A Studious Demon

First, Deon refined the bronze organs spirit. He was very much behind with the organs lineage of spirits compared to the others, since this spirit took a full year of passive use to reach completion. The bronze class and beyond evolutions would be reduced to half a year, but this was still way longer than the other spirits.

Six months was over 4000 hours, and Deon could not speed up this spirit directly with the suffering for time spirit. The organs spirits were accelerated passively when suffering for time was activated alongside another body tempering spirit, so Deon intended to first refine and bind the bronze organs spirit, then train with the other body tempering spirits to reduce the time needed to complete its usage.

Following the bronze organs spirit, he refined one of his silver class spirits into its gold class evolution; glistening bed bug into shimmering bed bug!

The improvement to his mental and physical focus and energy, alongside his thought processing speed and even his will power, became more noticeable with each evolution. This was the highest evolution of this spirit that he knew thus far though, it was likely that his progress with this spirit would be halted for some time.

Deon had only managed to obtain this spirit's recipe after extorting Remi's demonic great grandfather during their chat through the yin-yang pendant. That treasure was currently in a comatosed state, so for now, obtaining any further evolution recipes for the bed bug spirit was not possible.

With the shimmering bed bug spirit to support him, the next step was to refine the gold class versions of the tendons, muscle and bones spirits.

Deon now had extensive experience with refining many body tempering spirits into higher classes. Refining a gold class spirit was usually an expensive and extended endeavour for a shaman, but Deon, actually managed to refine and fully use all three of these spirits within a single week!

He succeeded with each refinement after not even five attempts. By making use of the suffering for time spirit, he really did feel like he was training far too quickly!

This was naturally a good thing. Others would not be able to endure the immense torture of the suffering for time spirit, but Deon was addicted to this rate of improvement, the pain was inconsequential!

Now that he had improved his body to a satisfactory level, Deon moved on to something that he had wanted to do for quite some time now…

He was going to read those books left behind by Blood God!

Ever since he passed the inheritance trial, Deon had desperately craved to understand the contents of the books in his spatial ring. Unfortunately, most of these books were written in various strange languages that he was completely unable to read.

The previous books that he could read all contained information on a few matters, but they were severely lacking when it came to properly expanding his knowledge on various shaman pursuits.

Blood God only included the things that he considered to be essential in those books; information on spirits, including natural spirits, spirits related to life-span, the body tempering spirits, the three spirits he left for his inheritor, and some general information on spirits as a whole. He also left behind details regarding the constitution of the body he left for his inheritor, and some very brief general knowledge on the spirit continent.

Now, Deon finally possessed the means to study the other books written in foreign languages!

Remi's great grandfather revealed the secrets behind each of these languages, with the hope that Deon could become stronger and protect his great granddaughter. There were 108 books and four languages in total between them.

He immediately ignored 72 of the books, since these were written in the 'language of law'. The language of law was written in one of the 72 fundamental world laws, meaning that there were actually 72 different law languages. These languages could only be read if the shaman possessed sufficient comprehension of the corresponding world law.

Deon vaguely understood the concept of the world laws, but only barely, and he knew that his understanding was too shallow to possibly read these books just yet.

Or at least, he thought this would be the case, until he passed his gaze over one of the books.

This book was pitch black in colour, whilst the writing on the front cover was somehow a deeper, more eery shade of black. The 'words' on the cover were difficult to even look at, the writing could not be adequately described in words. The confusing symbols gave Deon a headache when he stared at them for too long.

After putting the rest of the books away, Deon stared at this book cover uncertainly, squinting at the title page for a solid hour, before finally, he could just barely make out a single meaning within the character on the front cover.

'Death.'

"Hah…hah…hah…what the…hell…"

Despite having somehow read that single character, Deon didn't dare try to push himself any further. He collapsed to the ground, wheezing for a solid ten minutes, unable to breathe properly, the moment the word 'death' appeared within his mind.

"The death law? Since I am able to read this word, this must be the law type of my core spirit…"

Deon already understood the concept of a spirit's 'type', as Blood God considered this to be essential foundational knowledge for a shaman.

In the Kingdom of Restari, a spirit's 'type' always referred to its main usage, be it movement, offence, defence, body tempering, and so on. However, the truth of the matter was that all spirits possessed three distinct types.

Usage type, racial type, law type.

