She then thought deeper, and the second requirement became clear "The second is knowledge, one needs extensive knowledge regardless of which faction one is part of to create the ritual for each seal. The ritual needs to be done by your own hand, including the inscriptions and everything else. This step is also easy for me, since I have this inheritance at hand, I only need to study them intensively and will be able to do the ritual.
Lastly, it is spiritual power that will be the most time consuming for me. I need to let my soul absorb spiritual power. Only once it reaches a satisfactory level can I gather the spiritual power around to fully advance.
I don't know whether to say I am lucky or whether this is a gift intended by the Aeon Witches… but the inheritance necklace gathered spiritual power throughout the many ages. It didn't have the function in the beginning as far as I can see, but the long exposure to it while actively hosting a soul that doesn't absorb anything made it mutate it seems.
Now it gathered enough spiritual power for me to create the third seal. Only because of my long stay in here did the spiritual power become extremely attuned to me, else it would be impossible for it to actively help me.
As for the fourth seal, if I don't want to wait a few more decades, I won't be able to use its help. It only advanced a hundred years ago at most as far as I can see, so it probably was influenced as much as I was after reaching the ten thousand years mark.
But how can I wait a few more decades to advance after spending so many years here… even if I was unconscious for the most time and only gained knowledge through the corruption, my soul still feels fuzzy at the thought of waiting any single second longer.
An impatient time witch… well, my soul will calm down after living in the outside world for a few years… after all, the ratio of twenty six to ten thousand still changed me a lot, even if I won't be able to go back into seclusion for ten thousand years after staying outside for only twenty six, after a few years, my mind will definitely calm down and the decades up to that point won't be difficult to wait through, so there is no need to be too impatient.
Also, advancing several stages without any practical knowledge is dangerous. The inheritance clearly states that even descendants of important witches will at most stay behind for the first three stages. No matter how theoretical witchcraft is, most witches still prefer to practice outside. It can be said that they are half theoretical and half practical, not adventurers that travel around all the time, but not those that seclude themselves for many years.
No, they like the lifestyle of having a residence and operating from that residence the whole time, whether it is to open up a apothecary or something similar.
For me now, the importance is deciding on the rituals I want, after all, I can only have nine and all of them are extremely important…
The basic practice is to gain three foundational rituals in the early stages that enhance the harnessing of spiritual power, affinity power and one that strengthens the school we master. The middle stages will ask one to gain three seals with deep affinity towards the one they bind towards in the fourth stage of bound witch. Lastly, the three higher often choose extremely specific rituals.
But the last point is because these rituals have high requirements, while there is also a saying that the more affinity seals I have, the more I will be attuned to those spells. Even if my affinity is high, it is spread like an ocean and I am good at all kinds of time spells, but not very good…"
Thinking of this, the woman soon had her answer already, three rituals, two of which are said to be higher ones, while the last one is actually a ritual of the middle stage of a different faction. The reason she can use it is because as impartial judges, the Aeon Witches have deep relations to all the other factions.
Often times, they would help other factions and gain deep knowledge from other factions under the promise that the rituals they gain are never to be used against them. Naturally the time witches agreed and used that knowledge as foundation to enhance the inheritance of time witches.
The two extremely high rituals are of the same origin. The first the new witch wanted to attempt was one very important: the Ritual of the Eternal Name!
The pre version is the 'Ritual of the True Name', but the time witches changed 'true' to 'eternal'. People can have the same true name, but there are only a few names that persist throughout eternity. The true name is one that has a lot of emphasis on what you will be like, how your abilities will become, it becomes a major characteristic of yourself.
One could say the same about the eternal name, only that the eternal name goes even deeper into the matter and the name becomes more important, and it will also make the owner of the name more unique. How many have a true name with the meaning of bravery? But one time, bravery itself was a name – a true eternal name!
The new witch didn't hesitate for long – the ritual wasn't difficult at all, she only needed to sit down and make herself forget her own name, reject that name, then write her name on her soul.
Being in a soul state makes it much easier, so she sat down and closed her eyes intently. She willed the spiritual power in the artifact to approach her. She harnessed it extremely fast, it can be said that this is a great blessing upon her.
Without much effort, she broke through the awakened apprentice stage extremely fast.