087 Eagle Spirit!

Theresa had not moved a single step in four whole days. She glared viciously at the spirit-bound orb in her hand, her bloodshot eyes wide open, her face rigid and ferocious, the spasmodic twitching of her features lending her an increasingly possessed air.

Yes, she had fallen into obsession—for the sake of that little wolf’s spirit orb, she had gone mad.

After days and nights of relentless probing, she had finally discovered traces of energy flow. This threw Theresa into a state of abnormal mental excitement. Her already savage expression, touched now by a creeping flush, looked even more eerie. Grinding her teeth, she forced up one trembling hand and swallowed the vial of restorative potion prepared beside her. At once, her whole body began to shake violently, lurching left and right, forward and back, as though seized by epilepsy. In the same instant, her face flooded with blood until it was swollen a deep, livid red, as if a mere prick would make it bleed.

This dreadful transformation lasted for about a minute before Theresa slowly opened her eyes. In their dark depths blazed a madness edged with ferocious determination, and that determination had only one target: the spirit-bound orb.

Having erupted with the aid of an expensive mental-restoration potion, Theresa immediately poured all her mental power into the orb. The vast, forceful surge of power made the little sphere tremble faintly.

What her consciousness first encountered was the wolf totem’s spirit body, imbued with a kind of intimate affection. Extending outward from there was the “summoning array” that supplied energy to the little wolf spirit body. This array was simple in structure, belonging to the category of beginner magic circles and used extremely widely. Theresa had of course long since memorized its construction by heart, so the cost to her consciousness at this stage was negligible.

Farther above lay great stretches of gray haze. She split her mental power into two streams: one adhered to the summoning array, spreading into a mesh that wrapped the entire circle, feeling out the relationship between the array and the external flow of energy; the other dissolved into countless threads and scattered through the vast murky expanse, searching for even the slightest fluctuation.

As her control grew ever finer, the once-unclear grayness began to thin little by little, as though mist were parting and the sky opening beyond it. The fading haze receded slowly, and through the lighter and lighter veil she could at last faintly discern several strands of pale gold drifting above the summoning array.

This had never happened before. This was a breakthrough of the first order.

Ecstasy burst across her face. For a moment Theresa felt her spirit soar. Although her mental power had already been spent by sixty or seventy percent, this was still the best result she had achieved since beginning her exploration of the spirit-bound orb. Forcing down her excitement, she moved her thoughts, and several wisps of power as fine as spider silk immediately wound around the pale-gold lines.

In an instant, a flood of information surged violently back, crashing into her mind. Theresa, caught utterly unprepared, spat blood on the spot and fainted.

The white sheet, a full meter in length and width, lay flat across the desk. Its surface was densely covered with layer upon layer of magic circles. Counting carefully, there were five layers in all, overlapping one another and interacting in exquisitely intricate ways. Yet Theresa, the one who had drawn this formation, was now torn between joy and worry.

What delighted her was that after countless efforts, she had finally grasped the spirit-bound orb. The five-layer magic circle on the white sheet was precisely the connecting array linking spirit body and puppet body that she had longed for.

But how to compress this one-meter-square magic circle into a palm-sized orb was the new problem she now faced. The technique for compressing magic circles was something only those at the intermediate stage of focused thought could learn, and Theresa, at merely the second threshold, could at best be considered a beginner in that discipline.

The unwilling Theresa could only glare ferociously at the white sheet, stare and stare and stare, wishing desperately to glare it smaller by force of will.

“Do you want to make it smaller? How small?”

The Book Spirit’s timid voice sounded in her mind. Even after so long, its timidity had hardly changed at all.

Theresa snapped back to herself and asked in a deep, thunderous voice, “What can you do?”

The Book Spirit was silent for two seconds before replying, “If you want it as small as a sphere, I can’t help. But compressing it by four or five times should still be possible. The old master once recorded an obscure thought-technique that is just right for compressing these low-tier magic circles.”

A thought-technique, meaning a technique of consciousness, was a method for using mental power. Because such techniques were rare, every one of them, however obscure, was a precious treasure of considerable value.

Following its old procedure, the Book Spirit transmitted the information to Theresa. Whether because she was already experienced or because the amount of information this time was smaller, she felt only a few stabs of pain during the transfer. Yet Theresa, already in a state of feverish excitement, no longer even noticed the pain. The moment she saw the thought-technique, she was utterly absorbed.

The technique was unnamed and only a fragment, but even the portion revealed now was enough to shock her. She had never imagined mental power could be used with such delicacy and precision.

Almost as soon as she finished reading the fragment, Theresa began testing the newly learned skill, her hands tracing shapes in the air. As her fingers moved, magical energy in the atmosphere was guided into convergence. Gradually a magic circle about one meter in diameter appeared in midair. Within the pale golden glow, her hands did not cease. Before long, a second circle, slightly smaller in diameter, layered itself over the first. Three times, then four; and when five circles were effortlessly superimposed, Theresa’s hands suddenly began to move with astonishing speed.

