Refining for the Kingdom

"Vice Commander Deon, now that the formalities are done with, is there anything that I can help you with? This is not coming from the military, but from me personally." General Li said with faint smile. He felt like Deon had somewhat seen through the military's real intention, yet he also didn't seem bothered by it. Just in case though, the general thought it would be best to show the young military prodigy that the kingdom wasn't entirely filled with scheming old guys, some people could be genuine and trusted.

Deon pondered for a moment, not caring about the curious waiting gazes of the hundreds of soldiers around him. After a while, he waved his hand and produced a spirit that looked like a small slime, with a faint bronze sheen.

"This…bronze muscle spirit?" The general blinked. After pondering for a moment, he looked at Deon oddly. This spirit was uncommon, but not unheard of in the kingdom. That said, he had already looked through Deon's file…just where did he get this spirit?

Finally, Deon could get rid of this thing that was basically just a burden to him right now. He had already used the bronze muscle spirit fully, but hadn't revealed its existence before now since he had been worried that he would be forced to join the spirit refinement division. Because of this, he was forced to hide the spirit in his soul space.

But now, there was no chance that he would be forced to move units. In fact, revealing his ability would only further improve his reputation.

"I refined this spirit from the dense muscle spirit back at the academy. I've already used the spirit and have no use for it, so I wanted to give it to the military."

Deon said it calmly, but General Li was shocked by his words.

"You…you actually refined this…whilst you were still in the academy?" He asked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. He then frowned slightly and asked:

"You should have finished with this spirit long ago, why hold onto it until now?"

Deon scratched his head and smiled embarrassedly.

"I wanted to join the war division, but I would have been pressured into the refinement division if I had revealed this sooner."

General Li blinked, as did Commander Reana. They were a bit taken aback by this sort of foresight…because they realised that he was right. Had he revealed his ability to refine this spirit back in the academy, he would definitely have been placed in the refinement division, even if this went against his will.

Even now, Deon still didn't quite understand the weight of his claim. He claimed to have produced the bronze muscle spirit…but there were not even ten shamans in the kingdom capable of producing this spirit!

"Deon, how many attempts did this take you?" Commander Reana asked slowly.

"Seven." He answered honestly. Seeing their dumbstruck and disbelieving expressions and realising that this sort of ability was maybe a bit too shocking, Deon hurriedly added: "I practised refining the dense muscle spirit from the vital physique spirit many times before this though."

"Seven attempts until the first success…" General Li was shocked, but he straightened up and pondered over the implications of this. Deon was now feeling slightly worried…there wasn't any chance that he could still be conscripted into the refinement division, right?

The general noticed his concern and quickly quelled his unease.

"Don't worry, I won't force you to move divisions. But…if the kingdom supplies you with the resources you need to produce this spirit, will you do so? Outside of battles and training of course."

Deon's eyes lit up. That actually sounded quite good…he needed more refinement practice, and wasn't the kingdom just offering to fund his practice for free?

"I'm willing." Deon nodded. "But I would also like access to other recipes and resources for practice…ah, I suppose that I can buy them with merit points…"

"No need!" The general hurriedly denied. "Your potential as a spirit refiner is clearly incredible, I assure you that the kingdom will provide you with whatever you need for practice, so long as the end products are returned…" He realised towards the end that he was basically asking Deon to work for free, causing the general to hesitate.

Deon didn't mind it at all.

"Perfect, I only want to practice my spirit refinement, general."

With that, a unique arrangement was agreed upon. The crowd watched on dumbly as Deon so casually formed a trade deal with an esteemed general of the country….his prestige again shot up in their eyes.

Soon enough, life in the 37th unit's camp became peaceful once again. Everyone needed time to recover after the shock and damage from that last battle. Around half of the soldiers were injured in one way or another, they would not be sent to a large battle again for at least another month in order to give them time to properly rest and recover.

Whilst others were either resting, training or continuing to build up their defences to expand the camp, Deon was in his own private tent, a tent larger even than those of the captains'.

He stared down at all of the resources before him. There were so many precious materials that he had to stop himself from drooling.

"We will be back with more materials in two weeks time, Vice Commander Deon." Lieutenant Shi said with a smile.

Lieutenant Shi was a seemingly gentle woman, someone who didn't seem to fit the role of a military lieutenant. She was young and attractive, keeping her black hair neatly cut, but still reaching her shoulders, a longer length compared to most females in the military.

Anyway, her soft temperament was exactly why she had been assigned to manage the transportation of resources and food between the camp mountains, and why she was now assigned the duty of personally bringing Deon whatever he needed.

Well, for now, they wanted to see if what Deon said was true; could he truly produce the bronze muscle spirit?

The bronze muscle spirit wasn't all that special really, but being able to refine it was a symbol of a shaman's ability when it came to spirit refinement. Most of the resources he was given could only be used to create the bronze muscle spirit specifically, making it obvious to Deon that this was basically a test.

