“16 dead ?!”, Yugimi couldn’t believe what he has heard.

“20 of you couldn’t catch a single boy? And what is this weapon that you are telling me.”

Yugimi was furious, it was not because he lost 16 men, he didn’t care for their lives. They were all just pawns. But he was angry that they sacrificed this many person and were unable to do any harm to that boy.

“Get me that man who contracted us to kill him first. He must know something about this guy,” Yugimi shouted to the men who were shivering in fright in front of him. These were the survivors from the group of men that had attacked Rober, only one man remained from the original five thugs who tried to kill Robert.

After bowing their head in respect, they went to find Isau. They were so angry that they could kill Isau if they got their hands on him now.

After the men walked out of the room, Yugimi walked into the fireplace and poured his energy into a crystal above it. And walked straight through the fire into a dark room, lit by a candle. The bald old man that had killed Riley was sitting there in meditation, near him there was a crystal bowl full of dark red blood. His right hand was forcing a sphere of blood into his vein in his left arm, which had been cut and bleeding.

Yugimi waited there not daring to disturb the bald man. After a minute, the man started shivering and skin pale white skin flushed, after suffering for a while, he stood up and gazing through the window into the stars of the sky.

“I can only take one more dose of this cloud wyvern blood before my vitality runs out,” he said in melancholy.

“I am not even sure if gaining affinity of another element was really worth losing my already diminishing vitality”, The old man was certainly contemplating his past choices when he said it.

“Gaining the bloodline of a spirit animal, only milord could accomplish it. All others we have tested on have surrendered to the poison without any resistance.”, Yugimi praised the old man.

He had seen the poison’s effect on normal people, they would get a high fever and die due to it. There was no way a normal human being be able to withstand the power of a spirit animals bloodline.

“What about the test subjects that I requested?”, The old man asked.

“I am arranging for them milord, you will have them by tomorrow. This time you will certainly succeed.”

“I hope I do, this body does not have any more vitality left. Unless I can absorb life force from someone successfully, only demise awaits me”

The man was thinking about that one last barrier that had been stopping him from absorbing the vitality of his test subjects. The phase where he had to infuse his soul into their body and do something. He found this method of absorbing vitality from a rune that he got his hands on.The runes were partially obscure and thus the only way for him to continue was to experiment constantly.

“Master, the payment for the last men that I delivered?”, Yugimi asked with a shameful voice.

“Here,” the man flicked his hands and a single spirit stone, shining with a blue core flew to Yugimi.

This guy is asking for a payment for delivering 10 men. What a pitiful state this Lord Yuuma has fallen into. I can’t step on North Eastly Empire as the whole army is chasing after me. I have to be careful on even this small country of Lorvale.

I think killing a million people for tests were a bit too much. But what can I do, having used up my vitality to infuse the bloodline of the Cloud Wyvern, I had no choice but to use this way to increase my vitality. And they were people that I owned. It was not like I abducted people from other nobles’ fiefs. It was the piece of land that I owned. The people I owned. And I was only an inch away from success if only I had a thousand more people to test on!

Yuumi let out a sigh. It seems that I will have to wait until my followers arrive.

What he didn’t know was that this so-called poison in the spirit animal blood was the antigens in the blood that human body fought against when entered into its bloodstream, and that a young man called Robert has already injected himself with spirit animal blood and didn’t even have a side effect.

The doctor that came to heal Robert was annoyed by the number of questions that were asked by the young man whom he was supposed to treat. Robert was asking away many questions that he had about the human body, trying to understand the source of magic power.

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He had to increase his power level as soon as possible, as he was already against powerful foes, and he was not sure how much power his future enemies would have.

He knew that magic cells carried the magic energy in the body, but he was still unsure of the source of the energy.

The doctor explained that heart was the source of magic and how meditation can help him control the energy inside the heart to compact it to increase someone's level.

When he asked about the structure of the heart, Sophy gave him a weird look. There he goes with his eccentric character. This guy is an alchemist and he is also trying to be a doctor now? With his skill in alchemy and weaponsmithing alone, he could have a prominent position in the society. It was not that Sophy was complaining, he was on her side anyway. The higher his skills are, she would benefit better from it.

Sophy was not just trying to get benefit from him, she had a feeling that this young man was going to be someone important. Someone in a much higher position than her in the future and wanted to be someone who stands beside him at that time.

The doctor also paused for a moment after hearing this question. But then explained it to him. The human heart in this world had 5 chambers, Two atria, two ventricles and the center Mysticle. Robert knew that in earth Heart had only 4 chambers, so he asked curiously about this Mysticle. The doctor explained it as a small pearl in between the four chambers, it contained all the magic energy of someone and thus was responsible for providing it to the blood.

This doctor had a bit of hesitation when Robert asked him about the mysticle and all, there were many who sought this knowledge for ill intends. But in Robert, the doctor only saw curiosity. It was like this man was a born scholar and had a curiosity for everything. And thus the doctor helped him quench his thirst for knowledge as much as possible.

Doctor grew a vine in his wound and its leaves covered the wound, It filled the room with a medicinal aroma. Robert was ordered to rest for three days before moving again. He decided to use this time to sense the Mysticle and how it contained energy. He could already feel the energy flowing through his blood streams and knew its concentration was most high in his heart.

After a few hours, he was able to feel his heart completely. He could clearly sense that there were five energy masses. The center one was like a lighthouse in the middle of an ocean, but the four others were like an ocean lit by thunderclouds. He could feel them contracting and expanding.

Concentrating on the Mysticle, he could feel that it was filled with energy. He tried to control the flow of energy and could easily do it. He felt like he can empty the whole energy into bloodstream if he wanted to.

This gave Robert the total understanding of how magic works. The Mysticle absorbed the energy from the universe and stored it. The magic cells in the blood chose the element and carried the energy to various parts of the body.

If he wanted to increase the magic power he has to increase the amount of energy inside Mysticle, and for using this magic efficiently he either needed more magic blood cells or blood cells that could carry more magic.

So he has to take a two-prong approach to his cultivation. He needed to find a way to increase the energy of Mysticle as well as get his hands on all elemental blood cells. He had read that there existed dragons and wyverns that could topple cities with their magic. If only he could get his hands on their blood.

For increasing the energy in Mysticle, he already had a plan when he found that he could control the energy inside it. He could convert the energy into matter! Just the way they used to do it in the particle accelerators. He theorized that if he could create mass, then it will form a cloud of matter which can be further transformed into a dense energy source by following the life cycle of stars and other celestial objects.

He named it "Celestial cultivation." It was the way the universe was formed, and if everything goes right, he can trample the heavens with this cultivation method.