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"That should be it. But the fight earlier made such a huge commotion… finding anything now might be a pain."
Wu Liuqi scratched his head, looking drained and completely out of energy.
"There's not much we can do about that."
Elsa sat gracefully on a rock, a faint smile playing at her lips.
"The strongest one's already been dealt with. What's left shouldn't be anything too scary. If we split up, we can probably clear them out pretty quickly."
"Let's hope so." Wu Liuqi yawned. "I'm about to drop from exhaustion."
"In that case, let's rest here for a bit," Sam agreed. "I'll summon some Hell Crows and have them search for spirit beasts corrupted by void energy. Once we've caught our breath, we can divide up and finish them off."
Everyone nodded. After a fight like that, they were all running on fumes.
While they rested, Liu Erlong quietly walked over to Sam. She looked like she had something to say but wasn't sure how to start.
"If you've got something on your mind, just say it," Sam said with a smile. "Aren't we friends now?"
"…Friends…"
The word caught her off guard.
Given her identity and situation, "friends" wasn't exactly something she had much of these days.
"Well, since you put it like that, I won't beat around the bush," she said bluntly. "Who exactly are you people?"
"I've felt it since the beginning. You don't use soul power… but you're ridiculously strong."
She had asked about this before, but Sam had brushed it off with vague answers. After witnessing their overwhelming power firsthand, she couldn't hold back anymore.
"We're not from this world," Sam said calmly.
They'd be gone once the mission was done anyway. No need to spin some elaborate lie.
"…What?"
Not from this world?
Liu Erlong froze.
C-could it be… the legends were true?
The Divine Realm really exists?
With power like theirs, it wouldn't be impossible if they were gods…
Unfortunately, Sam had no idea she'd already leapt straight to that conclusion.
Since he genuinely considered her a friend, he explained further.
"We all come from different worlds. We ended up in your Douluo world because of that spatial rift."
"Different worlds? A spatial rift? So… you're not just gods from legend?"
"…Or maybe you really are gods," she thought, even more confused than before.
"Ah, don't overthink it," Sam said helplessly. "Just know we're from other worlds. We're here to fix that spatial rift and recover the void energy leaking from it."
"…I still don't get it."
But she didn't press further.
Liu Erlong wasn't the type to obsess over answers or pry until she got every detail. It was enough to know they were her friends. Everything else? Not important.
She'd only asked out of curiosity in the first place.
"Oh, right. You're level forty now, aren't you?" Sam suddenly asked.
With her status, the only reason she'd be in the Star Dou Forest was to hunt a spirit beast for her breakthrough.
"Yeah." She nodded. "I hit level forty. The day before yesterday, our team came here to hunt… and that's when…"
Her voice trailed off.
"In that case," Sam said with a grin, "how about I give you a spirit ring?"
Liu Erlong blinked.
"…You'll what?"
Before she could ask anything else, Sam had the King of Wisdom strip the void energy from the humanoid mantis's corpse. Then he had it simulate this world's method of generating spirit rings and extract one directly from the body.
The King of Wisdom wasn't just for show. With abilities like analysis, parallel processing, omniscient calculation, integration, and separation, it had already figured out the mechanics of spirit rings.
Over the past few days in the Douluo world, Sam had received an enormous number of spirit beast souls and corpses in Hell. That was more than enough data to crack the system completely. And since Hell was under his full control, recreating a spirit ring wasn't difficult at all.
Not only that, after being processed by the King of Wisdom, this ring would fuse without any side effects whatsoever.
By this world's standards, this was nothing less than a god-bestowed spirit ring.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Hurry up and absorb it!" Elsa urged from the side.
She and Liu Erlong had somehow bonded instantly. Female friendships could be mysterious like that.
"Yeah, yeah, go for it," Wu Liuqi chimed in, eyes full of curiosity. He'd always wondered how soul masters absorbed spirit rings to grow stronger.
"Hmph. How boring."
Kurama turned his head away dismissively. But the corner of his eye still drifted back toward them.
Sam caught that and smiled faintly.
Such a tsundere.
"....."