"How many are remaining?"
Asked Yvraine as they were searching for survivors of the onslaught brought on them by the Necro-Madness Spell Formation. After they finished killing the survivors or those injured or practically everyone else, now came the hard part, but the part which Samiel very much anticipated, and to such extent that gold coins almost appeared in his eyes.
"This was the last one; now we need to start cleaning the corpses and their possession."
Stated Samiel with an excited voice, as even Yvraine was a bit excited. This would be the first time in her life she would be gathering proper loot or obtaining her own resources and riches from killed foes, so a new experience.
For Samiel, this was just an old thing, but every time he was getting loot, it was the best feeling in the world, especially when he got good loot from someone he had killed.
"You are a really simple person, right?"
Yvraine said mockingly as he nodded to her provocation because, indeed, this made him happy. He didn't know why, but since he remembered, he was obsessed with searching through every nook and cranny of any place that may have something valuable.
Samiel ordered his Undead to search through every corpse and obtain their Dimensional Rings or any other types of equipment. This was the advantage of having Undead because they did most of the dirty work for him. He couldn't really imagine the situation where he would need to do this manually and search through every corpse with his own hands.
While Undead was usually "stupid", they could easily carry out some simple menial task, like puck up that weapon or pick up something valuable. And how did they know what was valuable? It was simple; through their natural connection to Necromancer, they could sense it through the connection.
Most commonly, Dimensional Pouches as Rings were rather expensive.
After several hours of going through the countless Dimensional Equipment, searching through corpses, their loot consisted of this for each:
x1,000,000 Gold Coins
x15,129 Iron-Tier Mana Crystal
x7,541 Steel-Tier Mana Crystal
x541 Bronze-Tier Mana Crystal
x1,740 Normal-Grade Dimensional Equipment
x125 Rare-Grade Dimensional Equipment
And aside from that, there were countless other items, such as weapons, armors, other equipment, books, and many, many others that it would make a smaller mountain.
While Samiel obtained an enormous amount of Iron-Tier Mana Crystals, they were virtually useless to him, as they could not help him increase his strength.
This amount was not low, as he could use a lot of it to increase his strength and also to leave some money to buy some things he would need.
Even though he got around 1 million gold coins, which is a nice amount, but in the Tower, Gold Coins were not that useful. Still, Samiel decided to keep them on Yvraine's advice.
Now he would need to sell all things obtained from all these people, though this time, he would want Mana Crystals as payment; a lot of these things were of high quality, and most importantly, there were thousands of weapons, armor pieces, side equipment, and other miscellaneous things.
And finally, the number of Tokens they obtained was 34,000, which was three times of that what Samiel initially needed. Most of it came from the Bronze-Tier professionals, especially the Divine Blood Descendant, Asura Tribesman, and Pale Blood Clansman; each had over 3,000 of these Token, from which the Asura Tribesman had over 5,000.
"We will go 50/50 with Tokens, but I am taking 70% of other loot."
This act greatly surprised Yvraine as she thought he would want to have the majority of Tokens, but in truth, he didn't really care about them that much.
As long as he completed the mission, it was enough.
Additionally, he was various of the Asura Tribe and Transcendent Faction behind them enough to exchange something from the list to increase his strength.
Usually, things the Asura Tribe provided there were various weapons and Bloodline Samples of various creatures. His bloodline was already top-notch across the Cosmos, and about the weapons, he had a bad premonition that all of them were cursed or came with some price.
Not to mention, Samiel had a very bad premotion about getting anything from the Asura Tribe, very bad promotion, and his senses never betrayed him, so he didn't really want anything from them.
So, he didn't really want to have anything with Tokens or to be tied in any kind to the Asura Tribe. For him, the Mana Crystals and other things were far more useful.
[Ruler Quest: Battle Royale has been completed. You can now advance to the 3rd Floor. Do you wish to advance?]
Samiel got the message from the Tower System. He declined, choosing to remain on the 2nd Floor for the Hidden Mission.
Surprisingly, Yvraine did the same thing as he did.
Moments later, other messages arrived.
[Advancement Quest: Battle Royale has been completed.]
[Hidden Mission has been revealed and issued.]
[Fragment of Trishula has been obtained. Collect all the fragments to complete the weapon.]
[Hidden Mission: ??? in the Desert
Description: Use Tokens in the ceremony on the 2nd Floor to awaken the sleeping beast on the 2nd Floor.
Rewards: Opportunity to contract the ???.]
Samiel carefully looked at the Hidden Mission, not really knowing what to think about it. This Hidden Mission didn't provide any rewards to its competition, just a chance of contracting the thing that was sleeping on the 2nd Floor.
But alas, there was not possible that with a ton of restrictions on the things that Akashic Records could give as rewards, he couldn't await some good things for every time.
Now, whatever it was, it must be either an extremely powerful or a very unique creature. In the end, it doesn't matter, as Samiel didn't have any other purpose for the Tokens, so he would try his luck and maybe obtain an overpowered Familiar.
[Fragment of Trishula
Rank: Holy
Description: Fragment of the Ultra-Order Grade Divine Weapon of Shiva, which was broken upon his death during the ???. Collect all Fragments of Trishula to revive the great weapon once more.]
After he stored the fragment of Trishula, he didn't have the mood or time to observe and think about a fragment of a broken weapon, so he stored it away and decided to take a look at it at a later date when he arrived at the 3rd Floor.
He contemplated about where to conduct the ceremony because, from the description of the quest, it was hinted that there should be a specific place for it.
In the end, he asked Yvraine as they had formed some level of trust in each other after the time they spent together. After spending together around 1 year, it was evident that their relationship became something weird?
"Hmm... there is one place that corresponds to the description... Altar of the Ubaste, located in the desert mountains. It is a dangerous region, where not many people venture due to enormous heat and scorching sun."
While Samiel knew that this would be a dangerous endeavor, he knew he would be fine. Mainly because of his Armor, Rao's Vengence. Contrary to Yvraine, who needed to do something about the troublesome heat and sun of the 2nd Foor, Samiel did not. And he was a person who hated hot environments and blinding the sun with a burning passion.
The answer to that was his armor, Rao's Vengence, which was forged from the corpse of Ancient Sun God Rao, thus automatically protecting him from the heat and sun. That was the main reason why he was so confident in his journey.
"Yvraine, you should go to the 3rd Floor ahead of me, and when I complete the Hidden Mission, I will use that thing so the Tower System will teleport me next to you."
He said as Yvraine agreed with him; she knew that he had missions from the Tower System; it didn't take her a long to realize it, not that Samiel bothered to hide it. She told him that anybody with more than two brain cells would be able to find it out after some observation; she found out during their time on the 1st Floor because it was clearly evident that he was not using any other method to climb the Tower.
She didn't really want to go with him to that desert, as even Bronze-Tiers could perish there from the enormous temperatures and sunlight that scorched you to ash. Samiel was okey because they had protection, but she didn't have anything.
So when they reached a silent mutual agreement to climb together, she knew that it would be better if she ascended to the 3rd Floor and found them somewhere to stay. He didn't really ask about the 3rd Floor and what was there, but Yvraine told him that their stay there would be very pleasant... he really wondered what she meant by that.