Chapter 35: Seeking Profit After Danger
Deon was so exhausted that he soon forgot all about the earlier shock. He ran away from the scene of the massacre for around 1000 feet, eventually falling into a hole that opened up below him after he tiredly stepped onto what originally appeared to be stable dirt ground.
After dropping down abruptly, the hole ended up becoming covered with stray tree branches and the like, blocking out the faint moonlight and leaving Deon feeling somewhat hidden.
'Whatever, this will do…'
He was too exhausted to care and passed out in the pit. He slept for a full 10 hours, paying off his sleep debt to compensate for the use of the bed bug spirit.
The following day, Deon pulled himself out and returned above ground.
Deon didn't continue to explore the outer region, but returned to the 1st unit's camp. He ignored the bodies and spirits he hid around the region earlier…compared to the moon river reed spirits, those were just worthless trash.
The 1st unit welcomed back the dirty but mostly uninjured Deon. Lieutenant Puja came to greet him, surprised to find that he was more or less uninjured, just extremely ragged looking.
"You were only gone for two days…this is sensible, spending too long out on your own isn't a good idea." She thought that Deon had returned after realising that he was outmatched. She could rub this in and say 'I told you so', but the aggressive and blunt lieutenant was actually understanding and even comforted Deon.
He was still tired and couldn't be bothered to explain, so he just waved his hand and summoned all 3 moon river reed spirits.
"This…" Puja's pupils shrank, then a moment later, she sucked in a deep breath of shock as she identified the spirits.
"You actually found three 1-Star moon river reed spirits! These are all gold class spirits, and they're pretty decent even amongst the gold class! This…I see, so you returned because of this." She immediately understood that Deon must have discarded some of his spirits to make room for these 3. Continuing to travel in this state would not be smart, returning to camp was only normal in this situation.
"You sure are lucky…" She shook her head and tutted. As a newly ascended 2-Star shaman herself, she still saw the value in many 1-Star spirits. She was only an initial stage 2-Star shaman and her only 2-Star spirit was her core spirit…she really wasn't that much stronger than the pinnacle battle freak geniuses amongst the peak stage 1-Star shamans, despite what others might assume.
These three spirits were still extremely valuable in Puja's eyes, making her feel that Deon's luck was too good.
"Luck? Not really…" With that, Deon took out a leather satchel and poured out all of the badges he had taken from his slain enemies.
26 badges. 26 kills in two days, including five captains at the peak of 1-Star. All the soldiers were elites too, late stage 1-Star shamans.
Puja stared dumbly, then took another look at Deon's rugged appearance. Now, she felt that he was actually in pretty good nick…compared to the 26 Fan enemies he killed at least.
Every single one of these kills was an achievement, yet he threw the badges out like he was just collecting his wage. Puja laughed wryly, then realised why the upper brass thought so highly of this kid.
"Still, you should be careful. No matter how strong you might be, there's no way that you got all of this without putting yourself in serious danger."
Deon just smiled dryly and nodded, then waited as Puja pondered for a moment.
"General Li will be visiting for the monthly meeting between kingdoms in two days. How about you rest up here until then?"
"Sure." Deon readily agreed.
"The spirits…" Puja hesitated as she looked at the moon river reed spirits longingly. She wasn't sure if Deon wanted to keep them, or if he would donate them to the military in exchange for merit…truthfully, these spirits were already better than almost all of the spirits contained in the kingdom catalogue.
"I'm keeping one for myself." Deon began. Puja nodded, she expected this much, it was a useful spirit after all.
"I'll hand in one of them for merit, then the other, I'll trade with someone in the military for something suitable." Deon finished.
Puja nodded, this was acceptable. The standard military expectation of soldiers was to hand over all loot in exchange for merit, honour and promotion. For someone like Deon though, who was basically guaranteed to become a commander in a few years at the very most, he had some other options.
If there was only one of these spirits, he wouldn't be able to keep it, but there were actually 3, so this was fine. Exchanging for merit was what the military wanted most of all, but directly trading amongst the high ranking military executives was also considered acceptable.
Since he was doing one of each of these things, then nobody would complain about him keeping the third spirit. Indeed, when General Li arrived two days later, and the now rested and washed Deon greeted him properly, the general immediately became shocked by Deon's achievement.
Killing 5 peak stage 1-Star shaman captains…no, including that old guy from earlier on in the war, Deon had killed six peak stage shamans now!
That was 6 shamans who were at the same rank as him. Actually, the first time he killed such a character, Deon was a full stage weaker!
Killing those at the same or higher stage was an ability that not many possessed. Only those shamans who were warriors through and through could do this. And to do so consecutively, and so easily, within what was most likely a group….
General Li knew that even with his earlier assessment, he had still underestimated this child.
"Keep one, donate one and trade one. Mm, this is good." He nodded upon hearing Deon's proposal. A moment later, a crafty grin appeared on the general's face.
"Actually, I would quite like this spirit for myself. It may only be 1-Star, but the ability to breath underwater is something that I don't possess."
The moon river reed spirit allowed the user to breath underwater. The 1-Star version was only effective for up to half an hour, but the 2-Star version increased this to 4 hours and the 3-Star version had no time limit, besides the period of time that the user could remain conscious and continue to actively operate the spirit.
