Henricqal City, Miga.
Lin Sheng left the Soul Fortress when it was already late. He sat on one of the public benches, taking in a deep breath as he absorbed the new scenery before him.
Behind him was a pharmacy with a line as a few elderlies chatted about while waiting for their turn, all the while hunched.
Lin Sheng had changed into a black windbreaker, and inside was a gray shirt and white jeans, looking no different than most university students in the city.
As he stretched, Lin Sheng pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the time.
There was an unread message on the screen, and Lin Sheng tapped to read it.
“It’s done. You can move it at any time.”
“That’s fast.” Lin Sheng put the phone back as he stood up, and walked towards a small residential district to the left.
Over there, Adolf’s men had already helped him to rent a room, specifically for him to perform his summoning ritual.
From his experiments, Lin Sheng surmised that the growth of holy power upon stimulation did not appear out thin air, and he guessed that the increase of his holy power was actually a type of extraction of his soul.
An extraction that forcefully converted one’s soul into holy power.
So, it came back to the strength of his soul. If anyone else were to attempt this, their soul would have been sucked dry, and die on the spot as their consciousness disappear.
His Gloria technique, on the other hand, used the Ashen Seals, alongside the manipulation of both dark and holy power to slowly stimulate the growth of his body.
The core principals were still the same, but it was much gentler and more subtle as there was the power of the Ashen Seal to adjust and serve as a buffer. That greatly increased the safety of the process.
If he could perfect the technique, that meant the efficiency of his training would increase at least tenfold compared with the methods using dark powers.
That was why Lin Sheng was willing to sacrifice so many soldiers for the experiment to succeed.
As he slowly made his way into the area, he walked among the pedestrians before entering a nondescript unit on the left.
He got into the elevator by the stairwell and pressed the button for the top floor.
*Ding!*
Just as the elevator door opened, a bespectacled lady in a black office dress waited quietly outside.
“Mr. Lin, your room is ready.” The lady handed over the key to him.
“Thanks for the trouble,” Lin Sheng said as he took the key.
The lady bowed with a smile before she entered the elevator and left.
A moment later, a faint scent of smoke permeated through the door slits.
Not long after, the door opened once again as Lin Sheng got out alone, his body seemed to be much darker than he entered as if he was shrouded by black smoke.
This time, he not only replaced all of the destroyed Vault Wardens, he even summoned a dozen normal Blackfeather Swordsman.
“If I put Xylond aside, I could control three bodies perfectly to experiment with Gloria. That will greatly increase the pace, and hopefully, things will go well.”
He sensed that Gloria had a powerful potential to it, but at this stage, he only planned to use it to strengthen his body.
With his summoned soldiers, they were pretty much limitless living experimentation ingredients, and every one of them was a part of him, with perfect sensory connection, he could detect every minute changes to the body.
And that was far more efficient than lab research, much, much more efficient.
As he got out of the tiny residential district, he went about strolling. The progress of Gloria had him seeing hope at the end of the tunnel.
With his good mood, he entered a small book shop by the road to pass time.
There were rows upon rows of Migan fairy tales, and the shopkeeper was squatting by the corner playing games on his phone, not even bothering to look at his customer.
Lin Sheng went around for a bit before his sight landed on one particular book about fairy tale creatures.
“This…?”
On the front page of the book was the same butterfly pixie he had seen in his dream last night.
The pixie had long sharp eyes, with a tiny yet venomous tongue, and it blathered nonsense to the point of pain.
“It’s totally the same…” Lin Sheng walked over and picked up the book to read.
“The Griffin’s Morass”
That was the title of the book.
Lin Sheng flipped through the pages.
“In Migan mythology, Griffins were the most common and widely-used mythological character.
“They are mysterious creatures and have powers akin to a witch doctor. They are well versed in using all kinds of hallucination medicine as they live without a quarrel with the world in secluded places.
“But the most popular of these places was the mythological Griffin’s Morass, which contained all sorts of mysteries and riches.”
The last line of the foreword was, “The Griffin’s Morass, everyone has a Griffin’s Morass of their own.”
Lin Sheng went through the latter part of the story, and most of it consisted of local legends and tales from all over Miga. Most of them were twisted and grossly exaggerated, lacking any meaningful reference.
Only that butterfly pixie and that foreword had Lin Sheng thinking.
The book stated that a butterfly pixie and a cat that was almost strangled to death were the guardians of the entrance to the Griffin’s Morass.
If one could accomplish the pixie’s wish, and save the dying cat, then they would gain the right to enter the Griffin’s Morass.
Lin Sheng simply read it a few times over but did not purchase it. Just a few read-throughs were enough for him to memorize all of the things in there.
The dream from before matches the description in the book, and Lin Sheng was starting to doubt if he had indeed entered that so-called Griffin’s Morass.
As he got back to the Soul Fortress, Lin Sheng continued to experiment with the Gloria technique, before washing up and going to bed.
His dream was interrupted last night, and this time, he intended to fully investigate the changes in this new dream.
…
*Tick tock, tick tock…*
Amidst the ticking of the clock, Lin Sheng raised his head as his consciousness returned to him.
And before him, was that sky-scraping tree from earlier.
There were however no sights of any living being around. The corpse of the butterfly pixie lay by the tree trunk, and further ahead was the decapitated cat.
Lin Sheng checked the body and went around the dead cat as he followed the only small path in the wood.
Further ahead, the massive bird that he saw yesterday stood on the way, blocking the path.
The black bird was about the height of a human, as its feathers exuded a cold, metallic sheen and its beak was curved like an eagle’s.
*Squawk!*
A piercing squawk later, the black bird flapped its wings and hopped toward Lin Sheng.
Its wingspan was about four meters wide, and literally blocked Lin Sheng’s entire frontal vision. A second later, the bird’s razor-sharp claws were striking close to Lin Sheng.
*Bam!!*
Lin Sheng raised his hand as his arms transformed into the half-dragon state and gave one of the bird’s claws a firm grip.
As the two forces collided, Lin Sheng was pushed a step back as his holy power surged, and increased his strength as he smashed the bird into the ground.
*Bammm!!*
The ground caved in a little as grass and dirt flew all over, a crater forming in its wake.
The aggressive black bird now flopped dead, killed by a single strike.
“Its’ strength is not bad. On pure power alone, it’s probably about a Level 4 warrior’s.”
Lin Sheng waited for a moment, as strands of black lines finally appeared and entered his chest.
Lin Sheng paused for a moment, squinting as he felt the surge of memories into his mind.
It was a Black Hawk, and its life basically revolves around hunting when hungry, drinking water when thirsty, aside from killing a few strangers that popped out of nowhere.
Besides its daily life within this weird forest, it was just a normal giant eagle that was slightly bigger than normal.
