Stygian Mage

Seeing all the new items in his Storage Pearl, Soren knew that he had to check each one of them and confirm what they all were. He needed to know what he had, to be able to properly utilize his wealth.

For now, though, he decided to first check all the books and the compendiums that Garlon had gathered; the other items would come after that. So, one by one, he skimmed through all of these books and had Isaac save all the data in his database; of course, it was for easy access.

Some books were just skill books that were specifically made for the Warrior type Initiators; Soren pretty much ignored them after Isaac copied all of them.

Other books contained very detailed information about ingredients and wild herbs that were mainly used in potions and pills. The compendium that Garlon was trying to sell was also amongst these books; this one was especially detailed with three categories: Herbs, Metals, and Miscellaneous Items. Obviously, with Soren wanting to start Potioneering, he needed to know all this information; thus, these books were very important to him.

Apart from these compendiums, what interested Soren the most was a huge brown book with a thickness of about twenty centimeters that contained information about various Beasts and Insects. Although Soren indeed had some knowledge about Soul Pets from the information that he had gathered back in the Liston Family’s mansion, it was very scant; in fact, he didn’t even know that Initiators could make Insects into their Soul Pets. But from this book, he could now gain much more advanced knowledge about this topic. Other than that, he also found some potion recipes and a few types of contracts in this book that were vital to having Soul Pets.

The recipes were basically of the potions that Initiators could use to feed their Soul Pets. Different potions had different effects; some of these included increasing their reproduction rate, making them go berserk, replacement for their food, helping them through the evolution process, etc.

As for the contracts, they were basically the methods used to merge the soul of a Beast or an Insect to that of an Initiator; this was the reason why Soul Contracts were sometimes also called Soul Merging Contracts. And according to the types of contracts that Soren found in the book, there were various effects pertaining to different contracts.

The first type of contract that was in the book was the ‘Sharing Contract’. This type of contract basically allowed the contracted pets to use their master’s skills and spells; and vice versa. While this feature was a very powerful ability, it contained a fatal flaw; or more like a stringent requirement. To be able to use each other’s skills and spells, both the contracted pet and the Initiator had to have a proper constitution to be able to support it. If they did not possess such a constitution, they both would receive a backlash and might suffer from severe soul damage.

The second type of contract that was in the book was the ‘Slavery Contract’. This type of contract was for the scenarios where the Initiators wanted to control the Beasts or Insects who were unwilling to form a contract with them. This basically forced the Beasts and Insects to go through the contract and become an Initiator’s Soul Pets. Also, given that it was a forced contact, it obviously had some problems; the first and foremost being that there was a high risk in going through the contract. Not only that but even after being successful, this contract would definitely leave the soul of the pet severely battered; resulting in a possibility of them becoming a mindless puppet. So, unless it was absolutely necessary, Initiators did not prefer to use this method; the fact that this contract did not have any special features like the others also contributed to this, of course.

The third type of contract in the book was the ‘Summoners Contract’. This type of contract actually had two special features that made it different from the other contracts. One of them was that it allowed the contracted pets to cultivate and grow naturally even when they were inside the Contract Stigma; the special space which the Initiators kept their contracted pets in. This was only possible with this type of contract as with the other contracts, the Initiators would have to let their contracted pets out for them to be able to cultivate naturally; as a side effect, those Initiators who used other types of contracts would start depending on only potions and pills to raise the cultivation level of their pets.
The second feature of this type of contract was that it allowed the Initiators to summon their contracted pets back to their immediate vicinity regardless of where they were in the overall range; the overall range depended on the Initiator’s Soul Strength, the ‘Spirit’ stat, of course. With this feature, the Initiators could easily summon their pets back to them if they saw the need to do so; thus, saving their pets and their own life in emergency situations.
Because of these two features, this type of contract was the most sought after and was the most famous one among the Initiators. Not only that, but the majority of the Beast Summoners type Initiators, whose fighting style revolved around having multiple contracted Soul Pets, preferred this contract; and it was due to that that this contract was named ‘Summoners Contract’. Ashby had also used this contract and that was why he was so confident in sending his Soul Pet into the jungle before.

Finally, the fourth and the last type of contract in the book was the ‘Death-Substitution Contract’. This contract was actually a very weird one where it seemed to have a very powerful feature, but the reality was that the price to pay for that feature was too high. Just as its name suggested, this contract allowed an Initiator to survive a deadly situation by letting one of their contracted pets die. This was basically about transferring death from the Initiators to the pets; it was a lifeline that many Initiators loved to have. The only problem with that was that the system of contracted pets didn’t work on the slave-owner concept; even the ‘Slavery Contract’ didn’t work on the concept of slave-owner. With any of the Soul Merging Contracts, whenever a contracted pet died, the Initiator would suffer from severe soul damage; many times, this damage would be enough to kill the Initiator. And this was also true for the contracted pets; they would also suffer from severe soul damage and would most likely die if their master ended up dying. Given these facts, even though it was the type of contract that could be a very good lifeline for many Initiators, very few of them preferred to use this when choosing their Soul Pets.

