When Sunny finally returned to his private chambers after surviving the horrific initiation of the Vanguard, he noticed something was wrong.
He walked over to the massive altar, the focal point of the room's energy-gathering array.
Where are all the Corrupted Spirit Stones?
The recessed carving on the altar, which had been overflowing with the jagged, black crystals just that morning, was completely bare.
Sunny ran a pale hand over the smooth stone, his brow furrowing.
He checked the hidden compartments beneath the altar, but found only a single, half-crushed fragment of a stone wedged in a crack.
What was going on?
Did someone rob me? Sunny thought, panic instantly spiking in his chest.
Did an assassin slip past the perimeter guards while I was gone?
He quickly scanned the room. The Shadow-Ghoul Ape was huddled silently in its iron cage in the corner, and the newly fused Phantom Ash Scorpion was resting obediently beneath the heavy silk drapes of his bed. There were no signs of a struggle. No broken windows. No disrupted wards.
The only logical conclusion was that this was an inside job.
"Ghoul Ape, come to the bars," Sunny commanded, his voice a freezing whisper that commanded absolute obedience.
The skeletal, monkey-like fiend shuffled forward stiffly, its necrotic joints popping loudly in the quiet room.
"Did you consume the stones from the altar?" Sunny pointed a finger at the empty recess.
The Shadow-Ghoul Ape lowered its skull-like head. It spotted the single crushed fragment lodged in the altar's crack, reached through the iron bars with a trembling, elongated finger, and popped the stone into its mouth.
While loudly crunching on the crystal, the Ape shuffled over to the bronze blood-basin Sunny had placed outside its cage the day before.
It positioned its rotting jaw directly over the basin and let the spent, glowing ash of the digested spirit stone fall neatly into the receptacle.
After eating, it returned to staring blankly at the wall, maintaining its perfect posture with its head hovering over the basin.
Sunny walked over to inspect the basin. It was filled to the brim with exhausted spirit stone ash.
The culprit had practically confessed. Under Sunny's intense, glowing crimson glare, the Ghoul Ape began to shiver violently.
With jerky, terrified movements, it retreated to the deepest corner of its cage and pressed its face against the cold iron bars, assuming a posture of absolute submission.
Seeing an opportunity, the Phantom Ash Scorpion scuttled out from beneath the bed drapes. It climbed up the side of the altar and raised its venomous stingers high.
It consumed the dark essence! It consumed it all! The Scorpion's primitive, bloodthirsty thoughts echoed clearly in Sunny's mind through their soul link.
"Yes, yes, I am aware," Sunny muttered softly, barely moving his lips as he tapped the Scorpion's obsidian carapace.
It did not leave any essence for me to refine! The Scorpion projected a strong sense of predatory indignation.
Are you seriously upset because it didn't share the loot? Sunny thought, bewildered by the petty jealousy of a demonic insect.
Sunny wasn't actually angry that the Ghoul Ape had eaten the Corrupted Spirit Stones. The stones were meant to be used for cultivation and beast refinement anyway.
It was just that allowing a captive beast to act without explicit orders was a dangerous precedent in this cutthroat sect. If word got out that he couldn't control his own summons, he would look weak. He needed to establish clear boundaries.
"If you require more dark essence to sustain your core, you will petition me first. Is that understood?" Sunny said.
There was no indication that the feral Ghoul Ape understood human speech. It simply continued shivering, keeping its empty eye sockets firmly aimed at the wall, too terrified to even breathe loudly.
Since the blood-red sun had not yet fully set, Sunny decided to utilize his status. He activated the communication jade slip tied to his belt.
The Quartermaster of the Resource Hall had sworn an oath of absolute obedience to him after yesterday's display of power, promising that any resources the Young Master demanded would be delivered immediately to his courtyard.
Channeling a sliver of dark Qi into the jade, Sunny contacted the Quartermaster. He demanded another thirty pounds of Corrupted Spirit Stones and ten pounds of Blood-Lotus Roots.
The Quartermaster, his voice trembling with eager fear, assured Sunny the delivery would be immediate.
...
Less than ten minutes later, a heavy knock echoed through the courtyard. A low-ranking sect disciple, pale and sweating profusely under the weight of a massive iron chest, knelt before Sunny's door.
Seeing the disciple shaking with sheer terror at just being in his presence, Sunny didn't say a word. He simply gestured sharply toward the corner of the room.
The disciple practically crawled inside, deposited the heavy chest, and immediately bowed his head to the floor. "Thank... thank you for your mercy, Young Master."
"..." Sunny offered no reply, simply staring at the disciple until the young man scrambled backward out the door, terrified of overstaying his welcome.
Sunny locked the heavy wooden doors and unsealed the iron chest. He pointed a finger at the terrified Ghoul Ape in the cage.
"This essence will sustain your core for the next phase of refinement."
The Ape smelled the overwhelming, putrid aura of the high-grade dark essence and slowly turned its skull toward the chest.
