Talisman Research

While one may think that huge price surge is absurd, you had to remember that time could never be bought back. The younger a person was when they reached the peak of the Mortal Renewal Realm, the more likely they were to breakthrough to the Inner Heaven Realm.

Plenty of powerful families and sect's would dump huge resources if it meant a chance to create an Inner Heaven, which were the mainstays of any power.

Money can always be re-earned, but time is lost forever. Even then, the 50 Nux Stones Minos estimated were a bit modest, if it was sold at an auction, it could easily go for hundreds.

Naturally for such a hot-ticket item, Minos didn't plan on disclosing his identity, so he held onto them until now.

Originally he was planning to give them to Venix, but that treasure room contained an entire barrel of Blood Wine Honey, so naturally that thought fell through.

With two threads of thoughts happening simultaneously in Minos's head, he could think with twice the efficiency. A large list of goals quickly formed in his mind, making his path become clear and clear.

First, earn 175 Nux Crystals. Second, buy all the auxiliary occupation knowledge from the Nine Treasure House. Third, sell talisman's to fund his research. Fourth, find some trustworthy people to open his own power with. Fifth, use this new power to get hands on any knowledge available.

There were also steps six, and seven, but for now those steps were too distant, so Minos put them on the back burner.

…

For the next week, Minos began selling low-level talisman to the Nine Treasure House as he stocked up on his Nux Crystals. After a week of selling, he had already earned about 3 Nux Stones.

While it may not seem a lot given Minos's ability, he did so on purpose. Selling to many would slowly destroy the market, and also make people question how exactly he worked so fast.

With his hands on enough money for the meantime, Minos began the first test that had been on his mind for a long time, which was what he called 'Flesh Talisman.'

Deep in the woods of the Underwood Mountain Range, Minos was tucked away in a cave. Shining Talisman's that had been upgraded to last longer and shine less were pasted on the walls, illuminating the dark cave.

On a large rock table, a Laughing Fox was pinned, each arm held in place by iron cuffs. The Laughing Fox was a low-level demonic beast, with the strength of the first Life Lock, so Minos had no trouble catching it.

Using a sharp custom crafted talisman brush, that was more like a blade, Minos slowly cut into the flesh of the back of the Laughing Fox, like he was giving it a tattoo.

Minos had always wondered if one could directly fuse talismans into creatures. If that was possible, wouldn't one have access to a talisman that never burnt out?

In fact, Minos himself had already proven this line of thought was possible with his Shining Punch. Through twisting his veins he could make it such that his body gained the same effect of the talisman he was mimicking.

Of course, this was incredibly difficult, and even given Minos's demonic enlightenment, it was no easy task. This naturally meant it had little applicability on a wide scale, which didn't meet Minos's goal.

He needed something that would be the standard of his organization. Something that would provide an immediate strength boost with no requirements on the user-end.

He had already been in the mountains for a week at this point, and he had already officially turned 14 according to his calculations. However his birthday was spent away from humanity, testing his ideas on any beast he could get his hands on.

He had already attempted to do the same thing on mortal beasts, but it failed every time without fail. Since Minos already knew his line of thought was possible, he realized that the failure must lie in the creatures.

Eventually Minos realized the fundamental problem, which was the fact that the creatures were mortal, and lacked any Nux in their bodies. Without Nux as a source, the talisman was destined to fail.

While at the Mortal Renewal Realm, one still couldn't control Nux, their body was slowly being transformed by it as they broke their Life Locks. It was what gave their body its strength in the first place.

As mortal creatures lacked Nux, the talisman couldn't find an energy source to power itself with, so it failed. Of course this only raised another question in Minos's mind.

What was the point of the Nux Gathering stroke if the body already had Nux? Wasn't it redundant?

However, as Minos furthered his research, he realized the crux of the problem. While the Nux Gathering stroke did as intended, its power was incredibly weak, and it could only gather the Nux in its immediate surroundings.

Hence why special talisman paper was required for talisman making. Normal mortal paper had no Nux in it, but talisman paper did, and just enough to power a talisman.