Of course, this was just one part of the book where these four contracts were described in detail; with this knowledge, Soren could basically initiate a Soul Merging Contract with a Beast or an Insect any time now. Other than these contracts, this book also listed various Beasts and Insects with their detailed description and properties; it even had separate ranking lists for Magic Beasts and Magic Insects which Soren did not know were based on what category.

Soren had copied a lot of information from the library in the Eastwood and the Liston Family’s information center, but all of that truly paled in comparison to what just this one thick book had provided him with.

…….

Done with skimming through the books, Soren now decided to organize all the things that had come from Garlon’s Storage Pearl.

To start with, he first went through all the potions and pills and organized them according to the information that Isaac was constantly providing him from his database. Most of them were healing potions and pills while only a few were for restoring ‘Stamina’. From what Soren understood about Potioneering, although these potions were for Rank 1, they were of the Lowest-Grade quality and would do some damage to the Initiators; they were similar to the potions that he had seen in Eastwood before. Of course, he could not say anything about the pills but seeing the quality of potions, he reckoned they were probably the same.

Moving away from the potions and pills, Soren started looking through the ingredients. Amazingly, most of the ingredients that Soren found in the wooden boxes were for the recipes made for Magic Beasts and Magic Insects. Apart from those ingredients, the rest were just for basic potions whose recipes Soren already had; they were in the compendium that Hans had given him as the payment.

Done with organizing the ingredients, Soren next moved on to the Memory Spheres. As usual, Soren didn’t use them immediately and first had Isaac scan them for any traces of Mana. Only after Isaac had confirmed that none of these Memory Spheres contained any foreign Mana did Soren start going through them. While most of them were just empty Memory Spheres, Soren did find a couple that contained some fire-related skills. Other than the ones with the skills, there were also two which contained the cultivation techniques named ‘Turtle’s Life’ and ‘Flaming Hair’.

With the Memory Spheres dealt with, Soren moved on to the two vials of blood that Garlon had. Although Soren could not tell specifically what use these vials of blood had, he at least knew that they were Initiators’ blood and not from some Beasts’. Garlon probably needed these vials of blood for something but as Soren had no idea what that something was, he decided to put them aside for now.

Next up were the Spell Vessels that Soren was not really interested in. From just one look at their design and color, he could tell that they all were of Fire Element; it was glaringly obvious. And based on his relation to that element, it was better if he stayed away from these Spell Vessels. As for why Garlon possessed these Fire Element Spell Vessels together with a fire type cultivation technique, Soren could only make a guess here and say that Garlon might have received an inheritance from an Initiator with Fire Attribute. Given that Soren didn’t want to add those spells in his Soul Form, he just let these Spell Vessels be for the time being.

With that out the way, Soren moved on to the Enhancement Artifacts that Soren had taken off of Garlon’s corpse; Garlon was also wearing the same Mana Touch gloves but Soren ignored that as he already had it. There were four artifacts in total that Garlon was wearing, and amazingly, they all were for ‘Strength’ stat. If Soren had to guess the reason behind Garlon’s decision on this, it would probably be that Garlon was making up for his weaknesses by using these Enhancement Artifacts. After all, the man had focused entirely on his defense. So, to win a battle, he needed something that could provide him with offensive power; these Enhancement Artifacts fulfilled that purpose.

Given that he didn’t need such artifacts, Soren put them aside too, and moved on to the other items. The two automatons that Garlon had were the same as what Soren had so he didn’t need to check them thoroughly; just making sure that they didn’t have any problem was enough. Other than that, there were only Beast Cores, Mana Cards, and Mana Crystals left in the Storage Pearl for Soren to organize. After doing a count, he found that there were 610 Middle-Grade Mana Crystals and a few Low-Grade Mana Crystals in total; there were also five Mana Cards but Soren had no way to tell how much Mana Crystals they had. As for the Beast Cores, there were hundreds of Rank 0 Cores but only 11 Rank 1 Cores.

……

After Soren was finally done with organizing all the things in the Storage Pearl, he decided to look for the information related to the crystal sphere that he had. Seeing how much Garlon wanted it, it was possible that there was some information related to it amongst the books that he had just skimmed through.

So, Soren had Isaac scan all the data that he had just added in his database from the books and look up any information related to the crystal sphere.

“…..”

“…..”

“…..”

“…..”

It took some time for Isaac to go through all that data but ultimately, he found what Soren was looking for.

