Chapter 10 - Shaman Spirit Evolution
After everyone selected their spirits, life at the academy continued on. Around half of the class ended up selecting the dense muscle spirit, since they realised that they would be able to benefit from two spirits this way after using the dense muscle spirit and returning it months later.
As everyone from class sat together in the cafeteria for lunch a week later and discussed their progress, Remi Restari scoffed at the mention of the dense muscle spirit.
"Silly peasants, it's just a little dense muscle spirit. I used this spirit before even coming to the academy. Really, none of the spirits in that spirit hall are up to my standards, I-"
"Princess, could you be quiet and let us enjoy this?" A 20 year old man named Jophan said this and laughed. Remi blushed deeply after being interrupted and turned away with a harrumph. This only made more people laugh though. They really did seem to forget that she was a princess and that outside of the academy, she held the authority to have them all executed with a single order.
"Hey princess, why did you enter the military anyway? Wouldn't life in the palace be much more comfortable than this?" Jophan asked her curiously.
"Of course life in the palace is more comfortable, but…I want to prove myself. I want to prove to my father that I'm capable and that I can make a name for myself in the military. I will definitely rise above everyone else as the most talented person in the kingdom. I will show father and everyone else that I can excel with my own abilities!"
Nobody had expected such an intense and heartfelt response, so they fell quiet for a second.
"I guess life in the royal family is tough, huh." A girl with short blonde hair called Risa spoke. She was a noble herself, she looked at Remi sympathetically, understanding her struggle well.
"Well, being the best won't be easy. Take Deon for example, he's only ten years old yet he's already a mid stage 1-Star shaman!" Jophan exclaimed and shot Deon a glance.
Deon had been listening quietly and minding his own business, he didn't expect that he would be dragged into this conversation. He recognised that Jophan was actually one of the men he saw applying to the academy in district 5, so he supposed it was normal that he had been recognised. Being casually called out like this was still annoying though.
Everyone showed surprised expressions and the attention shifted towards Deon. Remi also looked stunned, she had not realised that this young boy was actually at the same level as herself!
"You…well, what core spirit did you use, what class is it, can it match up to mine, a gold class spirit?"
Hearing Remi getting flustered and trying to show off by putting down a boy younger than herself caused some of the older recruits to watch on in amusement, whilst the younger ones rolled their eyes. Deon's response was most definitely outside of their expectations though.
"It's rude to ask a shaman about their spirits, Miss Restari."
Polite, compared to Remi, this response was way too calm and polite! The contrast of the 15 year old princess standing up and pointing at him in agitation, whilst Deon only shot her an indifferent glance before continuing with his meal, stunned everyone into silence for a moment, before the table erupted into laughter.
"Haha, Deon is way more refined than you, Miss Restari!"
"I didn't expect you to be so well spoken Deon, haha, you said that so nicely yet it only made Remi look even worse!"
"Our class sure is interesting, huh?"
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…
Eventually they attracted the attention of the on duty guard and were told to shut up, but some people continued giggling quietly.
Later that day, Deon returned to his dorm room, which contained a desk, a bed and a simple bath. He sat down atop the bed and closed his eyes, then sank his focus into his soul space.
Within the soul space, he watched the dense muscle spirit for a moment, before urging it to begin activating. Using this spirit required intense active focus.
The moment the spirit was activated, the surrounding grey origin energy was drawn into the spirit, then a faint green mist was released. The mist left the soul space and permeated the muscles, gradually being absorbed by the muscles and strengthening them. This process wasn't painful, but it was extremely itchy and most people would be unable to endure for longer than half a minute at a time.
Deon calmly continued for a full ten minutes before his origin energy dropped to a low level and he was forced to stop. He didn't open his eyes though, instead choosing to actively refine the spiritual energy in the atmosphere in order to replenish his lost origin energy at a faster rate.
Origin energy would recover naturally as the origin soul recovered the depleted reserves, but spiritual energy could be consciously refined to replenish the reserves in order to speed up the process ten fold. Ten minutes later, Deon was ready to repeat the usage of the dense muscle spirit.
