"It's better than nothing," William finally gave in, breaking the seal using his knowledge and formations. He tried almost everything he could form using materials he had. He even used few of the outer world materials, the ones he acquired from Lara's city over years, remained after all his expenditure for all this time.
"It's time to see what these are for," William looked at the spiky cores he got out, spread over the ground, filling the entire living room inside the house.
He knew one simple way to know what was special about these cores. They came from the special Hot Snow world. And so he had lots of expectations towards them.
He splashed his blood over one core. Normally he'd find the core turning into dust, feeling the spirit power entering his body. Yet none of this happened. His blood just spread over the spikes, making him try this method again.
"Weird… This is the first time for the fox's Devour ability to fail me," he muttered to himself while waiting for a few minutes on the side, without anything happening.
"Do you need something else?" he asked, as if he was speaking with a sane person or something. He held the spiky core in his hand, tried to shake it, hoping something different would happen.
As he was trying different things with this core, even to the extent of throwing it down to the ground, his hand got injured accidentally with the spikes. The spikes got inserted deeply in his hand, and then magic happened.
The moment his hand got pierced with the spikes, lots of blood came out from him. This blood was different, as it was in the colour of his spirit power. It was pale gold with faint blackness within. And by this gush, he felt instantly weaker, almost falling to the ground, if not for supporting his body using his other hand.
The one pierced with the spikes seemed like it didn't listen to him anymore, didn't belong to him. He tried to move it but failed. And as he landed on his knees, leaning on the ground with one hand, he felt like he was this close from dying out.
He caught his breath after a few stressful minutes, ones that seemed like an entire lifetime to him. When he got that breath in his lungs, he felt like all the weakness vanished.
He didn't see himself at these stressful moments. The spikes didn't absorb his weird blood, but got melted down by it, turning with the blood into a thick veil of fog.
The fog was pale gold and black, totally covering him within. When he took a breath in, he sucked all this fog, something that was quite unbelievable, yet it happened.
"This…" When he did that, he felt like his strength returned to him. It wasn't the same, as he felt far stronger, a lot better than minutes ago.
"It didn't add anything to my spirit power tally," he tested his power again, ending up with no increase as he expected. He didn't even gain a single spirit power point,
?α?dαsηθνε| "But I feel stronger… Somehow…" he tested himself again after an hour, and yet nothing changed. His spirit power points were the same, not showing a single increase or anything. As for his spirit, or spirits, they looked the same.ραпdαs `n?ν?| сom
Yet when he left the crystal for a longer time than usual, he noticed something shimmering deep down his spirits. "What is that?!" he had a wild guess in his mind but had to better inspect that weird black flash of light that appeared for a few seconds in the heart of his spirits.
When it happened for the tenth time, he was sure of it. "A spirit fusion… these cores instigated a spirit fusion of my spirits… Wow!"
He now realised why he felt stronger. It wasn't a quantitative leap, instead it was a qualitative one.
His spirit changed and got purified, climbing a grand step towards perfection. He didn't know what the end spirit would be, would it be a fox? A snake? Or a dog? Or a mixture of them?
"I hope it'll end up being a dragon," he recalled Berry and couldn't help but laugh at this ironic twist in fate.
He always envied her for her spirit fusion gift. It was something that wouldn't show much effect at lower grades. But the higher she'd climb, the stronger she'd become.
He looked at his ring, and there he found thousands of these cores lying there. "I wonder what will happen after consuming all of them…"
He started to devour one core after another. With each time the spikes pierced his hand, he ended up having the same weird situation, where he'd lose control over his hand, and feel weak as hell for a minute or two.
The more he used these cores, the longer this period lasted. "Damn! I can't go on like this…" after devouring the one hundredth core, he had to stop, panting for breaths, "the last one took almost an hour… This is insane!"
The last few cores were really challenging to devour. He tried to consume healing and spirit power regeneration elixirs, with no avail.
It seemed like this weakness was something that he had to pass through without any way to deal with it. He had to endure, and after spending the last hour suffering like this, he knew the next time he might lose his life if he continued to do it.
"I'll devour the cores I have then train," William started to absorb the cores he accumulated so far from adventuring this world, and yet the net result was quite disappointing.
He stored these cores for a long time already. And most of the power stored within these cores is already gone. So, it was expected that he got a couple hundred points at the end.
"At least I'm at seven thousand and half points now…" he felt like fate was toying with him. At a point, he'd gain a hundred points per a single core. And at other times, he'd gain just one hundred out of hundreds of cores.
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