Massacre Before War

The enemy's hesitation allowed Deon's soul refinement spirit to fully devour those 3 origin souls, though it didn't exactly take long. These 3 souls barely qualified as a snack to this spirit.

When left unbound by a shaman, the soul refinement spirit could only survive if fed a diet of origin souls. However, since Deon nourished this spirit with his origin energy, it instead used these 3 origin souls to strengthen itself, taking a tiny step closer towards the 2-Star boundary. To truly ascend into a 2-Star spirit though, not only would it require a substantial number of origin souls, but it also needed to successfully refine a 1-Star shaman into a spirit.

By comparison, the soul extraction spirit was much easier to advance. This spirit also consumed origin souls; 99 undamaged peak stage 1-Star origin souls would all but guarantee its successful ascension.

After feeding the soul refinement spirit these origin souls, Deon returned it to his soul space and turned to face the remaining soldiers. He held the ancient demon spirit in its sword form, but he didn't expect the soldiers to actually stay motionless for so long, refusing to take a step closer towards him!

With a shrug, he converted the sword back into a bow.

Chi Chi!

The crowd of soldiers were awoken from their stupor as 2 of their members dropped dead to the ground.

"Ah! He, he actually killed Reggie and Susana!"

"Damnit, that bow is too formidable, we're like sitting ducks at this distance!"

"Charge!"

Deon first targeted the early stage 1-Star soldiers, since he was still hoping to obtain the origin souls of the stronger fellows. There were 2 soldiers at the late stage in this group, they were prime targets. If he killed them from a distance with the bow form, the origin souls would dissipate before he could hope to extract them.

One of the late stage shamans was clearly the leader of this group and he was obviously more formidable than the rest. He remained calm from start to finish and didn't say a word. When he saw Deon reloading the bow by reforming an arrow from the retrieved black mist, he suddenly rushed forwards and pulled out 2 swords from the sheaths on his waist. The swords began glowing with a dull red light as he approached.

The other soldiers' eyes lit up. Although he was only at the late stage, Captain Harcon had actually killed a peak stage 1-Star enemy captain once! If he managed to reach the peak stage, he would definitely be one of the top contenders to become a full fledged commander at the next Fan Kingdom awards ceremony!

He rushed ahead of the pack just as Deon shot another arrow, taking out a pitiful early stage soldier behind him. The soldier let out a helpless cry, then Captain Harcon heard him spluttering painfully before falling down.

The enraged captain didn't hesitate to slash out twice with both swords in rapid succession. The first strike aimed at Deon's stomach, his goal was to make Deon lean forwards as he shifted his hips back to dodge. His second strike aimed towards where he anticipated Deon's neck would be after he moved.

But was Deon so easy to manipulate in battle?

Of course not! If there was one thing Deon had developed in the underworld trial, it was a keen sense for combat!

The captain's plans were instantly seen through by Deon. Deon played along at first, dodging the first strike by throwing his waist back and offering his neck forwards. The captain smirked confidently, but was shocked as this child suddenly stepped in close towards him. By the time he realised that he had been tricked, it was already too late for the captain.

CHI- CHANG!

"Peugh!"

Deon was too close to the captain, so the glowing red sword strike was completely unable to make contact with any part of him. Whilst the captain was helplessly thrown off balance by his missed attack, Deon's bow vanished, forming a knife that he immediately plunged forwards.

The captain was indeed quite impressive, at the last moment, he stepped back, narrowly avoiding the knife. What he failed to avoid was the knife's sudden and unexpected extension, transforming into a full fledged sword surrounded by a dark demonic aura. The sword shot forth, drilling a large bloody hole through his abdomen.

Deon remained still as the captain slumped forwards. He secretly activated the soul extraction spirit, for the first time using it on a living person rather than a corpse.

He obliterated the captain's liver, causing him to lose consciousness within seconds. With the internal damage and blood loss, he would be dead shortly. Deon extracted his soul during this moment of critical injury, when his opponent wasn't able to resist due to his terrible state.

If an opponent was fatally injured to the extent that their death was inevitable within a matter of seconds, it was possible to extract the origin soul whilst they were still alive.

Deon suddenly pushed the captain's dead body back towards the 3 horrified soldiers who caught him on instinct, not feeling time to regret their thoughtless actions as a black sword cut through 2 of their heads, then pierced the third's chest in the next instant.

Unfortunately he only had time to extract a single mid stage origin soul, but in the following battle, Deon managed to seriously maim the last late stage 1-Star soldier, along with the final mid stage soldiers. As for the remaining early stage soldiers, Deon killed one, extracted his soul quickly, then maimed 3 by cutting through their legs, leaving them rolling around on the floor, screaming out in bloody agony.

