Harvesting Souls

Deon was feeling ecstatic right now. The 4 enemy soldiers he cut down were all shamans, whilst their captives, his own soldiers, had completely missed the battle. One of his men was unconscious, whilst the other dropped to the floor after Deon 'assisted' him.

Deon's assistance consisted of savagely kicking Fenashi hard enough that he tumbled back, away from the Fan Kingdom encampment, falling past the forest line and getting himself entangled into a thick bush. By the time he stood back up, Deon was already carrying the unconscious soldier and running towards him.

Fenashi looked at the 4 brutalised enemy corpses in shock…

The first, Deon killed by decapitating his head. The second, he stabbed through the chest from the front. The third was cut in half through the stomach, turning his body into 2 pieces which dropped down, landing in a pool of blood and intestines. The final fleeing soldier was stabbed in the back after Deon transformed his sword into a spear and threw it, toppling the last foe before he got too far away.

After that, Deon ran towards this last person and used the soul extraction spirit to harvest his origin soul. Indeed, the reason he paused between each kill, giving them the chance to yell out and flee in the first place, was because he extracted each slain foe's origin soul immediately after killing them, before moving onto the next.

And now, finally…his soul extraction spirit was filled to the brim, containing 99 origin souls!

Although, that unfortunately didn't mean that he was done with collecting the origin souls needed to use the soul refinement spirit just yet. Truthfully, the chance of success in creating a spirit from a shaman was quite low, especially given the quality of the souls currently stored within the soul extraction spirit. There were only 19 peak stage 1-Star souls, 32 late stage 1-Star, then the rest were subpar for use in the soul refinement, they were mid, early and even initial stage 1-Star origin souls.

Whilst the soul refinement spirit's only only requirement to create a 1-Star shaman spirit was the 99 1-Star origin souls, this was a very vague requirement. After reading through Blood God's notes, Deon's understanding of these spirits was much better compared to when he first entered the spirit continent.

Basically, the higher the stage of the origin soul, and the less it dissipated prior to its death, the greater the amount of energy that would be available in the soul refinement process, and the greater the chances of success. The chances of success were actually quite low generally speaking, but if most of the origin souls used were much weaker than the target, then the chances of success would decline even further.

Deon learned this by reading through Blood God's notes. Blood God did not leave behind many texts that Deon could actually read, but he at least left behind some information regarding the soul refinement, soul extraction and ancient demon spirits. Even this information was not fully comprehensive, but it gave Deon somewhere to start.

In truth, Blood God had only succeeded in using the soul refinement spirit twice. He created the soul refinement spirit only after he failed his ascension and fell to a weakened state, so he did not waste his energies on experimenting with the spirit extensively.

Blood God tried to refine the soul refinement spirit for countless years before this. Even though his ascension failed and his coming death became inevitable within a few decades, he gained enlightenment at the moment of his failure. He finally succeeded in refining the spirit, but every use of his power left him further weakened. He needed to save most of his power to create the underworld trial properly, so after he confirmed that the soul refinement spirit functioned as it should, he stopped his experimentation and saved his remaining energy.

Deon really wanted to obtain 99 peak stage 1-Star origin souls, but at the very least, they should all be late and peak stage. He still harvested any origin soul he came across though, after all, origin souls had many, many uses.

For example, origin souls were required to refine both the soul extraction and soul refinement spirits into higher ranked spirits. Even the ancient demon core spirit could benefit from slaughtering origin souls!

Deon cleared his mind of these thoughts and he considered the information he had just overheard from the Fan soldiers.

He handed his unconscious subordinate to Fenashi and ordered him to return to base camp as quickly as possible, relaying the order that all guerrilla warfare trained soldiers were to assume their positions throughout the forest hill immediately. On top of that, he wanted another team of 20 elites to act as the vanguard, they would battle as much as they could manage on the flat land before retreating back down below. He also arranged for another team of 30 to be on standby, hiding just beyond the forest line, ready to give assistance if needed.

With this, their camp would be left borderline unguarded, with only 10 elites staying behind to keep watch. If there was an enemy attack, they would signal and the reserves would return to help out. It was unlikely that anyone would attack though, as the only decent position to attack from was the enemy Fan Kingdom encampment right here.