Taking his ancient demon spirit as an example, its usage type was 'offence', or perhaps 'materialisation' was a better fit. It was entirely possible for high class spirits to have multiple types in this category, it wasn't necessarily set in stone.

All spirits possessed only a single racial type, the ancient demon spirit's racial type was demon.

As for its law type…Deon had previously believed that it was darkness, but he could definitely be mistaken. After realising that he was able to read the word 'death' written in the language of law, he guessed that his spirit also possessed the death law type.

As for why Blood God didn't explain the ancient demon spirit's types, Deon had no idea. Blood God's movies eluded Deon to this day, he couldn't begin to understand what that person was thinking.

Fire, water, air, earth, metal, light, darkness, lightning, these were the eight fundamental corporeal laws. There were also 'ethereal laws', which were more broad and vague, including things like death, space and illusion. Basically, corporeal laws were physical, whilst ethereal laws were not.

Deon was no expert on this topic, but he understood that it was extremely unusual for him to be able to read even the word 'death' on the front cover of one of the books. This suggested that he had already begun to comprehend the law of death…

"No point overthinking it." Deon put this out of mind. Once he had recovered adequately, he returned the law language books to his spatial ring and continued on.

The 36 remaining books could be split into three groups, as there were 12 books written in each remaining language.

Deon put away the 12 books written in the language that was supposedly extremely tedious to learn. This language was called the 'primitive language', but it was nicknamed the 'suicide language', because trying to learn this language was so horrendous that it left people wanting to kill themselves. Every single word in this language was represented by a myriad of different complex symbols, there was no rhyme or reason to it at all.

After some thought, Deon decided against the temptation of studying the seemingly straight forwards 'ancestral language'. This language was used in the largest library on the spirit continent, the ancestral library.

According to Remi's great grandfather, this library was an enormous place which held the continent's earliest records of civilisation. Whilst there was actually a dictionary for this language, the final language, Deon placed these books aside for now.

He planned to study the final language; the intuitive language. This should be the fastest of the languages to learn if what Remi's great grandfather said was true.

The intuitive language had no set form whatsoever. To write in this language, a shaman merely needed to write whilst filling the writing with their intent.

Some people could pick the language up within seconds, becoming decently adept within minutes, and veteran readers within the hour. Others were unable to ever learn this language, no matter how diligently they studied.

Deon muttered to himself as he recalled his conversation with Remi's great grandfather.

"That demon claimed that a peak stage 1-Star shaman should be able to comprehend at least some of this language within three days. If not, they have no worthwhile future prospects, as their ability to comprehend the world laws and their own heart is insufficient. I have no idea if that's really true, but hopefully I don't take too long…"

Deon turned to the 12 books and pondered, before selecting the book that he was most curious about, which was also the book that he believed should be the most helpful to him right now.

Remi's great grand father helpfully told him the titles of all 108 books. The book he chose was titled 'Consciousness Tempering Spirit Recipes: Ranks 1 - 3'.

Deon was excited as he looked at this book, causing him to end up staring at the cover for a bit too long. Eventually however, his expression changed. At first, he blinked a few times and looked confused, before his face twisted slightly and he expressed his doubt.

"Didn't the old man say that the best way to learn this language is to practise writing it, and that diving in and attempting to read it directly is a hundred times more difficult? How come I can already read the title, just by staring at it for a few minutes?"

Deon was dubious, but he continued to study the book curiously. When he opened the book to the first page, he found a messy scattering of scribbles and doodles that seemed to contain a sharp intent, an intent which tried to restrain its killing desire, but was unable to properly do so.

This was Blood God's writing, filled with his personal intent!

Deon stared for a few seconds, then his eyes widened as all of these seemingly random scribbles started to reorganise before his eyes. It was slow going, and every now and then, he felt a headache building up.

The old demon warned him to look away for a few seconds whenever this happened, as otherwise, he would end up severely mentally exhausted, taking many days to recover.

After 15 minutes, Deon was stunned as he stared at the first page, which was now completely translated in his mind. There were no recipes on this page, it was merely an introduction to the book.

He understood the second page after ten minutes, the third after five minutes and the fourth after three minutes…

Before long, Deon had successfully read through the entire contents of this book!

Learning the intuitive language by reading was much more difficult than learning it by writing.

Deon was stunned. If what Remi's great grandfather said was true…then his potential as a shaman was simply too shocking!