"Are you hurt, Niv?"
Hel immediately pulled Niv into her arms, carefully inspecting her condition.
"Don't worry, Master," Niv replied with a faint smile. "The Shadow Knights acted quickly. And as soon as you severed Edwina's data conduits, I used my authority to seize control of the city's core systems. The alchemical golems couldn't lay a finger on me."
"That's good to hear."
Hel sighed in relief, then pointed toward the massive crystal structure behind her.
"Try taking control of that," she said. "I've erased Edwina's true spirit. What's left is nothing but a big, soulless toy. You can refine it into a secondary body—and at the same time, boost your computational capacity."
"But… isn't it a little too big?" Niv hesitated as she looked at the enormous crystalline mass. Unless they planned to settle permanently in the City of Flesh, there was no way to transport such a colossal 'brain.'
But staying here wasn't realistic either. For one thing, it was far too far from the Helm Territory—two or three hours even by alchemical train. And beyond this city lay the Goblin Imperial Capital itself, guarded by a Saint-rank goblin.
Hel had no intention of setting up camp anywhere near that.
"You're right," Hel admitted, frowning slightly. She couldn't just leave behind something so valuable. But this crystal was far too large to move… and yet, move it she must.
So, she resorted to a different approach.
[Advanced Death Magic: King's Castling]
With a mere thought, Hel swapped positions with one of her Shadow Knights who had infiltrated the interior of the crystal.
Once inside, she reached out and touched the nearest "brain."
[Trait Extracted: Advanced Soul Science (Gold), Advanced Desire Energy Application (Gold), Advanced Biochemistry (Gold), Advanced…]
She collected nine gold-grade traits and one red-grade trait in total.
Most of them were similar to Niv's own traits—things like elemental affinity, magical algorithms, database systems, and cognitive network architecture. Hel already had equivalents of her own, and thanks to the goblins' work, most of hers were of even higher quality.
Still, some of Edwina's traits surpassed Niv's. For example, Niv's "Goblin Database" was orange quality, while Edwina's was gold-grade—[A-Rank Goblin Database]—containing far more research data and experimental results.
Naturally, Hel replaced Niv's old one with the superior version.
"Tch. Only gold-grade?"
Hel frowned as she examined Edwina's magical and talent-related traits—they were merely gold-tier, the same as Niv's. No need to bother replacing them. She upgraded Niv's other traits to gold instead, except for one.
"'Advanced Mecha Piloting'… Hah, she really didn't know how to drive one."
Niv chuckled softly. "That's normal, Master. Pureblood goblins prefer to sit comfortably in their offices sipping tea. Piloting mechs and fighting on the front lines—that's the work of us mixed-blood goblins."
"I see. Well, don't worry," Hel said, shrugging. "Once we're done here, I'll help you upgrade that trait myself."
With that, Hel used King's Castling again, teleporting deeper into the crystal.
Now that the network of brains had exposed their base traits, she reached out to examine them one by one. With a wave of her hand, one of the brains floated gently toward her.
[Trait Extracted: Brain of the Forest Elf Queen (Gold)]
"Another elf queen?" Hel blinked. "Ah—this one's a forest elf."
[Trait Extracted: Brain of the Snow Elf Queen (Gold)][Trait Extracted: Brain of the Winged Elf Queen (Gold)]
Three in a row, all from elven queens. Hel began to wonder if these little goblins had a personal grudge against elves—were they collecting elf queens' brains for sport?
Thankfully, the fourth one was different.
[Trait Extracted: Brain of the Troll King (Orange)]
"A troll's brain?"
She stared at the walnut-sized lump in her hand, puzzled."Is the troll just… really small? Or do trolls just not have much brain to begin with?"
She shook off the thought and continued her exploration. As she swam through the crimson liquid that filled the crystal, every brain she passed turned to embers and dissolved into the red fluid.
By the time she finished, she had examined all 1,100 brains. Most were Tier 5, with only a hundred reaching Tier 6.
One thing stood out: nearly half of them belonged to elves. Forest, snow, sun, moon—even dark elves, the so-called "collector's edition"—all represented here.
Hel couldn't help but wonder if the goblins had nearly wiped out the entire elf race in their experiments.
Even stranger, during the trait-fusion process, if three out of five combined brain traits came from different elven types,the resulting fusion would always form a single unique trait called [Elf Brain].
However, since "brain traits" weren't bloodline traits, she couldn't tell how they actually differed internally.
"That's enough collection for now," Hel murmured, watching as the remaining brains had shrunk by more than half.
With a flick of her wrist, she summoned one last, tiny brain—barely the size of her thumb.
It was from a fairy—those miniature humanoids no larger than a handspan. Their brains were so small that Hel hadn't even noticed them at first, only discovering them after she'd cleared away the larger ones.
"Let's run a test."
She lifted the fairy brain with her mental energy and brought it close to her fingertip, replacing one of her existing traits with [Elf Brain (Pink)].
At once, a system prompt appeared:
[Ding! Current host's bloodline quality too low. Please halt operation. Continuing may cause rejection. To proceed, insert an additional bloodline trait to enhance host bloodline quality.]
[Recommended bloodline traits: Dragon Bloodline (Red) or Demon Dragon Bloodline (Red)…]
Hel still had two red-quality Dragon Bloodlines and one Demon Dragon Bloodline left. For testing purposes, she naturally chose the one she had more of.
With a thought, she merged the Dragon Bloodline into the process.
The two traits fused rapidly, and soon a new trait appeared:
[Dragon Elf Brain (Pink)]