Mass Spirit Refinement

Lieutenant Shi watched with a pale face as Deon spent the remainder of the day refining the same 1-Star spirit time and time again. In the end, after 13 attempts, he successfully refined 10 spirits. As was the agreement, he handed over these spirits to the lieutenant to pass on to the kingdom.

Deon used only 13 sets of resources to refine these spirits, even though the kingdom had gifted him with 50 sets of resources! He had made a big profit this time!

The refinement for the second of the 6 spirits was slightly more difficult, he failed on the first attempt, but succeeded soon after. Overall, he took 15 attempts to achieve 10 successes.

Deon refined 10 spirits each day, fulfilling the complete quota that he promised in the agreement within a single week.

"Success." Deon smiled and held the small grey pebble in his hand. This was the 'iron shield spirit', an immobile defensive spirit that formed a layer of light around the user. The shield was highly reinforced and as strong and durable as iron.

The spirit was refined from the living stone 0-Star spirit.

The 0-Star spirit was covered in molten iron and then mixed with various red, blue and green herbs.

Deon made a mistake when he first attempted to form a vortex with the various herbs, but he still managed to recover the situation without ruining the refinement, continuing to maintain the vortex until a type of powdered glass was thrown into the cauldron. This wasn't normal glass, but the glass wing from a weaker 1-Star demonic beast; the vampiric fly.

By heating the cauldron to extreme temperatures, most would find it difficult to control the vortex properly, but Deon had almost no problems with this.

After maintaining the vortex for another 40 minutes, a red yuan berry was thrown into the centre of the vortex. The 0-Star spirit absorbed the berry's energy when the spirit and stone collided at a particular angle. If the angle of the collision was even a single degree out, then the refinement would immediately break down, resulting in an explosive backlash.

Deon avoided failure, showcasing his skill once again. The collision caused the vortex to transform into a floating sphere of molten fluid, cocooning around the spirit for 3 hours, before it reemerged in its new form; a small, smooth pebble. This was the iron shield spirit.

It was certainly the most difficult of the 6 refinements, but even so, Deon managed to succeed on his first attempt! This was partially due to luck, but his skill undeniably played a big role in his high rate of success.

After a total of 18 attempts, he succeeded 10 times. He felt that he could still improve further, so he refined another 10 iron shield spirits, this time only requiring 16 attempts.

At this moment, Deon realised that perhaps he should optimise his skill with every spirit refinement, before moving on to the next. After all, with every refinement he perfected, his skills only became more impressive.

Lieutenant Shi was supposed to leave after monitoring him for one week, but she ended up staying for a full month, speechlessly watching as Deon not only completed those 6 refinements 10 times each with countless materials to spare, but then continued to perfect his method, until he felt his progress slow down to a crawl.

"What a weird bird…" Deon muttered tiredly as he stared into the sky absentmindedly, almost falling over when he finally exited his tent.

"Commander, there's nothing there…you really should get some sleep." Lieutenant Shi smiled bitterly.

Deon blinked, then rubbed his eyes, realising that he was actually so sleep-deprived that he was starting to hallucinate. He may have overdone it a bit since he didn't sleep for a full week whilst perfecting those refinements.

He handed over any spirits which were useless to him to the lieutenant, telling her to just add however many merit points to his tab.

'I'm not being treated like a lieutenant at all! Hah…well, he's not being rude either though. Compared to those old grandpa's ordering me about all the time, Deon's still nicer to be around.' Lieutenant Shi thought.

When she returned 2 weeks later with many of the things that Deon had requested, she was relieved to find that he had calmed down slightly with his refinement practice.

Now, rather than refining spirits for 20-22 hours every day, he only refined for a meagre 12 hours each day, then spent 6 hours training with his body tempering spirits, and finally spent 4-6 hours managing the camp.

Now and then, he also ventured out of the camp to hunt and kill…he always went alone, he always found someone to kill.

Deon was only hunting enemy 1-Star shamans. These shamans were no longer very useful for progressing his ancient demon spirit, but he was still able to extract their origin souls, improving the average quality of the souls contained within the soul extraction spirit.

On top of that, Deon was simply keeping his skills sharpened.

"C-Commander, do you even sleep?" Lieutenant Shi asked weakly. Whenever she visited, he was awake, no matter the time. For instance, right now, she didn't expect him to be awake and training with the body tempering spirits before the sun had even risen for the day!

Deon blinked and looked up.

'She was still here? I always forget, since her presence is so quiet and timid. Weird for a lieutenant. Hmm…'

Deon was brought out from his musings when he remembered that the lieutenant was still awaiting his answer.