In the mean time, Deon quickly returned his attention to the rapidly approaching 15 enemy soldiers, all of whom looked enraged as they found their comrades lying dead in pools of their own blood. Their corpses were beyond mutilated, it was a horrifying sight, even for these seasoned veterans.

Deon looked up, then ran back into the forest, pretending to make a hasty retreat, even stumbling through the thick shrubbery as he went.

The soldiers shared a glance and laughed darkly. They didn't care that he was a child, because this child had just brutally slain their comrades in arms!

They casually approached the bush that Deon had leapt into.

"Haha, kid, just surrender already, you have no chance of escape, so-"

Chi!

"Huh?" The 3 people behind the leading soldier all stared blankly, then suddenly went on high alert as they realised that something was amiss. However, it was already too late.

CHING CHING CHING!

Deon decapitated the 3 soldiers, all of whom were standing far too close together, with a single swing of his sword. Their heads slid cleanly from their necks, causing those behind them to turn pale with fright.

As for the first enemy soldier who mysteriously dropped dead to the floor, this was Deon's recently conceived new move. The killing was still achieved with the ancient demon spirit, but this time, he utilised the demonic spirit in the form of a bow and arrow.

In the past, Deon was unable to shoot or throw the spirit as a projectile, as he had no way of making it return to him. However, after becoming a peak stage 1-Star shaman, he began to kill.

As he killed, he began to learn.

He killed to his heart's content in the upper region, improving the power of the ancient demon spirit. Well, the spirit itself wasn't improved, but Deon's connection and understanding with his core spirit deepened. This gradual improvement was unlike those core spirits that were refined in a cauldron, sending the shaman straight from peak stage 1-Star to initial stage 2-Star. However, Deon now understood that unique spirits, those at the holy class and above, also evolved their rank differently, especially when they were the shaman's core spirit.

The ascension of unique spirits from 1-Star to 2-Star wasn't achieved by a simple, single step refinement, unlike common class through to mythril class spirits. Instead, they all had unique methods of ascension that took time and work to complete. Progress was achieved one step at a time, allowing the peak stage shaman to improve quickly as they became more adept at utilising their core spirit.

The more he killed, the more the ancient demon spirit grew closer to its true peak. The peak for the ancient demon spirit wasn't achieved just by reaching the 'peak stage', that was merely the beginning.

Whilst for others, the peak really was the peak, for Deon, it was simply another stage that he needed to train through. His improvement could already be seen in his ability to utilise his core spirit in the form of projectiles.

But at the end of the day, Deon still preferred to use this spirit as a sword. It certainly felt like its most natural form, whilst the power it could display in this sword form was too shocking for the 1-Star shamans that faced him.

As the other 11 soldiers stared at him in shock, Deon managed to extract 3 of the 4 origin souls from the recently deceased, replacing 3 of the initial stage origin souls within the soul extraction spirit.

As for those 3 initial stage origin souls, Deon did not destroy them, but instead fed them to the soul refinement spirit. The spirit appeared like a demonic genie in his right hand, stabbing out 3 infernal tendrils into the origin souls and devouring them whilst wearing an evil grin on its face. Killing intent exuded from the soul refinement spirit, it truly possessed an evil appearance!

Like the ancient demon spirit, the soul refinement spirit's rank ascension was a gradual process, and extremely unorthodox to say the least. Naturally, any shaman who saw this scene would have the same thought…

"D-Demon! He's actually a demonic shaman!"

"What do you- ah! You-you're right, this kid is actually feeding origin souls to that shockingly evil spirit!"

"D-d-d-demonic sh-sh-shaman…?"

…

'Demonic shamans' were shamans that followed the demonic path. They had a terrible and fearful reputation in the mortal nations.

In these small places with few powerful shamans, demonic shamans were almost non-existent, many people didn't even believe them to be real. Those with a wider worldview knew that they were very much real though. They also knew that it wasn't those openly evil and sadistic demons that were the most terrifying…but those who blended into righteous society, pretending to be a sheep, whilst reaping the benefits as a wolf.

Shamans such as Deon.