Seeing that the lieutenant was hesitant to leave, Deon turned to her with a smile.

"You have orders to watch me produce the bronze muscle spirit, right?"

"Ah!" The Lieutenant's eyes widened, not expecting that a child would see through her so easily.

'The rumours about him are true after all…' She thought.

"My orders are to watch you if you're agreeable to this…if not, I will take my leave."

"No, it's fine." Deon shook his head, then didn't pay the lieutenant anymore mind and turned towards the stacks of resources piled up in the wooden crates and quartz viles.

Deon's eyes sparkled. The kingdom supplied him with everything he needed, from the basic materials to the demonic ox heart blood…they even provided him with a top quality black steel cauldron!

This cauldron wouldn't become damaged no matter how many times he failed to refine a 1-Star spirit.

"Red powder, bronze metal, glowing root, hundred grass fungus, yuan berry, spring water, spotted spider's silk, and most importantly, 1-Star demonic ox heart blood." Deon spoke out loud as he gathered the ingredients together. "Alright, time to begin."

"You're going to begin right now?" Lieutenant Shi blinked in surprise. Didn't spirit refiners usually meditate for a few hours to prepare themselves for each refinement? Didn't spirit refiners often have annoying temperaments and refuse to refine a spirit unless they felt like it?

"Sure, why not." Deon shrugged, then paused and turned to the woman behind him. "I've only succeeded with this refinement once and it was almost a year ago now, so I might fail once or twice before succeeding." He reminded her, then turned back towards the cauldron and began.

'Might fail once or twice before succeeding…? But even the best peak 1-Star spirit refiner in the kingdom only succeeds one out of every four times with this refinement, and that person is extremely experienced with this specific process!'

Ignoring the lieutenant now, Deon began.

The first step was to place three pounds of bronze metal into the cauldron.

The red powder ignited below the black steel cauldron produced a blazingly hot flame, gradually melting the bronze down into a metallic liquid.

The dense muscle spirit was thrown in casually once the liquid reached an appropriate consistency.

Deon added spotted spider's silk to form a cocoon around the spirit.

Glowing root and yuan berry were thrown into the mixture and combined outside of the cocoon to form a thick light essence.

This light essence was caught in the hundred grass fungus.

Deon narrowed his eyes, he knew that this was one of the hardest steps. He concentrated and increased his control. He fully captured the light essence, then broke the hundred grass fungus up, one tip at a time, until-

BANG!

Deon felt the mixture become chaotic and retreated at the last second. He avoided blowing himself up and exhaled slightly, then pondered over what went wrong. After ten minutes, he cleaned out the cauldron, meditated for half an hour, then stood up to try again.

"Wait, you're going to try again? Don't you need to rest…?" Lieutenant Shi asked oddly.

"No need." Deon didn't bother explaining and directly continued. His origin energy had fully recovered and he managed to avoid being injured by the explosion, so he was fine to try again. As for his mental exhaustion…he was far from his limit.

On the next attempt, he successfully fused all one hundred grass fungus tips together in the mixture, then carefully quenched the glowing liquid with spring water.

Next, a single drop of 1-Star demonic ox heart blood was directly pushed into the cocoon, causing the cocoon to open up.

Finally, Deon casually threw in three 0-Star vital physique spirits.

The lieutenant's jaw dropped as she watched the dense muscle spirit greedily devour the helpless vital physique spirits. It glowed brightly as all of the liquid in the cauldron was absorbed and it floated gently into the air, rapidly draining around one third of Deon's origin energy.

The green spirit gradually developed a bronze sheen. Deon waved his hand and the bronze muscle spirit floated into the air and hovered above his palm.

"Two attempts, not bad." He nodded contentedly. Refinement could never be successful 100% of the time, but two attempts to refine this spirit was indeed acceptable to Deon. He knew that he came very close to failing at the end there, but it didn't matter since it all worked out in the end.

"I, I…" Lieutenant Shi was dumbstruck. This defied all common sense regarding refining! Plus, he was so casual about it and even made it look easy!

Her original plan was to stay for a full week to watch Deon attempt the refinement once each day. He claimed to have succeeded in just seven attempts the first time, so this week should have been enough in her original estimations.

Well, she still stayed for a full week, but her original goal was blown away as she watched Deon exhaust the entirety of the two week supply of resources in a single week. He succeeded around 50% of the time and tried the refinement twice each day, resulting in 7 bronze muscle spirits by the end of the week.

Deon sent the lieutenant away to fetch him more materials. He found it quite amusing that this lieutenant, someone who ranked much higher than himself, had been forced to become his errand girl.

Amusing, but very suspicious. In all likelihood, Lieutenant Shi had also been tasked with monitoring him. It seemed that he had already attracted too much attention, someone out there was trying to keep an eye on him…