Vital Flower Spirit

A moment of silence followed. Deon stood alone in the cave and quietly looked down at all the bloody corpses, enemy and ally alike.

His reason for doing all of this was for the spirit at the back of the cave. This was a rare spirit that only grew on mountains, it was a spirit that any shaman would covet.

1-Star vital flower spirit.

The vital flower spirits existed from 1-Star through to 6-Star, they were actually all platinum class spirits. This spirit was expendable, it could only be used one time, but it had the miraculous effect of increasing a shaman's life span!

The 1-Star vital flower spirit could increase a shaman's life span by up to 10 years. The younger one was when they used this type of spirit, the closer to 10 years they could have added to their lifespan. These years would be lived at their current vitality, meaning they would spend this number of extra years living at their current physical age.

For Deon, using this spirit now would give him the full 10 year effect. The effect would begin to decline once a human reached 15 years old, then drop further and faster from 25 and onwards…if an old man used this spirit, they might only gain another 3 years of life.

He knew just how rare this spirit was and also knew that nobody would ever sell this type of spirit. Whilst the military could certainly provide him with some merit points for this contribution, how could anything be better than more life?

When Deon first saw this spirit just a minute ago, his first thought was, 'is it alright for me to take this, or should I hand it over to the military?'

It was at this moment that he came to a realisation; unknowingly, he had been sucked into the system, if only by a tiny bit. Whilst he wouldn't fall for their righteous charade of honour and glory, Deon had unknowingly started to entertain the idea that perhaps, teamwork and supporting one another was the superior way to progress as a shaman.

But this...was the mindset of the righteous path!

This was absolutely not his intention! Deon immediately felt as though a thin and hidden veil had been lifted as soon as this thought entered his mind.

Shamans could be simply defined by two paths: the righteous path and the demonic path. The righteous path were those that loved to talk about justice, honour, respect, compassion and so on. They believed that life was meaningless without community, they believed that it was right to obey rules and to follow the system. They believed that the good of the community came above that of the individual, or at least so they claimed. In the end, the true core of the righteous path was the idea that shamans should support one another in order to progress.

As for the demonic path, whilst many in the righteous path considered these people to be 'evil', demonic practitioners would scoff at such a ridiculous label. They disdained the concept of morality and believed that the only truth in this world was strength. Demonic practitioners were lonely people and for this reason they were far less common. Particularly in a mortal nation, a 'demonic path shaman' was basically unheard of, someone like this would be treated in the same way that serial killers were treated on earth…as evil, insane and scum.

Truthfully though, without backing, it was difficult to train as a shaman. Without companionship, it was difficult to live as a human.

But Deon knew deep down, that he was a demon through and through. He may be living in society amongst the so called 'righteous' right now, but the only reason that he had entered this kingdom in the first place was so that he could obtain knowledge and resources.

So now that one of the most precious and desired resources in this world was in front of him, why was he still considering the military rules?!

When he thought about it, Deon realised that he had become distracted by those around him, he had become sucked into their ideal of teamwork, if by only a little bit. The moment this frightful realisation hit him, Deon was able to crush it before it spread any further.

And so, he slaughtered everyone. He allowed Vanna to be killed by the enemy, so there would be no suspicion there later when people came to investigate. As for Benji, Deon killed him with an enemy rifle. He wiped his finger prints from the rifle, then gently placed it on the ground, close to the soldier's body.

Deon knew that he was taking a risk here...but risk was the way of the demonic path!

Now that all was done, he needed to work quickly. With the mist of the military's principals removed from Deon's mind, everything became clear and he saw that this situation was both a time bomb and a treasure trove.

He didn't immediately use the vital flower spirit, but first, brought a different spirit out from his soul space.

The black vortex span in its centre and grey tendrils floated around the circular vortex slowly. This was the soul extraction spirit.

Wasn't part of the reason that Deon wanted to go to war, exactly so that he could obtain souls using the soul extraction spirit?

