Chapter 15 - Preparing for Graduation

Seeing his first bronze class spirit with that bronze sheen reminded Deon of something they had learned in class.

One might assume that the reason for the spirit showing this bronze gleam was because it was bronze class, but this wasn't quite right.

The spirit classes were actually named after the unique features of the body tempering spirits. Each of the body tempering spirits would use bronze metal to evolve to bronze class, whilst the spirits themselves would gleam with bronze lustre. This was also true for the following silver, gold, platinum and mythril classes. According to legend, the classes themselves had been named after these spirits.

Not all spirits could be evolved so smoothly to higher classes, in fact, most spirits existed as a set class and could not change unless a new recipe was discovered and they were evolved into an all-new spirit. At least, this was one theory…the other theory suggested that all spirits had infinite potential, it was just that shamans had uncovered too few of the potential evolution pathways!

Most spirits didn't contain their class in their name, such as Remi's gold class core spirit, which was simply called the 'fire lotus spirit'.

The body tempering spirits were somewhat unique in this regard, giving rise to their fame and their use as the standard that other spirits were measured against.

After returning the spirit to his soul space, Deon quickly returned home and began training with the bronze muscle spirit.

He already possessed the foundation of the dense muscle spirit, which was the first criteria that he needed to meet before using the bronze muscle spirit.

It was said that once a shaman had this foundation, the bronze class spirit would require half the time as the dense muscle spirit to reach completion. Each consecutive evolution of this spirit should require around the same period of time as the bronze muscle spirit.

The only problem with this theory, was that the bronze muscle spirit produced a much greater feeling of itchiness compared to the dense muscle spirit, making it difficult to use for as long as the dense muscle spirit in each training session. For this reason, most shamans would actually need even longer to complete the usage of this bronze class spirit.

As for Deon, he was able to ignore the itchiness easily. What he couldn't ignore however, was the increased origin energy consumption. After using the spirit for six minutes straight, his origin energy was almost depleted and he was forced to stop.

When he used the dense muscle spirit, he would spend ten minutes activating the spirit, then another ten minutes recovering his origin energy. This time, he could only activate the spirit for six minutes and still needed ten minutes to recover his energy.

Overall, his speed in using the bronze muscle spirit was 20% slower, but since this spirit would require half the active use time compared to the dense muscle spirit, Deon estimated that he could finish using it within two months.

He soon realised that there was a slight problem with this line of thinking.

The bronze muscle spirit depleted his mental energy more rapidly, tiring him out more quickly. After three hours, Deon was forced to stop and sleep. Since this was the case, he would probably spend slightly longer than two and half months on this pursuit.

Even so, this was more than enough to time to improve his body's physical abilities before the academy's graduation exam!

Now that Deon had finished his refinement of the bronze muscle spirit, he was able to once again spend some time accumulating tokens. He didn't need quite so many tokens now though, since he only intended to buy one more spirit.

After spending half a month earning enough tokens, Deon cashed in the ten purple coins in exchange for a single 1-Star spirit.

1-Star swift leaf spirit, a spirit that had the form of an ordinary looking leaf, but allowed the user to move with extreme agility, like a leaf in the wind. This was the best movement type spirit that Deon could afford from the catalogue, he bought it since he was lacking a spirit of this type.

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Unlike his teacher, Deon had no intention of becoming a so-called specialist spirit refiner. In the first place, Deon firmly believed that all shamans should have the ability to refine their own spirits anyway. He knew that Blood God did this, so he expected that most higher ranked shamans would also do the same.

In the Kingdom of Restari, it was considered common sense that a shaman would specialise in a certain area. Spirit refiners, healing specialists, front line soldiers, spies, and so on. Essentially, they applied standard military positional thinking to shaman development in general. This was quite normal when considering the fact that in this kingdom, shamans were essentially tools of war.

But Deon didn't agree with this concept. Whilst this might make sense for people who's only life goal was to join the military and gain prestige, Deon was different.

The Kingdom of Restari was merely the beginning of his journey!

He fully intended to explore this world once he had the power to do so, he knew that he would need to rely on himself.

To journey alone and rely on oneself meant having no flaws in any area. Movement spirits, close range and long range attacking spirits, defensive spirits, stealth spirits, survival spirits, training spirits and ability in spirit refining, he needed all of these things.

