Verso reached into the pile of rubble and pulled out a second glowing shard. Holding it up in air he squinted his eyes as the system window appeared beside it.
[Attribute Crystal: Mana 6]
"Ah, it's for Mana..."
Verso's voice drifted off as the excitement he previously had cooled down seeing that the attribute crystal in his hands was for mana.
While any other person would kill for an increase in their mana, he wasn't exactly happy receiving this.
This was mainly because Verso did not have any active skills that used mana which kind of made the stat feel useless for the time being.
"I guess it is still better than nothing."
He sighed deeply as he tightened his grip on the crystal. The blue light from it spiraled into his wrist before the stone crumbled into a fine grey dust.
As he got done absorbing the attribute crystal, a sound of clacking stones drew his attention.
Behind him, his summoned golem was finally standing back up as the rocks were slowly connecting back into its body and it's runes were regaining their glow.
Verso walked over to inspect it and standing close to the golem he noticed something new around his head. There was now a thin web of cracks running through the center of its crystal.
"So you did take some damage." Verso muttered.
He stared at the crack as a worrying thought crossed his mind.
In the real world, when a summon died its soul was destroyed forever but he had no idea if the same rule applied to the System's simulation.
"I would rather not find out."
With a mental command, he called the golem back into his soul space to let it heal. Verso turned around to look back toward the center of the crater.
The number of golems he could see moving in the shadows was staggering.
Their numbers were way higher than what he had expected. In all of his classes he was taught that the quantity of golems in the crater was manageable but this was clearly not the case.
It also kind of made sense how the teachers came to this conclusion as in the real world, hundreds of students were constantly thinning the golems out.
But as the only one hunting in this entire realm, their quantity was stupidly high.
"Also, what's going on with this luck?"
Verso questioned as he thought back to what he had experienced in the past hour. In just sixty minutes, he had not only gained a beast soul but also two attribute crystals.
This clearly defied every law of probability which either meant that he was the luckiest person in the world or there was something else in play.
"Does this have something to do with the system?"
Verso tried to make an educated guess before going silent turning the cogs in his head.
He wasn't about to complain about a broken drop rate but he still wanted to be smart about this, because if this was actually the system then he had a really big advantage on his side.
"Okay, I have an idea."
Verso started walking again, but this time he didn't head for the center.
Instead, he turned to the left as he started searching for golems in small groups of two or three that he could handle quickly and efficiently.
"It's a shame I can't get any more strength from them, though."
He said it while letting out a deep breath full of regret.
Monsters usually only dropped attribute crystals with stats that they themselves possessed. And since his stats were now the same as the Minor Stone Golem any further attribute crystals from these guys would be completely useless to him.
He had officially hit the cap for this area and the next step forward was heading deeper into the crater which he couldn't do as he was right now.
"If my theory is correct, I should be able to go in deeper tomorrow..."
Walking for a few seconds, he spotted a pair of golems near a ravine and didn't bother taking cover this time.
He instead rushed in, manifesting his ivory cleaver with a sharp flash of white light. As the golems turned to lock onto him, a wide smile appeared on his face.
"Give me your best shot!"
---
Hours Later
The ground was only what could be described as a graveyard of grey rubble.
Verso walked through the wreckage, his boots crunching on the shattered remains of what used to be a small army of golems.
"I don't get why it's so hard to find the head." He grumbled, kicking rocks aside one by one.
He was searching for the head of his latest kill to finish the job which was incredibly hard because of how much rubble had piled up in the area.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted a single boulder vibrating in a pile of rocks.
"There you are!"
Verso jogged over and happily delivered a sharp kick, flipping the boulder over to reveal the glowing blue crystal.
He did not waste any time, thrusting his cleaver straight down through the center.
[Primitive Beast Slain: Minor Stone Golem.]
[Beast Soul Acquired: Minor Stone Golem.]
Verso froze as the message echoed in his ears. Then, a slow wide smile spread across his face. This was the type of smile that made him look less like an innocent student and more like a villain.
"How many does that make it now?"
He let out a small chuckle and looked around. As far as he could see, there was nothing but piles of broken stone.
As he stood over a large pile of rubble Verso like a psychopath that had just single handedly massacred an entire civilization of golems.