If he could obtain 99 1-Star origin souls, then he could use these souls to refine a unique 1-Star spirit from a 1-Star shaman!

Swoosh!

Deon held the vortex close to Benji's corpse. Benji had only just died less than a few seconds ago, so his origin soul was yet to fully dissipate. A black light surrounded Benji's body, then a faint and extremely weak golden figure which vaguely resembled Benji was dragged out from his body and forced into the vortex. A second later, the soul extraction spirit returned to its previous state.

If Deon had acted just a moment later, Benji's origin soul would have dissipated.

Anyway, Deon could now feel that Benji's origin soul was being kept within the soul extraction spirit in a sort of stasis, allowing it to continue existing, despite not really living.

After looking around at the remaining corpses, Deon sighed. All of these people were killed too long ago, their origin souls had certainly dissipated by now. Higher ranked shamans' origin souls could survive for slightly longer after their death, but 1-Star shamans were simply too weak. Really, the best way to obtain origin souls would be to seriously maim someone and extract the soul as they died, but it was already too late for this.

Thinking this, Deon stopped worrying about anything else and dashed towards the vital flower spirit. He glanced back at the cave entrance as he moved, only relaxing after seeing that it was still clear.

The gun shots and yelling had been too loud earlier, he was certain that this would attract the attention of the nearby groups underneath Captain Dan. They could arrive at any moment, so he needed to hurry.

The vital flower spirit was a small flower no larger than a daisy, only it glowed with a faint golden radiance. The flower could only be bound directly, picking the flower would result in its immediate death. The vital flower spirits only formed naturally in mountains, they could be neither manufactured nor evolved artificially, this was the reason for their scarcity.

Deon stretched out his hand and injected his origin energy into the flower. A grey mist slowly wrapped around the flower, before filling the spirit and dragging it into Deon's soul space.

"Captain, I think there's a cave up ahead!"

"Shit." Deon cursed. He had no time to activate the spirit right this second, he still had something he needed to do before his unit arrived.

If they were to arrive and find that Deon was basically uninjured besides a few minor cuts and bruises whilst everyone else was dead, they would certainly be suspicious.

He sighed as he thought about what he was about to do, but still rushed forwards and picked up the sword of a fallen Fan soldier.

Deon gritted his teeth, then plunged the sword into his stomach. He watched with wide eyes as the sword pierced into his body, then slowly pushed it further in whilst trying to remain silent.

He had studied the human body thoroughly and was confident that he could avoid damaging any major organs using this thin sword blade. Being stabbed directly through the abdomen should be good enough, and there were plenty of shamans with healing type spirits in the 37th unit, so the chance of dying was non existent.

The chance of being caught and executed horrendously was much greater if he did not do this.

Deon pulled out the sword and involuntarily gasped. His vision became blurry as the pain filled his body, but he still managed to carefully lay the sword back in that soldier's hand, before he dropped to the floor.

As he lay there on the ground, he still wasn't content to rest just yet.

His consciousness was fading away, his vision was already blurry, but Deon still forced himself to activate the vital flower spirit. The spirit glowed brightly within his soul space, the golden light spread out until it wrapped around his body. This glowing only lasted for a single second, then dispersed as if its had never been there in the first place.

Soon after, Deon saw the outlines of some soldiers moving into the cave.

"Shit, are they all dead?!"

"Check everyone's vitals, there might be some survivors!"

"Captain, I think that Deon is still breathing!"

"Quickly, heal him! He doesn't look good, be fast!"

Hearing this, Deon could finally close his eyes to rest. With the use of a healing spirit, he was absolutely certain that he would make a full recovery. The group had likely seen his weak looking body bleeding out and panicked, but if they actually took the time to assess his injuries, they would realise that his life wasn't in much danger even without the use of a healing spirit.

The blood loss was very much real though, combined with the accumulated exhaustion from the battle and Deon's spontaneous plan, he was thoroughly knackered out and contentedly fell asleep to the screams of his grieving comrades.