Some spirits could cover multiple roles, others could not even fulfil a single role completely. Understanding spirits was a core necessity to become a full fledged shaman.

Besides this, the swift leaf spirit would also help him to increase his speed through the assault course, an integral part of the end of year exam. After this, the swift leaf spirit would provide him with a greater survival ability when he finally stepped foot onto the battlefield.

Deon never forgot about his goal in joining the academy, which was to graduate into the military and go to war. In war he would be able to kill freely, helping the ancient demon spirit to ascend to 2-Star once he reached the peak stage of 1-Star.

The battlefield served a second purpose though, which was related to the soul extraction spirit and soul refinement spirit. Deon was extremely interested in refining a shaman into his own spirit, but for this, he first needed to extract 99 origin souls. Secondly, he needed to find an appropriate target.

Anyway, that was something he was unable to achieve right now. What he needed to focus on now was improving his strength so that he could pass the graduation exam.

Less than three months later, Deon had finally finished with the bronze muscle spirit. He hadn't been questioned further during this time regarding the bronze muscle spirit, and he could guess why.

He had only attempted the refinement of the bronze muscle spirit seven times before stopping. Nobody had seen him succeed and bind the bronze muscle spirit, so they probably assumed that he had given up.

Deon knew that this was likely to be General Senlin's line of thought. Even though the old man held him in high regard, he would never believe that Deon could succeed with a class evolution after only seven tries.

After careful deliberation, Deon decided to keep this a secret for now, hiding the bronze muscle spirit within his soul space. He could probably sell it to the general, but this wasn't a good idea.

If he were to sell the bronze muscle spirit and reveal that he had successfully refined it after just seven attempts, it was possible that he would be forced to join the spirit refiner division in the military without the chance to step foot on the battlefield. This obviously wasn't what Deon wanted.

So, he was forced to keep the bronze muscle spirit in his soul space for now, despite it being useless to him at this point. On top of this, he couldn't obtain the resources to advance it to silver rank more than a single time, and he was sure that he would fail on the first try.

After finishing his training with the muscle spirits, he had now freed up four hours in his day. Deon spent this time refining spiritual energy into origin energy to increase his shaman rank, quickly approaching the late stage of 1-Star. He also spent more time studying, a necessity now that he had reached the half way point in the year and the course became more intensive.

The military tactics, geography and politics lessons were interesting, but the shaman classes were far more valuable in Deon's eyes. He was able to learn about many more spirits, both natural and man made, which existed in this world.

They also started lessons on spirit usage, where they were instructed on methods to utilise their attacking, defending, healing, supporting and movement type spirits. There was some variation between the different spirits classed within each group, but the general principles were the same.

Deon created quite a bit of fuss when he summoned his ancient demon spirit in front of the class for the first time.

"What the hell is that?!"

"A sword?"

"So evil looking…"

"Is this really a 1-Star core spirit? I wonder what it is, no wonder Deon is so talented!"

When people asked him curiously about his core spirit, Deon replied that he was uncertain about its identity. Since even the teacher of this class couldn't recognise it, the matter was dropped. It was rude to pester shamans about their spirits anyway.

In truth, he really didn't know everything about this spirit of his. He knew its name, its class, and its method of evolution and ascension…but many details were still hidden regarding this demonic spirit.

If it were a normal bound spirit, perhaps Deon would be pressured to sell it. This was his core spirit though, he couldn't give it away even if he wanted to. The core spirit was fused with the shaman's soul, they existed as a single entity. The ancient demon spirit would live and die alongside Deon.

Essentially, when a spirit became a shaman's core spirit, it underwent a permanent change and became useless to others…though there was one exception that Deon knew of.

The soul refinement spirit!

This spirit which could refine a shaman into a unique spirit, actually targeted the shaman's core spirit itself. In a way, the soul refinement spirit was something with the ability to steal a shaman's core spirit, though it also stole the entire shaman along with it.

Anyway, as the date of the examination approached, everyone became noticeably more nervous. It was normal to spend two or three years in the academy, but they all knew the benefits of passing in the first year.

They would immediately become elites, able to join a shaman squad and then lead their own troop as a captain later on if they wished to do so. Whilst there were many divisions in the military, the front lines were the destination of most, since this was the place where one could obtain the most glory and honour.

Naturally, Deon couldn't care less about such things. To him, the battlefield was a place to train, a place to earn profit…and a paradise where he could kill to his heart's content.