A Sorcerer’s Journey

After sending the altar 1000 degrees of magic power, Grimm eyed the Myna which was happily chewing on his nuts. He then opened a black crack with his magic.

Standing on the altar, Grimm opened the space crack from his own castle’s void fragments with ease.

He stepped into the crack without any hesitation.

A ten-meter-tall tree grew on an island that was covered with black sand and the waves of the sea surrounding it. Energy pillars continued to support the sky.

Making slight adjustments to nature force, Grimm flew towards the tree which was located in the middle of the island. Four Rain-dew Flower Spirits fluttered their tiny wings as they approached him. Then, they paid their respect to Grimm with their entire body trembling in fear.

Grimm glanced at the two new-born spirits. The two little creatures instinctively made a frightful cry and fell onto some tree leaves as they had forgotten to flutter their wings.

Grimm knew that it must have been the two elder spirits who taught the little fellas about the terrors of evil sorcerers.

Ignoring the concerns of the little creatures, Grimm examined the Gold Ginseng Mother Tree. Once he was certain of its health, he retrieved multiple Tjugealong Stones from the dimensional gap and tossed them to the Rain-dew Flower Spirits.

“Grind them to dust after increasing the previous measurements to double the amount, then scatter them around the roots of the mother tree,” Grimm instructed.

“Yes.” The spirits responded in a shaky voice.

Grimm did not pay attention to the spirits after giving his instructions. He simply checked the experimental plants that were planted around the island before he flew towards the experiment materials that he previously collected from the Seven Rings Headquarters for Dark Demon Hunters.

Thirty sets of black-skinned skeletal humanoid creatures continued hibernating in the icy seals, nothing more, nothing less.

Grimm circled the specimens deep in thought.

To collect Despair, even with the unique negative emotion gathering technique that Black Sorcerers had developed, Grimm believed that the Greedy Flame Giant’s consumption of hatred worked the same as collecting Despair in certain cases. These two both focused on the collection and usage of negative emotions which might efficiently decrease the amount of effort and time Grimm needed in his study on the collection of negative emotions.

Even so, the study on the collection of Despair would still use up Grimm’s time on the study of Destructive Energy. However, if viewed in the long run in terms of his Demon-Hunter career, it was worth the time.

With that thought in mind, Grimm had his magic power surging from within as he slapped the vast ice container. By adjusting the earth’s repulsion strength, Grimm levitated the container before he disappeared into the world’s fragments along with it.

On the altar of the Demon-Hunter Castle…

The space distorted and Grimm appeared on the altar with the ice container floating above him. Under his control, it landed gently on the ground with a soft thud.

“Eh? Lord Grimm, are you planning to choose a new spirit servant from these creatures?”

The Myna appeared when the space on Grimm’s shoulder distorted. He curiously observed the thirty foreign humanoid creatures in the container.

“These creatures? Their capabilities are too low, they are merely specimens for experimentation.” Grimm stated as he randomly pulled out a frozen humanoid and placed it on the experiment table. After that, he thought of something and secured the creature with green lines made from his magic.

The first step in collecting Despair was to feel despair!

According to the vicious rules on the dark side of the Sorcerer World, every Black Sorcerer was destined to feel despair. If he had never gone through that process, he would be a high-quality humanoid experiment specimen for Dark Sorcerers instead of being one himself.

For a Dark Sorcerer to feel despair, there were two steps, to either experience despair from test subjects or to experience it themselves. Either way, he had to experience the immense power from these sorts of negative emotions.

Grimm believed that these cognitive processes were quite similar to the observation of Destructive Energy that he had been conducting up until now.

“Hmm, to let the specimen experience despair… I wonder what I should do…”

After half a month…

This very day was the weakest period of Grimm’s Intoxication Sorcery. Staring at his creation on the experiment table, Grimm was unable to hide the red flushes he got from his overwhelming excitement. This creative experiment was something that Grimm had spent a total of three days to plan and ten days to conduct.

