Mystical Journey

"Good stuff!" He tied the dagger to his waist decisively.

Checking it on the weapons rack again, the rest were at most the same level as the chest armor, not particularly peak class, but still rather excellent. It was just that after he obtained the dagger, Garen couldn't quite appreciate the rest.

His fighting style was always bare-handed, he only took the dagger because he felt this thing was more mysterious, and he didn't know where that flashing creature came from.

Leaving the weapons rack, he walked up to the rack in the center.

There were a few items sparsely scattered on this rack. They were all unbelievably precious peak-level minerals and jewels.

There were six items in total, divided into three types.

Garen recognized two types, the three Evolution Crystals and two Night Crystals. The last was something like a blood-red pearl, he didn't know what it was.

Although most nobles had Evolution Crystals, he really hadn't seen a crystal like the one in front of him before, crystal clear and as large as a watermelon. Or at least, Garen hadn't seen one like this in Vanderman's estate storehouse.

Most totems could only use an Evolution Crystal once, the more these things were used, the more efficient they became. At the same time, they were absolutely necessary ingredients for fixing most powerful totems after they were utterly destroyed.

They had always been military-required materials, and weren't allowed in open private transactions. Most people found it impressive to use a walnut-sized one once. All three in front of him were as large as watermelons.

Garen took off his coat directly, putting the three crystals inside and tying them up tightly. These three crystals exceeded entire cities in worth.

As expected of the Royal Treasury!

With admiration in his heart, he also stuffed the other two items together and tied them up.

Night Crystals were a treasure that could temporarily boost a totem's potential, and temporarily strengthen them significantly. It was just that they also had significant side effects, and required a forger to make them into a potion before those side effects could be reduced.

As for that last Blood Pearl, he had no idea what it was, but Garen put it into his waist pouch.

After that was the third rack.

There was a mess of everything there, many items overall, more than ten types, but they were all strange and unknown.

There was a lush green plant seed shining with green light, an old scroll torn in half, a wilted black flower in a flower vase, an unknown creature's banana-shaped skull, and a blue-purple spherical object like a fish egg.

Garen didn't recognize many of these items, but he vaguely felt as though these things had something in common.

That was, they all emitted an aura of age. As though they had existed for many, many years.

Garen glanced at these items one by one, when suddenly his gaze fell on a dried-up black eyeball.

This item had the exact same feeling he got from the Eye of Isaiah back then!

He couldn't help but reach out to pick up the dried-up black eyeball.

The Eye of Isaiah was a grey-white stone eye, and the one in front of him was a true creature's eye.

Vaguely, he felt an intense heat coming from his War Chain, as though something was resonating inside, beating.

He pulled up his sleeve and looked at it, on the very tip of the diamond-shaped white-silver chain, the embedded grey-white stone ball was slowly trembling, beating like a heart.

The War Chain was embedded into his body, and Eye of Isaiah was naturally also a Solidifying Tactic etched into his body. This was actually already equivalent to an organ transplant, the entire War Chain similar to a man-made organ transplanted onto the human body. Not long after the transplant, it would be utterly assimilated into the totem user, becoming part of their body.

It was just that, right then, the Eye of Isaiah that had already been assimilated into Garen was resonating with the eyeball in his hand.

"Could it be?! All these are…?"

Garen suddenly thought of a possibility, his heart giving a little jolt.

He took the black eyeball in his hand and pressed it lightly against the War Chain.

Psst!

The eyeball actually melted away, turning into a black liquid and flowing into where the Eye of Isaiah's grey-white stone ball was, completely wrapping it up.

Suddenly, an intense, burning pain came from his left arm.

Garen frowned slightly, thinking this intense pain slightly odd.

It was as though two burning hot snakes of fire were rapidly extending down his left arm, flowing past his shoulder, heading up his neck, and darting into his eyes with a whoosh.

He had no intention of stopping it, after all the worst case scenario would be that he died once. He had the Nine-Life Talent, so he wasn't afraid of any accidents at all.

As for the pain, he had experienced countless battles since he started training his secret techniques, and which injury hadn't come with pain. Some of the training methods were even more painful than the injuries. If he didn't have that much determination, no matter how strong his natural talent was, he couldn't possibly have become King of the Century.

The black liquid kept enveloping the Eye of Isaiah, and after more than ten seconds, it finally slowed down, seeping directly into the Eye of Isaiah.

The whole stone ball became faintly black from its original grey-white, emitting an unnamed sense of eeriness.

Garen looked straight at his attribute pane, and as expected, the Eye of Isaiah on the War Chain had changed.

'Original Eye: originating from the mysterious Ancient Endor civilization's tactics, this tactic will make the user's eyes completely transparent, they can see inhuman mysterious powers. Formed by the Eye of Isaiah absorbing the Original Eyeball. The Eye of Isaiah was originally forged by a forger known as Isaiah. The forgery was the Original Eye, excavated from the ruins.

