Returning to the city took less than an hour and he was back in the hustle and bustle of the city's trade district. Ivar sold the lizard to a butcher shop, but no matter how hard he haggled he still only got two-thirds of what he thought he was going to get. It really couldn't be helped; he wasn't the only one from the academy that had used the past couple days to go hunting. But the good news was that the Shell Bugs sold for twice the normal price, it still wasn't close to the price of the armors that were made from the bug shells.
With all his business done, it was time to return to the academy, no matter how much he didn't want to. If Ivar could, he would happily quit the academy and return home. But he like most of the students of the academy were forced to attend by order of the city manager. Ivar figured that if the order was lifted today, then the academy would lose over ninety percent of its students tomorrow.
His uncle joked that the academy was an asshole factory, that the rich would send their worthless shit children to the academy so they could learn to be complete and utter assholes. After attending the academy for the past month, Ivar was sure that it wasn't a joke but the truth.
Entering the academy should be a simple matter of showing the staff at the gate his student I.D. plate, but just like almost everything else in this academy the staff made it hard. He was asked for his name, the name of his teachers, the room number his classes were in, and several other questions and some he had to answer more than once before he was allowed to enter.
He was expecting the same thing when he returned the low-quality soul-gem later, and tomorrow when tried to get the cultivation resources the academy was supposed to give him every week. The most annoying part of it was that the academy would deliver the same resources to the wealthy students and that all they had to do was ask for something and get it without the hassle.
He hated this hassle even more than he did being taught what he had already known for several years. Ivar was the first demonic spiritualist in his family in the past one-hundred years, but over one-hundred years ago his family had many demonic spiritualists. Each one wrote a journal describing their journey as a demonic spiritualist. Every demon spirit they fused with, its strengths and weaknesses, every spell learned, and growth strategies from the first layer to rank 7, the highest any of his ancestors had reached.
Every family that had demonic spiritualists had these journals and would never share them with outsiders. But in the past hundred years many families were forced to sell their journals to survive. Even in a barely medium ranked sized city such as this one has hundreds of journals for sale, common journals up to rank 2 can be purchased for a few dozen credits, while those up to rank 5 or 6 going for tens of thousands of credits. Most families in this city have several common journals and were ready to spend the credits to get better journals if their families ever produced a demonic spiritualist.
Ivar used his family's journal to learn to read growing up, along with many of the younger generation of his family. Beig forced to attend the academy to learn things he had known for years while being treated like shit, make Icar hate the academy, it made many of the students hate the academy.
Ivar's thoughts of why he hated being at the academy came to an end the moment he walked into the cafeteria and the delicious smells that were within. He would deal with returning the soul-gem he barrowed after he ate dinner. Because he truly wasn't sure he could resist lashing out at the clerks if they annoyed him with an empty stomach. He filled his tray with a selection of grilled, stewed, and fried meats of various demonic beasts.
After he was done eating, he had wished he eaten slower so he could have more time before heading to the resource center. What should have been a simple flash his I.D. plate and returning the soul-gem took over ten minutes as the clerk asked the same questions several times and dragged their feet checking the records. The condescending tone the clerk used while talking down to Ivar made him want to jump over the counter and pummel the worthless little shit half to death.
Ivar was still angry by the time he returned to his room, but he needed to calm down to purify the Great Horned Lizard's soul. After taking a deep breath, Ivar focused on the steps of integration needed to make this lizard soul his. He remembered how it felt to absorb the Great Horned Lizard's soul and seeing it running around his soul realm. Then he focused on the next part, purification, where he would flow his spirit energy through the little glowing lizard's body to strip the remaining consciousness, making sure to remove every last trace to prevent it from reforming and interfering with his control. By the time he began to think of saturation he had already let go of his anger and was ready to begin.
It took a few tries to get his spirit energy to flow into his soul realm, several more tries to pin the little glowing lizard down. After the first hour of purification process, the glow from the little lizard had dimmed by half, after the second hour, it no longer glowed and the three layers of rainbow light surrounding it had dulled considerably. The glowing lizard that was running around his soul realm now looked like a lifeless glass lizard figurine.
This would be the point that he could begin to fill it with his own spiritual energy to start the saturation process but wanted to eliminate and possibility that anything was left behind and continued to purify the lizard's soul. But after forty minutes he had to stop, he had run out of spirit energy and was now suffering from a headache. To remedy this, he took a spirit replenishing pill from the resources he had been getting every week since coming to the academy. The pill melted the moment it entered his mouth, and the warmth the spread throughout his body from his stomach almost made him think nicely of academy for once, almost.
It was now late, so after his head stopped aching, he flowed a little bit of his replenished spirit energy into the lizard soul, before going to bed. As much as me didn't want to, he still had to get and go to classes.
Sleep came quickly to Ivar, but ended far quicker than he would like. His body was a little stiff and sore when he woke up but that went away after a bit of stretching and meditation. When he arrived at the cafeteria, he wasn't feeling up to being social before eating so he grabbed a seat away from those he knew and began devouring his food only slowing down when most of his food had disappeared. He didn't want to make the same mistake as last night; he wanted to use as much time as possible to delay having to go to class. But in the end his plate still became empty faster than he wanted.
The corridors were filled with lots of people walking to their classes who looked just as miserable as Ivar. He could be home, surrounded by his family. His father and uncles could be teaching to track demonic beasts, or the best was to set up an ambush, or a thousand things far more important than listening to a teacher tell everyone what they already knew.