Chapter 11 - Spirit Refinement

The practical lessons on spirit evolution used 0-Star spirits as the target of their practise. The aim was for the shaman students to evolve these 0-Star spirits into 1-Star spirits.

They were beginning with what was considered the most simple and straight forward of all spirit evolutions; evolving the 0-Star vital physique spirit into the 1-Star dense muscle spirit.

The 0-Star vital physique spirit was the most common spirit used as the core spirit by shamans in the Kingdom of Restari. In fact, it was also one of the most popular choices throughout the spirit continent, mostly owing to the simplicity of its production and the broad knowledge surrounding its evolution. Whilst using a higher class spirit as the core spirit could provide the shaman with greater strength, it could also be difficult to advance further.

Whilst the 0-Star vital physique spirit had the potential to be evolved into any of the 1-Star body tempering spirits, when used as the core spirit, it would instead become the 1-Star vital physique spirit. There were no known methods to form this 1-Star vital physique spirit outside of the shaman ascension.

The 0-Star spirit had the appearance of a large blood drop, it was an inch tall and swaying from side to side in the still air. It had no intelligence and wouldn't even put up resistance when being bound, this was another reason why it made a good choice for the core spirit.

Spirits were mysterious and illusive creatures that formed under certain natural or artificial conditions. As for the 0-Star vital physique spirit, it formed naturally over time in areas that were stained with large volumes of human blood.

The Kingdom of Restari mass produced this spirit by buying human blood donations from citizens throughout the kingdom, then storing the blood in large containers and waiting. Eventually, spirits would form within these containers. The spirits would then be removed and kept in a warehouse.

This method was a bit gruesome, yet it wasn't considered 'demonic'. It only used the blood of willing donors and nobody was harmed during the process. Compared to actual demonic methods, this was really nothing much.

The class made their way across to the equally spaced cast iron cauldrons and waited for the teacher to begin his instruction. They had already been introduced to this evolution process, but they were yet to attempt it for themselves.

"Now, before we all begin, I have an interesting incentive to motivate you all to work hard. If anyone is able to successfully refine the dense muscle spirit within their first 3 attempts, then they will be allowed to keep the spirit or to exchange it for another spirit at the spirit hall." The teacher spoke these enticing words.

"Really?!"

"I thought that we were only able to get a spirit at the beginning and end of our stay in the academy?"

"You're wrong." The teacher directly refuted the person who suggested this. "You will only be gifted a spirit at the start and end of your stay here. This is not a gift, but something that you can earn for yourself."

Everyone became excited at the prospect of earning another spirit. That said, some people were uncertain and asked what they should do with this spirit since they were only at the initial stage and couldn't maintain this many spirits. The teacher replied by saying that they could exchange it for a token, which could in turn be exchanged for one of the basic 1-Star spirits at a later date.

"That said, don't get your hopes up. The academy will only fund you through one attempt each week in creating this spirit until you succeed. Most people require around ten attempts to find success, even geniuses in this field usually take at least five goes. Three attempts…perhaps 1 in every 100 achieve this. The success rate is better for those higher stage shamans with a greater density of origin energy, though."

Saying this, the teacher glanced at the three mid stage 1-Star students in the class, Deon, Remi and the recently improved Jophan. It was rare to have this many at the mid stage so early into the year, it was clearly a good class.

The 1-Star dense muscle spirit was produced from the 0-Star vital physique spirit via a method known as spirit refinement. Spirit refinement referred to the artificial evolution of one spirit into another spirit, either in terms of its rank, its class, or both. Typically, spirit refinement was carried out by shamans using a cauldron in an alchemy-like practice.

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Not all spirits could be artificially evolved like this. Many spirits had other unique evolution pathways, such as Deon's ancient demon spirit. This demonic spirit required killing in order to ascend to a higher rank, it could not be evolved using spirit refinement. Many spirits found in nature were the same way, they could not be produced using a simple cauldron, they had their own unique methods of development.

To create the 1-Star dense muscle spirit using spirit refinement, the 0-Star vital physique spirit first needed to be bound.

Whilst many of the students present were only initial stage 1-Star shamans and already held two 1-Star spirits in their soul space, a bound 0-Star spirit required only one tenth of the origin energy to maintain compared to bound 1-Star spirits. It was good enough for these people to attempt the spirit evolution.

After binding the vital physique spirit, Deon waved his hand and pulled it out from his soul space, placing the spirit into the cast iron cauldron. He recalled the information on how to evolve this spirit and glanced up at the ingredients that had been placed on the desk in front of his cauldron.