Other students at the academy could generally only tolerate using the dense muscle spirit for less than 50 half minute to one minute rounds each day. This added up to a measly total of 50 minutes each day at the very most, but usually even less time would be committed to this pursuit.
But Deon, he continued this cycle of using the dense muscle spirit, then recovering his origin energy, for a total of four hours each day. He would have liked to continue for longer, but between classes, physical training drills and using this spirit, he was thoroughly mentally exhausted by the time the sky turned dark.
The underworld trial tempered Deon's mental resilience, but now that he once again possessed a physical body, he was limited by the capabilities of his physical body and brain.
Most others were activating the dense muscle spirit for a half hour each day, but Deon was doing four times this at two hours of daily activation. This meant that his progress would be four times faster than others, who would usually require around ten months to make full use of this spirit.
Under Deon's strict regime, he would be done with the dense muscle spirit after two and half months.
He considered returning the dense muscle spirit after this, but in the end he decided to keep it. The reason for this was simple; he possessed the refinement recipe to evolve this spirit into the bronze muscle spirit!
As the prefix suggested, the bronze muscle spirit was the bronze class evolution of the dense muscle spirit. Not only did Deon possess the recipe for this evolution, but he even had the required materials.
Right, most of the materials provided to him by Blood God were those used to evolve the body tempering spirits. Since the constitution of Deon's body allowed his internal talent to grow via the usage of the body tempering spirits, Blood God set Deon up to begin his journey along this path.
As for the process of evolving a spirit, Deon read through the texts, but he was still unclear on a few details. He hoped that this would be covered in the military academy classes.
Time passed by quickly and Deon was beginning to wonder if training in evolving spirits was actually included in the academy's syllabus. His worries were cleared a month later, when they had their first class on spirit evolution.
The students all sat in rapt attention, hanging on the teacher's every word as he explained the process of spirit evolution clearly.
"There are two types of spirit evolution; rank evolution and class evolution. Evolution requires the shaman to be at least the same rank that the spirit is evolving into. For example, only 2-Star shamans are able to evolve a 1-Star spirit into a 2-Star spirit. The evolution process and requirements are different for every spirit, but most require that a mixture of ingredients and origin energy be injected into the spirit in a certain way. Typically, shamans use a cauldron to achieve this, the process of evolving a spirit using a cauldron is known as spirit refinement…"
As the teacher went on, Deon compared the teachings to what he understood from Blood God's own guidance. To describe the process of spirit evolution was a bit complex, it was easiest to use a simple example.
To evolve the 1-Star dense muscle spirit into the 1-Star bronze muscle spirit, the spirit needed to be submerged in a cauldron of molten bronze metal at a precise temperature. As the spirit absorbed the bronze essence, a concoction of herbs and other metals were thrown in at appropriate times to help stabilise the process. If the spirit was able to absorb all of the bronze essence without exploding, then the evolution would be successful.
When evolving spirits, there was a high chance of failure which would often result in damage or even the complete destruction of the spirit. The core spirit had a greater resistance against this damage, but it was also much more difficult to successfully evolve the core spirit. Trying and failing to evolve the core spirit could even result in severe injury to the shaman themselves.
It wasn't uncommon for shamans to die whilst attempting to advance to a new rank. This was because once a shaman reached the peak stage, it was necessary to evolve their core spirit into the above rank in order to raise their own shaman rank.
A shaman's rank was directly tied to their core spirit.
As for Deon's core spirits, the ancient demon spirit's method of evolution, it was…unconventional.
The ancient demon spirit could only increase its rank by killing. Only by engaging in slaughter with the demon formed sword could the spirit absorb the aura of death and ascend to greater heights. Of course, since it was Deon's core spirit, it was impossible for it to evolve higher until Deon himself became a peak stage 1-Star shaman.
Truthfully, this was the other reason that Deon had joined the military. Where else could he kill so wantonly without suffering from the repercussions of his actions?
Just thinking about what was to come put an excited smile on Deon's face.