Up until this point, the black-skinned creatures’ skulls had been transplanted onto monkeys from the Sorcerer World. The rough sewing techniques on it greatly resembled Master Peranos’s facial art. Fortunately, the life force of these creatures was strong. Even in their frozen state, their souls continued to burn within their skulls, releasing its spiritual fluctuation.

As for the creatures’ body, Grimm had used certain sorcery techniques to maintain their physiological functions and planted a few ‘playthings’ inside.

Those ‘playthings’, were none other than Grimm’s Symbiotic Insects, Gadfly.

“If it still doesn’t feel despair after all it has been through, I guess I have no choice but to switch the specimen,” Grimm mumbled as he injected two bottles of magic potions into the creature’s brain. After that, he started observing the specimen for any changes in its emotions.

With a black crystal ball floating in the air, Grimm started to record his experiment, with his eyes shimmering with evil anticipation.

A quarter of an hourglass later…

The specimen’s soul started to fluctuate. Grimm immediately rushed to the specimen’s side when he noticed the changes.

“Hmm… a quarter of an hourglass huh… This creature’s immune system is supposed to be four times weaker than a human’s. I guess they’ve started to develop a strong immunity system along with the advancement of magic potions by human sorcerers throughout these years.” Grimm mumbled as he made a motion to summon the crystal ball closer to the specimen.

The creature’s face started tightening and relaxing simultaneously. These were all signs that its soul was gradually awakening.

“The stabilization of the soul’s fluctuation takes up to nine minutes and fifty seconds. This is three times faster than humans. Does it mean that the time in the foreign land where this creature resides in is three times faster than the Sorcerer World?”

Grimm diligently recorded all his thoughts and inspirations in his notebook.

“No, one of the books of curses mentioned something about this before. Once you study in depth into the curses, it branches into different fields of study and one of them is the study of an organism’s biological clock. The humans in the Sorcerer World are really strange, even though the Sorcerer World runs on a twelve-hourglass and twenty-four mechanical gear rotation basis, we humans are still biologically functioning on twenty-five hours.”

Rustle, rustle, rustle…

Grimm’s quill smoothly ran along the pages of his notebook as he wrote down his words.

“Therefore, some sorcerers speculated that the humans that reside in the Sorcerer World during the ancient ages were not locals, hence the abnormal biological clock reaction. While some sorcerers surmised that the Sorcerer World originally rotated in a twelve-and-a-half hourglass time, then changes gradually occurred in the rules of the Sorcerer World…”

Suddenly, the specimen’s face contorted visibly. Grimm only gave it a mere glance before he returned to his thoughts.

The specimen was currently still undergoing the awakening of its soul, its memories were frozen in time before it was sealed into the ice. The struggles it was going was probably the pain it felt from that part of its memories.

For the specimen, it was experiencing a nightmare, which means that time was still required for it to fully awaken.

Beep, beep…

The machine on the experiment table made a soft signaling sound but Grimm did not pay much attention to it.

It was an instrument that recorded vitals, one of the sorcerer’s most commonly used experiment instruments which recorded the life force of the specimen on the experiment table. The notification earlier indicated that the specimen’s life force was gradually depleting as its soul was awakening.

This was a normal phenomenon as the body of a monkey was unable to support the needs of this foreign creature’s soul. With the rejection of the body as well as the lack of energy supply, this specimen was destined to live a short life.

Of course, the theories regarding it involved other high-level sorcery knowledge as well, but they were meant for another time.

Grimm was not bothered by the specimen’s awakening process, instead, he went back into deep thoughts.

“Theoretically, humans have half an hourglass per day that serves as their weakest period. During this period, our biological clock, our body and all immunities of the soul will be at the bare minimum. High-class Curse Sorcerers use this weakness to calculate the caster’s weakest period and cast their curses. As for Black Sorcerers who study the meaning of life and death, they will also use the characteristics of an organism’s biological clock in their vast field of study…”

Suddenly, Grimm came to a halt in the recording of his thoughts and narrowed his eyes as he turned to the specimen.

At the same time, the specimen’s eyes snapped open after a vehement struggle and their eyes met.

“Let us begin!” Grimm said as stopped all thoughts, and placed his entire attention on the observation of his specimen.

