Chapter 14 – The Sovereign's Blueprint
Inside Lakan's private sanctum, the air was thick with the scent of Almáciga resin and the metallic tang of spirit-ironwood. Ling Yue, the Golden Kite Douluo, stood leaning against a pillar, her golden armor reflecting the prismatic glow of the various crystals Lakan had scattered about.
"Lakan," Ling Yue began, her voice a mix of curiosity and exhaustion. "The researchers are still losing their minds over your 'Tide-Flow' technique. Now you're telling me you're going to revolutionize the very nature of Soul Rings? You're six and a half. Shouldn't you be playing with a ball or something?"
Lakan laughed, his fingers deftly etching a series of flowing, curved characters into a piece of sacred Kamagong wood.
"Balls are boring, Sister Ling Yue. Writing the future is much more fun," Lakan chirped. He paused, looking at the script he had just carved—the Baybayin Scripture.
"Listen closely," Lakan said, his voice dropping the playful tone for the grounded authority of the 'Sage.' "The current world is stuck in a cycle of blood. You kill a beast, you take its ring, and the beast's resentment stays in your spirit sea. It's primitive. It's... messy."
Ling Yue frowned. "That's the way it's been for ten thousand years. What's the alternative?"
"Two paths," Lakan held up two fingers.
The first is the Soul Spirit Ring (The Bonded Soul)
"This uses a ritual to invite a beast to choose to stay with me. Instead of killing it, I use the Baybayin Scripture as a bridge. The beast's consciousness is converted into a Soul Spirit. It lives in my Spiritual Sea, perfectly preserved. It doesn't just give me one ring and die; it grows with me. A ten-thousand-year beast can provide three or four rings as I rank up. It can talk to me, advise me, and even manifest in battle as a partner."
The second is the Soul Spirit Tool (The Anito Artifact)
"This is for the objects," Lakan gestured to the Kalasag shield on his bench. "In the ancient scrolls, weapons had Anito—spirits. By 'feeding' a blade through Atang (ritual offerings) and awakening it with a drop of my own essence, the tool becomes sentient.
Unlike the mechanical toys the blacksmiths make, an Anito Artifact has a soul. It can move its own weight to parry for me, or release energy because it wants to win the fight. It's not a weapon; it's a living soldier."
Ling Yue's eyes widened, her golden aura flickering in her shock. "You... you want to put spirits into your mind and your weapons? Lakan, do you realize what this means? If a Soul Master doesn't have to kill to gain power, the Spirit Beasts will stop seeing us as monsters. You're talking about a world without the 'Ring Limit' and without the slaughter."
"Exactly," Lakan smiled, his eyes sharp. "And it starts with these." He pointed to the Baybayin runes. "These aren't just letters. They are a code that resonates with the natural frequency of the world. They are the 'language' the spirits understand."
Weeks later, after Lakan had refined his ritual components—the Resins, the Blessed Water, and the Sacrificial Kris for the 'First Draw'—he and Ling Yue set out for the Star Dou Great Forest.
"Why here?" Ling Yue asked as they entered the emerald shadows of the world's most dangerous forest.
"I need a partner who is intelligent enough to understand the contract," Lakan replied. "And I have a feeling the 'Ancient' spirits are guiding me toward something specific."
As they ventured deeper, bypassing the outer perimeter where the common hunters roamed, Lakan suddenly stopped. His Seven-Tone Chaos breathing caught a discordant note in the air.
It wasn't the smell of a beast. It was the smell of Rot.
Ling Yue's expression hardened. Her golden wings flared slightly. "Lakan, get behind me. That's not a beast's aura. It's... familiar. And disgusting."
In a clearing ahead, they saw it. A trail of drained spirit beast corpses, their life force sucked dry not by a predator, but by a human. A man stood over the body of a young Starlight Deer, his eyes glowing with a sickly, blood-red light.
"An Evil Soul Master," Ling Yue hissed. "To think they would dare to hunt so close to our territory."
Lakan looked at the man, then at the innocent deer. His breezy, flirty personality vanished. A cold, heavy pressure began to radiate from him—not the pressure of Soul Power, but the sheer weight of a Sovereign who found something offensive to his world.
"Sister Ling Yue," Lakan said, his voice like cracking ice. "Let's not just kill him. He's found something... a cave behind those vines. My spirit sea is screaming. There is something in there that shouldn't exist in this era."
Ling Yue nodded, her spear manifesting in her hand. "We hunt, then. Let's see how your 'Eight-Directional Flow' works against a monster that eats souls."