"Firstly, submerge in mountain spring water…" Deon muttered to himself as he recalled the process. He poured two pints of mountain spring water collected from Jing Mountain into the cauldron.

"Next, heat gradually to a temperature just below boiling."

They used a special type of wood that burned at the correct temperature to produce this flame.

Deon observed carefully, making sure that the water wasn't heated too quickly. Whenever the spirit started to vibrate rapidly, he reduced the temperature, before gradually increasing it once again.

At this stage, around ten people in the class had already failed. Just a single lapse in concentration was enough to cause the evolution to become chaotic and fail. The vital physique spirit was quite resilient though, so none of the spirits were destroyed. A spirit was also less likely to become damaged if the refinement failed earlier in the process rather than later.

A few minutes passed by and finally, the temperature had reached the optimal height. Deon threw in a pinch of red ginseng, then stirred the cauldron lightly, making sure that the ginseng stayed around the outside and didn't touch the spirit in the centre.

The liquid turned red as the ginseng's essence was released. Deon slowly guided this essence into the spirit, watching it carefully to ensure that he wasn't forcing it to take on the essence too hastily.

At this stage, another 7 people failed.

The essence absorption step was slow and took half an hour to reach completion.

Next, he added half a pint of ox blood.

Bang Bang Bang…

Another 9 people failed. These failures were more spectacular than the earlier ones, their spirits became slightly damaged after a light flashed from the cauldrons, then a thick black smoke filled the room. The teacher waved his hand, creating a gust of wind and clearing the smoke.

He was secretly impressed that four people were still going. These four were Jophan, Risa, Remi and Deon.

Deon's forehead became creased and he started sweating. After adding the ox blood, it became much more difficult to maintain the connection with the spirit. The spirit was rapidly absorbing the blood essence and undergoing subtle changes, making the connection more chaotic and tentative.

Deon didn't noticed, but after another two minutes, only himself and Remi remained. They both reached the final stage at the same time. They quickly turned up the temperature under the scrutinising gazes of those around them, then rapidly urged more of their origin energy to fill the spirit.

BANG BANG!

They were both blown back from the cauldrons at the same time miserably. Remi hit a wall and nearly collapsed, whilst Deon narrowly twisted his body and avoided colliding with someone behind him before landing on his feet.

His expression was pale, but he didn't show any unwillingness towards his failure.

This was his first time attempting to evolve a spirit via spirit refinement, it was natural that he had been caught off guard by the change in the vital physique spirit as it suddenly turned into a vacuum that sucked in all of the surrounding origin energy. They had been warned about this in advance, but it was still impossible to understand how one should react to this situation until experiencing it for oneself.

It was for this reason that no shaman in the kingdom had ever succeeded in evolving a spirit on their first attempt.

"Damnit!" Remi gritted her teeth. Despite doing no worse than anyone else, she still wasn't satisfied.

"Miss Restari, your performance is already commendable. Succeeding on the first attempt is an impossibility, there's no need for you to feel bad about this." The teacher smiled and gave rare words of praise. He also glanced at Deon and didn't say anything, but secretly felt amazed in his heart.

'Such talent, combined with his calm temperament, Deon is an amazing seedling! He's not arrogant despite his abilities, a child like this is not common at all.'

This practical session came to an end and the remaining lessons for the day continued. This type of practice could become quite costly, which was why they were only able to attempt the spirit evolution once each week. Not only did spirit evolutions use up many resources, but the spirits themselves could become damaged or even destroyed during the process.

The vital physique evolution was the simplest and hence the cheapest of all evolutions, whilst the spirit was also resilient enough that it wouldn't be destroyed too easily. The spirits that were damaged in the lessons were taken back to a certain location and nurtured back to good health, whilst the healthy spirits were kept in another storehouse.

Deon continued to use the dense muscle spirit over the following week. He had already noticed a significant boost to his physical strength, allowing him to catch up to the other adults with stronger bodies in the physical training classes.

Because Deon's body was smaller, even after exhausting the power of the dense muscle spirit, his strength would still remain slightly lower than others. On top of this, many of the academy's recruits had used the vital physique spirit as their core spirit. This spirit had the effect of improving their physical constitution, an element of which involved improving their strength and athletic ability.

If Deon wanted to truly catch up to these people in terms of physical ability, he would need to at least use the bronze muscle spirit. If he wanted to use the bronze muscle spirit, he would need to refine it for himself. Before that though, it would be best if he gained more practise in spirit refinement.

A week later, it was time to attempt the evolution of the vital physique spirit once again.