PART 1

The ritual is finally ready. This also meant that I emptied my storage equipment quite a lot. More place for loot. Back to the ritual. It looks kind of glorious. Geometrical shapes, mainly circles, with silver, with and other colours. It feels like being back in college. Those automated drug testers. They had similar colours. Whatever back to the ritual.

First I used some meditation to be in my peak. Very important in any kind of ritual or experiment. If this whole things blows in my face because my mind wandered somewhere, I wouldn’t know where to cry. The ingredients would be wasted.

As the last component, I put the soul stone into the middle of the ritual. The whole cave lights up for a second and then goes back to into an inactive state. Now I have a couple of hours for preparing subject#001. A lot of time.

Inside the ritualist circle, I connect my mind to the control of the ritual. It is a bit like an array, like in the mage towers, but very simple, barely any commands. It is more like an on/off switch with the potential to become a computer and maybe an AI. The next hurdle was connecting the second set of soul to the right circle. Which was fairly easy for me at least. The amount of times I experimented on subject#001 is uncountable. Manipulating his soul may not be as easy as my own, but sure am better at it than most mages would assume. I believe that not even the maker of this particular ritual thought about my situation.

Back to the ritual. After some time, the second soul is attached to the right space.

The ritual is ready to begin. First, I turn it on, then I watch as the ritual is doing its magic.

First, the room lights up in silver-white light, not exactly expected in a borderline evil ritual. Next, the mouldy, wet smell in the room gets replaced by a strong odour. Hard to describe, I would say it is a mix of iron like smell, like in blood, with a mix of citrus. A strange combination I know.

After making sure that the ritual is making it’s intended thing and not doing anything strange, I go into myself and watch what exactly the ritual is doing there. Hoping to get some kind of enlightenment or idea for future spells and/or gadgets.

My bet had paid off. Not in a direct way like the infusion technique I learned the last time, more like giving a spark of insight while watching. This might be the legendary state of enlightenment that was talked about in novels back on earth. The soul is literally getting a scrub down. It gets deformed often into strange shapes, then left in that shape for slow self-recovery. This way the whole process went on for half a day. The last part of it was dozens of snapping sounds. Twelve were the loudest. Maybe this was the meridian network Chinese traditional medicine practitioners talked about? The whole movement had been somewhat popular when I was a teen, so I know a bit about it. Plausible, possibly just a coincidence. Making a mental note about the placing of those major meridians, I continue my observation.

After the snapping sound, the soul and the body, which in this case was mine, was completely destroyed. The contact points were either completely, or nearly completely disconnected. This, in a roundabout, way solved my previous problems. Now something undocumented happened. The snapped meridians and the mater is was made from didn’t simply disintegrate, they combined with mine. This also happened to the soul tissue close to those meridians. These also combined with my soul. Strengthening my soul across the board. I also feel that my cultivation also advanced rather rapidly and after breaking through the 4th stage of the soul path, I will have the additional benefit of already knowing those points and have them already have strengthened them. A very lucky coincidence.

The last benefit provided that enlightenment. I theorized a system similar to a hard drive back on earth. While in school, I had a group project to research and compare ancient and newer modern storage techniques. Nowadays we used a kind of quantum database shrank down a lot. This also only for those not wanting to use the cloud. Where nearly everything was stored. I, of course, am not able to replicate such a complicated system, but maybe making something similar to a HDD was possible?

It will stay as a theory for a good while. Not having the necessary resources and ability to even remotely try something like that. Begrudgingly, I had to leave this until I breakthrough as an official mage.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A group of people were walking around the woods, in front of them is one tracker, looking around at the trees and bushes.

“What do you think he is doing? I haven’t seen him cast any magic yet. Do you really think that he will be able to find his track?” said man A.

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“Yes, he should. The boss paid good money for him to find Osric, then lay an ambush. Watch out, he might be listening, you don’t want to offend that guy, I heard some stories.” Man B said.

“Yeah, unfortunately, he won’t help us in the fight,” Man B said.

They get interrupted when the tracker shouts for them. “Come here lads, there it is,” he shouted.

Then he shows them some remaining magic, which is about to dissipate.

“Your boss got lucky, one more day and your mate would be gone for good, now follow me” He said and laid the group onwards.

After a couple of hours of walking, the tracker stops. “Now lads, this place is the best if you want an ambush, he would come through here” Confidently, he walks into the place void of trees in the middle of the forest.

“Why, the forest is big tough” Man A couldn’t hold back his doubts

“Because you dimwit, the rest of the area around is full of monsters. If he treasures his dear life, he will come through here. Now, lads, my job Is done, see ya” He sais and leaves the place before anyone in the group could say anything else.

