Chapter 13 - Improvement On Multiple Fronts
Deon waited until after his classes had finished that day before visiting the spirit hall. Even the daily physical training drills where he could barely keep up with the others didn't dampen his mood today.
By showing the on duty captain his token, he was able to quickly exchange for everything he needed. After this, Deon directly headed towards the academy's spirit evolution building.
Located in a separate building from the main academy, it was a minute walk before he arrived. The doors were open and some smoke leaked out, confirming to Deon that this was the correct place. He walked inside and saw that there were 100 cauldrons lined up in an orderly fashion, each spaced six feet apart with ten rows of ten. There were twenty to thirty recruits inside, each person was focussed on their own cauldron and didn't pay Deon any mind.
This room served as a practise room for the students to practise their spirit refinement using the supplied cauldrons freely. Deon had been given his own cauldron by Blood God, but it would look beyond suspicious if he suddenly produced this from nowhere.
Deon looked around, then chose an unoccupied row. He glanced to the side briefly as a cauldron exploded and a recruit cursed out loud, but he ignored this common occurrence and began his own preparations.
So as to not raise suspicion, Deon carried the ingredients for this process in a leather bag rather than storing them in his spatial ring. He was aware by now that spatial rings were completely nonexistent in the Kingdom of Restari, nobody had even heard of such a peculiar ring.
Deon took a deep breath and showed a determined expression. It was time to start refining spirits…it was time to start accumulating funds.
On his first day, he succeeded two out of three times.
The following day, he purchased six 0-Star vital physique spirits with appropriate resources. He attempted another six refinements, succeeding three times and failing three times. He realised that it wasn't sensible to refine spirits like this consecutively. Spirit refinement was an exhausting process and he would become increasingly tired with each new attempt, thus leading to more mistakes.
In the end, Deon settled on refining the dense muscle spirit three times each day, with a 15 minutes break between each refinement. He didn't forget that he needed to continue using the dense muscle spirit on himself of course, so he didn't spend all of his time refining.
Classes, refining spirits, and using the dense muscle spirit. These days, Deon didn't even bother trying to increase his shaman rank. He was already at the mid stage of 1-Star and improving to the late stage wouldn't be as beneficial to passing the academy's graduation test as improving his physique and studying the military theory.
On a side note, Deon's ability to memorise information during class was far better than when he was a student on earth. He couldn't be sure, but he guessed that this had to do with his soul's training in the underworld trial.
Over the following month, Deon remained consistent with the amount of time spent on using the dense muscle spirit.
Alongside this, he also branched out and tried to refine the 1-Star iron skin spirit from the 0-Star vital physique spirit. Using a token, he was only able to buy two of the 0-Star spirits along with suitable resources for this process, so after he succeeded again on his second attempt, he directly used this spirit and didn't bother with creating any more, since the dense muscle spirit's production was more profitable.
Using the iron skin spirit allowed Deon to experience more of the wonders of the world of spirits. After binding this spirit and bringing it into his soul space, he activated it by pouring in his origin energy. He was well prepared and not at all surprised when one third of his origin energy was depleted in an instant. The spirit that had the appearance of a flat bug disintegrated into ash, then this ash spread out and dug into his skin.
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A burning flash spread throughout his body, it was painful, but ended after just a few seconds.
Just like that, Deon developed 1-Star iron skin! Visually, there was no difference, though perhaps when standing in the sun, his skin would possess more of a gleam. In terms of defensive capability though…
Clang!
Deon chopped down at his arm casually with a knife. The sound of metal against metal resounded and a few sparks flew about as the knife bounced away. A casual strike like this could no longer harm him, even when inflicted by a sharp blade. Deon prodded his skin curiously, but felt that it was still smooth and soft.
This was the miraculous effect of the iron skin spirit.
If an experienced swordsman chopped at him with a broadsword, he would still be thoroughly decapitated. If a rifle man shot him from ten feet away, he would still be pierced.
