Evolving My Undead Legion In A Game-Like World

Chapter 957: The True Opportunity

From Shojo’s memory Michael could tell they had been equal in strength at the time of the encounter, with Shojo taking the narrow victory.

But what had made this particular human stand out, both in Shojo’s memory and now in Michael’s attention, was his ability.

The human could transform into a gigantic snake carrying a faint but unmistakable trace of dragon bloodline. Except through special means, only a bloodline warrior could achieve something like that.

Michael had only encountered two in the Land of Origin. One was a member of the Lionheart royal family’s extended lineage. The other had been Rui, the prince of an empire.

The Black Serpent Empire.

Putting aside the name, for some reason the figure in the memory gave Michael a familiar feeling. It reminded him of Rui. There was a resemblance between the two that he could not simply dismiss.

In the surrounding territories there was said to be only one power that possessed Legendary Stage beings. That power was the Black Serpent Empire.

Surely there was no direct relationship between who Shojo had killed a decade ago and the prince who had died by his hands. Right?

Even Michael was not entirely convinced by his own reassurance.

In any case, this figure was also connected to the greatest treasure Shojo had accumulated. The treasure had already existed before that encounter, but the legendary human’s contribution was what had elevated it into something truly remarkable.

Michael turned to look at the center of the clearing.

There was a pool.

It sat in a natural depression in the stone floor, roughly circular. The liquid inside was not a single color. It shifted between deep crimson, dark gold, and something closer to black at the center where the concentration was highest. The colors layered rather than mixed, each visible at different depths.

The pressure it emitted was considerable. Michael felt it the moment he crossed the threshold into the clearing.

At the same time, there was an allure to it that was just as powerful as the pressure. Not only could Michael feel it, he could sense the ”desire” coming from the undead standing beside him.

Perhaps if Lily had been there instead she would have already been trembling from instinctive greed.

Michael knew what this pool was.

The foundation blood pool.

Whatever shortcuts Shojo’s method had provided, they had left gaps in its foundation that raw strength alone could not fill. Shojo’s two longest periods of stagnation had been the transitions that required something its method could not shortcut.

One was the breakthrough from the Grand Stage to the Great Stage, which required one to comprehend a law. The other was the step toward externalizing that law into a domain.

Neither could be consumed from an external source, unless one had abandoned the idea of forging their own path entirely.

Fortunately the gaps left by the shortcut method could be repaired.

This pool was Shojo’s method of doing so.

Starting from the peak of Rank 2, whenever Shojo devoured a creature he only took seventy percent and directed the remaining thirty percent into a blood pool.

The pool was not simply filled with blood. It was the concentrated essence of those creatures.

It was said that demigod supernaturals, as long as a single drop of their blood remained, could not truly die. Michael did not know how accurate that claim was, but it spoke to how significant the essence contained in the blood pool actually was.

To a certain extent it was more accurate to call it an essense pool.

As Shojo’s own level rose, so did the threshold of what entered the pool. At its current stage, everything added in recent centuries had come from Legendary Stage opponents.

And then there was the legendary human from a decade ago.

Shojo was not a creature that sought life and death combat casually. In fact almost all Legendary Stage supernaturals operated the same way. Michael had enough evidence of that.

The dignified Rank 4 demonic supernatural had fled from a Rank 2 Michael in hell without hesitation to preserve its life. The Amarazi elder on the fifteenth floor would have escaped if not for Beginning’s near suicidal choice to hold it in place.

Creatures that had spent so long reaching their level did not risk it lightly.

For Shojo to have pursued that fight, the potential gain had to have clearly outweighed the risk in its calculation. And it had been right.

The legendary human’s essence, mixed into the pool alongside everything else, had transformed it into something qualitatively different from what it had been before.

The dragon bloodline, however diluted, still carried a trace of the true dragon bloodline within it.

It was more accurate now to call it the Dragon Foundation Blood Pool. Or the Dragon Foundation Essence Pool.

Shojo’s ambition had been to use this pool to ascend to the demigod stage.

If not for Michael’s existence, Shojo might have succeeded in shedding its identity as a deer entirely and emerged as something closer to a dragon.

There was also a reason Shojo had been particularly drawn to creatures with special blood or rare essence.

Ordinary essence, even from powerful creatures, could only improve the pool’s quantity. But special bloodlines, rare affinities, and beings carrying concentrated fortune or unusual foundational qualities improved the pool’s quality.

A pool refined by even a handful of truly special essences produced a foundation capable of supporting a higher ceiling at the moment of breakthrough, not merely repairing existing flaws but actively elevating what the breakthrough could produce.

This was why Shojo’s ability to sense fortune in blood had become so central to its hunting strategy over the centuries. It was not simply greed or appetite.

The legendary human a decade ago had been the most significant find in centuries. And Michael, from the moment Shojo’s senses had registered what he carried, had represented something beyond even that.

Even without Jester’s interference it would have still attacked Michael eventually.

Shojo had been only a step away from the demigod stage. If it had succeeded in devouring Michael, combined with the blood pool it had been accumulating for over five hundred years, it might have genuinely ascended within a century.

Unfortunately, thanks to a certain undead’s scheming, its greatest opportunity had become another man’s treasure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​