Chapter Ninety-Six: Abyssal Summoning Arts

After leaving Blackstone Prison, Chu Yun first rode Paimon back along the road to the Mage Station. He wanted to ask whether there were any trustworthy artisans in the city.

When Chu Yun had killed the Thunderwater Ray earlier, he had also obtained a thunder bone. Although this natural staff could serve as a weapon even without being worked on, it would grow much stronger if polished by a craftsman and engraved with a mage’s runes.

Chu Yun did not have many pieces of equipment on him. Besides having the thunder-bone staff processed, he still needed to buy quite a lot of other gear.

As a local, Anna should know a few masters.

Knock, knock, knock.

Chu Yun knocked on Anna’s door. If it had been any other day, she would have answered at once and hurried over to open it, sometimes without even changing out of her nightclothes. But this time, no one was there.

Glancing at the sky and the nearby magical devices, Chu Yun felt puzzled. At this hour, Anna should have been back to recharge these devices.

“She’s responsible. She shouldn’t forget something this important,” Chu Yun could not help worrying.

But soon he remembered that Anna was about to become an instructor at the Mage Academy. Perhaps she had already quit her job and handed it over to someone else. Their recharge times might not be the same anymore.

“She even came back to recharge a few days ago during the training camp, didn’t she? Forget it. I’ll ask tomorrow. Once I finish grinding the magic book for experience, I should be ready to level up. I wonder what kind of camp blessing I’ll get at the second tier.” Chu Yun began to look forward to it.

With every level increase, aside from the fixed boosts to health, mental power, and skill points, one also received different rewards depending on the level. This time, the reward would be a camp blessing.

The slaughterhouse was rather far away. By the time Chu Yun arrived near it, the sky had already grown dark.

Most of the monsters here were tier zero, and the experience they dropped was no longer of much value to Chu Yun, so it was more useful to use them to strengthen Paimon instead.

Paimon was obedient and loyal, and as a monster of mixed lineage, it was an excellent research subject for Chu Yun. Improving its strength was not a waste.

To feed the experience orbs to Paimon, Paimon had to be brought near the slaughtering area. The slaughterhouse operated around the clock in shifts, and since Chu Yun had been here before, the staff recognized him.

He still had the staff prepare fresh meat for Paimon, then found a safe place, activated the invisibility ring, and entered the mirror world.

The moment he stepped in, he realized something was wrong. The slaughterhouse, which should have been covered in white light everywhere, now held only a scattering of a few dozen points. The glowing cluster centered around one particular place had vanished completely.

That place was exactly where Chu Yun had buried the Abyss Summoning Tome.

“I remember the Abyss Summoning Tome uses soul sacrifice to summon monsters by absorbing souls. Could these light spheres have been absorbed by it?” Chu Yun frowned.

He went straight to the big tree where the Abyss Summoning Tome had been buried, then blasted the ground apart with a mana burst and took out the spellbook.

“Ooh, ooh, master, you’re finally here.” Because of the contract, the spellbook in the mirror world did not attack Chu Yun and could communicate normally.

However, in essence, it was still only a mirrored copy.

“What’s going on? Were these light spheres absorbed by you?” Chu Yun asked.

“No, master. I only absorb souls. After I absorb a soul, these light spheres disappear too,” the spellbook answered honestly.

Chu Yun frowned and brought over one of the glowing spheres from afar. “Isn’t this some kind of soul shard or something? You can’t absorb it?”

The spellbook activated its ability and tried to absorb the sphere, but failed.

Yet when Chu Yun personally tossed the sphere into the spellbook, it was absorbed immediately.

Chu Yun also ordered Paimon’s mirrored form to touch a sphere directly, and the result was the same: failure. It seemed only he, as the ruler of the mirror realm, had the authority to “assign” the ownership of these spheres.

The mirrored copies existing in the mirror world could not absorb the spheres on their own.

“What changes happened after you absorbed the spheres?” Chu Yun asked further.

Compared with Paimon, that silly little monster who knew nothing, the spellbook was not only well-read but also far easier to communicate with.

“Master, I feel slightly stronger, but my soul reserves have not increased. Under normal circumstances, the main body would not have this effect from absorbing souls either,” the mirrored spellbook said, sounding somewhat puzzled.

These spheres were not souls, but they vanished as the souls dispersed.

If he could not understand it, he would set it aside for now. Chu Yun still had serious business to attend to.

“You are not allowed to defend. Annihilating Divine Thunder!”

-32
-2
-1

“Master!”

“Burning Hand!”

“I may not be human, but Master, you...”

...

[Gain 296 experience points]

Perhaps because of the difference in tier, no skill dropped this time either, but experience was exactly what he wanted right now.

Do not be fooled by how affectionately the spellbook kept calling him master. Based on the information Chu Yun had uncovered, cases of spellbooks turning on their masters were far from rare, and he would not be deceived by it.

Chu Yun’s Mirror Realm Master was currently at tier two. Its mirrored replication ability allowed him to copy up to two skills onto himself at the same time. He had already copied one before, and now he could copy another.

Aside from Abyss Summoning, the spellbook also had several other abilities, such as a protective barrier, levitation, and Abyssal speech, all of which could be randomly copied. What could be copied at this stage depended purely on luck.

“Mirrored Replication!”

This time, Chu Yun copied the spellbook’s strongest spell.

[Abyss Summoning]

Tier: Tier 3 Summoning

Casting Time: 30 seconds

Range: 510 meters

Spell Components: Incantation, gestures, materials (souls, corpses, and the like)

Duration: 30 minutes

Effect: Sacrifice souls to open the Abyssal Gate and summon an abyssal monster drawn by the sacrifice. The monster disappears when its health drops to zero, or after completing the terms of the contract.

Description: Different sacrifices and contract terms will summon different monsters.

A tier-three spell would not be easy to master in just two days. It would be faster to keep killing through brute force. In truth, he had hoped to copy a spell that could be learned.

This spell could actually be used for farming monsters. Rather than laboring to hunt outside, it would be easier to set up various traps and then slaughter abyssal monsters. The only issue was that the summoning was too random; sometimes one might even run into some abyss lord out for a stroll with nothing better to do.

Still, if he truly wanted to summon something, Chu Yun could simply bring this magic book along. There was no need to go out of his way to copy it.

What mattered was filtering through sacrifices and contract terms. Pure and noble souls, and filthy and evil souls, had different circles of preference.

After cleaning up the spoils, Chu Yun and Paimon, now round as a ball from overeating, returned once more to the Mage Station.

“Strange, she still hasn’t come back?” Chu Yun felt that something was off. The magical devices had already run dry, yet no one had come to replenish them.

“Forget it. I’ll level up first and ask about it in a bit.”