Talented Spirit Refiner

Deon easily arrived at the same step in the refining process that he reached before. After the vital physique spirit absorbed the ox blood essence, he rapidly increased the heat to a high level.

Deon narrowed his eyes and showed an expression of intense concentration. This was the stage that he failed at last time, the increased supplementation of origin energy. The spirit would absorb a large quantity of origin energy to complete the evolution and ascend to the next rank, but supplying too much origin energy would cause the spirit to become overloaded and the evolution would fail in a spectacular explosion. Too little and the process would simply die away soundlessly.

Whoosh…

He concentrated fully on the task at hand, increasing the amount of origin energy he injected every second, but also observing to ensure that he was not overdoing it. Deon recalled the exact point at which the origin energy became overloaded during the previous attempt, and this time, he was able to slow down before reaching this stage.

It should be remembered that Deon had a massive advantage over any ordinary 1-Star shaman when it came to spirit refinement; his soul had endured many years of battle and torment in the underworld trial, strengthening his resolve and improving his willpower to a level unthinkable for an ordinary person.

Shamans cultivated their origin souls, the basis of their power stemmed from the origin soul and the soul space. What Deon had trained to a ridiculous extent was his precursor mortal soul. His mortal soul no longer existed after he became a shaman and transformed his soul into an origin soul, but even so, his experiences in the underworld still provided him with unseen benefits after his origin soul was developed and he became a shaman.

Superior fine control, concentration and endurance of the soul. These qualities were what allowed him to succeed on his second attempt at spirit refinement.

The origin energy he supplemented to the spirit was precise and well controlled. The small blood drop vibrated every now and then, but it eventually stabilised and glowed with a red light.

By now, everyone else in the class had already failed, including Remi. They turned towards Deon and looked at his spirit that was slowly floating upwards and out from the cauldron. Under everyone's shocked gazes, the blood drop absorbed the red light surrounding it with a flash, then suddenly distorted.

After this brief event, a translucent ball of green slime was left alone above Deon's palm, this was the dense muscle spirit. He smiled happily and nodded to himself, pleased that he had succeeded in creating the dense muscle spirit. With this, he could exchange for a spirit hall token, which would allow him to exchange for another spirit.

He intended to wait until he had completed the dense muscle spirit class evolution until he exchanged for a new spirit. If he accidentally destroyed his own dense muscle spirit, then he would exchange for a new one. Otherwise, he would take something else instead.

"Deon, incredible!" The teacher exclaimed with an ecstatic expression and wide eyes. As the teacher of spirit evolution at the academy, he was also an avid enthusiast in the area of spirit refinement. Aside from teaching the new generation of recruits, he also worked to evolve spirits, providing more higher ranked spirits for the military.

"Second try success! Someone like this only passes through the academy once every ten years! Most of the time this can be attributed to luck, but it still proves your talent in this area."

After saying this, the class was dismissed. Some people gave Deon words of congratulations as they walked by, which he accepted with a polite smile. Remi just scowled before storming off, making Deon smile wryly.

"Deon, do you know the full use of the academy tokens?" The teacher walked up to him and smiled brightly.

"Isn't it to exchange for one of the five basic spirits?" He blinked and replied.

Sustenance spirit, poison thorn spirit, rapid step spirit, iron skin spirit and dense muscle spirit, these were the five basic spirits in the Kingdom of Restari. The kingdom specialised in producing and obtaining these 1-Star spirits, making them the most widespread spirits found throughout the military.

"That is the basic function of the token upon which the token's value is based. Each of these spirits are of similar value, there are small differences but the academy rounds it out. The token's use is much greater than this though Deon, it can also be exchanged for resources used in spirit refinement, and for other spirits."

Hearing this, Deon's eyes brightened.

"What else can I obtain with the token?" He asked eagerly.

"One token is limited in what you can purchase. The reason I'm telling you about this matter, is because a single token can buy three 0-Star vital physique spirits along with the needed resources to evolve each of them into the 1-Star dense muscle spirit. This is the academy's way of allowing competent spirit refiners to continue practising."