PART 2

Until now, I was a bit confused why some of my movements were so sluggish. In comparison to my old self, it was still better, but it is nothing than some of the squires were able to do. Now I know why, because the meridians were split, the control of the body was also split, just that the other participant in this carsharing was not able to steer the vehicle, so it only interfered minimally, until when his soul got slowly strengthened through my efforts. After every heal, it got somewhat stronger. Theoretically, this is another way of training in the path of the soul. I am pretty sure that I am not the first person who discovered this and why this method I not popular isn’t hard to guess. Who would survive this?

My next course of action is destroying any evidence of the ritual. Soul magic is rare, so rare that I haven’t heard of it in the Order yet, but the official mages shouldn’t be this oblivious to it. So I decided to dump all of my grenades and flashbangs, expect two of each for. And either destroying everything inside the cave, or causing it to collapse. Either is fine.

Outside the cave, I activate the makeshift igniter, causing the whole cave to be embroiled in a chain reaction.

*BOOOOOOOOOOM*

With a massive explosion, the cave collapsed. The only witness of my ritual is now the rubble which formed from the cave. Satisfied at my finished job, I make my way back to the tower. Watching out for the target of the mission. Easy points never disappointed anyone.

My aim was a one-horned werebeast. It had a horn on its head and looked like a goblin sized Werewolf. Very sneaky creatures and hard to kill.

Sneaking my way through a valley, I notice I a bush shaking in the distance. Inside the bush, I can make out a bit of dark-blue, a colour my prey has plenty of. Sneaking towards it, I prepare some spells, my normal soul shield wouldn’t be of much use against a purely physical beast, so I don’t waste my mana on it. After closing in, I am only 6 meters from my prey. The bush shakes once more, this time harder and a dark-blue ball of fur is cannoning himself into my direction. Clawing in my direction, I use one soul shock to widen the distance and the attack with arcane bolt. The creature keeps dodging them. Even when hit with a soul shock, their instinct allows them to dodge the relatively slow spell. Relative to the monster, of course, no human would be able to dodge that. After wasting 5 minutes and half my mana, I lure the monster into a false sense of victory. When he makes a charge for it, I use soul shock again, but this time I use violet mana to power the arcane bolt. Which becomes a lot faster than before and pierces the skull of the beast, coming out at the other side. Not having time or a mouth to make any noises, the werebeast goes down without a problem. This type of creature is only dangerous when ambushed, else they are pretty manageable.

Smelling the iron-like smell of blood, I don’t lose any time and take out a big pot and drain his blood, making sure that no brain matter dilutes the blood. All in all, I got 2-3 litres of blood from the creature, which I refined into one vial of purified blood. Not a lot of reward for killing one beast, but what can I say? It was not exactly hard. Not for me at least.

Satisfied, I pack away my utensils, and leave the body for other predators to dispose of it. Back on my track, I don’t meet anything dangerous and continue my journey.

Waking up in the morning, I break up my campsite inside another cave and take on the last leg of my journey.

My gut is warning me from something. I don’t know what, but it is doing it now. This Is not the first time something like this happened. Back when I accepted the mission for the black beetle forest, the sensation was a bit similar, just much weaker. Might be because the danger was either less or that I got stronger. Whichever it may be, I now know that continuing my path forward is dangerous. Thinking back, I search for the best ambush spots from my way towards the tower. There were three of them. One being too close to the tower, and the other two farther away. The remaining two option was a valley which I had to pass through and the second where I dodged some of the stronger monsters close to the mountains. From the two, the first seems more likely. Using the latter would mean that they have to cover a lot more ground than the first. The first valley is a chokepoint between two monster territories. Common knowledge for anyone who bothered to take a look at the map about the vicinity of the tower. Now my main objective was not fighting. I can already imagine who and why the attackers are doing this. Evading is the best choice. Thinking over a bit, a plan begins to hatch in my mind. It consists of two parts. First I plant one of my grenades somewhat far from the valley, as to lure away some of the ambushers, second is to lure into the valley some grey wolves. Both parts are rather easy to accomplish, just getting away later might be more problematic. So, I prepare everything now and do it today.

The first part succeeded rather easy, I have already experimented a bit with a timed bomb, so making one which explodes after 40-45 minutes isn’t hard. Only the timing would be a bit difficult, but manageable. Then I searched for any group of grey wolves in the vicinity. I found two. The second was 6 minute run away from the valley so I choose them. Now the only remaining part is waiting for tomorrow. Very early when the sun is barely up.