"Blood…" whined a voice, just above a whisper. "…please…I need blood…"

Adam leaned back in his chair to check another cell. The Red Clan negotiator that he had captured was in it. His eyes were red rimmed, and his formerly translucent skin was becoming cloudy. The black veins were more difficult to see now.

"What a whiner," muttered Adam to himself. "I've given him more blood than any of the others."

The cell he was in front of contained one of the negotiator's bodyguards from when they came to Jackson. The Powerguard was looking at Adam with fear, huddled in a corner and shaking when Adam focused on him. Things had not gone well when they tried defying Adam. A bit of starvation and soul tinkering had let the Red Clan members know how dire their situation was.

It was the beginning of March, almost two months since these Red Clan members had arrived. Since then, Adam had used most of his time to scan their memories to gather as much information as he could. They were shocked to see the state that Cruxannith was in, causing them to intensely resist. It hadn't helped.

This prison had been built by Cruxannith and the Scyrric to contain up to peak Tier 4 classes. Due to Cruxannith's belief that a Tier 4 soul manipulator was backing Adam, there were defenses for both those who focused on strength and those with soul classes. In this case it had backfired as none of the Red Clan could escape from these cells.

The three he had captured took different amounts of time to submit. Adam didn't feel like the two guards had much to benefit him. However, he dutifully watched their memories, trying to glean any useful information he could from them.

In Cruxannith's memories, the training in the tower had provided him with a lot of knowledge, even if it wasn't very advanced. The amount of care given to those with soul classes, like Cruxannith and the negotiator, was so extreme compared to what he saw in the memories of the guards who had warrior paths.

It wasn't that they had been neglected, since the Red Clan tried to strengthen itself in every way possible. It was just that their training had been focused to their classes and they only learned what was related to them. There was no crafting, construction, or historical knowledge. They focused on their strength and killing opponents. That was all.

That wasn't to say Adam got nothing from them. Inside the memories, he experienced a lot of their combat training. While Adam wasn't confident that he could fight as well as they did, his forays to the Adventurer's Guild training area in his base had shown that with practice he was able to assimilate the lessons they had learned. Through repetition. Which he lacked time for.

The negotiator had taken longer to break, but it had been necessary. The two guards had practically been an open book to Adam, but those with soul classes also had skills to prevent soul tampering or attacks. Weeks were required before the negotiator was starved and delirious enough to open himself to a connection from Adam.

Now Adam only provided blood, and usually blood belonging to weak animals, to the invader when he was willing to drop his protection skill to allow Adam to get inside his soul. There Adam found a lot more knowledge that he could use but it was time consuming to document.

Still, the knowledge was paying off. With a higher base level than Cruxannith, the negotiator had been in the tower longer and had more education and experience than the former speaker. Useful knowledge was translated and turned over to the crafters, researchers, and leadership in Jackson. It had also led to them finding additional bases as well as a clear map of every Scyrric base in the region.

Unfortunately, this memory and documenting work required Adam's time. At the beginning, only Adam had the strength to fight the invader bosses. Over time, the levels that everyone gained were allowing them to handle the enemy bases without Adam. Because of that, and the pain Adam still felt from his soul damage, Adam rarely participated in raids.

Loath as Adam was to accept it, he was needed here, and the weakness he had gained from fighting and bonding with Cruxannith limited his ability to stand with everyone else. From the beginning, Adam had wanted to level up and grow like all those with classes. He had been jealous of how easy it was to see stats and watched the numbers go up.

Though Adam was still stronger than others, his time on top was coming to an end. He had found other ways to grow through memories and pseudo skills. Much of the important information they had needed to strengthen the humans left of the base had been gathered by him. Even his unique conversation with the [System] had made him feel further along in the Earth's assimilation than anyone else.

Yet, Adam couldn't get past his jealousy. He wanted to be out there fighting. Conquering. His very soul demanded it of him. The emotions within him conflicted. He felt more secure in his mission's progress with other people able to take more responsibility, but the high of being unquestionably stronger and more important than anyone else was dwindling, making him question his future. The calls from his soul to conquer were becoming more challenging to fulfill.

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Fortunately, his soul seemed to accept that as long as he was still unquestionably the leader within their base, and that every few days he was able to go out and link to his Rift Network those bases newly conquered by the Sentinel Army, then the urges gave him a pass.

Adam slouched in his chair. He stared at the Red Clan warrior in front of him. With as much focus as Adam had, he had explored the invader's class and skills. The shapes of them that Adam visualized while in their souls had been an interesting contrast to those he had observed in Cruxannith.

The problem was they were just visualizations. Adam had been improving his understanding of the energy used and how it filtered through the skills to activate. Cruxannith wasn't able to think or respond, but his new test subjects could. Watching them use skills while he viewed the soul constructs from the inside brought new light and new experiments.