Each leap of her slender white fingers seemed to carry some strange magic. Under the influence of that peculiar power, the flat magic circles began to distort little by little.

One fold, two folds, three folds, four folds—the entire formation was “repeatedly folded” four times, as though it were paper, before finally becoming a block-shaped object amid a shower of radiant gold, resting quietly on the desk.

She had succeeded. She had actually succeeded.

Ecstasy swept through her whole body, making her tremble involuntarily. After some time Theresa pinched herself hard before barely managing to collect her thoughts and turn to the more urgent matter: summoning.

As the totem vessel for the soul body, Theresa had already chosen her target: an eagle, an eagle soaring high in the sky.

Her slender fingers interlaced and tapped within a very small range, pinpricks of blue light falling between them. Using her fingers as brush and the air as canvas, with only a few strokes, the totem of an eagle poised to spread its wings and take flight appeared vividly in the air. She cupped her hands around it and drew it close. Her red lips parted, and she exhaled slowly. A wisp of gray smoke twisted twice in midair before plunging into the eagle totem. At once, the gray-blue aura surged.

The swelling gray-blue force surged and battered between Theresa’s hands, almost breaking free of her restraint. But how could she allow a treasure already in hand to escape? Gathering the last scrap of her strength, she violently smashed the ball of energy in her palms against the pale-gold block she had already forged.

With a hoarse birdcall, the gray-blue aura poured wholly into the block. In an instant golden light blazed forth, so dazzling that one could not keep one’s eyes open. Theresa had no choice but to shut her eyes and, by memory, pour several vials of stabilizing potion over the block. A chorus of sizzling sounds rose at once.

When everything finally settled, it was plain to see that within the translucent pale-gold block, the eagle totem wore a dejected, wings-drooping expression. Clearly it was most displeased with being trapped in such a fate.

But Theresa had no time to care about its displeasure. She had exhausted nearly all of her strength and the greater part of her mental power. Her whole body collapsed onto the bed, and when she tilted her head slightly, from the corner of her lips slid a pale gray “pearl.” No, the pearl itself was bright white, but because a few wisps of slowly flowing gray mist dwelled within it, it appeared pale gray.

This was the Soul Gathering Crystal. Several months earlier, after Theresa had been attacked on the northwestern ice plains, it was one of the gifts Amos had given her in compensation. It could collect ownerless fragments of souls and calm the mind. Its uses were truly boundless. The wisp of soul now placed within the eagle totem was in fact one of the stray remnants already residing in the Soul Gathering Crystal itself—Theresa still had not learned how to gather such fragments on her own.

After resting for quite some time, Theresa finally recovered some strength. She took up the little eagle’s spirit body and studied it carefully. First, it was rather large, which would make it somewhat difficult to merge into a puppet body. Second, its square shape made it easy to damage. Third, her compression technique for magic circles was not yet skilled enough, so the energy flow was relatively slow. And fourth, the eagle spirit body was not very obedient...

Ahem. In any case, compared with the wolf spirit, the problems with the eagle spirit were too many to count.

Yet no matter how many problems there were, they could not erase a single established fact: Theresa had finally become capable of forging spirited puppets on her own.

Winter sunlight was warm and gentle. Bathed in such light, anyone would feel like stretching languidly. In such rare fine weather, Mu also seldom stepped outside. On the sunlit balcony, he leisurely sipped afternoon tea. Of course, he was not alone. Besides the three little ones—Mumu, Kaka, and Jiujiu—today’s tea included one more guest, a female guest.

Felinna set down her teacup and watched the adorable little Fortune Ball carry a teapot ten times larger than itself, slowly pouring tea. A smile touched her lips. “That little one has already asked for leave three times. I imagine she’s locked in battle with the spirit-binding array. And yet you trust so completely that she can make a breakthrough?”

Mu drank his tea with elegant composure and did not answer.

Felinna knew his temperament well enough and continued, “She’s only at the second threshold. No matter how pure the soul body, she’ll still be limited by her ability. Why do you trust her so much?”

This time Mu finally replied. He set down his cup and let the Fortune Ball refill it. “She devoured a Void Demon.”

The answer startled Felinna so badly that she blurted out, “Impossible!”

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Mu said, and a rare trace of a smile appeared on his usually expressionless face.

After her shock faded, Felinna said at once, “Since you saw something unusual in her, why didn’t you request an appraisal? Why indulge her so?”

Mu’s smile faded. His cold gaze swept over her, and only after Felinna straightened her expression did he say, “She devoured a Void Demon. Devoured it cleanly, devoured it thoroughly, and digested it quite well.”

At this emphasis, Felinna froze for a moment, then seemed to recall something. Her thoughts flew in all directions; her face shifted from joy to worry and back again, and she fell into a long silence of contemplation.