With a Soul Point Balance of [15,587] following his recent considerably expensive purchase, Evian steeled himself for the inpour of information that flooded into his head, hurting him just as the Wraith counterpart of the same Manuscript had hurt back then.
Unlike spell purchases, there was always a denser quality to Weapon Modification Manuscripts that seemed to swell Evian's head with every imprint of every word and symbol stamped onto the immaterial scroll.
Once the Trial was at an end, Evian opened his eyes and they were bright with knowledge.
'You know I've been wondering, if Weapon Modification Manuscripts are this much of a Trial, how much more painful will Weapons manufacturing and Forging Manuscripts be?' Evian asked the assistant.
[...]
He took that silence to mean the worst and thus pushed that aside to focus on his Spear lying on his lap as he began to modify it by corrupting the seals and imprints that adorned it with Eldritch energy on such a fundamental level that he appeared to be changing the seals to suit his desires.
Evian liked the double-ended Spear. As an Heirloom he had seized from the Larnak Family, the spear was a powerful weapon but he believed it was still lacking. It was only at the Sixth Star and only had two more upgrades before Evian eventually outgrew it and in that case, he would need to upgrade it which would involve much more than the use of Eldritch corruption.
Evian wondered if he would still want to wield the Spear by then or if he would have gotten himself another powerful weapon but of course, in the meantime, that was not important.
He gripped the Spear and lifted it off his lap, smiling as he felt it quiet down and stop resisting his wield. He channeled Eldritch energy into it and the Weapon accepted it and even shook with an intent to discharge the energy it had been fed.
"All done!" Evian called out to the ladies while he sent the Spear into his Spatial ring.
"We're still retrieving resources," Lora said in a slightly subdued tone.
Another twenty minutes passed before they were done. Considering the number of Beasts they had to cut up and harvest, that was actually fast.
"Evian, Here's—" Lora said stretching out a Hunting Spatial Pouch specifically for keeping harvested Martial Beast resources but before she could complete her sentence, Evian waved her off,
"You all keep it," he said.
"We didn't do anything," Lora pointed out.
"Doesn't really matter, does it?" Evian said with a raised brow, "For now, we're a team and I have no use for any of that anyway."
"Why would anyone hunt without the desire to reap spoils?" Xania asked, sounding like the mere thought of it was at the very least strange.
"Could it be that— You don't know how to sell the loot?" Thana voiced out to bring up some alternate line of thinking.
"You're thinking too much," Evian said with a chuckle, "I just don't want it."
He turned away from the group at that point and stared deeper into the Forest,
"This way," he called to them and led the way.
Evian was not journeying blindly. His senses had picked up a powerful aura in the direction he led the group toward and the closer they got to it, the more he was sure of it.
"You can feel it now can't you?" he asked Lora as she was the one whose senses closely matched his in sharpness but they were already so close to the source of the aura that everyone in the group could very clearly tell what they were detecting.
"A Fifth Rank Beast," Xania said with a frown as her body tensed with readiness.
Everyone in the party was keeping their faces serious but Evian was instead smiling at the chance of reaping 10,000 Soul Points in one fell swoop. He was not going at it alone so why should he fear?
"We're here!" Evian announced as his speed reduced to a stalking pace. The ladies followed his lead. The plan was to at least not get discovered until they could afford to i.e. When they had gotten into a formation.
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
Evian was making gains but despite Wraithic Phasing, he was still getting slowly pushed into a disadvantage by the sheer numbers. After all, if he wanted to strike the Beasts, he needed to deactivate his Phasing and that moment gave his birdy opponents a chance to scratch at him with their talons.
But of course, Evian still had a move up his sleeves. For the first time since he started hunting in the Forest, he truly let loose.
His body began to exude a chill that got deeper and stronger by the second until it formed a field that pushed the Aerial Beasts away from him while he charged multiple Eldritch discharges with his Spear and let them loose.
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]...
When that ended, he started sprinting between them, overpowering their winged advantage with the absolute maximum Speed he had access to, going on a rampage and killing even more.
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]
[You have acquired 1000 Soul Points]...
Evian felled so many of the Beasts that they started to stay away. While their intelligence was limited, they had enough sense to know that the single man, whom they had been unable to as much as scratch while he killed over half of their numbers, was certainly an existence to stay away from.
Meanwhile, Evian invested a portion of his recently-gained Soul Points on an important tool to bring down the Fifth Rank Beast.