Ikky had tried all night, and even after waking up, yet he couldn't get a single drop of his spiritual essence into the pale blade. Rather than him being unable to, it was the blade itself that was rejecting whatever he tried to put in it.
Ikky took his eyes off the blade in his hand and peered into the snowy landscape.
He tightened the furry white hoodie on his head and shuffled his bare feet through the thick snow.
"Since we have no knowledge of where the spirits might be, we should check the smaller spaces they could occupy. At least, it would be safer than standing out blind within this fog." Yaga adviced.
"Ha... It'd be nice if they chased after me instead. I'd rather have that than me having to look for them through this mess. Oh well, let's try that cave up ahead." Ikky pointed.
***
As soon as Ikky had woke up that day, he was put to work at the restaurant. His meals and lodging weren't for free after all.
Well, they should have been since Rick had been ordered to take care of the Seer he was assigned. It was only because of this that Arley was less strict and took her time to teach him how to do basic chores.
Still, Ikky was learning quite quickly.
At breakfast, he suddenly asked if there were spirits he could hunt. Mahar seemed to have the equivalent of every class of animals as spirits here, so why not those.
And that had brought him to the Kailash on the day after.
The Kailash is an area of snowy mountains. It snowed heavily, yet was always surrounded by thick clouds of fog.
It is a place where spirits are born, where prophets make them, and where they are hunted. Yes, it sounds strange putting those three attributes together, but the Kailash had its ways to force those who took from the environment to return something back— something of equal value.
As soon as one stepped into these snowy grounds, the Kailash would gradually absorb the spiritual essence within the bodies of the Prophets in it, take that essence and then convert it into spirit seeds— which in turn grew into food for the environment. But the absorption rate was very slow, unless those Prophets were expending some themselves. And that was where the wild spirits came in.
According to the amount of spiritual essence the Prophets contained, the Kailash would send proportional amounts of wild spirits to them, to hunt. Either that, or just a few but much stronger spirits instead.
Ikky wasn't sure what the case for him was, but he knew the habitat would give him a challenge considering he possessed a high enough spiritual essence as a Mythical mark wielder.
But if you asked him, his bountiful spiritual essence was more of a burden since he had no way to utilise it when he didn't even know what his Totem could do. So he got more work with lesser capability.
Nevertheless, the whole point of this hunting trip was to figure out how to use his Totem anyway. A little challenge wouldn't hurt... perhaps.
Ikky searched carefully from one cave to the next, looking for monsters, but to no avail.
"Damn. How far are these things? I know Arley said the spirits might spawn far from where I am, but how far does it go?" He kicked at the snow, wondering why no wild spirit had come for him yet.
———
From high up in the sky, above the Kailash mountains, a tall figure in a black and purple overcoat sat cross-legged in the air.
With one palm holding his head up, using his knee as a platform, he glanced through the thick fog surrounding the Kailash, effortlessly. Rick sighed out a laugh as he watched the boy he was asked to look over, scapmer without purpose around the mountain.
"On the bright side, there's no work for me to do." He murmured, but continued to watch over Ikky nonetheless.
There were no obvious numbers or power levels of monsters that could be sent within the Kailash to the Prophets in it, just estimates. So even if two Prophets of the same Hierarchy and strength were placed in different locations, what and how many creatures they would each attract would most likely be different. The Kailash sends wild spirits in quite a random ways, but still according to the spiritual essence it senses a Prophet can dispell. More than meaning how much essence a prophet possesses, it meant how much they could use it.
Perhaps it was because the mountains didn't want too much of its visitors dead, and wanted them to keep coming back, that it sent spirits accordingly to capabilities, rather than how vast their essence pool was. Because, those like Ikky with slightly more essence than normal, but very low ability to use it would most likely die if more spirits came at them, since they didn't know what they were doing.
So far, Rick had not found one single creature lurk within ten kilometers around the amber-eyed boy. This would normally mean he couldn't use his spiritual essence at all. But that was unthinkable. Nobody was that bad.
If that was the case though, then Ikky was the first of his kind, the worst of the worst! Could he even activate his Totem for five seconds?
"At this rate, he could either become a Dormant prophet and work the restaurant full time; or work his hair off." Rick said again.
If Ikky was willing to work two... no twenty times more than the average Prophet, then the amount of essence he would be able to draw out would gradually increase, and so would his essence capacity.
The Omen was not too unfair to those with lesser privileges. Besides, those with more, suffered unimaginably to keep them. And Ikky looked like he had suffered enough already.
... Rick had no idea...
Walking for a few more kilometers, Ikky had already given up on checking every other cave and boulder. It took a long while, but the amber-eyed man finally found what he sought.
Or at least, he thought he did.
Back at the snowy ground, at the foot of a cliff, a group of five armed men and three women stood on guard before the clouds of approaching wild spirits; their arms shaking from numbness and their faces dripping down blood.
Right behind them was a large cliff that they would have to go around in order to escape the approaching wild spirits. But at their current state, they could either choose to fight with a probability of dying, or run till they ran out of breath just to face inevitable death.
"This is all your fault Harith." One of the women said suddenly, wiping the blood off her pale lips.
Harith, the leader of the group clenched his teeth as he held his green amulet in his hand.
"We all agreed to do this Khavi. Have you forgotten when you stepped ahead of us to collect that thing?" Another woman tried to defend Harith.
"So what?! Harith was the one who hired more laggards to increase our numbers, but that clearly made things worse!"
"Who're you callin' laggards?!" The three hired men turned to her furiously.
While Khavi continued to blubber in fear, the rest were too exhausted to argue — clearly she had gotten the easier task in their previous battle with the wild spirits.
This group of prophets had already taken down eight of the twenty wild spirits they had called from the Kailash. They were in their fifth or sixth year of being prophets, so it was the experience they had that had helped them take down a few spirits from the restless herd.
Five years as Seers was quite higher than the average time it should take a prophet to ascend their hierarchy to become Believers, so there was also desperation that had led them here today— desperation that had forced them into using unnatural ways to lure out more spirits than they should have.
In a few days, another batch of Seers would be celebrated as this year's chosen. It would have been embarrassing to this desperate group to have to take missions along with the same hierarchy they had been for six years, but what did that matter now? They were all dead meat.
———
There were twelve remaining spirits in total, some obviously stronger than the others, all in different but familiar animal forms, revealing their class as just wild spirits.
These creatures were called by Seers who were well versed in utilising their spiritual essence, so they were quite strong. They were also a bit too much for even them, because of the manner they had been summoned.
Regardless, Ikky was too desperate to think more than once before engaging.
Like a meteor from space as he leapt from above the cliff, the amber-eyed man fell and slammed his blade into the head of the biggest creature he could get too.
*CRACK!!
The fog in the area cleared as all senses of those around the area, focused on the center of the blast.
"... That took WAY too long!" Ikky exclaimed, tossing the essence crystal of the spirit he'd just slain, in his mouth.
But that small thing wasn't enough to quell his frustration of having to look around all day for these spirits. And like they knew it too, the rest of them rushed towards him.
"Wait! Damn."