Body Tempering Spirits

Deon sat down and pulled out a black-red cauldron from his spatial ring. This was the cauldron gifted to him by Blood God. Even though Deon had possessed this cauldron all along, he had not actually used it many times, since it would be difficult to explain where he had been keeping it. Beyond that, this cauldron was clearly extremely valuable, he did not want to reveal it to others.

This was no ordinary cauldron, but contained a mechanism that would automatically act to stabilise a part of the spirit refinement when it was on the verge of failing. This fail-safe wasn't perfect, it only worked successfully around 50% of the time, but this still gave the spirit refiner more leeway to make mistakes compared to typical refining.

On top of this helpful effect, the cauldron was said to be impossible to damage so long as it was only used to refine a 6-Star spirit or below. Even 7-Star spirit failures were unlikely to cause it any damage, unless the refinement failed at the most crucial moment. Regardless, the cauldron would still protect the user from any serious explosive force.

The final amazing feature of this cauldron, was its ability to protect the ingredients within. Even if the refinement failed catastrophically, it was exceedingly unlikely for the spirit or spirits within to be completely destroyed by the backlash, as the cauldron diverted the shockwave throughout its powerfully absorbent blood steel frame.

"Gold skin spirit…I doubt it will be significantly helpful, but it's better than nothing."

And so the refinement process began. This was Deon's first time properly attempting a gold class evolution!

The first ingredient was three pounds of gold…it was expensive, but surprisingly, this was not so bad compared to some other refinement ingredients.

The cauldron was heated using yellow powder, creating a searing hot flame from below. As the molten gold was just about to begin bubbling, the silver skin spirit was slowly submerged below the molten surface.

Sensing that the heat wasn't enough and that the process might fade away at this rate, Deon urged more yellow powder into the flame, ramping up the heat within the cauldron.

He threw in demonic spider silk from a 1-Star beast, the spotted spider. The spotted spider was notorious for being huge, fast, venomous, and terrifying to meet alone at night.

After the spider silk, Deon poured in top quality mountain spring water, something he could easily obtain from his own camp.

A cocoon rapidly formed from the purple silk, almost cutting apart the spirit.

A human head-sized droplet of demonic bee honey was added. Seeing that the honey was too thick, Deon added even more yellow powder to the flame, doubling the temperature beneath the cauldron.

The bubbling golden liquid could only be kept stable via a rapidly rotating vortex, which seemed to not only assist the honey in absorbing into the demonic spider silk, but even further tightened the spider's silk cocoon around the silver skin spirit.

Finally, after all the honey had been absorbed into the purple cocoon, it started releasing a purple-gold light. Deon threw a golden yuan berry into the cauldron, right as he added 18 drops of demonic butterfly blood. Three drops of the butterfly's essence blood flowed down alongside 6 drops of heart blood and 9 drops of marrow blood.

Deon started sweating slightly as he maintained peak focus, but he remained completely calm.

However, he suddenly realised that he had made a mistake. The marrow blood needed to enter the golden yuan berry first, followed by the heart blood, then the essence blood.

But instead, the drops landed in the wrong order. Even though he added the blood drops in the right order, the chaotic turning of the liquid vortex caused them to enter the golden berry at incorrect intervals!

Deon stood up, ready to jump back and avoid the explosive backlash due to his inmpending failure…

But then, the impossible happened.

Nine different coloured beams of light were projected from the inside of the cauldron, lighting up the golden yuan berry, causing its collapse to pause! In this brief moment of pause, Deon's eyes shone like an eagle's as he rapidly rearranged the golden berry and the blood drops, until a perfect stream formed within the centre of the cauldron.

He quickly retracted his fingers and dipped them in a pot of cool water, managing to avoid burning himself thanks to his speedy actions.

For 1-Star shamans, spirit refinement was not an exact art, they often did not have the ability to perfectly manipulate the various ingredients within the cauldron. Expert spirit refiners would have accompanying spirits which could assist in the process, but such spirits were uncommon in this kingdom. Because of this, techniques like Deon's, manually moving the materials by hand, were not all that uncommon.

Three seconds flew by. The 18 blood drops entered at precise intervals. At this very moment, the perfectly balanced blood and berry melted rapidly, covering the cocoon in a red-gold layer. All of the purple and golden light was extracted, entering the red-gold coating, combining and then fusing into the cocoon.

The cocoon started to emit a powerful outwards pressure as it began to rapidly expand. After increasing the intensity of the flame below the cauldron once again, the cocoon was drawn to the bottom of the mixture and its expansion paused for an brief moment.

In this instant, Deon added the final ingredient; 3 bronze skin spirits!

In higher class spirit refinements, supplementary spirits were often used like this. The core of the refinement was still the silver skin spirit, but these bronze skin spirits were needed to progress the refinement through the final stage.

