Autophagy

As Song Lei kept staring, the meaningless reality outside started becoming more understandable. At first, it was like a blurry image. As time passed, however, it became much more meaningful and turned into what looked like a 3D simulation of his room.

'Let's see...' He muttered as he remembered the next part of the regeneration art. He first looked around and located the parts of the 4th dimension that he could somewhat recognize. His surroundings were made up of a blue grid. The walls of his room, the ground, the furniture looked all the same to his eyes.

Other than that, Song Lei could see a red flame silently sitting in a corner of the room.

'That must be the quake demon...'

As he kept eyeing every part of the room, he saw a gentle light floating into the room coming from where the door should be.

'This is it!'

This gentle white-colored light was mentioned in the book. According to it, these were strayed pieces of soul energies that had separated from something called the aether. They didn't belong to any other being and were stampless, meaning that anybody could pick them up and use them.

Song Lei completed the 3rd part of the technique as he proceeded to 4th. He gathered a really small amount of his soul energy and made it head towards that white ball of stray energy. A small tentacle-like energy lump started crawling towards wherever Song Lei pointed towards. It then reached the white ball of stray energy and turned into a net, grasping the ball of energy tightly.

As if Song Lei was doing phagocytosis, the stray ball of energy was pulled inside his soul. As soon as the main portion of the soul got in contact with the energy, he felt his entire being rejuvenate and bloat. It was similar to the time when he first raised one of his stats, full of ecstasy.

As he felt his soul integrate the stray energy into itself, Song Lei left his soul. His sight was quickly restored to its normal self as he stood up and felt the amount of energy he had left.

'It was restored to nearly 90%... It was hard to learn but was definitely worth it...'

Scratching his cheek, Song Lei started a training routine where he would constantly spend his energy by raising his control stat and replenish it by using the Soul Energy Regeneration Art. Eventually, he would spend up his mental energy and would sleep from time to time. Doing this, he spent a whole day.

[With constant practice, your Control stat has risen!]

"That makes it four... I should stop practicing now. It's about time those Wei siblings from the Heaven Alliance come back and take away Damien..." Song Lei muttered to himself. He, once again, regenerated his energy.

From what he could understand, it wasn't certain that he would be able to find a stray clump of energy every time he tried to regenerate. It was highly dependent on luck. In case he wasn't able to find any, he would have to sit and wait. However, when he did find it, he could regenerate his energy at incredible speeds. What would normally take him more than half a day would be regenerated in a matter of minutes.

After finally finishing his preparations, Song Lei decided to craft the Claim Flag. First of all, he put the flag that was made by Isabel onto the golden frame crafted by Aston.

He then sat down in the middle of his room in a lotus position and held the little banner flag in his hands.

Feeling its exquisite shape, he started revolving the soul energy inside his body until eventually, he felt it boil with excitement. He then pushed the soul energy out of his hands, into the flag. Much to his surprise, his control over his soul had become much better. He had thought that two points weren't much, however, it was still two times his initial control stat.

Without wasting a single speck of soul energy, he managed to infuse it all into the Claim Flag's golden frame. As his energy kept running through it, the color of the flag's frame started changing. Or to be precise, it was starting to get coated in a grey-colored energy veil.

Finally, after Song Lei's soul energy totally filled the frame up, his energy then started pouring into the flag.

As mentioned in the guide, the flag was like a vast desert, sucking his energy reservoirs dry. To counteract this, Song Lei closed his eyes and dove into the spirituality of the banner flag. The insides of it were pitch black, completely devoid of any matter.

However, as Song Lei kept pouring his energy, it was starting to get filled with a substance that looked like mercury. Seeing this, Song Lei spread that mercury-like substance that was his energy to be less dense. In an instant, That small pool of energy expanded and covered slightly less than half of the flag's spirituality.

When finally, he managed to fill it up to its half, Song Lei stopped pouring his energy in like a downpour. Instead, he focused and started carefully pouring it in bit by bit, until eventually, he had a gigantic ball of soul energy completely under his control.

He carefully dipped it into the ocean of less dense soul energy. As soon as the ball came in contact with the ocean, it started dissipating bit by bit. Fortunately, Song Lei was aware that this would happen and was prepared beforehand.

He focused even more and formed an empty space between the ocean and the ball. Once the ball settled in its place, Song Lei released that empty space. Now that the ball had taken its place, he could get to the next stage.

