Days have passed after Tirus broke through and became rank 3 acolyte.
He used most of his time concocting potions, and studying transfiguration, apart from that, he sometimes accompanied Rick and Bilan on hunting missions so that he could get used to his increased physical stats and gather more battle experience.
He had planned on cultivating in seclusion after he broke through to official magus rank, if possible that is, and thus, he wanted to accumulate as much battle experience as he could now.
Due to his grand knight level physique and rank 3 acolyte cultivation, coupled with the fact that he had already learned a lot of rank 0 spells, his battle strength was currently top tier among rank 3 acolytes.
….
"Hey, Rick, how is your flesh golem now? Do you need someone to repair it?" Tirus asked Rick casually.
"Nah, It's good, plus I don't have enough money for that as I used all my magic crystals for potions to aid my cultivation." He replied.
"You see, I was actually planning on using the flesh golem on missions, but I found out that my control over the flesh golem was somewhat poor while fighting, and so I'm still practicing." He said.
"Will anyone tell me what the mission is?" Bilan asked, a little irritated.
"You shouldn't have been late!" Rick reprimanded her, she pouted "I was late, but it wasn't on purpose. Stop being unreasonable or I'll just leave."
"Hey, Hey, don't fight like children… I'll explain the mission." Tirus said to Bilan.
"We have to go to a valley to find the source of the negative energy that has been present there for half a year now."
"I see. No worries, look what I bought yesterday!" Bilan exclaimed as she showed a staff made of mahogany wood with a small red crystal on the top.
"It's a low-grade magic treasure, but don't look down on it, for it can reduce fire element spell's spiritual force consumption by 10%." She said, evidently proud of her magic staff.
Each increase in one's cultivation rank brought an immense increase in a magus's spiritual force's quantity and quality as well as increasing their affinity with the natural elements to a certain extent, resulting in a drastic decrease in spiritual force consumption when casting the same spell as compared to a magus of lower rank. For instance, a rank 2 acolyte would consume around 2 units of spiritual force for casting a fireball spell, but when the same spell is used by a rank 3 acolyte, then the spiritual force consumption would be lower.
Which explains the huge power difference between each rank.
The spiritual force consumption could be decreased by using some magic treasures, but the effect was usually quite limited and such magic treasures were quite rare, if not for Bilan being a peak rank 2 acolyte and the fact that she bought this from her mentor, it would've already been snatched by someone.
"Okay, Okay, let's leave for the mission now, shall we? Tirus suggested.
….
In a valley far, far away from Crimson Bone academy,
Three acolytes wearing the uniform of the academy were warily looking around them to see if there was any beast that could attack them. One of them was using an undead contracted beast to survey the surroundings.
Black fog shrouded the path ahead, striking fear into the hearts of many normal beasts, causing them to flee. But there were some beasts who were stubborn by nature chose to stay, alas, they could only die a painful death as the negative energy particles caused their bodies to slowly rot, some had gone insane, good thing that most of them were paralyzed.
"Hey look! There's a deep cave there, that must be the source of this negative energy!" Bilan pointed out.
"Okay… I'll go see if there's any danger." Rick said as he made his way to the cave with light footsteps.
Soon, he said, "Guys, it's safe and there's even a path ahead, there must be something."
"Is the path too narrow?" Bilan inquired.
"No, it's not." He answered.
"Hey, I think we should return to the academy, we can just tell them that the cave is the source." Tirus proposed but Rick retorted, "No, we should go in and look. What if we find a magical treasure?"
"Oh…well." Tirus could only stop talking as he started to follow Rick inside the cave and after a few seconds he said, "If something bad happens, then don't blame me for using you as my meat shield" in a monotone voice.
But Rick ignored him.
The trio made their way inside it, a few hours later, they saw three entrances, all of which seemingly led to different locations.
"Let's split up." Bilan suggested.
"Don't get reckless just because you have a new magic treasure." Tirus said in a low voice.
"Hey, I'm not reckless, it's just that it'll be more efficient if we were to split up." she replied, looking at Rick for approval.
"Okay, let's split up." Rick finally gave up and agreed to Bilan.
"This is not a good idea, I'm telling you." Tirus said, "Bilan, if you want to split, then okay, but I'm going with Rick, and remember, it won't be our fault if you die."
"Okay, okay." Bilan said, as she chose the entrance in the middle.
Rick entered the entrance on the right side.
Tirus followed Rick to increase his chance of survival. Even though she was his team member, he didn't really care much about what happened to her. Since she even ignored his advice, there was nothing else he could do. Even if he could, he wouldn't.
Tirus suspected that this may be some kind of inheritance ground which, for some reason, wasn't revealed until a few months ago. But due to some unknown reason, it now revealed itself.
*Brruuuum*
The sound of a huge rock moving could be heard, Tirus looked behind to see that the entrance was now block by a huge gray boulder.
"Ah shit, was that a trap?!" Both of them thought at the same time, but after nothing unusual happened, they finally started moving forwards, Tirus sent Hawke ahead to see if there was any danger. Since the path wasn't narrow, Hawke didn't have any problem flying.
"Hey, Rick, you asked about transfiguring your body with green metal tree, what happened?" Tirus inquired.
"The transfiguration was a success!" Rick said with a wide smile on his face.
"That's great, I'm also considering transfiguring my body as well, or maybe I'll wait until I become an official magus to get resources for better transfigurations." Tirus shared some of his prospects like how he was thinking of joining the academy as a professor and so on.
*Shriek*
Hawke shrieked, signalling that it found something dangerous ahead.
To be continued….