After the spirits landed on the cocoon, the mixture showed signs of instability. Deon was already prepared and urged the vortex to collapse inwards with its full rotating force. The gold liquid rapidly depleted as it was absorbed by the cocoon and the other spirits.

When all else was gone, absorbed into the sole cocoon, only the glistening gold cocoon remained. It floated upwards and landed on Deon's palm.

CRACK!

The cocoon cracked. The outer casing transformed into golden energy that swirled around in all directions, before suddenly being devoured by the golden glistening flat-bug that appeared within the golden mist. The creature glowed for a moment, then a minute later, the glowing stopped.

Deon's eyes shone with excitement. He had successfully refined the gold skin spirit!

"Bind!" Deon laughed happily, immediately binding the gold skin spirit. The moment he bound it and moved it into his soul space, his soul space became full; he no longer had any free slots remaining. But it did not matter, this wouldn't take long.

Deon closed his eyes, then after a while of visualising and connecting with the bizarre golden bug in his soul space, he muttered:

"Burn."

"Kkkreee-!"

Puff!

The bug screeched out for a second as black and red veins appeared all across its surface. In the next seconds, infernal cracks covered its body, causing it to disintegrate into ash with a burst of heat.

The ash travelled directly from Deon's soul space into his skin, perfectly dispersing across the entire surface of his skin without him needing to do anything.

"Kuh-!" Deon choked slightly as the sudden wave of pain hit him.

He felt like his skin was being melted with acid! He felt as if he had been doused in gasoline and ignited! He felt like fire ants had crawled under his flesh and were biting him continuously and with extreme rage!

He immediately started sweating heavily and forcefully grit his teeth to endure the pain. After 5 seconds, the pain began to decrease. After half a minute, the feeling had dissipated entirely.

The activation of the gold skin spirit only lasted for 30 seconds. Although it was a bit longer than last time, this was still nothing in the scheme of things.

Even so, Deon's whole body was soaked in sweat and he very nearly passed out. It wasn't until he meditated for half an hour that his body and mind completely recovered from the fatigue.

When Deon emerged from the tent, he found Remi standing there anxiously, waiting for him.

"Any news?"

"Commander! A demonic messenger eagle just arrived from Lieutenant Shi. She said that she found General Li. General Li was already heading to see you, since he finally procured a spirit that you have been asking about. Now though-"

"Wait!" Deon exclaimed, startling Remi. "Is it the black rose fortitude spirit?"

"I, I think so, yes-"

"I've been searching for this spirit for almost a year now! It's essential that General Li brings that spirit to me! Remi, where is it now, where is General Li right now?"

"I was just getting to that…" Remi replied dryly in response to Deon's barrage of questions. "General Li contacted General Senlin, and now, the two generals are doing their best to contact as many people as possible to inform them of the situation. General Li also promised that he would rush over as quickly as he can to provide assistance."

"And what about the spirit?" Deon almost sounded impatient, but he couldn't help it. He had only asked General Li to assist him with the procurement of a single spirit, but it was perhaps the most essential spirit that could help him to quickly improve his current battle strength!

SQUARK!

Whoosh!

"It's there." Remi sighed and pointed at the giant eagle, upon which Lieutenant Shi was actually riding. Her face was pale and she silently hopped off, getting far away from the bird without saying a word.

Deon on the other hand, rushed forwards and laughed joyously as Lieutenant Shi handed a single spirit to him. After taking the spirit off her hands, he returned to his guarded command tent immediately and without saying another word.

As Deon looked down at the black rose in his hands, he recalled everything he knew of the body tempering spirits.

In the Kingdom of Restari, it was considered common knowledge that there were 5 body tempering spirits. Truthfully, there were more than 5 body tempering type spirits, but the 5 which were well known throughout the kingdom were indeed the most crucial spirits when it came to the art of body tempering.

Deon knew more about this subject than any other 1-Star shaman, as the body tempering spirits were clearly described in the few books left behind by Blood God. These spirits were related to his body's constitution, Blood God had clearly deemed this knowledge essential for Deon to understand.

There were many books in Deon's spatial ring, only some of which he could actually read. One of these books detailed various spirits which were relevant to body tempering, all having some interaction with the 5 core body tempering spirits.

Many of these spirits were far out of his reach for now, but there was one relatively 'simple' spirit that he could certainly use right now.

Deon had always been looking to refine this spirit, but he had lacked a crucial ingredient all along, that ingredient being a spirit called the 'black rose fortitude spirit'.

With the black rose fortitude spirit in his possession, Deon was determined to complete this refinement before Remi's uncle arrived.

He was going to refine the 1-Star suffering for time spirit!