Sniff, sniff, sniff.

A large bright orange lizard with blue stripes and horns cautiously walked towards three berries sitting in a small canyon. As it slowly makes its way towards the berries it would sway its head side to side looking for predators and competitors, before stopping and sniffing the air as it flicked its tongue in the air.

It had taken five minutes for the lizard to walk twenty feet inside this canyon, while the lizard was content to take its time to make sure it could eat the berries in safety, the young man perched atop the canyon wall was not. He had set the rungtel berries to lure in any passing demonic beasts with their pungent scent, and now that this Great Horned Lizard had taken the bait, he was anxious to strike. The knuckles on the hand gripping his homemade stone warclub had turned white a few moments the lizard had entered the canyon.

After what felt like hours to the young man, the lizard began to walk towards the berries again. When it reached the spot directly under the young man, he threw a stone. The moment the stone hit the wall of the canyon; the Great Horned Lizard became alert. It spread its legs and lifted its body to make it look bigger while getting ready to spit poison at anything it perceived as a threat.

The young man seeing his chance, leapt off the canyon wall and raised his warclub high above his head and brought it down with both hands onto the back of the lizard's head. A sickening wet crunch and the sound of a wooden shaft shattering echoed in the little canyon. When the young man landed in the canyon, he has smashed face first into the shoulder of the lizard before falling backwards to the ground.

"FUCK... that hurts."

Now sitting on the ground, Ivar was trying not to scream obscenities due to the pain he was now in. To him, it seemed like a perfect plan to lure a demonic beast into the canyon then jump down to smash it in the head. And while the plan worked, he did not consider what it would feel like to jump down ten feet or smashing something in the head as hard as he could. His feet hurt, his arms hurt, and his hands were throbbing in pain.

While he would have liked to have spent a few minutes for the aches and pains he was feeling to fade a bit before he got to work on the lizard, but he had already seen the first wisp of rainbow-colored mist escape the from the lizard's head. Scrambling to the lizard as quick as he could, he waved a hand in front of a bag tied to his waist and an item of wood and crystal appeared in his barely functioning hand. Flowing a little spirit power into the object caused the center crystal to emit a grey light that pulled the rainbow mist into it. 

The object was a soul-gem, but just barely. The gem was of the lowest of low-quality gems, the wooden frame around was used to reinforce gem to make it just operational. The worst part of these trash soul-gems is the fact the academy will lend them to the poorer students but requires a sky-high deposit. But for the richer students they are given high grade soul-gems without a deposit, those soul-gems can hold multiple souls for years without issue, but this soul-gem will begin leaking energy in two or three day and will render the soul so degraded it will be useless in a week.

After a few minutes, all the rainbow mist was completely absorbed.

This Great Horned Lizard wasn't the greatest of demonic beasts, but considering that if he stood up, he could still see the city, it was the best he could hope for. The city's patrol teams did a good job of keeping stronger demonic beasts away from the city, and only letting the weaker ones to approach the city so young warriors and demonic spiritualists could hunt them to gain experience and make a little profit. 

Picking up the broken shaft of his home-made war club while wondering how the first demonic spiritualists survived. He had always heard the first demonic spiritualist used weapons of wood, stone, and bone to kill demonic beasts. But unlike Ivar, they were not hunting in a city's patrol zone culled of stronger demonic beasts, and they didn't have soul gems to allow them to rest and recover before integrating them. They had to hunt demonic beasts while surrounded by beasts from the first layer to rank 3 or even higher. And when they killed the demonic beasts, they had to drag their tired and bruised bodies on top of the beasts and absorb its soul while hoping another demonic beast comes to investigate the commotion. 

He had made this warclub from a sapling and a rock he stole from the academy's garden and a lot of string. He had been bored and curious and angry when he decided to try to hunt with a home-made weapon. But from now on he would be using proper weapons to hunt. 

Waving his hand over the bag tied to his waist, the body of the Great Horned Lizard disappeared into the bag. By now the pain and throbbing had been replaced with a dull ache, and it was time to rebait the trap and wait for more prey. Using the broken shaft of the warclub, he poked the rungtel berries to make them weep their juices. The pungent smell began to fill the small canyon and soon would overpower the smell of the lizard and its blood.

Climbing up the side of the canyon wall, he returned to his hiding spot among the rocks. Since he had time while he waited, he decided to absorb the Great Horned Lizard's soul into his soul realm. Placing the now glowing soul-gem to his forehead, Ivar started to flow his spirit power into the soul-gem to pull the lizard's soul out of the gem and into his soul realm. Withing a few minutes, the glow of the soul-gem was gone, it had returned to its dull and lifeless appearance. 

Within his soul realm was a small glowing lizard with three layers of rainbow light surrounding it scampering around. Of the three parts of the integration process, he had completed the first step: integration. Next would come purification, where the last remnants of the Great Horned Lizard's consciousness were stripped away leaving a pure but empty soul. The final stage was saturation, where the demonic spiritualist will flow their spirit power into the soul to fill it up the empty soul and make it a part of the demonic spiritualist. 

It was an odd sensation for Ivar, he could feel the lizard's soul within him. It was if he had grown an arm on his hip or a leg on his back, it was a part of him and not part of him at the same time. This would change when he completes the saturation stage, but that would time and shouldn't be done out in the field if it could be helped. Later when he got back to the academy, he would begin the purification process, which should take several hours.

The part of this process that he was looking forward to the least was the saturation, the soul of the Great Horned Lizard was at the third layer while Ivar was only at the first layer and would need about a week of deep concentration as he guides his spirit energy into the soul. It would be like trying to fill a large bucket with water one spoon at a time, it is doable but would be long and boring. 

While Ivar was dreading what was to come, three Shell Bugs entered the little canyon. The souls of these Shell Bugs were useless, but their shells were used to make good armor for those below rank 1 and could be sold for a good price. Ivar threw a rock near them, and they rolled up into balls to protect themselves. When the Shell Bugs roll up, swords and spears can't pierce or slash through them and hammers and clubs bounce off. But a knife slid under the shell segments and into the brain kills them quick and painlessly. Waiting a few minutes for the souls to fully dissipate, Ivar returned to his hiding spot.

When it was almost time to return to the academy and while Ivar was still wishing to stay a bit longer a Shadow Badger entered the canyon. If this badger had not come, Ivar could have stayed an hour or more, but foul odor of the Shadow Badger meant nothing more was going to come to this canyon for days.

Not wanting to touch the Shadow Badger and get it smell on him, Ivar grabbed a rock the size of his head and threw it at the Shadow Badger. Unfortunately, it failed to hit the badger in the head and killing it instantly, it smashed into its back. The Shadow Badger screamed in agony as it tried to flee, but its spine had been shattered and the rock pinned it in place. A second smaller rock did hit the badger in the head turning its loud screams of pain into quiet whimpers, a third rock ended its suffering.

Ivar climbed down the canyon wall feeling like shit. He wasn't happy the Shadow Badger had shown up but was always taught to kill a creature as painlessly as possible and to let a beast go rather than make it suffer. As he approached the badger, he gave a silent prayer asking for forgiveness. When the first wisps of rainbow mist started to leave the badger's body, he pulled out a soul-gem to collect its soul. It wasn't the lowest quality soul-gem had got from the academy, but dark red gem set in a shiny blue metal. It was a high-grade soul-gem he had taken from home before he came to the academy. 

The Shadow Badgers soul would be maintained in perfect condition for at least twenty years in this soul-gem, and Ivar would make sure to use its soul well. After collecting the badger's soul and the rungtel berries, he began to head back to the city. Which was a good thing, the smell of the Shadow Badger was starting to make him gag.