His question elicited a soft chuckle from Tiger. “I’m sick of this, too.” She got into stance but Musnuf tossed over a core. “Here, you can have one but not both.”

She looked a little ridiculous now in her stance but Musnuf ignored her. “Let’s go.” He called out to the wolf, it barked like a dog and started trotting after him. She just wasn’t worth it, not this late in the stage.

He spent the rest of the day hunting in the mountains. The screeching monkeys were still a challenge if they were in a group but if he used his illusions, they wouldn’t be a problem.

He used the flame dagger talisman’s as well. He was onto something. Stabbing them into flesh caused them to flare up and it wouldn’t stop burning out until the animal was dead. It was a gruesome process leaving the corpse intact except for the eyes, They looked like dull orbs that’d lost their sheen.

He walked back to the notice board with a hefty pouch of beast cores. He splurged all of them right away on three separate talisman manuals. There wasn’t a universal language for talisman’s. Instead, it was hundreds of different schools with thousands of variations.

He pored through them on his own and copied over a set. The pages were covered in a dense forest of dark scribbles. It was hard to make anything out.

However, the talisman was starting to make sense now. He grabbed a separate piece of parchment and started writing down every symbol he could make sense of and their meaning. It was about twenty five percent.

What do I erase now? He decided on the illusion art. The other option was the beast taming art but there might be a connection between the two. It freed up half the page and he was able to copy over the other two manuals.

He closed his eyes and turned over the stream of new information. He used it to look at the flame dagger talisman. He could make out how it was operating. He wanted to just jump up in excitement.

Burn Soul. That was its most basic function. That was the reason, it wouldn’t stop burning out. It was drawing on the soul and using it as fuel. He clenched his fist. He finally had something to build upon. Something that had a direct relation to the soul.

This was going to be a long night.

//////

Next Day

He burst out of the door’s like a banshee. He had to test something out. His heart was thrumming in his chest like a battering ram.

He drew in some essence from a stone. It woke him up a little bit and he headed out to the forest. He found a pair of monkeys soon enough. He needed them both for his experiment.

He had a new talisman in his hands. He’d just created it. He found a screeching monkey, tore open the talisman and a dagger materialized in his hands. He stabbed it into one of them and the creature screamed in pain. The dagger didn’t flare up this time. It just rotated in calm measured intervals.

He stabbed it into a second creature and the talisman burst into a green pyre similar to his ghost flame but it had monkey-like features and it screeched into the air.

“Yes!” He pumped his fist into the air. It was working. He’d created a brand new talisman.

This dagger had white flames instead of the orange blaze of the previous set. He’d drawn out the soul using the flame dagger talisman. It used the first soul as the battery and the second soul was just going to be housed in it. That housing part had been accomplished using the green ghost flame.

Both arts were crucial for it. He sat down and waited. Once the first soul was exhausted, it started using up the second soul as fuel. That wasn’t good. If he had some time he could resolve that aspect but he had two days at most.

He needed to focus on one crucial aspect first. How was he going to get this talisman to his soul lantern. It required direct contact with the lantern. Part of him was wondering if it would work on a soul lantern but he was sure it would.

He covered his eyes with his palms. This wasn’t going to be the bottleneck that killed him. No fucking way!

/////

He spent the rest of the day preparing a rucksack of essential supplies. Food, water, stones, potions and two sets of clothes.

He was brewing some potions in Cloud’s abode. He was going through it in a mechanical process. His mind was mulling over how he was going to retrieve the soul flame. Getting in there himself was next to impossible. An elder was stationed there at all times. They would know he was there in a split second.

Each minute was twisting his gut further, the anxiety and panic was churning in his mind. He bottled a potion and placed it into his pouch. It was a healing potion.

“Something on your mind?” He almost dropped his ladle this time. He didn’t even have the patience to get angry.

“No, I was just thinking.”

“Care to elaborate?” Musnuf looked at him and scanned his face.

“I…I need to retrieve something. It's very important to me but it's next to impossible to get it. I can’t rely on other people to get it for me either.”

“That’s awfully vague but I guess everyone has their secrets” He stumbled over to his sofa and plopped down on it. “Do you know why I’m stuck here, on the outskirts of the sect with nothing to occupy my time other than the bottle?”

Musnuf just kept quiet. He would be lying if he wasn’t curious. Everyone was a sucker for gossip.

“I was the Sect’s Young Master, my father was the previous patriarch.”