Chapter 154 Such Advancement

Drained of its blood, the Crimson Flame Dire Bear showed no signs of life within a short while. Vail squatted down to touch the bear's carcass, only to discover that aside from thick bones, the interior of the beast was left with nothing but some soft, mud-like mush. Presumably, that was what remained of its blood-drained muscles and internal organs.

Treading upon the thick yet remarkably soft fur of the dire bear, his toes tapped rhythmically against it, yet all of Vail's thoughts were consumed by the emerald divine staff. Although the Crimson Flame Dire Bear had been dealt with, Vail could not muster any sense of joy.

What on earth had happened?!

Vail's mind was in utter turmoil; he had no idea what he was even thinking! He simply reached out with a trace of bewilderment and slowly grasped the divine staff that belonged to him.

Without any deliberate action on his part, the moment Vail gripped the staff, the meter-long artifact suddenly transformed. The original emerald green shifted once more into a bizarre, blood-like crimson. These eerie red hues coursed continuously through the jade-like material of the staff, resembling true, living blood. Whether it was due to some newly forged connection between his sea of consciousness and the staff, Vail even fancied he could hear the sound of blood flowing ceaselessly within the weapon.

Unconsciously, Vail closed his eyes slowly, sensing that some anomaly was occurring within his sea of consciousness. Right where his fire-type magic crystal resided, all the fire-type magic seemed to boil, continuously radiating waves of searing heat. In Vail's hand, the red light inside the divine staff responded to some unseen stimulus, rapidly converging toward the crescent-shaped tip, bit by bit. Not only that, but as this bizarre blood-red color gathered, it began to change. After an unknown lapse of time, once all the sinister crimson had concentrated entirely within the fire-type magic crystal nestled in the crescent moon, that blood-like red abruptly morphed into a fiercely blazing, scarlet ball of fire. It burst forth from the crystal in a single torrent, coursing along the staff and rushing straight into Vail's sea of consciousness.

"Hum!"

His entire sea of consciousness was enveloped in a red-tinted mist, at the very core of which lay the fire-type magic crystal. At this moment, the crystal was vibrating incessantly, emitting a scorching high temperature that made Vail feel as though a raging fire was trapped inside his body—an intensely uncomfortable sensation. Fortunately, this feeling did not last long before it quickly dissipated, and everything returned to its former tranquility. Yet, when Vail projected his perception into his sea of consciousness, he was astonished to discover that his fire-type magic had actually advanced!

A Tier 3 Magician—this was now the level of his fire-type magic.

To be honest, Vail had never imagined he would advance in such a manner; not only had he never experienced it, he had never even heard of it! All he knew was advancing by constantly battling to challenge one's limits, by accumulating experience through relentless cultivation, or by achieving breakthroughs through sudden enlightenment. Yet he had never heard of advancing by consuming the blood of magical beasts and extracting the magic contained within their gore! And what shocked him even more was that the speed of this advancement was so... terrifyingly fast?!

A minor increase of one tier, which by Vail's usual reckoning would require painstaking cultivation for two or three weeks, or perhaps necessitate a life-or-death battle to achieve, could apparently be accomplished effortlessly under this method simply by hunting down a few high-level magical beasts and draining them dry!

Was this the power of possessing a divine artifact? It was simply too monstrous!

Vail bit his lower lip. Having wielded the staff for so long, it was only today that he discovered it possessed such a capability. He held the staff in his hand, examining it with a strange gaze he had never felt before. Whether due to the gathering darkness or not, Vail felt that the surface of the staff now possessed a deeper luster and beauty than before.

"Could it be that I was too stimulated tonight and am experiencing hallucinations? Why do I feel like even its weight has increased considerably?"

Vail frowned, just as he was about to test the weight of the staff, when he suddenly heard a painful groan from not far away. He smacked his forehead—damn it! Rosdi that guy was still lying over there!

When Rosdi caught sight of the carcass of the Crimson Flame Dire Bear, an indescribably strange expression surfaced on his face. He poked and prodded the bear's corpse for a long time, then paced around the surrounding ground for ages. After quite a while, he slowly straightened up and stared fixedly at Vail with an exceptionally bizarre gaze, as if he longed to see right through Vail inside and out to satisfy his curiosity.

"Hey, would you mind not looking at me like that? This whole thing... well... honestly, I don't even understand it myself yet!"

Vail felt somewhat uncomfortable under that peculiar scrutiny and stammered out a reply. Yet he wasn't really lying; he genuinely didn't understand. As the wielder of the Staff of Rosicrucian, Vail still hadn't figured out what kind of existence the staff truly was, especially regarding his degree of attunement with it. Even now, Vail wouldn't dare claim that his synchronization rate with the staff had ever reached a pitiful one percent!

Seeming to sense that Vail's facial expression was not feigned, Rosdi finally sighed, waved a hand at him, and said, "Never mind, never mind. It's your private business anyway; a person's entitled to a few little secrets, right? Ah, what a pity about this dire bear's fur, though! Hell, do you know how much a pelt in this condition would fetch if we sold it? At least twenty gold coins!"

Hearing Rosdi's lament, Vail merely smiled indifferently, waving a hand at him. "You like this fur? That's hardly a problem!"

"Forget it, Vail. Dragging a pelt this big around will slow us down terribly..."

Rosdi was shaking his head in refusal when he was startled to see Vail simply press a hand against the dire bear's fur and wave it. Instantly, the pelt, which was over three meters long, vanished into thin air right before his eyes!

"This..."

Rosdi's jaw dropped, unable to squeeze out a single syllable for the longest time.

"I put it away," Vail said with a faint smile, turning to Rosdi. "Once we head back, I'll give this fur to you. Oh, right, autumn is almost here. How about using this stuff to make an overcoat?"

Vail's semi-joking demeanor left Rosdi unable to keep a straight face, prompting him to mutter under his breath, "You know? I'm just now realizing that being a magician is really not bad at all!"