With a smile on his face, Noah didn't even think twice about swallowing the ball of energy, hoping for a result that would satisfy him.

In no time, Noah felt the little ball of energy unravel as it ran down his throat, leaving a delicious sensation along the way. If this were considered a dish in any restaurant, Noah was sure that that dish alone would be able to make an ordinary restaurant become a 3 star Michelin restaurant. Unfortunately for Noah, while the energy ball was delicious, on the other hand, the change was not as satisfactory.

Noah had already absorbed statistics from other people, and the biggest stat increase he had gained was when he had burned and absorbed the dwarf corpses. Compared to the energy received by the dwarves, Noah felt that this essence was practically nothing.

Looking at his statistics, this further aggravated Noah's deduction, as he saw that his Strength, which was previously at 25, had now only risen to 25.1 by absorbing the essence.

This was far from ideal. From what Noah had calculated, with the amount of merit points he received in the Fortresses, he could buy perhaps 20 essences a year from the family. But that would still give him only 2 stat points...

Even though he was disappointed, Noah did not forget that there was still a ferocious wolf in front of him. While thinking about all these things, Noah had already teleported around the wolf a few times and let the flames burn the monster's body.

The flames that were burning the other wolf's body had already recovered Noah's mana to 100% again, so it was only a matter of time before Noah would kill this wolf. Because he was disappointed, Noah, instead of killing the wolf directly, summoned his imps to finish the job.

The imp with Fire Claws was overjoyed to see a powerful enemy with eyes so beautiful for him to devour, so using teamwork with the imp who had Hell's Tunneling, both after several minutes and a few deaths had managed to kill the monster.

Noah had already obtained an essence and had been disappointed with it, so even though he knew of the rarity of the essences in the Fortresses, he did not even bother to look through the other wolf's corpse.

Upon hearing the request of the two imps to eat the stone wolf in front of them, Noah just laughed and nodded, giving permission to his two little imps.

Seeing the imps trying to carve out and eat a stone monster's eye was truly a sight that amused Noah more than he expected, but what he didn't expect was that as he and the imp that could teleport watched, the imp with the Fire Claws stuck a claw of fire in the wolf's head, pulling out an eye, but it didn't stop there. Quickly, he stuck his claw in even further and in the blink of an eye he had pulled an orange sphere from the wolf's head and ate it.

This shocked Noah. He had not expected that the imps would find an essence in this wolf, much less that they would eat that essence directly. He didn't even know it was possible!

Curious, Noah approached the imp that had eaten the essence to see what the change in him would be, and while the two imps started fighting because one had eaten the essence, Noah just watched to understand what change might have happened.

The change was very subtle, but Noah realized that the claws of the other imp were having a harder time piercing the skin of that imp, unlike before, and despite having Fire Claw, when the ability was not activated, the claws of the two imps originally had had the same edging.

That gave Noah an idea: If the imps were becoming

"out of date

" because of their strength that was only Rank E, if Noah fed them with essences, wouldn't they eventually become Rank D, even maybe being able to move up to Rank C?

Thinking about this possibility, Noah became excited as he imagined an army of rank C-A imps invading a city. Rank C monsters were monsters strong enough to destroy an entire neighborhood, let alone an army filled with Rank C monsters like he might eventually have...

But thinking further that point, Noah realized that it was unrealistic. As much as theoretically it was something possible to make the effort to obtain so many essences, it would be a substantial task. The best thing to do would be to just focus these essences on a few imps, and looking at the two imps in front of him fighting like two kids who wanted the same toy, Noah already knew which three imps he would focus on.

While he had this internal monologue, more and more monsters began to arrive around where he was, probably after they felt that the energy from that area that had been so strong was now disappearing at an alarming rate.

Noah, of course, was excited to see so many strong monsters and started to think about how many essences he could get for his imps after killing all those monsters. With just a quick glance, Noah counted at least 10 stone animals watching them, but as these stone animals were less powerful than the two wolves he had just killed, Noah supposed that they wouldn't all have an essence in their heads. Still, as long as at least more monsters continued to arrive, Noah didn't care that the present monsters were insufficient.

Noah was quite prepared to face these new beasts, realizing that the corpse of the first wolf he had killed had just been burned. The other was still intact, as Noah was using that corpse as a mana supply for the next battle, but what caught Noah by surprise was that as soon as the first corpse was burnt, a notification appeared in front of him.

Congratulations on absorbing the corpse of a Rank C monster. You received 0.1 Strength points!

This surprised Noah completely. 'How come I received statistics from burning a monster... Is that the advantage of a Rank C Fortress? If I had known before, I could have burned the monsters that the team killed.'

Thinking about it, Noah felt a little regretful, but when he realized that because of this ability he might never need essences that were so valued by the other Blessed, he couldn't help but release a laugh.

"Hehe...

"

Since I don't need essences, I will be able to give these useless things to my imps without any weight on my conscience... Just by killing the monsters I will get statistics; this is perfect.

Looking at the ten monsters in front of him, Noah no longer saw them as monsters that he would need to deal with, but as pieces of Strength points that he would receive for killing each one.

With a slightly manic smile, Noah summoned the three special imps he had and ordered them to start fighting these monsters. Leaving the corpse of the other wolf burning to recover mana, Noah also teleported among the wolves, and with a smile on his face, used the Fire Claws to burn the corpse of each of the monsters as they fell.

Please read the author's notes down here! he he he :3 ↓↓↓