99 Benefiting from the Dead

Eren flashed a wicked smile when he realized that the artifact was a better fit for him than he had initially thought. This artifact alone had made Rog’s death worth it for Eren. However, he needed to find something else about him.

“The runestone.”

Eren said to himself as he opened Rog’s right palm with his hand before forcefully accessing his storage space. In the next moment, all of Rog’s possessions had been taken out in front of Eren.

Eren quickly looked through all of Rog’s stuff and found what he was looking for right away. He quickly picked up the azure-colored stone in his hand and stared at it carefully.

This azure-colored stone had some runic markings etched on it. When Eren imbued it with his mana sense and wrapped it inside his mana, it sent out a peculiar mana pulse. The act had also erased Rog’s residual mana signature from it, making the stone completely Eren’s.

Eren quickly realized that this was the other piece of the puzzle he needed to open the door of the Bear’s Creed testing ground. The same door that was located not far from where he was currently.

Eren wanted to explore the testing grounds right away. But he knew that now was not the right time. He needed to prepare thoroughly and master some of his old and new spells beforehand.

‘I’ll just keep this stone for now. Saved me the trouble of looking elsewhere.

Eren thought to himself before making the runestone disappear into thin air. He then looked at the rest of the things Rog had.

‘Hm. These daggers are nice. Too bad they are designed for someone with a mist element. I won’t be able to unlock their full potential.’

Eren really liked Rog’s daggers. He kept them inside his storage anyway since they could always be exchanged for daggers featuring the elemental runes he was familiar with. He was sure that Malcolm would find some use for them anyway.

Eren then found some more potion vials on Rog that he could use. Plus, there were some mist-element spell scrolls and spell books he could sell to Malcolm as well.

Eren also found a spell book that was not bound by any particular element. It was an unelementalized spell meant to be used by all the rankers.

Spirit beast spell.

The book contained the procedure to cast the spirit beast spell. Unlike most spells, it takes a lot of preparation to cast. Only now did Eren realize why he needed his natal body to do the spell.

This was a blood ritual spell that bound a mana beast of the ranker’s choosing with them. The spell required the ranker to first subdue the beast they were looking to bind with before killing them inside the spirit beast spell array.

The mana beast would be forced to discard their bodies as a result of dying inside the array. However, their souls would be prevented from dissipating. The rankers then needed to follow the rest of the procedure described in the book to bind the beast’s soul with them.

A ranker’s soul needed to be split and fused with the beast’s soul after binding. This allowed the mana beast to gain consciousness. It also made it easy for the beast’s soul to treat the rankers as their masters, obeying their every command.

The mana beasts would gain the ability to speak, thanks to the portion of the ranker’s soul getting added into their consciousness. They would possess almost all the knowledge a ranker had at the time of the splitting of the soul, making them gain the same level of comprehension as rankers.

It was necessary to use the natal bodies for this complicated procedure. Otherwise, there was a chance something could go haywire. In addition, even if one managed to bind mana beasts to synth bodies, they would restrict the beast from being bound only to that body.

In short, rankers won’t be able to use the spirit beast spell with their natal bodies if they had bound the mana beast using their synth bodies. No ranker would want to lose a portion of their soul like this with such a disadvantage.

‘Hmm? The spell says the beast’s soul binds with the ranker’s mana core?’

Eren kept on reading further into the book to learn more about the spirit beast spell. He had come to know that the spirit beast spell had some limitations when it came to binding with multiple beasts.

Usually, rankers preferred binding with one spirit beast because it was less problematic that way. The splitting of souls that turned mana beasts into spirit beasts was no simple matter. A ranker’s soul was stronger than a mortal soul. However, a Meta ranker’s soul could only endure so much. It would take years for the soul to recover from such a procedure.

Plus, after the spirit beast’s soul gets bound with the rankers through their mana core, the difficulty in progressing through the ranking journey would increase. After all, it was now the master’s responsibility to see that their tamed beast ranked up with them.

Adding more spirit beasts would not only strain the rankers’ souls but also make their ranking progress stagnate because of the burden their mana cores would be in. so most rankers, irrespective of their rank, would usually stick to having one Spirit beast if they decide to have any that is.

The spirit beast spell was an investment and a long-term commitment. It was not something the rankers could do on their whim. They also needed to make sure that the beast they bind with is compatible with their element and nature. The disparity between the ranker and their potential spirit beast would only mean that rankers would face an even more extreme burden to progress through their ranks.

The process of casting the Spirit Beast spell was complicated and expensive. That’s why most Meta rankers would choose to avoid the spell. Only mad lads like Rog would start using the spell when they were in the Meta rank.

Eren also found out that he was missing the array scroll that came with the book. He concluded that Rog must have used the scroll to bind with Killer.