Chapter 14 - Bronze Muscle Spirit
Deon made his way towards the spirit refining hall as usual. His goal this time was different compared to the other times he visited this place, he was going to attempt to evolve the dense muscle spirit into the bronze muscle spirit.
Whilst he was near the top of his physical training class right now, this situation wouldn't last. The others would continue to make rapid progress as they continued to use the dense muscle spirit, leaving him behind in the dust. His two options were to wait until he aged and grew larger, or to use a spirit to push himself further.
Deon didn't want to waste multiple years in this little academy, so he opted for the latter choice.
With the bronze muscle spirit, he should be able to reach the necessary standard to pass the athletic component of the examination.
Deon stood before the cauldron and calmed himself down as he laid out the ingredients before him. He had already confirmed that everyone in here was busy and that nobody was paying him attention, but it didn't really matter anyway. The people who used this building were only students, they wouldn't think much of it even if they saw him using these unusual materials.
Red powder, bronze metal, glowing root, hundred grass fungus, yuan berry, spring water, spotted spider's silk, and most importantly, 1-Star demonic ox heart blood.
Each of these ingredients was somewhat valuable, but the 1-Star demonic ox heart blood was worth far more than the rest. This ingredient could only be obtained from a 1-Star demonic ox, a common demonic beast.
Demonic beasts were animals that had undergone a change and gained power that allowed them to stand above the rest. A 1-Star demonic beast was similar in strength to a 1-Star shaman.
Whilst the demonic ox could be considered a common demonic beast, the spirit continent was vast and Deon had no idea if this creature inhabited these parts. At the very least, he couldn't buy demonic ox heart blood from the academy's catalogue.
Luckily, he possessed ten drops of this blood, whilst the evolution of the dense muscle spirit to bronze muscle spirit only required a single drop. It seemed that Blood God had anticipated that he might not be able to obtain more of this blood for a while, since the inheritance ring contained ten portions of this ingredient, but only one portion of the rest.
Deon pushed these thoughts from his mind and began the refinement.
Firstly, three pounds of bronze metal was placed into the cauldron. He used red powder to produce a scorching flame from underneath, slowly melting the bronze down into a metallic liquid. Once the liquid reached an appropriate consistency, the dense muscle spirit was thrown in.
He added spotted spider's silk to form a cocoon around the spirit.
Glowing root and yuan berry were combined outside of the cocoon to form a thick light essence.
The light essence was caught in the hundred grass fungus, and-
BANG!
Twenty minutes into the process, Deon was blown back by a rough explosion. He sighed and picked himself up from the floor, then examined the spirit and found that it was thoroughly damaged, but not quite destroyed. It would recover if it was allowed to sit in ox blood for a few days.
His clothes were dirtied from the ash that rose up after the refinement failed, so Deon didn't feel like staying and doing anything else. He returned home and washed himself, then contemplated what his next move should be as he lay down in bed.
Actually, this failure was entirely within his expectations. Class evolutions were known to be extremely difficult, more difficult than rank evolutions. Trying to improve the class of a spirit that was ranked equally to one's own shaman rank, was extremely difficult and often ended in failure.
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But Deon had already calculated this.
Over the past month, he had refined the dense muscle spirit every day and only wasted a few tokens on practice materials. Currently, he had 35 tokens in his possession.
35 tokens was enough to buy the materials for this class evolution refinement six times over, including the spirits, but not including the ox heart blood. This also covered the cost for the full materials, not considering the fact that he wouldn't use all the materials every time and nor would he destroy the spirit on each failed attempt.
Overall, he was relatively optimistic about his chances of successfully refining the bronze muscle spirit before running out of funds. Even if he did run low though, he could always just create more dense muscle spirts to earn everything back.
After buying back everything he needed, Deon retried again the next day.
BANG!
Depressingly, he failed at an even earlier stage this time. He was too focussed on what was to come and lost focus for a moment at a point that should have been simple. This lapse in concentration cost him a dense muscle spirit. For the first time, he actually destroyed a spirit during a refinement!
