Unwilling Reveal

"This…is this the intuitive language?"

Crash!

Deon suddenly leapt up to his feet and span around in a single motion, summoning the ancient demon spirit and forming a sword without hesitation. Just as Deon was about to stab forwards and slaughter his assailant, he paused.

"Damn kid, jumpy much?!" Terros took two steps back, with his widened eyes locked onto the blade tip. It took Deon a couple of seconds for his mind to clear up, then he quickly put the sword away and smiled apologetically.

"Sorry, but you shouldn't sneak up on people like that, haha." Deon laughed as he quickly kicked the 12 scattered books behind him.

Unfortunately, Deon was unable to hide them in time.

"I didn't 'sneak up on you', I knocked, then I even waited for a minute before coming in. More importantly, these books, they're written in the intuitive language, no? Where did you get all of these exactly?"

Deon sighed internally. He did not want to reveal these books to others, he knew that him possessing these things was suspicious and would entice others to investigate him. Not to mention that these books were probably extremely valuable…

Until now, the only person who knew that Deon possessed these books was Remi's great grandfather. Deon was willing to reveal the books to that old demon for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Remi's great grandfather had already realised that Deon was the inheritor of a powerful shaman after recognising that the ring on his hand was a spatial ring. Since this was the case, there was not much reason for Deon to hold back.

That old man understood the four languages of these books, allowing Deon to identify not only the books themselves, but also the languages that he needed to study in order to read them. If he had not shown Remi's grandfather those 108 book covers, Deon still wouldn't even know where to begin.

Perhaps others wouldn't dare to reveal something like this, but Deon had a huge appetite for risk. If there was something to be gained, he would almost always take the risk!

Revealing these assets to that old demon was a risk, but it was a risk that Deon was willing to take. He knew that the old man was stuck in a place far away from here, he would not be able to return in a short period of time. Deon did not plan to remain in this kingdom forever, he would hopefully be long gone by the time Remi's great grandfather returned.

Besides, Deon only revealed the book covers to the old demon, not the inner contents. Blood God only put a simple title on the covers of the texts he authored, he did not reveal his name or identity.

As Terros's gaze bore down on him with suspicion, Deon was unable to find a reasonable excuse. So, he simply did not answer, and instead, he decided to cautiously test the waters.

"You recognise the intuitive language? Can you read it?"

The middle aged man obviously saw that Deon was avoiding the question and rolled his eyes. Still, he gave an answer.

"This language is supposedly famous across the entire continent, though I have no idea if that's really true. I can read it well enough, but this…are these recipes? I'm shocked you can read intuitive language recipes with such a joyous and engrossed expression, they're notoriously arduous to decipher…" He looked at Deon strangely, pondering something as Deon remained guarded against him.

"Are all of these books filled with recipes?" Terros suddenly asked. Deon silently shook his head.

"But there are still plenty of recipes, right? Haha, I don't know what's inside these books, but I bet they'd sell for a good price at the annual auction!" The bearded king's eyes lit up with greed as he carefully scoured his gaze across the scattered books behind Deon.

"Recipe!" The burly man exclaimed as he recognised this word on a few of the book covers. "I may not be excellent at reading this language, but I know how to locate a spirit refinement recipe book when I see one! Wait…there are actually seven refinement recipe books?" His eyes suddenly widened and his face became less joking and more serious. He actually licked his lips, leaning forwards and reaching out with one hand, intending to grab one of the books as he seemingly forgot that Deon was still present.

Deon stepped between Terros and the books with a smile on his face.

"My apologies, but I will have to kill you if you attempt to take any of these books away." Deon stood in Terros's way with a smile that wasn't really a smile on his face. The middle aged king paused, grinning widely as he stood up straight.

"Oh? Think you can best me in a one on one? Haha, I don't believe so, nor do I think that you would overestimate yourself so much…meaning that these books must be truly valuable!"

"That, and if you try to sell these, the both of us will end up dead, I guarantee it." Deon stated plainly.

"What?" The bearded king thought Deon was kidding at first, but after seeing that serious and unyielding expression, he had second thoughts.

He rolled his eyes and took a step back.

"I'm not really going to sell your damned books…ahem, especially not if these are actually demonic inheritance scriptures from some notorious demonic figure, which is now seeming increasingly likely…"

Deon blinked. He didn't expect such insight, nor to hear someone say the words 'demonic inheritance'.

His mind whirred…had Terros worked out that he was a demonic inheritor? How come he saw through this but Shi did not? Were demonic inheritances common in this world? Were demonic inheritors hunted down?

That last one was definitely a yes, at least in Blood God's case. Blood God was so unanimously hated across the continent that if Deon carelessly showed these books to someone, he might be recognised and killed by some righteous powerhouse before he even knew that he was being targeted.

"But these books, these recipes…I get it now, this is where you obtained the refinement recipes for the spirits you keep producing!" The king's sinister expression took a 180 after thinking of something. He quickly turned to Deon and grabbed his shoulders. That greedy expression was still present, only now, it was directed towards Deon himself, whilst he completely ignored the books.

