The words the Eastern Sage had told them made the group fall into deep contemplation, pondering about how they would spend their fortune. With that thought in mind and a discussion, they all agreed to share the spirit stones they had and hold down the fortune they would get from selling the artifacts until after the tournament. The 5,9 million worth of spirit stones were divided by five. Since Emery had taken the most valuable and expensive item – the Tier 6 dagger – for himself, its value was subtracted and Emery would only end up getting 180,000 spirit stones. With that said, Emery accessed his bracelet and checked how much he actually had. [Contribution points : 1,462,274] [Spirit stone: 192,120] The disparity between the amount of his contribution points and spirit stones was glaring. This was because the majority of spirit stones he had were spent on buying ingredients, new spells, and fixing his broken sword. Now that the allocation was decided, the next agenda was of course to put all the items they didn't need on the auction and went to the Magus Alliance headquarters to trade the spirit souls they had for reward. To this matter, Klea looked at Emery with a wicked smile on her face. "You have ten days to spare, right Emery? So you will help me with this.. thank you" To be honest, Emery wanted to return to his spirit absorption training as he felt the need to prepare himself further. However, he decided to accept Klea's offer. Not only could he take advantage of this to rest his body and spirit core, he was also interested in seeing the matter of trading spirit souls. … Golden City. As soon as they arrived at the bustling city, Emery was taken by surprise when he saw a familiar figure who seemed to be waiting for him. A female half-blood magus with light blue hair, Magus Shena. "You should have told me when you returned from the mission." Realizing his mistake, Emery quickly humbled himself. "Yes, I'm sorry, Senior. It just slipped out of my mind." With how chaotic the mission was and how occupied his mind with the upcoming tournament, Emery had actually forgotten that his life was in danger. But now that the other party would be around him, he felt much safer immediately. After the short reunion, the three of them went ahead and made their way to the Magus Alliance headquarters of the Golden City branch. When they arrived, Emery couldn't help but be amazed by the building that stood before him. The place was a stronghold surrounded by high walls. It was a complex as big as the Magus Academy by itself. Standing right outside the place, Emery could perceive the dozens of magus and several grand-magus individuals within. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and walked confidently right towards the front gate. They were quickly stopped by the guards. Their identities needed to be checked and their reasons for visiting were noted before they were allowed entry and led to the Cage. It was literally a box of cages with half a dozen men in uniform attending the place ready to provide assistance. "What do you want, kid?" At first, there was a tone of disdain in the man's voice, but after seeing Magus Shena's figure standing behind the two of them, he quickly changed his tone to a more polite one. "What can I do for you, Sir?" "I want to hand over elves' spirit souls." Emery said as he took out the item from his Spatial Space. Seeing the tube containing nine spirit souls on the table, the man was startled. He immediately eyed Emery with suspicion. Having a Rank 9 kid taking out 10 magus-level elf spirit souls certainly raised some questions in the man's head. Not wanting prejudice to influence his opinion, the man did not voice his suspicions and just took the tube. He then brought out the souls and analyzed them thoroughly one by one. Emery and Klea patiently waited as the man carried out the examination. It was only several minutes later that the man came with much more enthusiasm. "Six, crescent moon magus, three half moon, and one full moon, this is amazing work sir, must have been a great battle" Although he was highly contributed in it, most were the headmaster's kills hence Emery could not take credit for it. "50,000 spirit stones each for the Crescents, 100,000 for Half Moons, and 200,000 for full moon, Altogether it would be a total of 800,000 spirit stones." It was quite a sizable sum. However, what Emery and Klea were waiting for was the reward that came with it. The Alliance merit points. The man scanned Emery's status before saying, "Earth faction?" "Yes." Moment after an information was shown from the panel in front of him. [Earth Faction] [Leader: Julian Kaesar] [Base: Planet Earth 1002] [Status: Grade 1, Lower Realm] [Subsidiary member of Nephilim Faction] [Alliance Merit: 0] It was the status of their faction, created after the meeting with the Nephilim 5 months prior. "For alliance merit, 100 for Crescent magus, 500 for Half Moon, and 2500 for full moon. That's a total of 4600 merits" The man was very surprised to see such a new faction would have received a large sum of merit so soon. Emery and Klea were still grasping the function of these merits. Fortunately, with magus Shena with them, they have a much better understanding of it The Alliance Merit was similar to the Contribution points that the Academy has, it's what most alliance members received after graduating. If Emery and friends did the Nexus mission when they graduated, they would have received more alliance merits instead of contribution points. Having Alliance merit would increase the prestige of a faction, which then would lead to access to aid that the Alliance provided for its members. That included the use to purchase things that only can be bought from the alliance; for example permits to purchase certain technology, permit to own a stargate portal, or to own a planet. Of course, all still needed some requirements before they could be purchased. The man once again asked "Do you wish to trade them all?" Emery looked at Klea and as agreed with the group before, they decided to trade all except the peak magus one. "Gladly" Before long, a notification appeared from the symbol on his hand and popped into his mind. [Your faction has received 2100 merits] [Alliance Merit: 2100] [Your realm rank - 7521] Considering there were more than ten thousand grade 1 factions in the Magus universe, boosting almost one third of the rank was certainly quite a surprise. "Now what to do with this last spirit soul?"