Novel Full Chapter 872: Aftermath
Chapter 872: Aftermath
Michael crouched slightly and brushed away a layer of ash and broken stone.
What lay beneath made him pause.
It was a hand.
A severed human hand, lying half buried in the ruined ground.
Michael stared at it in silence for a moment.
The fingers were long and slender, the skin pale but strangely intact despite the destruction that had consumed everything else in the area. The wrist ended in a clean severed edge, as though it had been cut away by an invisible blade.
Michael’s brows slowly drew together.
"That shouldn’t be here," he murmured.
The ritual circle had collapsed and the portal had vanished. Rui himself had been burned to nothing but ashes.
Yet this hand remained.
A realization slowly formed in Michael’s mind as his eyes sharpened.
The summoning might have actually worked at the last moment.
If the portal had managed to connect for even a fraction of a second before collapsing, then it was possible that something had already begun to cross through.
The hand in front of him might have been part of that.
Michael’s gaze grew serious as he studied the severed limb more carefully.
Fortunately, whatever had been summoned had clearly failed to fully emerge.
Otherwise the situation might have been far more troublesome.
Unfortunately, the hand alone did not reveal much.
From the severed limb, Michael could not determine the exact power level of the figure that had attempted to come through.
However, one thing was certain.
The fact that the hand had survived the destruction of the ritual site meant it did not belong to a weak person.
The area had been bombarded by countless attacks. Yet the hand remained largely intact.
That alone said something about the strength of its owner.
But the hand had been severed.
If its owner had been a Rank Four being, Michael doubted such a thing would have happened so easily.
Even with the power he had just unleashed, injuring someone at that level should not have been possible.
Rank Four experts were not that fragile.
Which meant the person who had almost crossed through the portal was powerful.
But not at the level of a Rank Four.
Michael slowly straightened.
His gaze remained fixed on the severed hand.
"Interesting," he murmured quietly, his expression thoughtful as he considered what to do next.
Ever since his talent had evolved, Michael had developed a certain habit.
Originally, his ability only allowed him to evolve his undead through the accumulation of evolution points. But after the later changes, the nature of the talent had expanded. It could devour materials and even merge certain things together in order to generate evolution points or create new results.
Because of that, Michael had gradually formed a habit of collecting anything that looked valuable or unusual.
Even if he did not immediately know how to use it.
Even if he later ended up never using it at all.
If something seemed precious enough, or carried even the slightest possibility of benefiting his talent, he would take it.
That was exactly why he had taken the bodies of Veyrion and the other awakener earlier.
Those two corpses had been interesting in their own way, but both of them were nothing but empty shells.
There had been no lingering soul within their bodies.
Not even a fragment.
That meant he could not attach his control to them through the normal methods he used when raising undead. Without a lingering soul, raising them would only result in mindless corpses. They would be even more useless than ancient corpses whose souls had partially faded but still retained faint remnants that could be revived.
Those remnants at least allowed for a degree of intelligence.
But these bodies had nothing.
Just flesh.
Empty.
Still, he had collected them anyway.
As for what he planned to do with them later, Michael already had a few ideas in mind, but he would need to leave this realm first.
Michael’s gaze returned to the severed hand lying in the ashes.
After a moment of thought, Michael decided not to pick up the hand.
It was only a hand.
There was no need to go that far.
If it had belonged to a Rank Four being, he might have hesitated. Even then, he would still have considered the possible trouble it could bring in the future, but the value alone would have been enough to make him seriously think about taking it.
This hand was not worth that level of risk.
Once he made the decision, Michael did not linger on it.
A trace of black flame rose from his palm.
It was Spartan’s flame, brought forth with the influence of his law.
Dark, dense, and unnaturally quiet. It did not spread wildly like ordinary fire. It simply descended and wrapped around the severed hand.
For a brief moment, the pale flesh resisted.
Then the black flames devoured it completely.
Only when the hand was gone did Michael finally feel slightly more at ease.
Still, he did not leave immediately.
The appearance of that hand made Michael carefully check the area again.
His perception swept through the ruined site, moving over shattered stone, scorched earth, broken corpses, and the remains of the collapsed formation.
It was during that search that he noticed something else.
A faint silver glint beneath a pile of cracked rock.
Michael stepped closer and pushed the debris aside with his foot.
What appeared made his eyes narrow slightly.
It was the shell-like object Rui had used earlier.
Surprisingly, it was still intact.
Not even the violent destruction that had wiped out the rest of the area had managed to damage it.
Michael crouched and picked it up.
The treasure felt cool in his hand, its surface still engraved with fine runic patterns. Though the light within it had dimmed greatly, the structure remained stable.
Michael immediately activated his inspect skill.
[Item Name]: Emperor’s Aegis Shell
[Grade]: Extraordinary Grade – ★★★
[Durability]: 92%
[Effect]:
• When activated, the shell releases a defensive barrier that expands into a dome-shaped shield.
• The barrier can withstand attacks equivalent to a Peak Rank 3 for up to 60 seconds at full energy before entering a cooldown period.