The noseless black-skinned skeletal humanoid specimen flinched before it showed utter terror on its face. Grimm knew that it was frightened by his sorcerer image.

Grimm lowered his head and wrote in his notebook. “Terror is neither hatred nor Despair.”

“Crook, crook, crook…” A few simple toned phrases indicated that the languages of these foreign land creatures were far inferior compared to humans in the Sorcerer World. They had limited changes in pitch and their emotional changes were direct. Therefore, it was said that the body of these creatures was mainly controlled by their emotions rather than rationality.

However, judging from its soul, Grimm could tell that the specimen was probably cursing and begging out of rage and fear. Still, there was no changing the fact that it was still an inferior creature that could not communicate through their souls. Hence, Grimm would never know the true meaning of its language in detail.

Eventually, the specimen started to realize that Grimm could not understand its language and began to struggle physically, then it finally noticed the abnormalities in its body. After it caught sight of its chained ‘body’, it let out a loud shriek with an obvious cry of desperation.

“Hmm, that’s not right… Why doesn’t it feel despair?” Grimm asked, confused at what was happening.

“Despair, a feeling an organism feels when they lose sight of hope in the future. According to the records, Demon Hunters started to collect Despair after these foreign creatures lost the war during the development of foreign lands. Did the specimen still have hope that I will return it to its initial state? Is that why it doesn’t feel despair?”

With that thought in mind, Grimm ignored the cries of the specimen and moved two steps to the side, revealing the creature’s real body that was placed behind him.

The headless black-skinned skeletal body was laid on top of another experiment table with numerous pipes sticking into it.

“Chirp, chirp, chirp…” The specimen screamed in desperation.

This made Grimm happy as his guess was proven to be true, but he was disappointed that it had yet to show any despair.

‘Then…’

Grimm approached the body without a single word, he then activated his magic and started controlling the Gadfly in the body to go on a rampage.

A suffocating atmosphere soon filled the air…

After that, the once hard black-skinned skeleton started to loosen up, gradually it showed signs of the separation of an independent mutated life form. Suddenly, a mutated organ popped out of the body’s belly button.

“Crook chirp chirp, crook chirp chirp, crook chirp chirp!” The specimen let out a devastating cry in despair.

Grimm savored the feeling of despair in silence as the crystal ball recorded the image of the current situation.

Bang!

The mutated body was torn apart, transforming into millions of mutated lifeforms. With the concentrated energy of the feeling of despair, the creature too passed away in despair.

Beep, beep, beep…

Still, the instrument monitoring its vitals indicated that the specimen’s life force had yet been fully depleted. According to the sorcerer’s life form energy supply rules, the creature’s body should maintain its life force.

However, there was no doubt that it was completely dead.

The only explanation was that Despair had fully depleted the creature’s life force and dispersed it outside of the body. However, the instrument recording its vitals was unable to detect these sorts of changes. Still, if a Black Sorcerer collected these types of Despair Energy, their base sorcery offense power would have a permanent rise when attacking creatures of the same species in the future.

This was how Black Sorcerers collected Despair.

His initial experiment was a success. Grimm summoned a Greedy Flame Giant with a wave of his hand.

This five-meter-tall giant was simply majestic as it released an astonishing aura with its pure black flames. Its belly opened and gobbled up the soul of the deceased specimen. After that, it swung its huge hand and pulverized all the mutated life forms. Finally, it let out a voiceless roar before it disappeared into thin air.

On the bloody experiment table, Grimm focused on writing down all the data and inspiration he gained through the experiment while referring to the footage in the crystal ball.

If he were to keep this up, Grimm would be able to harvest the results of his initial Despair experiment that was enough to satisfy the needs of a normal foreign war in the future.

Half an hourglass later.

Grimm sat down at the dining table and started eating after a simple wash. After that, he proceeded with the evolution of Basic Elemental Imprisonment Punishment Resistance.

Grimm’s life in the Demon-Hunter Castle of the Holy Tower of the Seven Rings had started to follow a simple routine as he began to familiarize himself with the long lifespan of a sorcerer.