Origin Soul Trade

That evening, Deon, Terros and Shi reconvened at their rented accommodation. Shi was standing there impatiently when they returned and glared at Deon accusingly. However, with Terros present, she couldn't say anything.

"What's up with you, doing some sketchy business behind my back?" Terros laughed when he saw Shi's expression.

"Yes, so could you leave us alone for a bit?" Deon unexpectedly replied. Terros paused, looking at Deon deeply for a moment, before nodding and leaving as he said:

"Whatever, just make sure you don't neglect your other business."

"What was that about?!" After Terros left the room, Shi glared at Deon in annoyance.

"I made deals with both of you, but don't worry about it. You both want to keep your business with me a secret, so you won't interfere with each other." Deon replied matter of factly.

"You really…hah." In the end, Shi just waved her hand, presenting three spirits to him.

"I went with these since you insisted…three soul pouch worms."

Deon's eyes lit up as he stared a the shining silver worms. These were all platinum class 1-Star spirits, they were quite rare, but Shi was able to source three. To obtain these spirits, she exhausted the majority of her wealth in a single day. She was naturally irritated when she returned, but was forced to wait another five hours before Deon showed his face.

Deon considered berating her for leaving their rented accommodation unguarded, but he couldn't really be bothered. When he thought about it, there was no way that any of them would be willing to act as a guard during their stay, they would just need to take the risk.

"Did you find buyers?" He slowly looked up and asked. She knew why he asked this and nodded.

"I did. I'll be able to sell all three within a short period of time, this way, the origin souls won't deteriorate by much. However…"

"We can't sell them undamaged, right?" Deon sighed, having already expected this to be the case.

Undamaged origin souls weren't just rare in this city, they were a myth. They simply did not exist, nor did anyone believe it to be possible to extract and store an origin soul without damaging it.

"Honestly, the average origin soul for sale is around 60% damaged. 'High quality' refers to those with 40% damage, whilst 'top quality' have 20% damage. Top quality origin souls don't appear often."

"And those which are above 90% intact?" Deon asked.

"They are almost impossible to find in the city, but not so impossible that my buyers will be too shocked. I think we can do this relatively safely, but we need to make sure the souls are no more than 92% intact."

"Hmm…" Deon mused to himself for a moment, considering the best way to handle this. "I have no experience with deliberately damaging origin souls. They deteriorate so quickly and I can't estimate the damage by eye very well, I can only understand the soul's damage once it's stored. Let's just do the transfer quickly and see what happens."

He then bound the soul pouch worm, before releasing an undamaged peak 1-Star origin soul from the soul extraction spirit, binding it with the soul pouch worm spirit as quickly as possible. This was an instant transfer, directly from the soul extraction spirit to the soul pouch worm. Deon focused his attention on the origin soul that was now stored within the worm, but only for a moment. His eyes shot open and he looked at the worm in disbelief.

"It sustained 4% damage from a perfect direct transfer? What a useless thing!"

"Useless? This is the best you can find in this city! Don't criticise my hard efforts!" Shi, still irritated form being forced to wait around all day, finally snapped and yelled at him.

"I know, I know. Let me give it another go." Deon stopped criticising the soul pouch worm before transferring the origin soul back and forth once again.

When being transferred into the soul extraction spirit, there was no damage sustained, but the soul again became 4% more damaged when going from the soul extraction spirit into the soul pouch worm. After pondering it for a moment, Deon did the same with two more souls.

"Here, how is this?" He handed the soul pouch worm back to Shi. Although the degradation rate increased when unbound, it was slow enough that a few seconds made no difference.

Shi bound the worm and examined the inside, then looked up and stared at Deon.

"I said 92% is the maximum limit, not to push all three souls to this level!"

Deon shrugged, saying nothing.

"Hah…" Shi rubbed her head and silently thought it through.

"Fine. You already have some damaged souls, right? Leave this first soul pouch worm as is, but fill the other two with lower quality souls."

