Chapter 74. Seclusion
Days after the death of Connor,
The Shadow Union raided several bases of their star rank enemies and obtained many treasures, along with the souls of their members, however, the mysterious expert who helped the Shadow union took most of the soul, including the soul of the star rank pirate.
This news quickly spread across the high scale organizations.
Now, on the island where the battle was fought stood a gigantic magus tower, newly made for the expert known as 'Soul collector'.
In a room of the magus tower,
Tirus was sitting on a chair, he wore his black robes and held a flask containing fragments of what seemed to be a vengeful spirit.
'A.I. chip, have you deduced the reason as to why Connor's soul was destroyed?' Tirus inquired the A.I. chip. When he destroyed the seal on Connor's true soul, his true soul also got destroyed along with it, though, Tirus managed to capture numerous fragments of Connor's true soul, it just wasn't enough for him to conduct a soul search.
[Beep! The seal was programmed to destroy the target's true soul if destroyed]
[67.34% of true soul preservation method has been deduced by now. Remaining time: 52 hours 45 minutes]. The A.I. chip loyally intoned.
'Good.' Tirus thought as he quickly cleared his mind, sat cross-legged and started cultivating according to the version of the dark lotus technique that the A.I. chip had produced for him.
This version of dark lotus was modified especially for someone like Tirus who had already cultivated till the morning star rank, he had used many other high-grade meditation techniques as reference for this.
Now all he had to do was make some modifications to his foundation and then he'd be able to reap the benefits of this technique.
*Inhale*
*Exhale*
Tirus took breaths in a certain rhythm, and the fire and dark elemental particles started to gather around him, forming an ethereal vortex.
Soon, all of his hair started burning as the fire elemental particles were devoured by him at a rapid speed.
After 30 minutes,
A dark crystal the size of a grain manifested itself right below Tirus's point mass.
[Beep! Host has cultivated and successfully modified his foundation and completed the 1st level of the modified dark lotus technique]
[Beep! Host has gained some resistance and a slight increase in affinity towards fire energy particles]
Tirus didn't react to the notifications shown by the A.I. chip and kept cultivating.
A day passed…
A few days passed…
A week passed…
Then a month, and finally, 3 years had passed.
Inside his sea of consciousness, a lotus with three dark petals had grown, on the top of the lotus was his point mass, being nurtured by the dark energy particles every second. His cultivation of the dark lotus technique would reach the level of morning star when the construction of the fourth petal was completed.
A wave of high-frequency radiation burst out of his body, destroying the room from the inside. The radiation couldn't travel outside as formations had been inscribed for such situations.
[Beep! Host has modified his foundation and completed the 7th level of the modified dark lotus technique]
[Beep! Host's spiritual force has gained the properties of fire elements. Host can now freely conjure dark flames of 200 degrees]
"Haah…" Tirus finally ended his cultivation session. The feeling of having his cultivation make such fast progress was just something else.
"The 7th level of dark lotus technique is comparable to crystal phase stage rank 3 magi, huh, good." Tirus was able to make such progress because he wasn't cultivating from scratch. He simply needed to follow the instructions provided by the A.I. chip and eventually, his spiritual and soul force would go through a qualitative change, resulting in him being able to conjure up dark flames.
"Just a bit more, I know it." Tirus murmured as he clenched his fists, "A.I. chip, show me my stats."
[Name: Tirus Van Elrod, Occupation: rank 4 magus; strength: 100.2 agility: 100.3, vitality: 100.1, spiritual force: 857.9, soul force: 94 (magic power is in sync with spiritual force) status: Healthy]
'My soul force has reached a bottleneck, but my spiritual force needs to be cultivated with time.' He thought as a wry smile appeared on his face. Him reaching a bottleneck in cultivation meant that he had made some considerable progress.
Usually, most magi would experience a completely opposite situation.
For spiritual force cultivation, there were countless meditation techniques, however, there weren't much for soul force.
Actually, increasing soul force wasn't difficult, the difficult part was to find a suitable method for oneself, which Tirus had. Soul Devour, a technique that he got from the memory of the ancient magi, Plaguemancer.