"Two days," Sunny said coldly, raising two pale fingers.
"You will consume exactly half a portion each night. Understood?"
The Ghoul Ape nodded its skeletal head frantically, the necrotic flames in its eye sockets flaring brightly. Sunny had not formed a blood contract with this miserable creature, so he couldn't communicate with it telepathically. He had to rely on raw fear.
Sunny wasn't worried about the cost of feeding the beast. As the sole heir to the sect, the Quartermaster didn't dare ask him for spirit-credits. He could hoard as many Corrupted Spirit Stones as he pleased.
The more dense dark energy the Ape absorbed, the closer it would get to reaching its maximum potential before the next fusion.
From the System's attribute table floating in his vision, Sunny could see that the Shadow-Ghoul Ape required an absurd amount of dark essence to stabilize its fragile core before it could withstand a fusion with a higher-tier entity.
Fusing beasts into the Commander grade or higher was not a simple matter of mashing them together. It required immense foundational energy. That was the cost of forcefully breaking the laws of nature.
A weak beast forced into a high-tier body would simply explode. The System required materials to bridge that gap.
Some of those materials, like the Blood-Lotus Roots, were heavily restricted by the Elder Council.
Whenever a beast advanced to a higher tier through unnatural means, its innate potential grade would drop significantly to compensate for the forceful evolution.
For instance, if Sunny fused two Perfect grade Elite beasts to create a Commander tier beast, the resulting creature would drop to an Excellent grade. The violent restructuring of their spiritual veins naturally burned away some of their innate talent.
However, Sunny knew from the System's tutorials that this loss wasn't permanent. A dedicated tamer could slowly repair a beast's potential grade by constantly feeding it high-quality, perfectly matched elemental resources.
After securing the Ape's rations, Sunny opened a smaller, lead-lined box from within the chest. Inside lay ten pounds of pale, pulsating Blood-Lotus Roots.
They looked like severed, purple veins, slowly oozing a crimson sap.
Smelling the sickeningly sweet aroma of blood, the Phantom Ash Scorpion became incredibly agitated.
Blood! I require the blood! To stabilize the Scorpion's new dual-attribute core and prepare it for further mutation, it needed a massive influx of pure vitality. The Blood-Lotus Roots were perfect.
They were highly toxic to normal cultivators but acted as a supreme tonic for poison-attribute beasts.
Sunny dumped the pulsating roots into a large stone mortar. Watching the fresh, bleeding roots, the Scorpion's ruby eyes burned with frenzy. But without Sunny's explicit command, the beast did not dare touch the food, simply raising its stingers and waiting.
Only after Sunny gave a sharp nod did the Scorpion strike. Its mandibles snapped down on the edges of the mortar, and it began tearing into the roots with vicious, mechanical efficiency.
It consumed everything, the fibrous roots, the crimson sap, and the toxic skin.
The Scorpion only consumed a third of the roots before its carapace began to glow with a faint, angry red light, signaling it had reached its limit. It sluggishly backed away from the mortar, curled its tail over its body defensively, and entered a state of torpor to digest the massive influx of energy.
The roots wouldn't rot, steeped as they were in dark energy. Sunny casually pushed the heavy stone mortar next to the bed with his foot.
***
The next morning, the horrific tolling of the Soul-Rending Bell woke Sunny from a restless sleep. It was the summons for the Vanguard.
All disciples marked for the Death Sworn were ordered to bring their contracted beasts to the Blood Obsidian Square for immediate deployment.
Sunny forced himself out of bed. He mentally connected with the Phantom Ash Scorpion, commanding it to follow in his shadow, and stepped out into the ash-filled morning air.
As he approached the staging grounds, the scene before him looked less like an army and more like a parade of nightmares. The entire square was overflowing with monstrous entities.
The cacophony of roars, hisses, and bone-chilling screeches merged into a deafening wall of sound.
There were massive, lumbering Abomination-Golems and swarms of fist-sized Corpse-Flies, but the most jarring sight of all was a massive, hulking creature that resembled a flayed, three-headed hound.
It stood over fifteen feet tall, its exposed musculature dripping with a corrosive black slime that sizzled as it hit the obsidian tiles.
Standing rigidly beside this monstrosity was a young, pale female disciple from the Flaying Halls. Her face was locked in a mask of sheer terror, entirely devoid of the arrogance usually associated with her pavilion.
Things were not supposed to escalate this quickly.
When she had first contracted the hound from the sect's breeding pits, it had been a terrifying but manageable Tier 1 Bone-Hound. She had intended to slowly cultivate it over years.
She had no idea she would be forced to feed it volatile combat-stimulants to forcefully age it for the Vanguard in a matter of days.
Its size had exploded, along with its uncontrollable bloodlust.
After a quick, terrified glance at its master, the three-headed monstrosity let out a deafening roar.
It acted as though it were already standing amidst the carnage of the front lines, desperate for slaughter.