Even the 1-Star spirit would be coveted by 2-Star shamans though, which is why Deon wanted to trade it with someone like General Li.
"I want resources." Deon stated calmly.
"Oh?" The general was intrigued. He didn't want a powerful or rare spirit…but resources?
"And I also want discretion." Deon added with a slight smile.
General Li's eyes widened for a moment, before he grinned broadly and burst out laughing.
"Haha, how interesting! Fine, state what you need, at the very least I promise not to speak of your odd request to anyone else."
Deon nodded, this was the best he could hope for. He had no way to force the general to sign a contract with him or anything, a verbal promise would have to do. The generals usually stayed true to their word anyway, they valued their reputation after all.
Aside from that, it should be remembered that Deon was roped in to become the 'child war hero' icon to motivate the masses…screwing over this person was a really terrible idea, not to mention his absurd talent and his strange ability to leap up the ranks and gain promotions every couple of months!
"I need…" Deon then listed off 10…20…30…40…50…
He ended up listing over 100 ingredients, along with their various quantities. The general nodded along with him at first, but then frowned when the list hit 20 items. His eye twitched by 50, and he was no longer keeping up by 100.
He was silent for a moment and stared at Deon wryly. There were so many ingredients that he couldn't hope to work out what Deon's plan might be…he knew it was some sort of refinement though, what else could it be?
'Most likely is that Deon has a recipe that he wants to keep a secret…or maybe he believes that he needs to keep it a secret. Hmm…' The general wasn't too surprised, there were actually many shamans like this. The military and government always spoke of honesty and loyalty, but the reality was that any decent shaman would have their secrets, along with some degree of selfish desire.
But mainly, they didn't want to be roped into some factions that would work them like dogs to refine spirits day and night whilst pressuring them to hand over 100% of their products. So, when Deon made this 'request for discretion', the general actually just thought that it was a actually good idea, that was all.
"I understood the first 50, but after that I lost track. Could you write it down?"
Deon nodded and happily obliged.
The value of this list of items was something that he wasn't even sure about. He was definitely asking for a lot to exchange for these things, but it at least gave him some leeway to haggle. He wasn't even certain if the kingdom had access to all of these ingredients.
He wrote down a list of materials in ascending order of his own perceived worth of the ingredients. There were 182 items, but he would be happy even if he could only obtain the 70 least valuable and rare ones, and even only half of quantities he requested would be excellent.
Deon mentioned to the general that these were all just various materials he wanted to refine into new spirits. He didn't know the value of many of these items, so he would accept the general's valuation so long as a local appraisal master was present to confirm the exchange was equal. The General didn't think this was strange, with a deal as large as this, having present a third party appraisal master was quite typical. This, as well as having present personal appraisal masters from either side of the trade, was actually just standard practise to ensure that both parties got an equal deal.
The list of materials Deon handed over to the general were all ingredients used to refine the 1-Star body tempering spirits. He had already regained his steel bones spirit and began using it, but settling for this wasn't enough.
The ingredients he requested gave him enough to attempt the refinement of each of the following spirits 10 times through the first half of the refinement, and 5 times through the second half:
Silver skin spirit, silver muscle spirit, silver tendons spirit, silver bones spirit, silver organs spirit.
Right, now that he possessed the funds to do so, Deon intended to refine the silver class of every body tempering spirit! He didn't even possess all of the bronze class versions, but he had access to the required materials for their refinements via the catalogue.
He added to the list a few materials from each of the bronze class and gold class body evolutions, as well as some, but not all, materials for the platinum class evolutions. Aside from this, he threw in a few other seemingly random but actually quite useful herbs and blood essences into the list that he gave General Li, just to throw off whomever might be watching.
Buying all the materials for the bronze class evolutions would draw too much attention if the kingdom also had access to these recipes. They would want to know where a child found this complete set of recipes, but that was a secret Deon could never reveal. So, this list was supremely long and if he received everything, he could attempt the bronze class evolutions 5 times, the silver class evolutions 5 times, and the gold class evolutions 3 times.
He was absolutely certain that this kingdom didn't posses the gold class evolution recipes. Besides, with how he mixed the list of materials together in an order of priority that would make sense to nobody but himself, nobody would be able to see through more than 10-20% of his plans at the absolute most.
If the higher ups in the kingdom saw through the fact that he possessed all 5 bronze class body tempering spirit recipes, he would no doubt need to give a better explanation compared to the lacking answer he provided General Li back in the academy. If he truly was forced to this point, his explanation would, as usual, be a tangled mixture of lies and truths.
Then what of his final plan if he was heavily pressured by high command? Haha, wasn't it obvious?
Deon would simply lead the upper brass back to the cave where he had been thrown out of the underworld trial, saying that he was led into a separate dimension and underwent a gruelling inheritance, an inheritance that self destructed after he attained success after enduring unspeakable pain and turmoil.
There was no way to prove it, but neither was there anyway to disprove it. Because things like this were actually not all that uncommon in this world, nobody would really doubt him too much. After all, this explanation made the most sense, nothing else really explained his shocking capabilities.
As for the nature of the inheritance and its origin, he obviously wouldn't mention such a thing. The fact that he was Blood God's successor was Deon's biggest secret, he had a feeling that if the world knew about this, he would never live in peace again.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone