?Two Days Ago....
"Are you kidding me?" Evan asked with a look of disbelief on his face.
"I told you, I will need a lot of energy to perform alchemy," Octavius said with a shrug of his shoulder and looked away from Evan with a small smile on his face.
"You old thief..." Evan gritted his teeth when he saw the old man was smiling and took some deep breaths to calm down.
After a full five minutes, he finally calmed down and asked with a pained expression on his face, "Is there any way to reduce the cost?"
"No," He received a simple and blunt reply.
Evan sighed when he heard Octavius' answer and looked inside his shadow storage. He hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he still took out a storage ring. He looked inside the ring and saw a mountain of high-grade essence stones.
*Sigh*
Evan once again sighed when he saw the mountain of essence stones and with a wave of his hand, around fifty million high-grade spiritual stones appeared in front of him.
"Fu*king robber."
Octavius rolled his eyes when he heard Evan's muttering and decided to ignore him. He just realized that the clone of the shadow monarch is a very greedy and stingy person.
"Give me a cauldron," Octavius said as he sat down at the top of the mountain of essence stones.
"We can't use the Ancient Alchemy Cauldron for it, right?" Evan asked when he heard Octavius and thought about the information Amara found in the books about Ancient Alchemy.
"Yes, just give me a normal cauldron," Octavius nodded and took out the monster cores, monster hearts, and some herbs from a storage ring.
Evan looked inside his shadow storage and gave Octavius Amara's cauldron.
"Don't let monsters disturb me," Octavius said once Evan gave him the cauldron and a white aura came out of his soul, covering the mountain of essence stones.
As the white aura covered the mountain, the essence stones slowly started to disappear, and Octavius' aura started to increase.
Evan looked at Octavius who was absorbing the energy from the essence stones and decided to leave him alone. He released his shadow undeads in the surroundings and told them to kill any monster who approached Octavius.
They were in a secluded area of the second layer where Evan couldn't see any monster, but because of the mountain of fifty million essence stones, he knew that some monsters would be attracted towards Octavius' location.
"Because of the chaos caused by the phenomenon, I was able to kill quite a few monsters," Evan muttered in a low voice and nodded his head in satisfaction as he looked at the number of his shadow undeads which were over five thousand now.
The number of beginner-level rank two shadow undeads under his command reached seventy-two, and he already had more than twenty dead bodies of mid-level Rank Two monsters inside his shadow storage.
"Once Octavius creates the potion and I reach the peak of Rank One, I will turn all the mid-level Rank Two monsters into shadow undeads as well."
As Evan was contemplating about reaching the peak of Rank One, he suddenly felt a very powerful chaotic aura. His expression immediately turned serious upon feeling the aura and he looked at the horizon, only to see a streak of dark brown fire flying far away from him.
"A heavily injured Rank Three monster," Evan raised an eyebrow when he saw the streak of dark brown fire and was glad that it wasn't coming in his direction.
Although from its chaotic aura, he could tell it was seriously injured, Evan was sure that it would still be very hard for him to fight against it even with the help of his shadow undeads.
"A Rank Three monster is not something that I can harm with my current power..." Evan shook his head and continued to look at the streak of black fire that was flying away.
Evan didn't even think about killing the rank three monster because even if he somehow killed it, it would be useless since he couldn't turn it into a shadow undead.
"If I could have turned it into a shadow undead, then I would have definitely tried my luckâ" Evan suddenly stopped he couldn't turn it into a shadow undead.
"If I could have turned it into a shadow undead, then I would speaking, and his eyes opened wide as he realized something.
"Fu*k, why didn't I think about it earlier," Evan cursed loudly and rushed towards Octavius.
But when he saw Octavius was focused on creating the potion, he stopped and shook his head.
'I can't disturb him now,' He said inwardly and turned around to leave. 'I will ask him once he finishes the potion.'
"Protect that old man and inform me immediately if something happens," Evan ordered his shadow undeads and flew away from there.
Using the Shadow Wings, he flew in the direction where the black bird escaped and tried to look for it.
The aura of the black bird was quite chaotic, and it did not control its power while escaping so it wasn't difficult for Evan to follow its trail.
Around eight hours later, Evan finally found the black bird sleeping at the top of a rocky mountain. The rocky mountain was covered in dark brown fire, acting as a protection barrier for the black bird.
Evan looked at the black bird from a distance and was surprised when he noticed the aura of the bird was even weaker than before.
"It must have used all of its power to escape earlier and won't be able to recover soon..." Evan muttered in a low voice and looked at it with a pondering look on his face.
After thinking about everything for a few minutes, Evan finally made up his mind.
"I will bring Octavius here once he finishes the potion and will ask him if it will work or not," Evan said and left behind a shadow undead to watch over the black bird and inform him about its every move.