He flattened out the upper side of the ball and started drawing a triquetra. Every time he made small changes to it, he would have to spend another speck of soul energy.

After spending a great amount of time and mental energy on it, Song Lei managed to finish the triquetra.

'Huff... That was, hard...' He muttered inwardly as he left the spirituality of the Claim Flag. As a last touch, he made sure to encase it with an energy barrier.

[Congratulations! You've managed to create a lower mid-tier quality Claim Flag!]

After reading the notification, Song Lei jumped to his feet and stretched. He then rushed towards Isabel's floor.

"Hey! I finished it!" Song Lei said as he excitedly knocked on the door.

"Really? From those explanations I read on those papers, I thought that it would take you longer," Isabel said after opening the door. "Where are you going to place it?"

"I'm going to place it here. Hopefully, it will cover both this and the upper floor..." Song Lei muttered in answer. Carefully placing the flag on top of a closet, he injected his energy into it. Suddenly, a gray wave of energy burst out, encasing all the room and expanding out of it.

[Congratulations! You've placed your Claim Flag and officially conquered the 16th and 17th floors of the Heaven and Hell Apartment. From now on, you can use the map function to its full power on these floors, get notifications about important events and constantly produce blood beads. There will no longer be a blood bead limitation on this floor.]

"Finally!" Song Lei said in excitement. He quickly opened his map and looked at these two floors. Compared to their dull blue gridded structures, they now had become gray-colored, indicating The Limbo's ownership.

Inside them were small dots of different colors. On the 17th floor, for example, there was only a single blue dot, showing Aston's location. On the 16th floor, however, there were more variously colored dots alongside the blue ones. Song Lei himself was colored in green, as the monsters in the uncleared rooms were in red color.

'This will be very useful in the future...' Song Lei muttered inwardly. He wanted to stay a bit more and figure out the other functions of the Claim Flag, however, he no longer had time to waste.

Bidding his farewells, he left the room and rushed down to floor 14. After taking a shower and wearing a casual grey-colored hoodie alongside a pair of jeans, he left his room and went to the 7th floor to meet up with the others.

'I have a bit less than half of my soul energy, this should be enough as there won't be any conflicts in near time. Even if there are, the Wei siblings will protect us...' He muttered inwardly.

He was about to knock on Old Wolf's door, however, he heard voices from the meeting room and decided to go there.

After opening the door, he was met with a familiar scene. Old Wolf was sitting at the head of the table. There was an anxious expression on his face that he was desperately trying to hide.

To the left of the room sat He Lingxin. He had put his hands on the table and was constantly bouncing his leg.

Against him sat Damien who seemed relatively carefree compared to others. He was also the first one to realize that Song Lei had entered the room.

"Hey bro! I thought you had forgotten to come or something," Damien welcomed Song Lei. He got up from his seat and walked up to Song Lei. After a fist bump, he sat down next to him.

"I had some stuff to do on the upper floors," Song Lei said. He looked towards Old Wolf and opened his backpack. "By the way, I cleared the 17th floor too. Here are the blood beads I got from there," he said as he took out a bag that contained 400 blood beads.

"There's no need. Our branch doesn't really need such a thing," Old Wolf said. "We have been reduced to such a state... I'm surprised that you could go up there on your own and resolve problems so efficiently."

Hearing Old Wolf's praises, Song Lei scratched the back of his head.

"Well, then at least take half of it," Song Lei insisted. Seeing that he wouldn't be able to convince him, Old Wolf sighed and took the beads from Song Lei's hand.

"Dude, I still can't understand why those guys decided to take me instead of you," Damien said. Although that carefree smile of his was plastered onto his face as usual, Song Lei was able to catch a glint of sadness appearing for a split second.

'He still doesn't want to separate from us...' Song Lei thought. Not knowing what to say, he shook his head. "Do you know when Wei siblings will arrive?" He changed the topic.

"Hm... They should be here in less about than two hours so there isn't much left," Old Wolf said.

*BANG

"W- what was that?" He Lingxin asked in fear as he got up from his seat. Song Lei, too, was confused. Whenever the apartment shook like this, it meant that something big was happening.

Just as Song Lei got up and was about to leave the meeting room, a system notification appeared.

[Your territory is under attack!]