Chapter 55: Transformation Into The Spiritual Weapon
At the moment, the two huge beasts were too busy focusing on each other to notice Zen.
One of the beasts, the queen blade locust, had a broken limb from her earlier scuffle with Zen. In spite of being at a disadvantage, the one remaining limb was still a powerful lethal weapon shaped like the blade of a sword. Alongside her blade, the queen blade locust was a little bigger than the fire scorpion lion.
Although the fire scorpion lion was smaller than the queen blade locust, it was nimbler. Further, since the lava cave was the fire scorpion lion's natural habitat, it had an advantage.
As soon as the beasts collided in battle, the cave shook, rocks tumbled, and the cavern floor was littered with rubble.
Rocks fell from high up on the walls of the cave, and fire spouted out of the earth's core.
“Crash, bam!”
“Ba-boom!”
Loud clashing sounds ensued as the fire scorpion lion threw the queen blade locust on the floor swiftly.
In spite of the aggressive attack, the queen blade locust forcibly stomped the ground with her hind legs, thrusting the fire scorpion lion backward about one foot.
Immediately, the queen rushed towards the lion and flung her enormous blade at the fire scorpion lion. However, the lion evaded her attack and snarled before retaliating. The locust, which could only survive by slaughtering, was much more courageous and brutal than ordinary beasts.
“Skrressh!”
came the horrifying sound of the blade slicing into the flesh of the fire scorpion lion. Its heart and other organs spilled out. The fire scorpion lion, mortally injured, wailed mournfully. At the same time, cocking its nimble tail up, the lion slashed at the queen blade locust's head.
“Snap!”
The queen blade locust couldn't dodge in time, resulting in her head splitting and falling to the ground because of the force of scorpion tail.
Without her head, the queen's body became limp, and the blade trembled for a moment before her carcass slumped to the ground. The lion's organs were rent into pieces, and the large lion whimpered before tilting his head and gasping his last breaths.
People became apprehensive at the mere mention of these two huge beasts. They would be awestruck to see the two dead in this cave at the same time...
....
....
At first, when faced with the two beasts, Zen thought he was doomed to perish.
Earlier, he was roasted by Evil Lan's fire. Instead of being harmed, Zen became physically stronger, thereby becoming comparable to a top grade mysterious weapon.
But, the fire from the earth's core was different from Evil Lan's grade two fire. It was many times stronger than Evil Lan's fire.
After all, Evil Lan was only a half-step into the nature level. In the strictest sense, his fire evolved from his life energy rather than life vitality.
However, the earth's core fire was much mightier than the fire produced by any nature level weapon refiners even with life vitality.
Zen felt the sensation of burning as soon as he jumped into the lava.
He had experienced the same pain twice before, once in the cellar of the Luo family and the other was in Evil Lan's weapon refining furnace, so, in this cave, it came to be that he felt it for the third time.
In his current position, he knew that aside from gritting his teeth and toughing it out, he was helpless. He could pray to the God to bless his success against the earth's core fire, keeping his corporeal form from being incinerated, but, there was nothing more he could do.
Slowly, his complexion started to change. Overall, Zen looked like a red-hot piece of iron, glowing dark red.
As his body heated up and burned, countless little gold pieces appeared on his body. Subsequently, they started to rotate.
As they whirled faster and faster, the gold pieces changed into golden eddies and began to absorb the fire from the earth's core.
The fire that engulfed Zen was swiftly taken into the eddies and absorbed by Zen. However, the swirls covering Zen's body were not satisfied. After absorbing all the fire surrounding Zen, the eddies generated a mightier force and pulled the earth's core fire from farther away.
Wisps, streaks, and flakes of fire were sucked in by a gravitational force, madly rushing into Zen's body.
All the earth's core fire within the large lava lake rapidly converged in his body.
If anyone was present outside the lava lake at that moment, they would be astounded at the sight.
In the center of the lake where the lava had been boiling, the lava's color gradually changed from red to black as it cooled. At last, the lava was pitch black and solid. As the pitch black area expanded, more and more lava cooled, becoming solid carbon black rocks.
At last, the entire lake was a sizeable hardened rock.
Except for a few spots where the lava remained slightly dark red, the cave, which had been bright, now was in complete darkness.
A long while later, the lava lake suddenly cracked in the center, and a hand shot out from the crack. It was Zen's hand reaching upward, with a few pieces of gold foil glittering with a golden light. Afterward, Zen hit the solid lava with his head, smashing it. He crawled out of the broken rock.
A sweet smile spread across Zen's face as it dawned on him that he had survived an impossible situation.
Everything that had transpired was far beyond his ability to comprehend. When he jumped into the lake of lava to escape from certain doom, shockingly, his body absorbed the earth's core fire in the lake. Perhaps his physical strength was improved after being refined by the flames.
He looked down at his body and noticed that his chest had a wavelike texture to it.
Seeing the change, Zen was puzzled.
In the back of his mind, he felt as though he'd seen that texture, and he recognized the pattern from somewhere!
After contemplating the design, it struck him where he'd seen it! Clapping his hands, he shouted, “Yes! I remember now! It's a spiritual texture!”
Zen had seen such textures in the books of weapon refining techniques left by Evil Lan.
Weapons fell into a few classes. They were mysterious, spiritual, fairy, sacred and divine weapons.
Except there were no unique textures on mysterious weapons, special characters similar to this were found only on treasures like spiritual, fairy, and sacred weapons.
For instance, spiritual textures were on spiritual weapons and fairy textures on fairy weapons.
