Chapter 944 High Return, High Risk
"What?" Tang Shaoyang furrowed his brow when he heard the bad news, "What's the point of having a power, but I can't use it?"
The integration was stronger than the summon. The summoned spirit only had like eighty percent of their power when they were summoned. Much better percentage as he had evolved the skill further, but still weaker than the integration when he basically strengthened himself. Not just the big boost in his attributes, but he could also use the spirit's skill, their sense, and even experience in the battle.
He was excited when Avyn told him she was on God Rank, but the excitement disappeared when he heard he could not integrate with her. He was kinda annoyed, in fact, "Why don't we try it?" Tang Shaoyang did not want to give up, "Let's see how long I can hold during the integration with you."
'My advice is still the same, but I will not stop you from trying. Again, if you die from testing something silly like this, I just need to wait in my world for a new master. I am not losing anything if you die, but I have warned you.' Avyn did not try to stop Tang Shaoyang again. She knew she could not stop him anyway. She could only advise him; everything was on him.
The Last Kankara'Xeo made him hesitate from trying the integration, but again, he thought that he could save himself as he could cancel the skill if it was too dangerous for him. The Emperor took a deep breath and released it one ago before trying the skill.
Tang Shaoyang activated the skill, and the integration with Avyn started. His eyes widened as an extreme cold spread out through his body, then he started to lose his sense of touch, but he could tell that everything inside his body was freezing. It started from his heart and spread out through his body. The cold went up to his neck, and he immediately canceled the integration. The integration had not finished yet; in fact, there was nothing changed on his body aside from the coldness that spread out to his entire body.
The only thing he could feel was cold, and the weird thing was the coldness on his face. Half of his face was cold, and the other upper part was normal. Yes, the coldness stopped spreading right below his nose. On top of that, the only thing he could move was his eyes. He could not move or feel anything; he froze on the throne.
"What will happen if I don't stop the skill in time?" The question was directed to Avyn as he looked at his arms on the armrest. His skin turned blue from the coldness, but his skin had not changed yet from the integration, meaning the integration had not started yet.
'I don't know,' Avyn changed her answer. Before, her answer was dead, but it was different now, 'I noticed that only one of three hearts froze. Your Demon and Dragon Heart are fine; in fact, your two hearts are adapting to my Eternal Ice Energy. That's a good sign. Maybe you can try the integration again and let yourself freeze. If your body succeeds in adapting to my Eternal Ice Energy, then there's no problem integrating with me.'
"What if my body fails to adapt to your Eternal Ice Energy?" Tang Shaoyang shot the most important question. The woman did not even tell her the chance of him succeeding in adapting with the Eternal Ice Energy.
'You died.' She answered with two words and said it casually as if his life did not matter to her. She did not bother to hide her feeling that his death truly did not matter to her at all.
"That's worth a try, but I want to know the estimated time in adapting to your Eternal Ice Energy? And do you think I have a high rate of success adapting to your Eternal Ice Energy?" Tang Shaoyang did not back down. He felt like it was worth taking a shot because integration with Avyn could be an ace card for him if he encountered a God. He did not think of defeating a God, but at least he could escape from God by integrating with Avyn. It was just an emergency in case he encountered the same situation when he was in the Arkania Continent.
Even though there was no report about Gods from the group that entered the Survival Game after his Survival Game, he felt it was worth risking his life. On top of that, he had a skill [Seven Souls]. The skill was supposed to give him seven lives, but he was still unsure because there was no description of the skill. The snake came back seven times, but he was unsure if [Seven Souls] was the skill that revived the Green Sky Serpent. Again, he was willing to take the risk if the success rate was at least seventy percent.
'Hmm, let me check it,' There was a momentary pause. Tang Shaoyang did not know what Avyn did as he could not peek into the Spirit Space, but he waited patiently. Around thirty seconds, Avyn gave the answer, 'My Eternal Ice Energy is fading because you canceled the integration. That might be slowing down the assimilation, but if you keep the integration on, I estimate the assimilation will take around two weeks to one month. The fastest time will be a week. As for the success rate, I can't give you an estimation because your race is quite weird. Even my ancestors do not have the knowledge about you. Demonic Dragon? And also High Human? Three hearts? Let's say, around thirty percent? That's the highest success rate for you, I think.'