As the name implied, all the user needed to do was to devour souls. Although this method was excruciatingly slow, it was quite effective and could be used as long as one wanted to as long as their cultivation realm was at or above rank 4.
Tirus got up and started walking towards the gate.
*Swoosh*
Cool air blew on his as soon as he exited the room and saw a feathered woman standing in front of him.
"Lord, do you need anything?"
"No, take me to where Yule is." Tirus said as he sensed her cultivation. She had strength comparable to peak rank 1 magus.
"Follow me, then." She said, bowing.
…
In the main hall,
Yule was sitting on a throne wearing a red magus robe. Armored guards were standing in front of the door.
"Soul collector, come in." Yule said amiably.
"That I will." Tirus said as he directly appeared near another seat, which slowly elevated itself to the level of Yule's throne.
To this, he smiled and said, "This is high-grade magic equipment created by using the remnants information of ancient magi technology. This throne will elevate itself according to the cultivation level of the one who sits on it."
"Oh, I see." Tirus said in a pleased tone, "So, tell me more about the resource points of your organization."
Hearing this, a wry smile appeared on Yule's face as he said, "This organization isn't mine, if anything, it's lord Zegna's. I'm just here to manage things." He paused and then a few seconds later, moved onto the main topic, "The resource points that our organization has been mostly moved to our secret planes for safety…"
For the next few hours, the witty shadow elf explained the types of resource points that they had, however, Tirus was certain that this witty elf was trying not to talk about the fire source stones.
"Get to the point." Tirus said in an unpleasant tone.
The wry smile on Yule's face disappeared and was replaced by a serious expression.
"…"
After a minute of silence, Yule finally let out a sigh and said, "We can barely obtain 40 grams of it every year and most of it is sent to the magus world, sorry, but you won't be able to use it extensively."
"No problem, just give me 5 grams. Oh and also, give a map of the entire fiery world." Tirus said in a shameless manner. Just a single gram of shadow source stone could worth as much as tens of millions of high grade magic crystals and help any magus breakthrough from rank 8 to rank 9 of the dark lotus technique, yet here, Tirus was asking for 5 grams as if it was nothing.
'What will he even do with the entire map?' Yule thought, but remained expressionless.
"I'll see what I can do, but remember, the map won't have any information about the edges of the world." Yule said unwillingly.
He never expected a rank 4 magi to give him his full help without getting any personal benefit, but still, the other magi who came from the magus world to help the Shadow Union also took their share of extra spoils from their respective missions, if things went like this, then they may go bankrupt.
"Since you are going to give me fire source stones, I will give you some important information as well." Tirus said as he smiled in a cheerful manner, "When I soul searched the remaining parts of that star rank expert's soul, I found a seal that had been placed on it, and this seal was connected to hundreds of branch seals which were on the souls of the members of his small organization."
"…" The latter didn't say anything, however, Tirus didn't even wait for a reply and continued, "If you are sincere, then I may even give you more information, for example, the identity of the one who placed the seal."
"What?!" He exclaimed, but Tirus had already exited the room by the time the words left his mouth, he only heard the voice of Tirus, "Don't forget to send me the fire source stones to show sincerety; otherwise, I won't be able to help."
…
On the outskirts of the Blazing Crown continent,
There was a mountain made of white marbles which emitted a faint white light. All the magical beasts in the nearby area would have come here if not for the concealment array that had been set up.
Beneath this mountain was an entrance to a secret plane of an organization which secretly supporting the star rank expert, Connor, from behind the scenes.
"Lord, what are we to do now?" A 1-meter tall scaled man asked a lizardman who was standing in front of him.
"A year has passed and their growth isn't slowing down at all. They even killed Connor."
After a moment of silence, the lizardman said, "It is monarch's decree that we nip the problem in the bud, complete this mission within the span of a decade."
The Monarch that this lizardman was talking about was definitely the Blazing Flame Monarch.
"As you wish, my lord."
To be continued…