Autophagy

The next few days of his life went pretty calmly. Song Lei would spend most of his time sitting on his bed, trying his best to raise his control stat. Obviously, the more it went up, the harder it was to train. He was only able to raise it by another point in three days, bringing it up to 6. Unlike the main three stats, it didn't give him any special bonuses after raising it to 5. Which was slightly disappointing.

Aside from his control training, which was technically his only way of developing, for now, he would also occasionally collect blood beads from his floors. Now that he had placed a Claim Flag that made those places his official territories, his income of blood beads had risen. In the span of three days, he was able to gather 6000 blood beads.

He had also asked Aston to build a soul fortress for the 1408th room. Unfortunately, Song Lei didn't know how to craft talismans. The only person who had the knowledge was Old Wolf and he was...

On the fortunate side of things, however, Aston was looking to take a break. He was running low on inspiration, which was a necessary thing to have for research. It was always a great help to go do some other stuff when he felt he was approaching a bottleneck, in hopes of finding something inspiring.

Now that was set aside, Song Lei was able to relax slightly. He was staying in room 1401 for now. Kang Mirae seemed relatively comfortable with her current situation. Just like Song Lei had guessed, she had tried to go out venturing to other floors on her own. Fortunately, nothing bad happened while doing so. Because of the relatively calm state of the apartment, she didn't even meet any ghosts.

Other than that, she spent most of her time inside her room, using her skill as much as possible. She was trying to figure out what exactly her dragonification helped with, other than physical enhancements.

Of course, Song Lei also supported this action of hers. In the end, every person awakened their souls through their innate abilities. Even Song Lei, who had a rather unique inner ability, had awakened that way. The fact that she was training so diligently caused an awkward sense of pride in Song Lei. He felt like he was doing a good job raising a subordinate from scratch.

And in the near future, he would have to deal with a group of newbies. It wouldn't be as easy as it was to deal with Kang Mirae. She was an awkward exception. After those newbies arrived, Song Lei would have to do his best to get to know them and keep them safe.

Unlike the previous state of the Hammer Branch, where every member had their unique experiences and strengths, these newbies wouldn't be like that. At least some of them had been quickly taken in by the Heaven Alliance after being thrown into the New World, which was a good and a bad thing at the same time.

On the good side of this was the fact that these people wouldn't get traumatized by the horrors of this world, for now. The bad part was the fact that they wouldn't be able to get first-hand experience dealing with ghosts and monsters. Which was detrimental to their survival in the New World.

'Well... As long as I'm there to protect them, it won't be a problem,' Song Lei thought. However, deep inside, he knew that he may not be able to protect these people even if he tried his best. The apartment was in a state of equilibrium between himself and the landlord. If a huge war were to break out between the two, the apartment would die.

'That wouldn't be beneficial in any way for any side. Fortunately, the apartment manager seems to know that. If he didn't, he would've sent more of his subordinates at me.'

He had time. Time to get stronger at a relatively slow pace. He had no idea how strong the landlord was. For that reason, he needed every bit of strength he could muster to put up a fight. Unfortunately, he had no way of gathering information on the other side.

'I still don't know much...' He thought as he sat on his bed. According to the time on his phone, it was approaching midnight. Of course, having lived in the apartment for this amount of time, his body's biological clock was doing its best to adapt. With the help of his Body stat, he was able to get used to it. Now, instead of depending on the day and night cycle, he was able to sleep based on his tiredness.

As he breathed deeply and thought of what to do, only a single thing came to his mind.

It was to learn a new skill.

He had gathered a good amount of blood beads in the last few days. Although they weren't enough to get him a godly skill, he couldn't wait anymore. With each passing day, the apartment was healing more and more. Recently, the apartment had become able to create hordes again, albeit weaker compared to before. This was progress nonetheless.

Initially, Song Lei and Aston were planning to assist the apartment's recovery once it was strong enough to create hordes again. They already had a well-prepared plan that was mostly foolproof. However, there was a single variant that blocked them from healing the apartment.

If the apartment were to heal right now, there would be no reason left for the apartment manager to not attack. This was undesirable, as his faction still didn't have much firepower.

He needed two things.

Unfortunately, Aston and Isabel were Spirit Guardians. As their names suggested, they were guardians. What does a guardian do? They guard. In their territory, which were floors 16 and 17. They were good enough to put up fights.

For example, Aston could fight against two hazes on his own and hold out for some amount of time. Which was not to be taken lightly. Hazes were types of beings that were really hard to deal with. With their elusive move sets and vicious attacks, they were strong and were specialized in combat, unlike Aston.

And even if we considered all of this, Aston and Isabel were more mental type beings. They were able to keep their sanity from their human lives perfectly, which was hard for most beings in the New World.

So the first thing he needed was manpower.

Subordinates that were specialized in combat were needed. With his incredible smarts, Aston was able to outwit his enemies. However, it was never worth the risk to include him in any fight of any kind. He was a scientist and an incredibly valuable person that could lead Song Lei to his ultimate goal of leaving the New World. For that reason, he needed subordinates that would willingly fight by his side.

And the next thing he needed was personal capability.

The New World was harsh. Especially with the way everything worked in it. It wasn't a strong eat weak world that strength ruled. Song Lei couldn't just have a high amount of stats on his body and expect to be safe. He could get attacked on his soul if he were to neglect its protection. He could get mental damage if he were not able to protect it.

For this reason, he needed to develop. Fortunately, his system was on his side. With a constant flow of blood beads, he would be able to become more versatile.

This was his current plan, to choose a new area to develop in.

He had a few different ways of going with this. With the current amount of 6200 blood beads as his budget, he probably couldn't afford a skill directly related to combat. Relatively low-level combat skills' prices started from 25000 blood beads.

So for now, it was crossed out.

The next option was utility skills. Utility skills had a wide arrangement of prices and use, unlike combat skills.

There were cooking skills, smithing stills, alchemy skills, all kinds of things you would see in a fantasy setting basically. However, there was a problem with all of this.

Aston could manage to do all of these on his own, and Song Lei could ask from him whenever he wanted. So there was no real need for him to get one of these skills. He needed something that was unique and useful at the same time.

For this reason, he opened up his system shop and started thinking about what to buy.

'Talisman mastery? That could be a good idea. From the looks of it, they are very versatile. Being able to create safe zones and concealment talismans could be good. But unfortunately, it's nothing that Aston can't do...'

Anything slightly related to science was a no-go, as Aston could deal with them perfectly on his own. What Song Lei needed was something more esoteric. Something that was hard to deal with science.

Frowning, Song Lei started pacing around the room to think of what to do as he held his chin.

Feeling the need for inspiration in his bones, he looked around to find something that could inspire him.

Seeing a pile of books laid out on the ground, probably left by Xiang Yimu, he picked one up and started reading through. Fortunately, it hadn't been torn off or become unreadable because of the slimy goo created by the horde.

It was a book related to Northern Asian tribes. Which left Song Lei wondering why there was such a book in Xiang Yimu's room. After all, he didn't really come off as an avid reader. However, as he read through the book, he started understanding.

Xiang Yimu's innate ability was related to talisman crafting from what he could remember. The book in his hands talked a lot about the history of talisman creation. And most importantly, the book contained a lot more esoteric knowledge than Song Lei expected. A person could probably create an authentic, working talisman from scratch with the help of the book.

'But how would Xiang Yimu get such a book..? Did Old Wolf give this to him?' Song Lei thought. 'From what I remember, he didn't have good relations with most of the branch members. Then who in hell would give him this..?'

As he kept contemplating, a certain word written in the book with bold characters attracted his attention.

"Shamans huh...."