"Alright, let's forget about that. I am not going to risk my life for a thirty percent success rate," Tang Shaoyang immediately backed down from trying to adapt with the Eternal Ice Energy. It was not even fifty percent, meaning he was most likely to fail. Unless he could confirm [Seven Souls] was the seven lives skill, then he wanted to try it. With no assurance, the thought of integrating with God Rank Spirit disappeared.
"How do I increase the success rate?" He changed the question.
'Get a strong vessel, strong enough to contain my Eternal Ice Energy. In the System's terms, it's the attribute and the rank, or maybe you can upgrade your race again to Demonic Tang? Dragonic Tang? Or High Tang? Maybe get a third talent and second bloodline if possible. Whatever it is that makes you strong, or reach Legendary Rank. With your bloodline and race, you will get around seventy to eighty percent of success rate.' Avyn explained.
"Are you kidding me? Just seventy to eighty percent for a Legendary Rank? It's like three ranks above me, and it's not even a hundred percent?"
'It's a God Rank's power, so of course, you will face a huge risk unless you are a God too. Get to God Rank, then you don't need to worry about that anymore. Have you heard the saying 'high risk, high return'?'
"I will give up on integration," Tang Shaoyang shook his head. He was bold and fearless, but he would not try something with a thirty percent success rate or even lower. He gave up, "Then let's try summoning you. I wonder how much mana I need for me to maintain you."
He furrowed his brow as he realized that he still could not move. The Eternal Ice Energy still froze him, and he could not even move his finger, "Can I use the skill even if I can't move?" The skill did not require movement, but he never used the skill while not being able to move, "Let's find out."
[Ancient Summoning]
The skill was activated, answering his question. A blast of cold aura hit his face. The aura was even colder than his freezing body. Fortunately, no crazy thing happened during the summoning, so the throne hall was not destroyed. Avyn stood on the red carpet, facing Tang Shaoyang, "We meet again."
Tang Shaoyang did not bother to respond as he immediately checked his mana pool. His total mana was almost five million, just seventy thousand away from five million. Then he checked the missing number and was surprised, 'What the….'
The mana needed for summoning was different for each spirit. Everything depended on the Spirit Grade, but summoning Archaic Spirit took a chunk of his mana. Five hundred thousand mana just to summon Avyn. Then he noticed his mana pool was ticking down, and he lost a thousand mana per second. That was a crazy number. He needed like six hundred thousand mana to maintain Avyn for ten minutes and three million mana for an hour. That was more than half of his mana pool.
It took more mana than maintaining dozens of other spirits, even with Zara the Grade SSS Spirit and the other spirits at the same time. He wanted to shake his head, but his neck was still freezing. He wanted to speak, but his mouth was freezing too. Telepathy did not work when Avyn was summoned.
"How is it? Does it take a lot of mana to summon me?" Avyn asked as she approached Tang Shaoyang.
Tang Shaoyang just blinked his eyes as he had no way to communicate with the materialized Avyn. It's fortunate that the girl noticed it immediately, "Ah, I forgot that my Eternal Ice Energy paralyzed almost your whole body." She came over and placed her right hand on his chest. The Last Kankara'Xeo sucked all the Eternal Ice Energy from Tang Shaoyang's body.
That was a weird sensation where his body was cold, then suddenly warmed up as the Eternal Ice Energy disappeared from his body, "I have to be careful if I want to summon you later on. It takes more than half of my mana to summon and maintain you for an hour." He massaged his jaw, making various kinds of expressions as he still felt the stiffness.
"But why does it take that much mana to summon and maintain you? I felt like mana is never an issue when I even summon all my spirits," He wondered. Sure, God Rank was amazing, but the gap consumption between the Grade SSS Spirit and Archaic Spirit was just too big. He felt like the Grade SSS Spirit should not be far from the Archaic Spirit.
"Because I am not a death spirit like your other spirits. I am still alive, but I was trapped in a destroyed world. Even with my power, I couldn't get out of that destroyed place until one day, The System popped out in front of me, offering me an option to be a summon? I signed the contract with the System, then I figured that I am an Archaic Spirit. Kinda half right and half wrong, not a spirit, but I am Archaic. Been living for thousands of years, after all."