A spirit refiner referred to a shaman specialised in spirit refinement. They often devoted their life to perfecting this art, even attempting to evolve brand new spirits that the world had never seen before. The teacher of this class was such a person who desired to create a new spirit.

Not all spirits existed in nature, some could only be produced by man as a result of artificially refining other spirits.

Deon immediately felt as if he had been gifted an incredible opportunity. If he could spend one token and buy three 0-Star vital physique spirits, then even if he wasn't confident in successfully refining all three, he had some confidence that he could succeed with two and a high amount of confidence that at least one would succeed!

Wasn't this an incredible chance to earn more spirits? From the sounds of things, the teacher was suggesting that he could buy even more spirits if he possessed enough tokens…

"What other spirits does the academy offer in exchange for tokens?"

"In exchange for tokens, you can purchase many 0-Star and 1-Star spirits as well as resources. It's standard procedure that when a student succeeds in their first spirit evolution, they are told this information and given a written catalogue of everything that can be bought with tokens. I must tell you not to divulge any of this information to the other students. The academy prefers to withhold this information until the student succeeds in their spirit refinement for the first time, since they believe that knowing all of this would only distract the students from their overall learning."

"I understand, I won't tell anyone." Deon nodded. Why would he bother going out of his way to help others like that anyway?

"Good. I'll provide you with the catalogue in class tomorrow, just arrive five minutes early, before anyone else gets to class."

With that, the two parted and went about their day. Deon did as instructed and arrived early the following day to receive the catalogue. He forced himself to hold back until the end of the day, only looking through the paper hand-written catalogue once he was back in his dorm room.

The value of one token was equal to the 1-Star basic spirits. The cheapest price of anything was a single token, with the most expensive costing ten tokens. It was probably because the academy didn't really expect the recruits to earn more than this that they didn't add anything more valuable to the catalogue. Most students would not buy anything worth more than a single token during their stay, since it was impossible for them to earn more unless they were extremely talented in spirit refinement.

There were three categories of items available for purchase; spirits, resources and spirit-resource packages.

The 'spirit' category referred to individual spirits. You could buy multiple 0-Star spirits for a single token, whilst it would cost between one and ten tokens for a single 1-Star spirit, depending on its value.

Resources were either sold by number or weight, the quantities varying largely.

Spirit-resource packages were 0-Star spirits that came with a set amount of resources, intended as a way for students to practice spirit evolution.

After seeing all of this, Deon immediately changed his plans. He decided that he would spend his token on the three 0-Star vital physique spirits with the suitable resources for the dense muscle spirit refinements.

There were other things in the catalogue that interested him too, mostly just the spirits, but also some resources. He first noticed that all of the ordinary class 1-Star body tempering spirits he needed were included in this catalogue.

Dense muscle spirit, one token. Iron skin spirit, one token. Steel bones spirit, two tokens. Metal tendons spirit, four tokens. Hardened organs spirit, eight tokens.

Deon understood each of these spirits quite well by now. The dense muscle spirit was used actively over a period of time to improve the muscles until the limit was reached. The iron skin spirit was expendable, burning to ash when activated and immediately toughening up the skin. The steel bones spirit and metal tendons spirit were used in a similar manner as the dense muscle spirit, though the steel bones spirit took much longer to fully utilise and the activation of the metal tendons spirit was far more painful. The hardened organs spirit sat in the soul space and passively improved the organs over a one year period.

Although it was possible for Deon to improve his internal talent by obtaining each of these spirits and using them, evolving them, using the higher class evolutions, and then repeating this process until all had been used at the mythril class, he was in no rush to do this. Something like evolving five spirits to mythril class was an ambition that most shamans would laugh at in this kingdom. Even though Deon possessed all the spirit refinement recipes for the body tempering spirits, Blood God had only given him enough resources to attempt the evolution of each spirit to the bronze class a single time.

As for everything else, he needed to rely on himself.

He was somewhat tempted by the hardened organs spirit. It took a full year to complete its effect on the body, so it made sense to obtain this spirit as soon as possible. Still, eight tokens was some way off. Besides, there were more important spirits that Deon would rather gather first.