A streak of spiritual texture showed up on Zen's chest, which meant his body had possibly entered a different stage, turning from a mysterious weapon into a spiritual weapon!
Zen knew how mysterious weapons differed from spiritual weapons. During the blooded test, he suffered horrific injuries from the dagger, which was one of spiritual weapons that Ryan used. Ryan would have defeated Zen if it wasn't for his body possessing the might of a top grade mysterious weapon.
Once Zen's body evolved into a spiritual weapon, his strengths would be naturally and significantly enhanced regardless of what he was capable of withstanding.
That brought the most critical point to Zen's mind.
“The most remarkable difference between spiritual and mysterious weapons isn't in their tenacity or sharpness. Instead, each spiritual weapon has a unique, extraordinary skill of its own. Like, Ryan's had a mighty silk energy thread he could summon,” murmured Zen to the empty cavern.
“Since my body has been upgraded now to the equivalent spiritual weapon, I wonder what kind of 'skill' I will gain?” Wondering about the possibilities excited Zen even more.
"Now, how do I trigger the skill of the spiritual weapon though?' reflected Zen.
Standing on the solid lake, Zen extended one hand out, breathed in and out, and loudly shouted, “Hai!” Rushing ahead two steps, he raised one leg, spinning in the air as he did, executing a spinning kick.
As he went through the motions, Zen's moves looked awkward.
After some trials and erroneous moves, Zen stood still, scratched his head and chuckled, thinking he was behaving idiotically.
Since he didn't even know if he had a spiritual weapon skill, it was impossible for him to test it the way he was.
When Zen stopped performing the senseless actions, the gold foil covering his body suddenly vanished from sight, leaving the cave in darkness all over again.
Zen pulled a fire starter out of his space ring. As he rubbed it, the cave lit up.
He looked around and saw nothing but the corpses of the queen blade locust and fire scorpion lion.
Earlier, when he jumped into the lake of lava, he had wondered whether or not the two massive beasts would battle each other.
Now, Zen felt he was overthinking everything. These wild creatures were more ferocious than he had imagined, and Zen couldn't help shaking his head and sighing at the miserable, wasted deaths of these two creatures.
As he headed in the direction of an exit and after he took two steps, he smacked himself in the forehead, thinking his brain was addled from the burning in the lake.
If the crystal cores from ordinary blade locusts and blade locust officers could be exchanged for some points, then, couldn't the crystal core from within the queen blade locust be exchanged for an even greater sum of points?
It would be such a waste to leave the queen blade locust's crystal core there.
While Zen thought, his heart raced. Tiptoeing to the queen blade locust, Zen took his knife out of the space ring and thrust it into her chest.
“Clank! Tink!”
came the melodious sound of a fist-sized purple crystal core hitting stone as it tumbled out of the locust and clattered to the ground.
“The crystal core of the blade locust officer is only as big as a walnut, but the queen's crystal core is as large as a man's fist!”
exclaimed Zen while he tucked the purple crystal core into his space ring.
After that, he turned his focus to the fire scorpion lion's corpse.
Zen didn't know if a fire scorpion lion's crystal core could be exchanged for points. He did know how rare the lion's crystal core was, and that it was the most valuable treasure among pill refiners and weapon refiners.
Without analyzing it further, Zen cut the corpse of the fire scorpion lion with his knife and dug out the crystal core.
Treasures could be found over the entire body of a supernatural beast. Human beings could become even mightier than supernatural monsters if they took advantage of these treasures. Zen wanted to make use of the fire scorpion lion's tail, so, with his broken knife, he sliced it off.
Wanting to take back the queen's blade, Zen checked his space ring, trying to make it fit, but there wasn't enough space to hold it, so he gave up. He could have carried it, but since the blade locusts had a keener sense of smell than human beings, if Zen had it on him, he would be attacked by any blade locust he encountered.
After taking what booty he could take, Zen walked back through the cave in the direction he had entered it.
He retraced his steps because of how unusual the cave was. With one shocking beast like fire scorpion lion inside, Zen thought the chances were greater of encountering more terrifying creatures further in the cave.
In light of surviving the attack from the queen blade locust and coming face to face with the fire scorpion lion, he attributed mainly to his good luck, realizing he would have had no chance of survival if not for being able to withstand the lake of lava and the earth's core fire within it.
Rushing back through the caves, Zen wasn't paying close attention and didn't know if he had gone in the right direction for a minute.
Along the way, Zen took a few wrong turns and met some class three beasts. He had some great adventures, as well as near misses, and several hours later, he emerged from the cave.
By the time he got back up to the world outside the cave, night had fallen, and it was dark. The sky sparkled brilliantly with millions of stars. Zen realized as he looked up how late it must be.
Zen carefully made his way back across the canyon and jungles, running along the paths he had followed during the daylight in the direction of the Dragon Fort.
Fortunately, blade locusts spent their night in ensconcing in their lairs, only venturing out under the rarest of unusual situations because they weren't nocturnal by nature. Any other beasts that would normally be out hunting at night were driven away by the insect aggression. Therefore, Zen didn't run into any beasts as he made his way through the thick jungles.
It took him a long time, but, finally, the Dragon Fort came into his view.
Once he reached the Dragon Fort, Zen strode to the building where Martin lived.
Martin was housed with other members of the Green Haze group in the barracks. Zen saw two guards stationed outside the barracks as he approached the building.
When the guards saw Zen, they immediately raised their lances, shouting, “Halt! Who goes? This is the barrack of the Green Haze Group! No visitors are welcome late at night. Leave immediately!”