It was also the reason why talismans were reduced to ashes when they were used. All the Nux in the talisman paper was extracted, reducing it to dust.

It also answered one of the very first question's Minos ever asked on this journey, which was why he couldn't simply use mortal items to create a talisman.

Mortal creatures lacked Nux, and since the Nux Gathering stroke was too weak to pull it from the surroundings, nothing happened, and Minos's tests all ended in failure.

While one solution would have been to strengthen the Nux Gathering stroke, Minos decided against it. His goal this time was clear, to create Flesh Talisman, so he put that thought on the backlog.

…

Back to the Laughing Fox, Minos split his mind into two parts as he operated. One part of his mind was completely focused on tattooing the Shining Talisman into the foxes back, while another part was watching over the procedure to catch any mistakes the moment they happened.

With these two thoughts, Minos found his efficiency increased by multiple times. He couldn't help but feel incredibly lucky that Venix had chosen to take the treasure room.

Minos already had incredible enlightenment, and by splitting his thoughts, it was like giving wings to a tiger. That was not to mention he was close to creating the second rune, which meant he'd have three split thoughts by then.

Minos also realized the benefits of his soul slowly strengthening. While his intelligence wasn't directly increased, he realized he could think and sense things much faster, which indirectly made him smarter.

By the time he had split the second rune, Minos noticed his thoughts and senses were already 1.2x as fast as normal, and Minos predicted that he'd be able to think twice as fast when he reached the peak of the Embryonic Rune Realm.

This not only had benefits when it came to making talismans, but also in combat. Imagine an opponent that could see the world at half the speed you did, they'd naturally be able to better exploit any weakness and avoid any attack.

Back to the fox, Minos had already finished the minor operation. The animal was relatively unharmed, except for the small part of its back that had a talisman carved into it.

As the talisman came to completion, the fox's back started to shine a bright light. This was another problem Minos had, which was the inability to deactivate the talisman after etching it on.

Since blood was the way to activate a talisman, it naturally went without saying that a talisman created in blood and flesh wouldn't be able to turn off.

So while Minos was happy about this success, he also realized that he now actually had a more difficult problem to deal with.

With a slight cut of his blade, Minos destroyed the talisman, causing the light to vanish and the fox to go back to normal.

Minos released the creature back into the wild as he sat back in the cave, two split souls constantly thinking in different directions so as to better converge into a solution. The main problem all came down to a stroke called 'Blood Trigger.' This stroke did exactly as the name implied, once blood was applied, the talisman would trigger.

While Minos could remove this stroke, he would then have a problem in the opposite direction, no longer being able to activate the talisman instead of turning it off.

With no solutions at the moment, Minos decided to go back to Underwood City. He already earned enough to buy the knowledge offered by the Nine Treasure House so he planned on doing so.

With the new knowledge, he may be able to stumble upon an answer to his question. With that in mind, Minos quickly cleaned up the cave before heading out.

The journey back was uneventful, and Minos was soon standing in front of the two iconic jade lions once more.

Walking in, he found the same lady he had initially talked to, and quickly made his purchase, but just as he was about to leave, he heard some shouting coming from across the room.

"There's no way this book is only worth 50 Nux Crystals, it's my family's heritage! I want at least a Nux Stone!" The young man, with short brown hair and an average appearance, shouted out, causing the young receptionist to reel back slightly.

Minos wasn't one to poke his nose where it didn't belong, so he was about to ignore this, however as he swept his gaze away from the young man, he couldn't help but notice the title of the book he was holding.

'Talisman Stroke Guide'

Minos quickly froze in place, and almost instinctively walked towards the young man before saying out loud.

"Excuse me gentleman, do you mind letting me take a look at that book?" Minos asked politely.

"Kid, this isn't a toy, unless you plan on buying, leave me alone." The man said, clearly having quite a sour personality.

"Well, whether it's worth buying or not, I'll only know after I see. Do you mind?" Minos said with a smile as he stretched out his hand.

Finally, under his bright smile, the man seemed to give in. He handed the book over to Minos, but warned him again not to damage it. Of course, for Minos who respected knowledge with all his heart, he naturally took good care.