With the stronger fire essence driving my refinement, it was much easier to control every step of the refinement. After what seemed like an eternity of careful precision, I looked at the finished pill core that lay in the cauldron. It was a small Dark Violet pill core. This young lord had succeeded and broken through to become a Grape Alchemist!

I quickly took out the Dark Violet pill core and mixed it with a bit of Tier-2 ointment I had available to make a topical salve. After I finished the salve I happily rubbed it over my body. My fatal wounds healed in front of my very eyes.

I live!

I pa.s.sed out right in that very cave after seeing my wounds healing. All my worries extinguished, I could finally rest and recover. It was a strange feeling, being alive. Teetering on the edge of life and death was no joke.

"Ma.s.sa alive!" said Freedom.

"Relief…" said Destiny.

The cursed weapons could feel their master recovering inside the cave. They would guard the entrance while he rested. Destiny was glad he no longer had to worry about sticking with a talkative merfolk for all eternity. It took an immense burden off of his chest.

"Wessa needs to be strong, Yussa too weak," said Freedom.

"…" said Destiny.

Destiny could feel the new insights his master had in the Fire Dao now, it would take him a long time to digest these new insights. Hopefully, he could be more powerful than the stupid merfolk if given time. Unfortunately, Freedom was a better-crafted cursed weapon, so he had an easier time learning his Dao.

Destiny planned to ask his master if there was anything he could do to improve his sword body when he got the chance. Serving and being weaker than the merfolk was annoying.

The barrier erected by the cursed weapons was too powerful for Chubs to pa.s.s. Chubs waited outside a while for Soulless, but eventually wandered off due to his hunger.

A few hours later, I woke up feeling a bit refreshed. I was still injured, but now my wounds were not life-threatening. I needed to go exploring with Chubs to find some stronger herbs to craft better healing supplements. I felt he had left the exterior of the cave from the location of his u003cSoul Brandu003e.

I decided to investigate what lay in the cave before meeting back up with Chubs. I hope whatever the raptors were guarding was well worth my efforts. Considering Chubs said it was really delicious, it might even be a Tier-5 herb. I was excited that I might get my hands on a Tier-5 herb.

After learning so much about herb lore, I wondered why we didn"t use alchemy to promote our descendants in the Hudson Estate. Pills were extremely useful in helping cultivate from what I understood so far. If we gave all our descendants helpful pills, we would not be a lowly Count Estate.

Now that I think about it, my Hudson Estate was probably a little backward. Pulling oneself up by his bootstraps was just ridiculous. Ignoring such a core tenant of cultivation was a mistake in my eyes.

Few cultivators even had the qualifications to be self-sufficient. Devil Ancestor seemed to value pure Dao talent over everything, attempting to nurture self-sufficient descendants that didn"t depend on the wonders of alchemy. Knowing how scheming my Devil Ancestor was, there might very well be a principled reason. I needed to expand my knowledge base to understand his thoughts.

When this young lord starts his own fief, he won"t do such backward things. I"ll outfit my descendants with enough pills and weapons to crush everyone in their path! I need to learn more about practicing devilry to make an informed decision, right now I didn"t even know the way to break into Viscount.

That might have something to do with it. Our Hudson clan is very young for a devil clan yet every lineage at least has one Viscount in it, so something had to be right with the way we raised our descendants. Pills might not be the magical solution for devils I was imagining them as. Consuming them could make breaking into higher realms more difficult for devils.

When I make it back to the Cove of Death, I will exchange some merits for a few Viscount devilry methods to understand the realm better. With my current combat proficiency, collecting merits should be easy. I felt if I gained more mastery of my quasi-Viscount Fire Essence, I could even compete with Viscounts now. My path to claiming the Serpent Cedar tree was becoming clearer.

As I explored the cavern I was surprised at what I saw. There were many rare ore veins here. These stupid raptors were sitting on a gold mine! The cave had too many branches to find the rare herb without direction. After a little cursory exploring, I gave up and went to the entrance of the cave to find the red-feathered raptor and Chubs. This young devil lord needed minions to dig out all these precious ores for him.

The red-feathered raptor was really in a miserable position. The way I destroyed his body in my fury made him useless to me right now. I needed to heal him for him to mine my precious ore. I slapped him a few times then planted a u003cSoul Brandu003e on him, before going to find Chubs.

Thankfully, Chubs didn"t wander off too far.

"Fat a.s.s! Don"t you ever abandon your young lord like that again," I said upon seeing Chubs snacking on a Tier-3 herb. Why does this glutton like wasting G.o.d"s precious treasures?

"Young lord," said Chubs as a piece of the ruined Tier-3 herb fell out of his mouth. He looked up to me, feeling wronged.

"Don"t young lord me," I said before activating his u003cSoul Brandu003e.

"Ahh," said Chubs as he fell over from the pain.

"Your cowardice almost cost this young lord his little life," I said.

"From now on you must have unwavering bravery when protecting your young lord. Know this, If I die, with my u003cSoul Brandu003e you would too. So you better start valuing my life more than your own," I said before hopping on the cowardly turtle.

"Yes, young lord," said Chubs.

My u003cSoul Brandu003e gave a subtle influence on a victim"s psyche, increasing their loyalty to this young lord. I had no fear after informing him of the u003cSoul Brand"su003e effect that he would rat me out to his old one. It was a wonderful ability, more useful than a Slave Contract because I could forcefully use them to subdue creatures.

The only caveat was that I could plant very few u003cSoul Brandsu003e. The victims also had to be weaker than me. With Slave Contracts as long as they were willing anyone could sign their life and nine generations away to me. I figured with my current mastery of Soul Dao I could at most plant three u003cSoul Brandsu003e.