"I sleep for 2 hours every 3 nights, but I meditate for an hour on the days I don't sleep."

"H-huh?! Th-that's can't possibly be enough!" She cried out.

"Indeed, in the past, it wouldn't be sufficient. But who would have expected that one of the evolution recipes I bought from the catalogue was the shining bed bug spirit!"

"Shining bed bug…" She muttered, but then her eyes widened in realisation. "Wait, there's a class evolution for the bed bug spirit? I had no idea…also, I didn't expect that you would actually use that sort of spirit…"

"Well how else would I work so much and sleep so little? This spirit is way better than people give it credit for, it not only reduces your need for sleep, but improves your waking energy, focus, concentration and motivation levels significantly too! I hope there are higher classes of this spirit, it's really incredible."

Lieutenant Shi looked doubtful, until Deon casually threw her one of the new shining bed bug spirits. She hesitated, but ended up binding it after convincing herself that she was just trying it out to better understand her target of observation.

After keeping this spirit for 2 weeks, she finally understood why Deon loved the bed bug spirit so much.

"You were right, it really does increase your motivation and boost your ability to focus! I feel more energetic, less sleepy, and all-around better! And I can easily get all my work done with time to spare these days since I don't need to sleep nearly as much!"

"Ah, so you get it! Good, good. I've finished creating a few of these, so I'll be relying on you to sell them again. Oh right, I also need the materials on this list."

The lieutenant was more energetic than usual and agreed happily. She scanned the list of 206 materials, but only recognised 60-65 of them at most. Deon had ordered them from most to least important, along with the price range he was willing to pay for each. He also grouped some materials together, pointing out that he needed all of them, or else there was no point in getting any of them.

Without caring to hide it so devoutly at this point, Deon sent off a list with enough materials to refine the standard body tempering spirits 100 times each, then enough for 50 of each bronze class refinement, 25 of the silver class refinements and 10 of the gold class refinements.

When she returned, Lieutenant Shi wore a bitter expression.

"I followed your instructions, there were no problems…until you ran out of merit points."

"I did?" Deon blinked. Well, that was a first. "All right, I'll just sell some things, like the spirits I refined during this past weak."

"That…" She looked through them and calculated quickly. Lieutenant Shi forced a smile.

"There's so many of them that it adds up to 123,650 merit points. For one week of work, that's amazing, but even so…"

"Not enough?"

"No…if you want to pay with merit points, it will cost you 39 million just for those last 36 ingredients in the quantities you requested."

"Hmm…" Deon glanced at the apologetic lieutenant, then looked at the materials before him and pondered. Whilst she had managed to procure most of what he needed, he still lacked many crucial ingredients for the gold class spirits.

In the end, Deon sighed…some of the resources were simply too valuable, but the main problem was that many of the necessary materials were not native to the region.

Anyway, it seemed that there was nothing else for it. Remi still hadn't returned after all these weeks, so-

"De- sorry, Commander Deon!"

"Perfect timing!" Deon whipped his head around and laughed happily when he saw Remi, who had finally returned after being away for so long. However, he saw bags under Remi's eyes, she was clearly both stressed and exhausted.

"Remi, what happened exactly?" Deon asked with a frown.

"Ah, that…well it, I was talking about that matter for a while, and it, ah, it dragged on…I only wanted to discuss it with imperial father, but somehow, without either of us noticing, imperial uncle happened to eavesdrop and spread the news throughout his, ah, what was it the word, you know, it's-"

"Remi, use this." Deon cut Remi off, preventing her from rambling any further as he stuck out one hand, offering her a spirit.

She stared down at Deon's hand blankly, but in her half-asleep daze, she did as instructed. For a moment, she continued staring dully, but then she frowned. She closed her eyes, before looking up and sighing.

"Thanks, but…what spirit was that?"

"Shining bed bug spirit, the bed bug's bronze class evolution. It helps keep you energetic and alert. Also, you can skip sleep and still feel great!" Lieutenant Shi explained with an enthusiastic grin.

"It sounds like a sketchy drug when you put it like that…" Deon mumbled.

"Huh, so the bed bug spirit can be useful like this, I never realised…" Remi muttered absentmindedly, before remembering the matter at hand and quickly looking up. Rather than tired, she now looked anxious.

"Commander Deon, I rushed here as fast as I could to tell you - ah, I'm sorry, it really is my fault - but you need to go, now!"

"What, why?" Deon furrowed his brows.

Just what had thrown Remi into such a fluster?