Iron skin could only protect him from casual swings, from dull blades or from distant arrows and musket bullets. Even this level of innate defence was of course far superior compared to a normal human though.
For the remainder of the month, Deon didn't spend his tokens on anything other than the ingredients necessary to create more 1-Star spirits.
He wanted to earn tokens, but he also wanted to gain experience in a wide variety of spirit refinements, before attempting to evolve the dense muscle spirit to bronze class.
Deon also learned to create the sustenance spirit.
Sustenance spirit, dense muscle spirit and iron skin spirit were all common spirits throughout the surrounding lands and their recipes were well known. The military didn't withhold the recipes and freely provided them to any recruits who asked. As for the other basic spirits, poison thorn and rapid step, these recipes were more secretive and not easily given out.
Deon actually succeeded on his first attempt with the sustenance spirit. The precursor to this spirit was the 0-Star nutrient spirit, a small red berry that would provide anyone with enough nutrients for five days upon consumption. The sustenance spirit was a larger multi coloured berry and although it was useful, Deon sold it for one token.
He already had four 1-Star spirits in his soul space out of his maximum capacity of six. He would at most hold onto five at any one time and didn't want to waste this space needlessly. Whilst the sustenance spirit had its use, it wasn't useful to him right now.
Anyway, he was also holding onto ten 0-Star vital physique spirits right now for a certain reason. He had accumulated these spirits after failing to refine them into the dense muscle spirit. Since the package sold by the academy included the three 0-Star spirits alongside the resources to refine them, it was easy to build up a supply of these spirits if the refinement failed but the spirit survived.
Finally, two and half months after obtaining the dense muscle spirit, Deon had reached a limit and this spirit was no longer useful to him.
At the end of each week, they would have a mini fitness test. When he first entered the academy, Deon would usually place in the bottom five out of the thirty people in his class, along with the other children and smaller women.
Today, he placed fourth. He had caught up to and overtaken the adults around him. The drill instructor was amazed on seeing Deon's time through the assault course, he couldn't believe that a small child was able to do this. Whilst things like climbing weren't a problem for the kids, they also needed to push boulders, carry rocks and drag a crate attached to a rope. This kind of heavy lifting wasn't something the kids could handle.
Well, he still wasn't up to the level required to pass the end of year exam though. Even the guy who placed first wasn't yet up to this standard!
"Wow, that was amazing Deon!" Jophan laughed and patted his shoulder. Deon smiled and shook his head.
"I'm still not up to your level, Jophan."
"Haha, you're still young and small. Your progress alone is incredible, you should be proud!" Jophan retorted.
"Hmph, you're still below me though." Remi scoffed. She had placed second, just half a second slower than Jophan. She had already completed the course of the dense muscle spirit before arriving at the academy, giving her an edge above the rest. On top of this, she was taller than Deon due to the age gap between them of four or five years.
By now, everyone had grown accustomed to Remi's attitude and didn't mind it. Risa, who placed fifth in this test, still took the chance to reprimand her though. She was the closest girl in age to Remi in their class and they also shared multiple classes together, so she had unconsciously adopted the role of an older sister.
"Remi, Deon's four years younger than you, there's no need to feel so competitive."
"Tch." Remi turned away and left.
"What's with her? Always high strung like that." Jophan muttered.
"The pressure of the royal family is probably weighing on her mind. She wants to be the best is all." Deon replied without thinking too much. Risa and Jophan blinked in surprise on hearing him say this.
What he said made sense, but…should a child really possess this level of patience and insight? Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Deon was actually still a child.
Deon did not care at all about Remi's attitude. In his eyes, she was a just some spoiled young miss and an over-competitive child. So long as she didn't get in his way, then her words were about as harmful as a dog's barking.
Remi could think whatever she wanted to think of him, but Deon would never waste his time on thinking about others. He was only focussed on training right now…training so that he could graduate from the academy and quickly make his way onto the battlefield!