“Egg of a Crystal Albarose: The Crystal Albaroses are a type of Magic Insects that excel in defense and have a very strong innate physique. These small insects that look like normal dung beetles with the exception of the dark-blue crystal constitution are known for their ability to survive through almost anything. Because of their high rate of survivability and their ability of adaptation, these Magic Insects that were often seen as a deadly bunch were given a very high threat level by the Asadien Initiators.“

“Additional Info: The Crystal Albaroses had two methods in which they increased their numbers. The first method was where a Crystal Albarose divided itself into two new bodies; this was the method of increasing their numbers in the same generation as these two new Crystal Albaroses contained parts of the same soul. The second method was where Crystal Albaroses gave birth to the next generation in the form of eggs; losing their lives in the process.”

Soren remained stunned with his mouth open for quite some time after he received all the information from Isaac. He had imagined the crystal sphere to be many things, from materials to ingredients, but an egg was definitely not one of them. If he hadn’t found out about this now, he would have probably gone through with his original plan and would have changed this egg into a weapon to be used with his ‘Vornea’; while it was not a good thing for him, he was really glad right now that his ‘Vornea’ was still not developed to that stage.

Now knowing that this was an egg of a Magic Insect, Soren immediately made some changes in his plans. With this turn of events, he now needed to understand everything about this Crystal Albarose. Not only that, but he also needed to figure out if this egg could be hatched or not.

According to the ranking list of Magic Insects in the brown book, the Crystal Albaroses stood at the 4^th rank. Given this opportunity to have this insect as his Soul Pet, how could he just sit still and let it slip by?

So, Soren started reading all the information he now had about this Magic Insect and anything related to it. During this period of time, he didn’t care for anything and even rejected the call to defend the wall against the Beast Tide. He had already done more than enough for the fees that he had received, so he had no qualms about doing this.

For now, he just spent all his time studying the things related to this topic and put everything else on standby.

………

Two days later, Soren received a message from Ashby mentioning that they would depart for the jungle the next day. Only after getting this message, Soren stopped what he was doing and decided to put his research on hold; he needed to prepare a bit before going into the jungle.

As for the issue of Soren killing Garlon under the jurisdiction of Captain Hans, with the ‘witnesses’ that Soren had prepared, it was determined that Garlon was the one who first tried to kill Soren for his treasure; after all, who would stand up for a dead guy.

About the Crystal Albaroses, from the information that Soren had already processed, he now knew many things. And the more he knew, the more he wished to have it as one of his Soul Pets. This Magic Insect that was seen as a deadly threat on many planets was actually not a native Insect of Astara; in fact, it had its own separate planet where it ruled the food chain. It was brought out from that planet by many Asadien Initiators before, and thus, had ended up inhabiting some of the other planets. On Astara, though, this Magic Insect had almost gone extinct and was very hard to find; at least in a stage where it could become someone’s Soul Pet.

Furthermore, Soren also found out that this Magic Insect actually did not have much innate offensive power; individually. Instead of that, it actually had a much higher chance of going through evolution depending on its surroundings and some other factors; this was due to its ability to adapt to almost anything. Because of this feature, many Initiators strived to have it as their Soul Pet; as this fact meant that this Magic Insect had a very high possibility of adapting to the Mana from an Initiator and changing its evolution path. And although every Soul Pet was affected by their master’s Mana and had a likelihood of evolving into a stronger or different species, the rate of success varied from one to another; the Crystal Albaroses had a higher rate of success with that. In other words, each Initiator had the possibility of owning a distinct Crystal Albarose depending on their Mana.

Of course, not everything was good news for Soren. As he knew from the thick brown book, Crystal Albaroses had two methods of increasing their numbers. One was where they increased their number by dividing their bodies into two, also dividing the soul between them. While this method would weaken them quite a bit for a period of time, after recovering, they would once again reach their peak; only this time, they would have two bodies with similar strength.
The other was where they gave birth to a new generation and died in the process. In this method, the egg would then become the next generation. But for this egg to hatch, it would need the vital energy released from the corpse of its mother; the Crystal Albarose that gave birth to it.

Unfortunately, Soren didn’t have a corpse of a Crystal Albarose. More importantly, the egg would specifically need the energy from the corpse of its mother; the corpse of any other Crystal Albarose would not work. After knowing this, Soren had almost freaked out and had thrown the book away in frustration. Only after calming down and thinking about it for a while, he started looking through the book once again. From what Soren knew, it was clear that Garlon was also aware of all this information. So, for him to be searching for an egg of a Crystal Albarose, he had to have a method to hatch the egg. With that as his motivation, Soren had continued his search.

And much to his delight, he indeed found such a method in the book; he had found out about it just an hour before Ashby sent him the message.

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