The last enemy tried to attack Deon from behind, but he was simply too slow. Deon span around, slicing through his neck and then quickly extracting his soul.

With all of the immediate enemies defeated, he quickly extracted the souls from the dead, before turning to the severely maimed and doing the same. He knocked all of those who remained awake unconscious, extracted their souls, then dispatched them by swiftly removing their heads.

By extracting the souls from those who were only severely maimed and not yet dead, their origin souls were harvested in perfect condition!

Deon fed the displaced lower quality origin souls to the soul refinement spirit as he went. Seeing him doing all of this whilst fighting was probably quite distracting for the Fan soldiers, but Deon didn't care if they saw his secret…because they were all now dead.

Aside from the key matter of the origin souls, Deon also remembered to collect his slain enemies' identification badges for the battle merit.

Finally, he glanced up and saw that he had indeed attracted too much attention, another 30-40 shamans, this time clearly organised into a serious formation, charged towards him from the Fan encampment.

He spent only a few seconds quickly searching through the spirits of his felled enemies, not expecting much. After all, even most of the spirits he looted from the peak stage 1-Star shamans during his solo battles in the upper region were barely worth anything to him.

Deon had accumulated too many merit points by now. Even if a spirit could be sold for 100 merit points, it wasn't even worth him taking, since unbound spirits were often a massive hassle to carry around.

However, a single spirit actually caught his eye, causing Deon to pause.

"Vice commander, please get back, the enemy is nearly upon us!"

Hearing the urgent call of his subordinates, who had finally arrived at the scene, Deon glanced in both directions, then back towards the slowly escaping spirit.

Without much thought, he grabbed the spirit and bound it, then began running back to the forest line at his greatest speed. The worried soldiers were stumped and realised that they needn't have worried…

Ten of the approaching enemy soldiers were riding out on horseback, but Deon was not much slower than these horses and far enough away that they were unable to catch up to him!

Deon now had 10 spirits bound to his soul space, his origin energy was unable to recover as it was drained. He needed to remedy this issue quickly, before the coming battle began.

As he ran, he unbound the moon river reed spirit, then quickly scanned his gaze across his approaching men.

He found a soldier with a canteen of mountain spirit water tied to his waist. Deon grabbed the canteen before the startled soldier could say anything, then threw his pitiful sum of 3 drop spirits to the ground before emptying half of the water and placing the moon river reed spirit into the container.

"Vice commander…" The soldier started to speak with a restrained bitter expression.

"I'll pay you back with interest once we return to camp, this gold class spirit is too valuable to discard, unlike 3 drop spirits."

The soldier immediately brightened up and agreed, apologising for his rudeness.

"No matter. Everyone, prepare for battle! The enemy's numbers our greater than our own, my estimate is between 100 and 120. However, I have already taken out 19 of the Fan dogs, including 2 elite late stage 1-Star shamans!"

Deon saw that although some peoples' eyes shone, others looked unsure.

"Vice Commander Deon…is it true that they have a 2-Star powerhouse?"

Everyone paled and broke out into discussion. Deon knew that Fenashi, the damned guy he sent back to camp, had blabbed about this in his shock. Tch…whatever, nothing ever went perfectly.

Despite being pressed for time and having just 20 seconds at most before the enemy was upon them, Deon stood up and faced his men from atop the forest hill. It was time to raise morale.

He grinned savagely, sending chills down the spines of all those soldiers staring up at him.

"You know…I have now killed over 25 peak stage 1-Star shamans single handedly. I've always wondered how I would fare against a newly ascended 2-Star shaman without any 2-Star spirits, since the battles within the realm of 1-Star are simply not interesting anymore. Haha, I suppose that against such a weak 2-Star shaman, this is the perfect time to test myself."

He paused for a moment under the stunned looks of his men. They didn't often see this savage side to the vice commander, not outside of battle at least.

The soldiers calmed down and comforted themselves somewhat, but Deon's following words were really what raised their morale from almost nothing, to an instantaneous shocking height!

"Of course, my victory is guaranteed, I simply wish to see how long it takes me to defeat this little Lieutenant of the Fan. Men!" He suddenly shouted that last word after coldly and calmly saying something really arrogant, yet something everyone instinctively believed.

"Move out! I expect no less than absolute victory! By the end of today, we will expand our camp's territory to encompass the Fan base camp ahead, as well as the hill-forest terrain! If you can't even do this much, then perhaps another training session is in order…"

"No! Anything but that!"

"Vice commander, I promise to slay at least 1 peak stage Captain!"

"Training he says…this battle suddenly seems less daunting all of a sudden…"

"For the Restari Kingdom! And for my life, which will definitely be extinguished if I have to go through anymore of that tort- training!"

Deon couldn't help but crack a smile. He had truly trained his men well.