17 A System Update

The mysterious notification appears to be a black letter lined in gold with a red seal of unknown symbols. 'What is this?' He thought. He never saw any notifications that appeared in letter form. All of them either appeared as bright letters only he could see or as a bunch of words floating in mid air. He pressed the notification seal and it unraveled into light.

Hello Sebastian, congratulations for being the 500th person to break through to the Immortal-8 rank. Due to that, the system will undergo a massive update that will be completed in 3 days. The upcoming features will be a leaderboard to see who's currently the strongest traveler present. A trading and shopping system so travelers can trade monster bodies, souls, essences or other things for merit points. The merit points will allow one to purchase items, weapons, servants and monsters at the marketplace. Completing quests and reaching an achievement is another way of earning merits and special privileges and items.

Thank You,

System Creator

After reading the notification, he got excited. With a leaderboard, he could easily see how strong he really is so he'd avoid overestimating or underestimating himself and easily recognize other travelers. The shop and the trading system would allow him to easily gather very rare materials, choose cultivation monsters freely, get new equipment or servants and maybe a few handy items. As he closed the notification, another one rang.

Congratulations for killing your first bloodline monster. You are awarded with 10,000 merit points and 1 basic bloodline summoning monster contract.

'Nice, I got 10,000 merit points.' He mentally exclaimed. He felt happy about the merit points and the summoning monster contract as he barely did any effort but received quite a bountiful reward. Regarding the summoning monster contract, he called out to Hirani in his mind. "You got a bloodline summoning monster contract?" She replied with amazement evident in her voice. 'I don't get what's the big deal about that?' He replied. He didn't understand why she was amazed by the summoning monster contract, he thought that it was just for summoning a random bloodline elevation monster, perhaps there is more?

She happily explained to her naive host, "A summoning monster contract allows you to summon a monster to become somewhat like a servant for you. The differences are that monsters have less free will than servants as they can only persuade but not rebel even in the slightest. These summoning monsters can be summoned at will and they will not be counted as another entity when killing monsters for cultivation. Also, they get stronger as you get stronger." After the quick explanation, he understood why it was so amazing that even his Valkyrie would awe at it.

Even though it is just able to summon a free monster, the monster would be a great help when cultivating. Since it is not counted as another entity, he could bring as much as he could and easily kill higher ranked beings. Also as it grows stronger alongside him, its combat abilities should be similar to his and would be an immense help to him when fighting. Since it is a bloodline monster, it should be at least a triple mutated one.

He discovered that he could access his inventory mentally now. He went in and retrieved it, materializing it into reality. A gold scroll with a silver seal on it appeared on his right hand. He did not know how to use it but Hirani quickly told him to simply press the seal, and so he did. The seal dissipated into bits of data and the golden scroll floated up until it reached 10m above the ground. The scroll then quickly flew forward before coming to a halt in a few seconds.

The golden scroll slowly unraveled into a silver, heptagonal magic array with a golden aura. The array floated in the air for a few seconds, showing no activity before hundreds of golden strands appear from it, forming a silver pillar with golden runes inscribed on it. Suddenly, a notification rang in his head.

The Basic Bloodline Summoning Monster Contract has been activated. Please choose the monster to be summoned and bind to.

Petal Fairy

Rarity: Imperial

Mutation: Triple Mutation

Bloodline: Flower Goddess bloodline

Combat Rank: Eternal-2 (Eternal-6 Rank)

Active Skills: 7

Passive Skills: 5

Corrosive Haze Dragon

Rarity: Imperial

Mutation: Triple Mutation

Bloodline: God of Decay bloodline

Combat Rank: Eternal-2 (Eternal-6 Rank)

Active Skills: 8

Passive Skills: 4

Great Sandstorm Efreet

Rarity: Imperial

Mutation: Triple Mutation

Bloodline: Pazuzu bloodline

Combat Rank: Eternal-2 (Eternal-6 Rank)

Active Skills: 6

Passive Skills: 6

He analyzed the 3 monsters, with his immense intelligence, rapid learning abilities and perfect memory, he completely analyzed the choices in less than 5 minutes. He had checked all their skills, appearance and bloodlines, they all are completely equal to each other overall. The three of them have different specialties for each. The petal fairy is an expert at illusions and seductions, her powerful attack skills make her very useful for ambushes and assassinations as her petal manipulation skills depend on overwhelming enemies with sheer numbers to kill them immediately. Her illusions and seductions also make her the best informant as she can force any man to tell her all they knew.