Whilst he was buying back the ingredients he needed the following day, Deon was approached by an unexpected person.
"General Senlin!" He straightened up and saluted.
"Mm, at ease." The general nodded lightly and wore a faint smile.
Deon could already guess why he had caught the general's attention. He was invited back to the general's office 'for tea'.
"Deon, I've heard that you have been accumulating tokens by producing dense muscle spirits recently?" The general began speaking as he sipped his tea.
Deon looked away from the various portraits of famous figures in the general's office and nodded.
"Yes general, I've had some success in spirit refinement, so I thought that I would make the most of it."
"Haha, smart! I'm curious Deon, why have you been purchasing materials like bronze metal and spotted spider silk?"
As expected, it was because of the bronze muscle spirit. The general was obviously curious about why Deon was buying the materials needed to refine this bronze class spirit, but he was even more curious about how Deon could have obtained this recipe.
The Kingdom of Restari possessed this recipe themselves, but this recipe was a secret amongst the higher ranking shamans in the kingdom!
"I'm trying to refine the bronze muscle spirit. I found the recipe when I was out adventuring, in the same place that I found my core spirit."
The general raised an eyebrow. He didn't expect Deon to be so calm when talking about this, or to admit it so easily. It wasn't all that uncommon for shamans in the academy to have one or two secrets, Deon's story was actually entirely believable. Seeing the honest and innocent expression on his face, the general didn't doubt him for a moment.
He would never believe that a child could lie so well.
On top of this, the general had no intention of pressuring Deon any further. In his mind, this talented child prodigy was worth far more than anything he might have found whilst out adventuring nearby to the kingdom; it was not worth alienating this potential future powerhouse of the kingdom just to pursue some possible short-term gains.
In this world, everyone was different, everyone had different priorities. General Senlin valued the prosperity of the kingdom above all else, he always held this in mind when dealing with various matters.
"I see, so that's it. Deon, please do not spread this recipe to anyone else, I hope you understand."
"Yes general, I will keep it to myself."
"Mm, good." The general examined Deon carefully, thinking more and more that this child was quite excellent.
With this brief conversation, Deon easily cleared up any suspicions towards his actions in refining the bronze muscle spirit and could now continue without needing to hide anything. He was starting to realise that having the body of a child had its benefits, since others would naturally be less suspicious of him.
Each day after class, Deon would replenish the materials he needed for the refinement. He would then attempt it again in the spirit refinement hall.
On his third attempt, Deon managed to progress further than the previous two tries. When he added the hundred grass fungus, he added more control and fully captured the light essence. He even succeeded in breaking up the hundred grass fungus into one hundred pieces, but failed as he tried to merge the 34th grass tip into the spirit.
On his fourth attempt, he failed on the final 100th grass tip, but learned from this experience and got through this stage on the fifth attempt. Unfortunately, the refinement exploded and destroyed the spirit after he quenched the mixture with the mountain spring water.
With his sixth attempt he was more careful at this stage and added the spring water slowly. Next, a single drop of 1-Star demonic ox heart blood was directly pushed into the cocoon, causing the cocoon to open up.
At this point, Deon threw in three 0-Star vital physique spirits. This was the final stage in the refinement, the semi-evolved muscle spirit needed to absorb these three spirits to ascend to the next class.
BANG!
The mixture exploded. Deon felt jarred as this large explosion slammed into him, even drawing some startled looks from others in the hall.
In his original estimations, he would be able to attempt the refinement only six times. He had barely proceeded halfway through the process for the first three attempts though, so he still had enough funds remaining for another two full attempts.
Finally, success was achieved on the seventh go.
The dense muscle spirit greedily devoured the helpless vital physique spirits and glowed brightly. All of the liquid in the cauldron was absorbed and it floated gently into the air, rapidly draining Deon's origin energy.
He stayed calm and focussed, allowing the green slimy spirit to slowly develop a faint bronze sheen around its exterior.
"Bronze muscle spirit." Deon smiled happily, feeling extremely satisfied now that his work had finally paid off.
This was his first bronze class spirit, but it was also his first success in spirit class evolution refinement!