Sam is in the middle of the soul extraction process, but all of a sudden he felt like something hit him.
It was not a physical hit. It is a hit to his soul. He could feel it. At this, he is using his soul to extract her soul out while restraining her mental strength completely.
But suddenly, the restraints of the mental strength seemed to be loosed up for no apparent reason or to be more precise for the reasons he couldn't understand or imagine.
The attack is light, but he halted in his tracks to make sure that nothing dangerous could happen to him in this process. Anything that is involving one's soul is too much danger. In fact, it is dangerous than playing with a spiritual core.
Because there are a lot more ways to heal or even regrow a spiritual core compared to the healing methods for the soul.
Last time, his soul barely got into the shadow realm for a few seconds and he was out cold for two months straight.
Sam started re-examining the runes in the middle of the process. He didn't find any anomalies at the start, but as he examined it again and again, he started finding anomalies.
There is some kind of power that is trying to alter the flow of the energy within the runes to make the part of it which is placing a 'leash' on the soul to loosen up.
Without this supposed 'leash' there is nothing Sam could hold onto to pull the soul out of her body. As the leash was loosened Sam felt his soul shake a bit.
He is getting mild hits continuously which might lead to come accumulated damage.
He focused on retightening the leash and the clash started.
Sam is really surprised and not so surprised at the same time with this clash.
The surprise is that she has this much soul energy and she seemed to have abundant knowledge in the soul necromancy to even try to change the flow of energy. But the not-so-surprising part is about the fact that he expected some resistance from her as she managed to keep some sanity within this Palace of inheritance.
The only confusing part about is, How?
How does she have this much mental energy? Sam has dedicated one-fifth of this total training time to just training mental energy and even when he is on long research retreats, he still kept up with this mental strength training.
Even from the Player's standards, his mental strength at least thrice if not four times higher than an average player.
But here another player managing to put up the struggle with it.
Sam decided to start a full-on war. He is not ready to give up the chance to torture this woman. She would definitely escape if he gave up now and it would be hard to find her again.
And he wouldn't be able to find her in a weaker state than this. Currently, her cultivation level, physical strength, energy reserves, injuries. In all of these aspects, she is worse than him.
He cannot let such a tempting chance go that easily. So he resorted to mental attacks.
He ran the runic formation slighting differently and started extracting memories from the soul, trying to find the deepest darkest memories of her which she didn't want to share, and to avoid her from seeing his secrets, he actively let some of his memories for her to see.
In fact, it is not a precaution, it is more like an attack and it could be said that this act of sending his memories worked better than trying to read hers.
Because Sam sent worst of his memories. Things like the constant physical abuse or the training in the assassin camp to control nausea and increase the tolerance for the human organs, corpses, and even rotten corpses.
He started showing these memories to her and she really was affected.
Her grip over the soul loosened a bit and now not only Sam got more memories, he also got the soul easily.
Right, when he was almost taking her out, he got a faint glimpse of memory which made him halt in his tracks in confusion and when he was to see it in full, suddenly his 'vision' turned black and all he could see is a pair of eyes burning black flames flying around and looking at him with a voice saying.
'Don't you dare.'
Sam lost control and the runic formation was destroyed. Before the backlash could strike, Sam let her body go and the backlash was all directed to her body and the soul which made her spit blood and hold her head tightly in pain.
She instantly gave up and the woman disappeared leaving the black whip behind.
Sam took his whip back and started recovering.
The fight might be relatively easier compared to Arkiv, but he still took some damage and the process of soul extraction is actually quite taxing.
While he is recovering he constantly thought of the small glimpse of that little memory he saw. He couldn't make heads and tails of it.
The rest of the memories he saw are her just trying to get by every day in a low-key way back in Desolate and in fact, she is in the lands of the beast faction.
So, she heard about Sam more than the rest of the planet and her name is Beryl.
He might be the first man in the universe who found out a woman's name in such a gruesome way.
Sam thought of the rest of the memories and tried to link it with the glimpse. But it didn't just work.
The glimpse is something about Beryl talking to her own and he barely heard a few words which didn't even make any sense.
But his instinct is telling him because of that strong reaction that he got from her and the reaction which is completely out of his league and understanding is making him feel more and more curious.
It is too bad that he couldn't find it for now.
He just laid down on the ground and let the warping do its thing.
He is falling to a lava river that was blocked by Yawnu. He was carried on Yanwu's back as he scolding himself in his mind.
He lost the chance to take revenge on one woman, who is so much weaker than him.
And he let the chance slip two times in a row.
He felt like shit right now and he also understood something else. He understood how the rest of the bigshots felt helpless when dealing with Sam.
He was open right in front of their eyes, in the most high profile way possible, doing everything he wanted, earning money that was always there but the bigshots never knew it was there to take and leaving like he doesn't give two fucks about their hate towards him.
And all they can do is think about their failed attempts and feel miserable about themselves thinking that they are entirely worthless, even though they ruled a million people for a greater part of their lives.
Luckily he is only at two attempts and he decided he wouldn't go and feel to that extreme and to make sure of that, he has to time the next attempt properly.
He would make a foolproof way that Hel herself would have to come down to save her player.
The warping continued and after he got his confidence back, he once again focused on the game.
He doesn't know how long he stayed there. How many days, months, or even years it has been.
But what he doesn't know is he only spent forty-five days in total, before encountered the third player.
This time the things were easier. It is Donner and Sam is in no mood of killing this guy, and he is also too injured. His whole body is covered with too many stab wounds and he is bleeding from at least eighteen tears and he is still standing there with lightning roaring around.
The first thought Sam came to was to kill this guy in a single slap and be done with it.
But all of a sudden he felt hesitant and left him alone.
Four players are dead already. There are only eight left. There is only one more player that has to die in his hands.
He just subdued him quickly and made him come to his senses before making him give up. It turned out he was in a battle with Kumar and he was also on verge of death.
Sam felt gloomy at this thought.
The chances of Kumar surviving are very few. No matter if it is the beasts or another player, they would eat him alive in a minute.
The only way he could survive is with the last breath half-eaten by the beast or beaten half to death by the player, before calming down right before he died and giving up.
Going out with a single breath in his lungs holding his life intact.
