Preparations

Angry Sun felt her blood freeze in her veins when she heard the youth in front of her laugh.

His eyes shined with a profoundly devious light and for a moment she perceived an insane killing intent permeate every single corner of the room.

It only lasted a moment though and then the youth's eyes returned to their calm and gentle appearance. The killing intent also vanished without leaving any trace.

Angry Sun gulped, trembling. Not because of the cold, but because she realized that she had highly underestimated the Summoner. Her eyes started to shine with a strange light.

"How does one join the forces of Mysterious Light?" asked suddenly Sif with a slight smile on his lips.

The Fighter responded immediately."Joining one of the two factions is very simple: it suffices to go to their camps on the Third Level and obtaining a War Token."

Sif nodded, it wasn't that hard then. He just needed to show up and take a token. "I see... well, then you are dismissed." he randomly waved with his hand, causing the door of the pagoda to start to open.

The woman didn't move. She pointed at him and puffed her chest. "Now give me back my sword and armor!"

Sif looked at her with a concerned look in his eyes: did he beat her up too much and caused her to become a retard?

"Go away before I beat you senseless again." he admonished her while ordering Luna to start closing up on the woman.

Angry Sun looked at the bat, moving on her four towards her and an ugly expression appeared on her face. She pointed at Sif, screaming. "If you want to work for Mysterious Light, you will need to join a group of operation! The quests for groups are much more rewarding than those for single people!"

Sif shrugged his shoulders. "Ok, I will keep this in mind. Now go!"

"You idiot!" The woman eyes fired up with fury. "Do you think that people would just take a random stranger in their group?"

The bronze-skinned youth rolled his eyes. Who cared? He wasn't actually going to join a group. He was basically a silver ranked summoner! He didn't need a group!

Seeing that the youth in front of her didn't seem to care about joining her party, Angry Sun gave him a last furious look before moving towards the open exit.

Sif observed her running out from the pagoda, his eyes filling of appreciation. She definitely looked better than Blue. It was a pity that she was too much strong.

However Blue was also a summoner, so her body was as weak as his. Having a relationship with someone like that was ok.

Angry Sun? No matter what, he definitely would never allow someone that could break his neck with a simple gesture to get inside his Energy Shield.

"What a shame... I like her temper" Said the youth used the arrays of the pagoda to close the door.

He picked up the token from the Eagle Paradise Pond and looked the various beauties available. After a moment of thinking, he decided to not call for some company.

Not because he didn't want it or he didn't have the money. Simply he realized that there was something more important to do now that he had decided to go to war.

'What a fucking nuisance...'

The leader of the two powers that were fighting were only Gold Rank Summoners.

This meant that in the battlefield he would encounter only bronze ranked and silver ranked summoners at most. As for Fighters and Great Fighters, he could easily deal with dozen of them at the time.

Even so, it was always better to be prepared for everything.

He used the Token to ask for a Fire Stone, some Vitality Ash and a bottle of wine. He also inquired about the next scheduled trip of the Level Elevator.

'One week, uh? That should be enough time.'

A young man delivered the wares he bought in a couple of minutes.

Sif payed 3 bronze coins for the Fire Stone and two bronze shard for a kilogram of Vitality Ash and a small gourd bottle of wine, before returning to his room.

He put away the vitality ash in his spatial treasure and focused on working on the Fire Stone.

It was a rectangular piece of red stone. On the extremity of the rock, there was a very simple array that activated and deactivated the stone each time it was operated.

Sif sat on the cold ground next to it and he sent a flicker of green energy on the activating array. The runes around the rock started to hum and then a strong heat began to come out from the stone.

The youth waved his hand, causing a violet flower and a long vine filled with thorns to appear from his spatial treasure. With his Willpower he took control of them midair and started moving them towards the stone.

Sif continued to manipulate the two herbs over the fire for several minutes, until they became an unrecognizable brownish mush. The air in the room started to stink with a very peculiar strong odor that came from the substance hovering on top of the Fire Stone.

The youth smirked with satisfaction, examining the brownish mush. Agony Inducing Poison. A very simple substance that could be made in thousands of different ways and with very basic ingredients. It caused extreme pain on the victims, even causing them to lose consciousness and die if it wasn't treated.

The only problem was that such a poison was useless against Rank 4 and higher Fighters. The amount of vitality inside their body was enough to immediately neutralize it. Even rank 3 Fighters were able to get rid of it if they focused on expelling it for a couple of hours.

This was one of the two reasons why it wasn't used so much. The other one being the strong smell that made it impossible to one to not realize that a weapon was coated with the substance.

"Now the real work begins…"

Letting the mush hover on top of the Fire Stone, Sif picked up the small bottle of wine and drank all of it in one single sip. Then he waved his finger and the brownish mush flew inside the gourd bottle.

