CHAPTER 156: MASS EXTRACTION: BLUE SKIN AND POINTED EARS (FINAL)

IceQueen’s eyes widened, but before she could press further, her father stepped toward the tinted window overlooking the city.

The city lights reflected against his single spectacle, making his gaze unreadable. His reflection in the glass looked more like a predator than a man.

"What arrangements?" IceQueen asked curiously.

For a moment, the room was utterly silent, broken only by the soft hum of computers on that floor. IceQueen clenched her fists. Her father’s silence was worse than any direct answer.

"You’re not telling me anything," she muttered bitterly. "But I can tell from your face... you’ve already planned something."

The man gave the faintest of smiles.

"Broken Heaven is an anomaly. And anomalies... have a way of being corrected."

At his words, the lights flickered once, then steadied, leaving IceQueen staring at him in uneasy silence. For the first time, she felt a chill run down her spine—not from Gabriel, but from her own father.

---

Meanwhile, inside the game world, Gabriel moved within the midst of the corpses.

One of the bright sides of Gabriel’s Extraction skill was that he didn’t have to place his hands directly on a monster’s body to extract from it.

Although he had no problem touching dead bodies, he preferred the non-contact method, which required him to be within a certain range.

The first corpse he stumbled upon was a relatively weak monster. From it, Gabriel extracted +2 Perception.

Because of how weak the monsters here were, he doubted he’d get any decent treasures. But treasures were the least of his concerns.

The reason he had returned to this battlefield was simple—he wanted to increase his attribute points.

Class advancement quests could take weeks, months, and depending on difficulty, sometimes even years.

It was the reason many adventurers were stuck at level 50.

When they hit this bottleneck, there was virtually no other way to increase stats. The only option was to rely on treasures with stat bonuses.

’However with how rare drops fall in this world, it would be quite hard,’ he thought as a screen flashed across his retina.

[Ding! You have extracted +2 Agility]

The only places with high chances of dropping items were dungeons.

Out here in the wilderness, you’d sweat and bleed before you came across treasures.

’Makes you wonder how the Grey family made it in this line of business.’

The Grey family was never out of stock. Even though they monopolized most of the powerful skills and treasures, choosing to sell only to the elites of the Human starting area, it was still baffling.

’But somehow, Damian was able to create his own business empire that rivaled the Grey conglomerate.’

Gabriel still didn’t know how Damian had pulled it off, but he was glad to be part of it this time around.

’With my talent, not even the big shots back on Earth would be able to compare,’ he thought inwardly as he silently moved from corpse to corpse, extracting from them.

Unlike other monsters, goblins weren’t harvested for meat. Human butchers frowned heavily upon it, so adventurers rarely bothered.

Why? The answer was simple.

Goblins weren’t only intelligent and humanlike—they could also speak. Eating them wasn’t appealing to humans.

There were at least hundreds of goblin corpses here, and if Gabriel tried to extract from all of them, he might run out of EP.

Moreover, he was saving EP to extract certain skills and check for compatibility later.

Some time later, he stopped extracting. His gaze swept across the graveyard, watching as all the corpses slowly turned into dust, drifting into the air.

"I’d easily pass as a necromancer," Gabriel jokingly mumbled to himself.

Why did he feel so strangely comfortable here... surrounded by the corpses of humans, goblins, and wolves?

Was it because of his last life? Because he had witnessed so much death that he had become numb to it?

At that moment, he couldn’t help but recall the words of the goddess Persephone in her prison:

"You’ll become the Champion of Death... You will walk the world once more, but never as you were before."

The words were still as fresh as if they had been spoken yesterday.

Was this what she meant? That he would slowly lose his humanity and become an unfeeling monster who only found pleasure in slaughter?

’It’s the necessary price.’ Gabriel shook the thoughts from his head. ’I’m not complaining.’

Then he shifted his focus to his Extraction summary.

[Extraction Summary:

+36 Agility, +40 Strength, +60 Perception, +99 Intelligence

Treasures Obtained:

Goblin Fang Dagger (Bronze), Minor Spirit Core (Bronze), Reinforced Hide (Uncommon), Low-Tier Flame Crystal (Bronze), Beastbone Plate (Uncommon), Iron-Tipped Arrows x15 (Uncommon), Spirit Grass Bundle (Uncommon)]

Gabriel glanced at the screen once before closing it. He didn’t care much for the shiny items right now. What mattered most was the steady climb in his stats.

In total, he had gained 235 attribute points—the equivalent of 47 level-ups in one night!

Gabriel felt his body sharper, his reflexes faster, and even his natural vision improved. His entire physique had stepped into another realm.

With this, Hero Ranks—unless they possessed extremely powerful skills—were no longer a threat.

However, this new strength came with a price.

’Back to 400 EP,’ Gabriel sighed as he looked at his points.

Suddenly, just as he turned to leave the battlefield, a faint rustling caught his ears.

His gaze snapped to the left.

There, half-concealed behind a tree, was a woman unlike anything he had ever seen. Her skin shimmered blue under the pale moonlight. Her silver hair glowed faintly as it flowed down her back. Pointed ears twitched slightly, marking her as something not human.

Gabriel froze, his brain moving on autopilot in that moment.

He hadn’t sensed her at all. Not when he was extracting. Not even now, until she had chosen to reveal herself. For someone like him, who prided himself on awareness, the realization was shocking.

And... embarrassing.

More than that... this person had seen him openly use his Talent.

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