Ability:

Ray of Terror -- the strange eyes can induce the terrifying shadows in the enemy's heart, directly causing a powerful emotional impact.

The totem user will obtain the ability to use Ray of Terror once a day, source of attack: eyes.

Effect: can cause death, serious injury, loss of consciousness, weakness. The stronger the opponent's will, the weaker the effect.'

"So it's this thing!" Garen suddenly remembered, when he was with Windling from Obscuro, he heard him mention this. Windling just didn't know that Garen had an Eye of Isaiah.

And now he dug the information about this special ability directly from his memory, everything becoming instantly clear to him.

"I just don't know how powerful it is."

He continued looking at the other things, and now Garen was certain, these things in front of him were all different Solidifying Tactics. These Solidifying Tactics were all different, and looked like all sorts of things.

Just take any one of these out, and the totem users outside will break their backs fighting over them.

Garen carefully identified the effect waves of these Solidifying Tactics.

For tactic effects, it was always quantity over quality.

He chose a seed with a mix of red and green, the seed emitting waves similar to that of the Healing Breastplate.

After embedding it into the War Chain, another Life Vine tactic ability appeared as expected. This was also a tactic ability he knew.

Summoning the surrounding plants into becoming a prison of vines, it wrapped around the patient, healing and protecting at the same time, while the vines themselves had certain protective power. It was a tactic with rather high survival power. It could be used once a day. It could heal all injuries below Spiritualization, but the number of usages needed could differ.

After the War Chain was upgraded, it had eight available tactic spaces.

After Garen took one Life Vine to increase his survival power, he started looking at the remaining tactics.

The War Chain was meant to gather his subordinates' and companions' power and survival abilities, while at the same time it was a good way to increase his own power and gathering ability, so it wasn't for his use only.

Therefore, the Life Vine was going to be his service to others, as a Solidifying Tactic kept by the royal family, its effects would naturally be decent.

After that, Garem began choosing his offensive tactics.

He believed that the best defense was to kill off the opponent, so offense was key.

He could gather power in his Solidifying Tactics, and use them once every day, which made it perfectly possible for him to match them up to create a mixed effect.

Garen felt the force fields between these tactics closely. After considering them carefully, he realized that his Myriad Water Jasper Technique probably wasn't the only one among Form Five fighters.

These Form Five elite fighters all shared a secret, which was that they all had their own Secret Technique. If he hadn't learned this secret from Ivycius, Garen would still be clueless about this.

They used Secret Techniques to assimilate the totems into their bodies, merging the two into one, achieving an extreme and terrifying evolution effect. Lower-level totem users think they themselves were stronger than totems, and that was why they didn't release their totems, but the truth was that they had assimilated their totems totally.

They no longer had totems to release.

Although Ivycius understood that, he had deep feelings for his own totem, and wasn't willing to take that path. Otherwise, he would have entered Form Five a long time ago.

The Solidifying Totems on the rack had heating forces, cooling forces, material forces, and other complicated forces that he didn't know.

Garen felt them for a while, and finally decided to add a tactic with the same type of force into his six remaining tactic spaces.

He didn't choose different combinations, because he didn't know any of these. So he decided to take six wilting black flowers with cooling forces.

There were eight of these flowers in total, and they looked like they withered a long time ago, the vase they were put in was actually made of pitch-black ice. The forces emitted by each flower were slightly weaker than their fewer counterparts, but not by much.

Garen pressed the six flowers into the War Chain, one after the other.

Slowly, his elemental pane changed again, a new tactic effect slowly appearing.

'Black Wilted Flowers (unnamed): source unknown.

Effect: Passive Spirit Light, lowers the temperature within ten meters by ten degrees. Slows down the enemy's movement speed and efficiency by a certain degree.'

"It's actually a precious non-consumptive Passive Spirit Light." Garen was slightly surprised, this type of tactic didn't need a continuous source of power, and could be used whenever and wherever. To a normal low-level totem user, to be able to obtain the effect of Spiritualization beforehand was already very impressive, as they could understand the true quality of such an effect in advance and increase the chances of their totem evolutions being Spiritualized, but to Garen, this was a little underwhelming.

He had only met a few Spiritualized high-level totem users, all the peak-level fighters gathered and compressed their powers, never using them wastefully.

They even only used their Spirit Light when they needed a large-scale effect.

These black flowers actually only lowered the temperature by ten degrees, Garen had pressed all the flowers into the War Chain, so the six black flowers stacked up reduced the temperature by sixty degrees. The area of effect was sixty meters. The effect on the enemy was the same, without an objective value.

There was still some effect to speak of. To a normal person that was already extremely terrifying, but to a totem user, it was only so-so.

After all, it was non-consumptive, so it was much better than those extremely powerful but at the same time extremely consumptive tactics. It was also more valuable than those Solidifying Tactics that had limited daily uses. Or so it was to Garen himself.

Solidifying Tactics were only for support, in the end he still had to rely on himself.