He then took a couple of minutes to gather a small sliver of Curse Energy. Once he finally managed to create a sliver of dark Curse Power he sent it inside the bottle.

Sif's eyes narrowed, while he began to use carefully the Curse Energy's corruption powers to destroy the strong scent inside the brown mush.

It took him an entire day to completely eliminate all the scent. He then activated the Fire Stone a second time and used it help himself fuse the Curse Energy inside the Agony Inducing Poison.

This took even more time: two full days, passed slowly fusing the dark energy and the poison. The result was a dark-colored muddy liquid, with no scent whatsoever.

"Agony Inducing Hex, completed."

A dangerous smile shined on Sif's face. The Agony Inducing Hex had been one of his first creation, back when he started to understand the potential of his Curse Energy.

Not only it affected Great Fighters, but it was also incredibly hard to expel!

Thanks to the Curse Energy's unique properties, more power one used to expel the hex, the harder it became to get rid of it.

The only way to get rid of it was to use medicine or wait until the Curse Energy dissipated when it didn't find anything to feed on.

Sif sealed the small bottle of wine and stored it away.

He sent his consciousness towards the Red Eyed Crow, checking on the advancement of the creature. He immediately could tell that the creature wasn't in danger of disappearing anymore and it was rapidly regaining its former power.

"Fire, Darkness, Earth and Illusion?"

He could feel several elements sitting in the creature's Soul Root, next to the Curse Power that he had implanted inside of him. It wasn't very common for a single beast to have so many affinities.

"Earth and Fire are the stronger… Darkness came next and then there are some traces of Illusion… what a peculiar beast…"

He truly didn't know much about this Red Eyed Crow. He never heard of a similar beast in all his years as Summoner. If his spatial treasure didn't recognize it, he would have considered it a mutation of some kind of crow species.

After making sure that everything was going well with his Silver Ranked Beast, Sif focused back on himself. He sent the Fire Stone inside the immense storage space of his Metal Scrap and retrieved a large mass of black colored stones.

"Vitality Ash."

It was a very strange natural treasure that existed only in the Ashen Grotto. Those black stones contained an incredible amount of life energy, making it incredibly valuable for Fighters.

Sif knew some basics about how Fighters trained, it was such a popular Path of Cultivation that most people in the Northern Coast knew a few things about it.

However he never actually walked the path and he thought that having some advice on how to do so wouldn't be that bad.

The youth took out a small red book from his pockets. It was the red book that he traded for the black blade together with the silver coin and the metal scrap.

The latter two had revealed themselves to be quite useful, but the red book was written in such bad calligraphy that he could only read small parts of it.

He had already started to examine the various pages of the manuscript and there were many things that looked like exaggerations and that Sif couldn't believe were possible. However, there were also some explanations that made sense.

If he had to evaluate it, he would say that 70% was bullshit and the rest was true.

Sif pointed the book towards the flying treasure that hovered around him. "Scan this, I cannot read most of it… the calligraphy is just awful."

[Scanning.]

[ Adding a new entry to Library]

[Decripting, 5% completed... continue in the background?]

"Yes"

Sif sent his consciousness towards the library. His face darkened when he saw the title of the new file. What "Greatest Cultivation Manual of the World?" this was just a version of the Song of Honor!

"Change the name of this shit to Song of Honor!" ordered the youth.

[Entry's name changed.]

The youth started to skim the first pages that had been already decrypted. He rapidly found what he was looking for.

"Sensing, Gathering, and Manipulation of Life Energy... I can skip this... here we go, First Stage: Opening the Meridians!"

The Song of Honor was dived in several stages, each containing 3 steps.

The First stages allowed the user to understand how to open his meridians, using them to circulate Life Energy around the body.

Those who could open at least one Meridian were called Rank 1 Fighters.

Although he didn't care much about becoming a Fighter, Sif had to come to terms with the fact that a stronger body meant more safety. He didn't want to lose his main body again.

The youth looked towards the large number of black rocks on the ground before him. "I think with all this Vitality Ash I can force myself to rank 2 even..." he murmured, searching for the fasted method of cultivation between the various proposed by the red book.

There were several breathing methods to rapidly absorb Life Energy from a Vitality Ash. Some looked like something that actually worked, others were absolutely ridiculous.

There was even a description of a small rune that the writer swore could help to automatically open the various meridians if powered by enough Life Energy.

"Interesting".

Sif focused on examining the rune. It was a shame that his understanding wasn't enough to tell him if it could actually work or was complete nonsense.

"Can you analyze this?" he asked the spatial treasure.

[No Rune Auxiliary System Detected. ]

The youth didn't look too much saddened. He already knew that without an Array Auxiliary System, he didn't have much hope of obtaining a positive answer.

"We can only try it then... so let's do so"

There was no harm in trying. He picked up a small portion from the Vitality Ash and used it to draw a fairly simple rune on his arm.

"Let's see"