Adam still wasn't an intellectual though. He was improving his understanding but had barely scratched the surface and wasn't even sure how he could use this knowledge. Ultimately, he wanted to get his own class that could grow, but he was still left with a lack of space within his own soul. There was also hesitance from Adam to tie himself directly to the [System] like everyone else.

The location that people within the [System] had for their class and skills was also in Adam, but it was like a deflated balloon submerged within a pressurized water tank. He couldn't expand it because the existing materials around it had nowhere to move out of the way to.

There had been a brief thought to use [Soul Shatter] within himself to create space. That would have required him to destroy part of his memory space, and the memories of the classes sent to him from future Adam, but that seemed ill advised. Adam couldn't risk losing his pseudo-skills in a mistake for the off-handed hope of getting a regular class. Where would he be if he even succeeded but lost his ability to manipulate souls while he started over with generic skills. So, he continued searching for some kind of understanding that would provide a more solid opportunity.

That all left Adam in an awkward place. He was less useful in combat while being forced to develop a scholarly part of himself that he had neglected his whole life.

Fortunately, none of that had stopped the Sentinel Army from growing.

While Adam researched his test subjects, the rest of the Sentinel Army was out there conquering bases. The number of capable fighters and Tier 3 combatants had grown quickly. They split into armies of 500, hitting different bases. General Carmichael and Colonel Davian worked with the other strategists to efficiently maximize their attacks on bases.

A lot of the stronger and more coordinated invader races in the area had been weakened when Cruxannith had forced them to attack Carmichael's convoy. The Sentinel Army had attacked them and taken out a lot of their stronger fighters and reduced the number of normal soldiers.

With their reduced state, the Sentinel Army units were able to make the base attacks a day trip. They swarmed in, killed the invaders, and then brought back the control crystal. Every few days the entire army would travel with Adam to take control of the base and get the extra stat increases from the base conquest titles.

With more Rifts to join the network, Adam's territory expanded, and they gained more materials and [System] currency. Adam mostly left the other leaders in the base to debate the best use of the resources, only needing to give approval upon hearing the proposals in meetings.

Their territory was almost the width of what had been Tennessee. Since the controllable area expanded in a spherical area around the Jackson base in all directions, physical borders like rivers, mountains, or forests didn't affect them.

It was always funny when the Jackson base area expanded and encircled an unconquered or hidden invader base. That allowed them to place some structures on the border of those bases, making the conquest easier.

The base Adam was in now, inside Memphis, was in the same situation since it had never been added to his Rift Network. It was like a dead pixel in the middle of a monitor, though it allowed Adam to get here and back easier than before.

It wasn't just through territory expansion that the Sentinel Army grew. While they had conquered 49 bases in these two months, they had been able to find more humans here or there. Some were hiding, some trapped. Others needed rescuing. Jackson took them all in and had no lack of resources to build additional walls and defenses throughout their territory to protect and house the people.

While Adam was discouraged by his new work focus, it didn't mean humanity was losing ground. Plus, Adam did force himself into raids on the rare Scyrric bases they located. He wouldn't miss those at all.

There wasn't much belief within Adam that he could figure out a solution to his own soul, but he held on to hope and tried to become more experienced at investigating and understanding souls. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Adam didn't know where the Red Clan base was. It wasn't located nearby, and something had been done to the negotiator to obscure its position, even from the Red Clan member.

"Your highness," said a Leputi voice that was no longer nervous. "A message is requesting your presence at the main base. They say it's urgent."

Adam looked down at his watch. He hadn't learned anything new from his captives recently and was just trying to find something he might have missed within them. He might have run into a wall that would require additional and diverse Red Clan members to experiment with. Leaving now wouldn't interrupt his efforts.

"Tell them I'm on my way," said Adam.

He stood up and checked all the security for the prison. It was important not to overlook something and let them escape. Opening a cooler next to him, he took out a vial of blood and rolled it to Cruxannith. She grabbed it and bit the seal, pouring the blood into her mouth even as her eyes stared blankly.

A blood pouch was tossed to the Powerguard he had been working on today. The invader shivered but lunged for it once it was in the cell before greedily tearing it open. Then he sucked on it while huddling in the corner.

A dead mutated possum was tossed into the negotiator's cell. The being looked at Adam with eyes pleading in desperation.

"I need real blood…" whispered the invader desperately with a parched throat. "You're killing me."

Adam shrugged.

"Sorry, just ran out," lied Adam without conviction.

Upon stepping out of this Rift, he was already in the Jackson base territory. It was an easy portal back home for a shower before the meeting. Now to see what crisis would befall them this time.

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