Drax calmly observed Max's mental state and attitude and felt satisfied seeing him progress.
Today Drax finally felt as if he was truly serving a lord and had not merged with some imbecile kid.
When he had just merged with Max a few years ago and had taken a glance at his memories, he saw a weak man who did not have the guts to achieve his dreams.
Back then, he had to force Max to kill his abusive ex-girlfriend because it was necessary to temper his mentality.
At the time he could remember the trembling teenager who was reluctant to take a human life, which was in stark contrast to the man he was today, who emotionlessly killed Zogaroth just because he might someday leak the secret of the sealing method to someone else.
It was a gradual change in his temperament which had been kickstarted ever since he merged with Drax and killed Sophie, however the speed was exaggerated once he became a primordial vampire.
When his body's hormones started to respond differently to killing an individual and no longer triggered guilt in his heart, little by little the human inside Max died and the cold primordial vampire who aimed to become a monarch someday was born.
Today, he had reached a maturity level that allowed Drax to bow his head in front of him, and truly start accepting him as a master.
*********
( Meanwhile Max )
Max met back up with Anna, Asiva and the group and explained the reason behind Sebastian and Lucius's absence.
He gave the command to recall all soldiers and to have them move as two big units as he feared what Arandale might do now that Zogaroth was dead.
Although that psychotic bastard could not leave the abyss city, he could still leave the mage tower and move freely in the city otherwise which made him a big threat to the security of the explorers inside.
Despite the risk, Max did not want to stop looting the place, especially since they still had 3 days left before the coronation ceremony and the time in between could be used to gather precious loot.
Re-organizing the looting party from groups of 5 to group of 40 men in a party, Max slowed down the speed of exploring and looting in preference of safety.
He gave orders to avoid the wind elemental and immediately give a distress signal if they encountered a crazy bastard with golden eyes.
In the meantime, he alongside Anna went towards one of the giant pillars supporting the underground city and began cracking it like a stone worker with his sword as a nail and a giant piece of rock for a hammer.
Max took 12 hours to damage one pillar to the point where it could be destroyed by Anna by a single arrow while exiting, while he also repeated the process 4 more times over the next two days against strategic pillar locations.
As expected, the wind elemental and the psychotic Arandale did pop up from time to time, but the large number of troops were always able to retreat from danger without risking a dangerous confrontation.
Although the group could potentially loot a lot more in the area if they wanted to, Max did not think it was wise to come back and re-explore the city as on his way back he stood beside Anna and watched her destroy all five pillars one after another, collapsing the roof over Abyss city and starting a massive earthquake on Geonmi planet.
Only when they exited the mines safely despite the earthquake did Max breathe a sigh of relief, as although the mines looked like they might collapse from the earthquake that was just created, it held strong till the end.
Max was sure that Arandale did understand perfectly well that Max was damaging the foundations of the city and if he wanted to, he could have interfered in the matter, but somehow he tacitly avoided meeting Max wherever he went.
Perhaps it was fear that if he could kill Zogaroth he could also kill Arandale, or perhaps it was some other hidden motive, but either way as far as Max was concerned he was buried under a lot of rocks and the legend of the abyss city had finally been completely erased from the history of the universe.
*************
( Meanwhile Lucius )
After the expedition, Lucius and Max quickly cooperated on loot distribution and Max decided to keep the sealing method, which he did not disclose on the list of loot and stated as an unknown spell, and the truth orb as his two privileged first picks.
Lucius chose some precious gems which were hard to find in modern times as his pick, while the rest of the gold, artefacts and research papers were distributed in a 60-40 split as promised by the system contract.
The approximate value of the total loot was about 60 billion gold coins of which Max got 36 billion worth of items and Lucius took 24 billion worth of items.
Of the 36 billion, only 18 billion were in liquid assets whereas the other 18 came from various potion distilling methods and lost potion recipes that were worth a lot of money and could generate serious passive income for the Bloodfall clan in the years to come.
Overall the exploration could be considered extremely successful and despite Lucius not contributing much to it, he did receive healthy benefits in the end.
For Max, the expedition provided him with some much needed immediate economic relief to run his territory as well as a method to obtain a recurring source of income in the days to come.
It also provided him with an invaluable technique that could become his trump card once he ascended to tier6, but his biggest win from this expedition was winning Lucius Aurelius's friendship.
The kid who did not understand the true nature of the relationship between his father and Max was in awe of Max's prowess and determined to bend over backwards if needed to secure his friendship.
Such an attitude made him a usable pawn in Max's hands.
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/// A/N - Chapter 19/20, the event is approaching its end ///