Chapter 0119

Chapter 0119

When the Eternal Spirit Guild was first created by Cardis all those years ago, they would recruit new members every ten years. Due to abnormally high death rate among the recruits, the Council of Elders decided implement changes.

The first change was obviously to change the recruit period from every ten years to every five years. They need a lot of fresh new blood to replace the old members.

The second change made was the affinity requirements. Most low-end guild accept mages with fifty affinities in all their elements. Mid tier guild accept mages with sixty affinities in all their elements and high end guild such as the Eternal Spirit Guild accept mages with eighty affinities in all their elements.

The Council of Elders decided to relax the requirement. The Eternal Spirit Guild started accepting mages with an average affinity above seventy.

For example, a mage has 81 wind affinities, 65 water affinities and 72 metal affinities. Under the old system, the Eternal Spirit Guild would never accept the mage. The average affinities of the mage are (81+65+72)/3 or 72.6, round up to 73. Under the new system, the mage would be accepted by the Eternal Spirit Guild.

The third change was to implement a grouping system.

The current Council of Elders were the first beneficiary of the grouping system. The tout the grouping system as the best method to create lifelong camaraderie among mages. The fact that the new recruits still die at a higher rate than other guild was ignored by them.

The grouping method had to be fair.

At first, it was the Elders who decided the group members. It was pointed out that the Elder were being bias, grouping high affinities children with each other and ignoring the rest of the recruits. Either that, the Elders tried to group their family members with potential powerful mages to ride their coattails.

There were too much bickering among the group of fools until someone suggested they left it up to the spirits to decide the grouping since their cultivation depended on the spirits and working in a group assigned by the spirits might increase their affections for their mortal, thereby increasing their mortal cultivation rate.

The question of how plagued the Elders until Cardis presented a weird contraption he said he forged at the behest of his spirits as an answer to the grouping problem. Since Cardis spoke, the Elders went along with it.

The Sphere of Spiritual Influence, as the contraption was called, was simply a bingo cage that can spit out three to ten balls at a time.

The new recruits inject their mana into a bingo ball and toss it into the bingo cage and wait for their bingo.

Cardis told Tempest the story behind the creation of the Sphere of Spiritual Influence was as glamorous as the guild made it out to be but he wouldn’t go into the particulars.

Tempest tried to pry the information out of Cardis, but he was surprisingly tight lipped about the whole situation. Tempest turned to Ventus for the gossips. There was no way she was going to let go a sordid story she can hold over Cardis head. She’d bring it up everytime he’d embarrass her.

Ventus told her the whole truth. The Sphere of Spiritual Influence was created when Cardis was poison with an aphrodisiac. He either had to sleep with a woman or let his power run amok throughout his body and burn the aphrodisiac out of his system.

During the three days Tempest stalked Cardis, he flirted with every female in his field of vision. He might seem like a Casanova, but it was only limited to flirting. He never slept with any of the women he flirted with.

His behavior gave Tempest the courage to approach him. She thought his behavior was a cover up for his ED. Who flirts with everyone but does nothing when opportunity presents itself on a silver platter? A man who can’t get it up, that’s who.

It wasn’t.

Cardis simply got tired of meaningless sex. Ventus won’t say he was pining after Eva but Tempest got the drift.

The Sphere of Spiritual Influence was created during his randy days. He chose to let his power run amok while sleeping with the woman who gave him the aphrodisiac. He woke up the next day with a splitting headache, ash all over his body and an ugly contraption he doesn't know what to do with.

The headache went away on its own; the ashes Cardis scatter at sea and the ugly contraption he pawns off to the Elders.

So the tradition of grouping new recruits came to be.

It is also how Tempest came to be grouped with several eclectic individuals.