Tristan was left dumbfounded for a long time. "I thought I was going to loot a treasure, but turns out I was played. Luckily, I got antidotes for the Tea Master's soul poison. He is a dangerous individual. I didn't even know I was dying, neither did the system say anything." He thought to himself. He collected the items left.
The Sealing Grimoire had fused with his soul and disappeared. Tristan took one vial of the antidote and immediately felt like a dangerous grip over his soul was suddenly slapped away and he felt fresh. He had to return and give the same antidote to his sister.
"Bertha's tirade opens up new questions. Did the Tea Master already suspect us as potential pawns of Bertha and thus poisoned us? Would that mean he is keeping an eye on us? I have to get strong faster. Why is he anticipating that Bertha has a contingency plan? Too many things are hidden behind a shadow." Tristan's mind was working in overdrive.
He decided to absorb the items later. Now he decided to clear out the items in here. He crossed into the tunnel of mushrooms, picked up one life mushroom and ate it.
"Wood Essence. It is marginally increasing my Energy Body Constitution. Looks like my next path in the energy body is clear. Tristan quickly gathered the thousands upon thousands of mushrooms into his storage. Then he finally made his way to the rose.
The rose remained as bewitching as ever. He remembered Bertha's statement about how it is of no use to him. Steeling his heart, he went and plucked the rose from the ground.
[Bewitching Heart Rose]
He put it in his storage. As he was about the turn away, on plucking the Rose, the ground gave way and a basement cave appeared. Tristan jumped into the cave without two doubts and inside he was shocked to find hundreds, hundreds of metal feathers of the Stymphalion Bird.
Tristan sighed, the First Frog King was a really hard worker. Tristan collected them into his storage and left the Frog World. He bid the guards goodbye and then returned to the dorm.
The first thing he did was found his sister. He called his sister to his room immediately.
"What is so urgent?" Joanna asked.
"I'll tell you in my room. Let's go." Tristan said.
Within his room, Tristan sighed. He concentrated on the Sealing Grimoire in his soul and the room became isolated from the rest of the universe. This was one of the intuitive benefits of being bound to this Grimoire.
Tristan looked at his sister who was confused. "Sister, remember when we went to the frog world? Where we met the mysterious person who served us tea?" Tristan asked.
Joanna nodded. "Yes I remember. What about it, the Palace disappeared."
"The Tea Master poisoned the both of us with his tea. He injected us with soul poison to destroy our souls over time." Tristan said.
"What? What do we do now?" Joanna freaked out?
"I've got the antidote. Take it right now." Saying so he handed her the golden liquid.
Joanna looked at her brother and saw him urging her to have it and so had it. Immediately she felt like a hand that had been grasping at her soul before that she had never noticed before had been slapped away and she felt free.
Tristan nodded. "If you ever see than Tea Master, don't believe anything he says, even the energy path he gave you, always verify the information. He and I can already be considered enemies, and he might try to fool you in the process. So be careful and vigilant." He advised her properly.
"I am going to absorb some treasures, can you sit and guard me?" Tristan asked his sister who nodded.
He took out the first item from the Bertha Benkins collection. [Heartwood of the First Tree] was a piece of blood red heartwood. Just touching it, Tristan knew that this is concentrated wood essence.
He turned into energy form and began absorbing the heartwood. It was very slow to absorb, primarily because it had a really vast amount of wood essence in it. It took over two hours to complete absorbing this item alone.
Just the one heartwood caused him a 50% progress with the energy body towards the next level.
He then took out the [Twilight Acorn], [Twisted Pine] and [Goldwood Leaf] and absorbed them one by one to gain 15% each to progress the energy body to 95%.
Finally Tristan directly absorbed 500 of the [Life Mushrooms] in his energy form to peak the progress of his energy body to 100%, unlocking the next evolution quest.
Tristan didn't look at the quest right now. He took out the [Wand of Eden]. Immediately it's terrifying Life filled Aura could be felt. The system asked if he wanted to absorb the Aura and he agreed.
Then only a tiny sliver of aura from the legendary wand formed a drop and got absorbed into Tristan's warrior aura, slowly diffusing and fusing together. Eventually this fusion was completed as well and he completed 100% of the Aura Cladding, ready to upgrade the physical body as well. Another evolution quest had opened up, but barely any aura from the Wand of Eden was absorbed and Tristan felt like it might be useful on the next level.