"Haha, I can't make use of these recipes and I don't want to sell something potentially dangerous like demonic scriptures, but you…you can actually make use of these things! You're able to refine these spirits, I know that for a fact! Hey hey, little friend Deon, how about becoming my business partner, how about it?"

Deon was speechless. He had never seen such a rapid change in attitude before! Deon was an expert when it came to forgetting past grievances, but this guy kept flipping back and forth, as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to befriend Deon, or to tear his throat out with his bare teeth!

"Hey, is that you in there Deon? Have you seen the Restari King around? He should be around here somewhere…"

Deon and the king suddenly froze. Deon's eyes shot back and out of the command tent towards Shi, who's figure he could see slowly approaching.

"Quickly, hide the books, or else she'll force us to split the profits with her, just to keep her quiet!" Terros urged Deon hastily.

Deon didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Profits? They hadn't even made a deal or come to anything close to agreement yet!

Sighing as he realised that he was being forced to show off yet another one of his secrets, he quickly crouched down, rapidly slapping each book with his hand, which was clad with an ordinary looking dark red ring. 12 flashes of light rapidly spread out from the ring, before Deon calmly stood up, just as Shi entered the tent.

The king's gaze towards Deon was screaming with a shocked questioning expression. However, he was a wisened demon with plentiful life experience, he quickly turned to face Shi and smiled.

"Suspicious." She immediately spoke with a frown.

"Huh?" The bearded king blinked.

"You never smile like that. Stop it, it's creepy, it's making me uncomfortable." Shi showed a disgusted look.

"Why just me? How come this brat doesn't get insulted?" Terros asked, looking slightly depressed.

"Because he's a child, and you're a middle aged man with excessive body hair?"

Deon wasn't sure what had happened between the pair, but they kept going back and forth for quite a long time.

'I'm pretty sure that Shi didn't talk to her employer like this the last time I saw her…they must have spent too much time together when they discussed the arrangements to be made before setting off.' Deon thought.

Naturally, with the Restari King and Shi absent from the kingdom, Terros needed to set up some preparations to make sure that his absence wasn't noticed, either by his internal opposition or by the Fan King.

After talking for a while longer, Shi finally departed, saying that she would wait for them to finish their 'suspicious conspiring chat'.

Terros stared for a while, tilting his head to peek past the tent entrance. After making sure that she was long gone, he turned to Deon and grabbed his shoulders.

"What the hell was that just now, where did the books go?!" He whispered aggressively whilst shaking Deon back and forth. Deon experienced Terros's full 2-Star dense muscle strength first hand. Even for him, this wasn't a negligible amount of strength.

"Eh?" Terros blinked and froze when Deon grabbed his wrists and slowly pushed him back with a wry expression.

"So strong! Did you use the 2-Star dense muscle spirit? No, that's not right, you've been attempting to use all of the 1-Star versions…wait, have you already used the mythril class versions?!"

Deon felt speechless that someone could get sidetracked so quickly. Well, he was glad to see it though.

"No, obviously not, mythril is way too expensive…"

"Oh, right." Terros nodded understandingly and fell into thought.

"We should be able to buy some in Flat Mount City. Heh, so long as you agree to do business with me, I'll even help you to source whatever you need for a reduced price! All you need to do is refine a bunch of those spirits, I'll handle the rest!"

Deon forced a smile. The refining was definitely the difficult part, but he obviously wanted to split the profits 50/50.

Though, if he really could get Deon discounted prices on everything he needed, whilst also dealing with the selling side things, then it might be worth it.

"Fine, I'll refine you some spirits to sell, but you need to keep the fact that I'm the refiner a secret….not that anyone would believe you."

"Of course, of course- hey wait a minute, I'm getting distracted! Tell me, what's up with that ring?"

Deon sighed, it seemed that he couldn't avoid explaining this matter, after all, he'd already shown it in action. Deon waved his hand, and then…

Whoosh…

The stack of 12 books appeared once again.

"This…is this a spatial ring?" Terros looked closely and asked uncertainly. He honestly couldn't see anything strange about this ring, it looked like a tacky trinket, like a roughly carved piece of rock.

Naturally, this was Blood God's intention.

"Oh, so you've heard of spatial rings? Your knowledge is surprisingly broad." Deon praised. He knew that spatial rings weren't common at all, nor were treasures in general, at least not in the 1-Star to 3-Star shaman world.

This was because treasures could only be refined by 4-Star and above shamans. And even then, not all 4-Star shamans possessed a treasure refining spirit.

"So it's really a spatial ring, incredible, I've never seen one before…"

Deon was worried that Terros would begin getting greedy and desiring this expensive ring, but the opposite actually occurred.

"Now I'm certain, you definitely obtained a demonic inheritance." The middle-aged man straightened up and glanced at Deon meaningfully.

Frankly, Terros no longer had a big enough appetite for risk to bother himself with a demonic inheritance. He knew that these inheritances came with no end of trouble, and most importantly, they could never be sold openly.