With that, they completed their preparations for this first trade. Shi took the three worms and slipped away into the night, whilst Deon watched expectantly, awaiting her return.

In the meantime, he started to refine spirits.

Slightly over three hours later, Shi returned.

"This…so much, just from nine origin souls?" Deon swallowed as he stared at the payment in Shi's palm. And this was merely half of the full payment, she kept the other half for herself.

"I was also shocked to be honest. I mean, did we really earn nine 3-Star drop spirits so easily?" Shi muttered.

A 3-Star drop spirit had the monetary value of 100 2-Star drop spirits. This was even more than Deon earned with Terros throughout the whole day!

"In truth, the first worm with the three nearly intact origin souls earned me over half of this…" Shi said slowly. Deon's eyes lit up and he grinned.

"So we should definitely continue to sell more at this standard, right?"

"Well…maybe…" Shi was uncertain, so Deon didn't say anything else. She needed some time to ponder over this.

Was it worth the risk?

Probably. This was a lot of money, even for her. Also, it just felt so easy! Obtaining these souls wasn't even particularly difficult…

Deon took a final glance at her before leaving with a knowing smile. He was confident that in the end, her greed would win over her caution. After all, what demonic path shaman wouldn't be willing to take a risk if the profits were good enough? Such a cowardly person could never successfully walk the demonic path!

It was fine to be cautious, but there was a balance between risk and reward. In this case, Deon believed that the reward far outweighed the risk, even for Shi, who was taking on the bulk of the risk here.

Time flew by…

Deon didn't sleep, refining spirits all through the night, through the following day and into the next evening. He didn't plan to sleep during this week in Flat Mount City, he couldn't let a moment go to waste during his stay.

Now that he had a large supply of mythril, it was tempting to attempt the mythril suffering for time spirit refinement, but Deon held back. Instead, he started to refine a certain demon type spirit that caught his interest, since the ingredients needed for this refinement would begin to rot if he left this for later.

What Deon refined was the third spirit in the demon spirit recipe book, 1-Star demon tattoo. This was a 'body transformation' type of spirit, a type he hadn't encountered until now.

Body tempering was the process of using spirits to steadily refine the human body into something more powerful. Transformation type spirits could be used to temporarily transform the body into a different form. Body transformation was almost like a mixture of the two, a permanent transformation of the body.

That said, 'permanent' was too strong a word for the demon tattoo, as this spirit induced what was known as a 'partial body transformation', rather than a 'complete body transformation'. Complete body transformations were much more extreme, but partial body transformations weren't without their implications either.

After using a 1-Star partial body transformation spirit, it would be impossible to continue using 1-Star body tempering spirits. After using this spirit, Deon would also be limited, only able to use demon type body transformation spirits, unless he removed the partial transformation later on with the help of a removal spirit.

Since he hadn't yet used the mythril class body tempering spirits, he obviously wasn't going to use this spirit just yet, but he wanted to refine it now since he had the chance. Whilst it wasn't difficult to collect the human ingredients personally, Deon realised that it actually might prove troublesome to collect all of the required materials before they started to rot. His only option would be to store the materials in a cool chamber,…unless he bought them all in one go and used them immediately. He could only do this whilst in the city.

Shockingly though, he actually succeeded with the refinement on his first attempt! Since he still possessed enough ingredients to carry out the refinement of this gold class spirit ten more times, he attempted the refinement another ten times.

He succeeded ten times.

Whilst Deon's success rate with gold class 1-Star spirits was close to 100%, this definitely shouldn't be the case when refining such a different type of spirit. This was a demon type and body transformation type spirit, neither of which he had any experience with at all!

It dawned on Deon at this moment that thanks to his core spirit, his comprehension over demon type spirits was simply inherently superior. He couldn't help but feel overjoyed by this revelation, it basically meant that his success when refining demon type spirits would always be incredible! Of course, it wouldn't always be as ridiculous as this, but it was definitely a good thing

Many demon spirit refinements were extremely tedious and long winded, so having a higher success rate would be extremely useful.