The corrosive haze dragon is a very durable and destructive being. It breathes out a large amount of corrosive haze to melt its enemies to sludge, all things that touch its haze would have its defense severely weakened. Its thick scales also provide it an impenetrable defense that only eternals of its rank and above can actually harm it at all. However, it has a major weakness. It is easily provoked and because of that, luring it into traps are very easy as its attention isn't easily distracted when it is angered.

While the corrosive haze dragon and the petal fairy had very specific specialties, the Great Sandstorm Efreet is a little combination of both. It could create illusions that only appear to certain people and could drive people mad by manipulating their 5 senses. However, unlike the petal fairy, he could not get information but could only drive people insane in battle through illusions and its illusions are less compelling than the petal fairy's. The efreet has a balanced arsenal of single target and multi target attacks, it has also a passive skill that makes it impervious to physical attacks by anything that is below its rank. It would be most useful against stronger enemies or zerg tactics.

He looked at each of their origins, bloodline, abilities and combat techniques one more time and reassessed them. He still found no edges that any of them have over each other. Even 5 minutes later, he did not find any advantages until he felt that his sword started to grow as he looked at the petal fairy's seductive figure. He thought of using her as a substitute when he felt horny. She definitely ranked around Lilith in terms of sexiness and their unnatural beauty.

He chose the petal fairy and pressed confirm twice as a confirmation prompt appears. After choosing and confirming the petal fairy, almost immediately, the golden aura around the magic array turned into a bright magenta. The silver pillar's golden inscriptions immediately transformed into a pinkish hue and the pillar cracked. As seconds past, the pillar cracked and brilliant pink light radiated through the increasingly large cracks. After a few seconds, the pillar collapse inwards and the light began to form a figure.

The figure formed into the Petal Fairy. She appears to be a young, sexy chinese woman with long black hair, pink eyes and an hourglass figure. She had a seductive face on and wore a pink dress that ancient chinese princesses would wear. She walked slowly towards her new master in a seductive manner and giggled before stopping a few feet in front of him. She is about a feet shorter than him and stood a little like a drunkard.

She then introduced herself in a sensual voice, "Hello Master. I'm a petal fairy, it's nice to meet such a handsome boy." Upon her introduction, he simply smirked before replying, "You don't have a name do you?" She nodded her head and replied, "I don't have one that Master can pronounce." He thought of a fitting name by recalling the names of his female friends and relatives in his old life. Who knows that they might have a fitting name. After some recollection, he came up with a fitting name, 'Li Yao'.

The name translated into beautiful demon, his enhanced memory allowed him to recall all the things he forgot in the past including when his mother taught him mandarin as a toddler and when he learned some other mandarin words and phrases from his chinese friends. He casually replied, "How about Li Yao." She nodded and immediately excepted the new name her master gave her. He walked back to the palace with her and decided to keep reading in the library with her so she could help him in a few things while also helping him combat wise.

They took a 30 minute walk towards the castle and he learned that she was from the Anansha continent, a larger neighboring continent that connected with Terradeus from the smaller continent's east. She had also passed on some knowledge about the situation there and how she died. She explains that when monsters and ancient beings perished or are sealed, they would either be copied or taken to become servants or summoning monsters. She told him that she had died 300 years prior and the knowledge she had might not be relevant anymore due to her absence from the living world.

When they went into the library, he noticed that the young succubus he met earlier is not here dusting or arranging the books. Since the library is still clean, he did not pay much attention to that. Despite already reading for around a total of 18 hours, he didn't even read 0.1% of the books in the library yet. As it is still daytime, he could spend the whole day reading until midnight where he has to return to his coffin. As a vampire, they are instinctually forced to remain in coffins after midnight if they have already fed. Since he is still a Tier 3 Pureblood Vampire, he could not do anything about that.

Before taking any books out and reading anything, he commanded Li Yao to read all the things about combat techniques and skills while he read about history, politics and the various monsters within the region. They started reading and it lasted for 14 hours before Sebastian went out and entered his black coffin. Before he left, he told her to keep reading and tell him what she had learned by the time that he came back to the library.