.]

[Do you wish to summon the Soul Servant, Blade Ant Queen?]

"Yes."

What happened next made Roman take one step back without meaning to.

The air directly in front of him split open with a pale amber light, and from it stepped the Blade Ant Queen.

She was exactly as he remembered her. Every bit as large, every bit as imposing, the curved mandible blades catching the morning light the same way they had caught the moonlight the night he killed her. Except now her entire body carried that faint amber glow, like something burning quietly underneath the surface.

She turned her head toward him.

Roman held his ground, composed as he gave a soft sigh.

"You work for me now," he said. "Those Stone Beetles. Clear them."

The Blade Ant Queen held his gaze for exactly one second.

Then she turned toward the Cracked Flats and moved.

Roman watched her go and exhaled slowly.

"Okay. That was actually incredible."

He followed at a distance and observed.

The Stone Beetles registered her immediately, their formations tightening as they turned to face the incoming threat. What they had not accounted for was the speed. The Blade Ant Queen covered the distance between the edge of the territory and the first formation in a burst that Roman had experienced firsthand, and watching it from the outside was a different thing entirely.

Her mandible blades went through the Stone Beetle shells like they were nothing.

The shells that were supposed to be the entire point of the creature’s defense. The shells that made direct strikes useless.

The Blade Ant Queen’s mandibles did not care.

CRAAASH.

CRAAASH.

CRAAASH.

Beetles fell in rapid succession, and the ones that tried to coordinate a response found themselves being scattered by the same kind of Blade Spray that had nearly hit Roman the night he fought her.

[Soul Servant Kill: Stone Beetle. EXP forwarded to Host. +35 EXP.]

[Soul Servant Kill: Stone Beetle. EXP forwarded to Host. +35 EXP.]

[Soul Servant Kill: Stone Beetle. EXP forwarded to Host. +35 EXP.]

The notifications kept coming, stacking faster than Roman could read them, and he found himself smiling without meaning to.

This was the most effortless EXP he had ever accumulated!

The Stone Beetle Queen showed up twenty minutes later, a larger and slower variant with a shell so thick it had survived multiple Entrant hunting parties according to the Forum.

[Monster Name: Stone Beetle Queen.]

[Rank: Level 14 Ordinary Monster.]

[Traits: Terror Cut. Remotes Dash.]

[Life: 91%.]

The Blade Ant Queen looked at it the way a person looks at a mildly inconvenient obstacle, and three precise mandible strikes later, the Boss was done.

[Soul Servant Kill: Stone Beetle Queen. EXP forwarded to Host. +450 EXP.]

[Common Drop Delivered: Stone Shell Shield.]

[Soul Servant Blade Ant Queen Soul Points updated.]

[Soul Points: 47.]

Roman collected the drop, looked at the cleared territory, and nodded slowly.

"Good work," he said to the Blade Ant Queen.

She turned her head toward him again with that same one second pause.

Roman was fairly sure that was just how she acknowledged things.

He dismissed her back into the Soul Bank and moved on, amazed how all things had happened without stress, but his most amazement was she was able to slay the Stone Beetle without much stress, because if he was to judge right, the difference from both Monster Level weren’t that different!

He didn’t have much time to ponder on that, because he surely had more jobs to do with the rest of the Souls.

...

The second territory he found himself was deeper into the valley, in a low section where the ground stayed damp and the grass grew dark and dense.

[Location: The Rot Flats. Home of the Blood Mice.]

[Inhabitants: Blood Mice.]

[Chances of Survival: 71%.]

He had been here before but not this exact same territory, on his secondnight in the valley, and he remembered exactly how quickly those numbers could become a problem.

Individually harmless. In a swarm, they were a different conversation entirely.

Roman opened the Soul Bank and this time selected the second entry.

[Soul Summon: Blue Goblin King.]

[Do you wish to summon the Soul Servant, Blue Goblin King?]

"Yes."

The amber light split open again, and the Blue Goblin King stepped through.

He was enormous... Quite.

Roman had killed him from a ridiculous type of invisibility and had never actually stood in front of him at full size in the open. The King stood nearly twice Roman’s height, his bone sword materialising in his grip the moment he fully formed, his deep red eyes finding Roman immediately.

Roman met his gaze and did not move.

"Blood Mice," Roman said, pointing toward the Rot Flats. "All of them."

The Goblin King looked at him for a long moment, then looked toward the territory.

Then he walked forward, and Roman followed.

The Blood Mice scattered in every direction the moment the King entered the Rot Flats, their usual swarm instinct completely overridden by the presence of something that registered as an apex threat.

But the Goblin King moved through the damp grass with a calm that Roman found genuinely unsettling, his bone sword sweeping in wide arcs that cleared entire sections with each pass.

The mice that tried to swarm him simply bounced off.

[Soul Servant Kill: Blood Mouse. EXP forwarded to Host. +12 EXP.]

[Soul Servant Kill: Blood Mouse. EXP forwarded to Host. +12 EXP.]

It was less dramatic than the Blade Ant Queen’s performance, mostly because Blood Mice at this level were not a real challenge for a Level 35 soul servant. But the efficiency was something else. What would have taken Roman twenty minutes of careful positioning and skill rotation was done in under eight.

The Boss, a bloated variant three times the standard size, tried to call a swarm in response to the King’s approach.

The Goblin King picked it up with one hand and threw it into a rock face.

[Soul Servant Kill: Blood Mouse Boss. EXP forwarded to Host. +280 EXP.]

[Common Drop Delivered: Rot Flat Whisker.]

[Soul Servant Blue Goblin King Soul Points updated.]

[Soul Points: 31.]

Roman stared at the Rot Flat Whisker for a moment and decided that was definitely a sell.

He dismissed the Goblin King and checked his Attribute stat while he walked toward the third territory.

He had been sitting on accumulated Soul conversion options since the Cracked Flats, and he figured now was as good a time as any.

He pulled up the Soul Attribute Enhancement option and looked at the souls he had declined to keep after the morning’s kills.

[Convert Soul: Stone Beetle (Levelless) — 5 Attribute Points.]

[Convert Soul: Stone Beetle (Level 3) — 6 Attribute Points.]

[Convert Soul: Blood Mouse (Levelless) — 5 Attribute Points.]

[Convert Soul: Blood Mouse (Level 2) — 5 Attribute Points.]

Roman converted twelve of them back to back and watched the Attribute Points climb. He wanted to see what it would look like, and after accumulating a few, a small smile hit his lips.

[+67 Attribute Points accumulated.]

He decided that he wouldn’t distribute it yet and just continued the hunting. He was thinking ahead to whatever the third territory had waiting, and to whatever came after it.

That was the main point, since there was still one Soul Servant who hasn’t made his debut.

He kept walking... Ready.