System vs Rebirth

The next day, Noel and the others immediately headed to the lake. They had brought several items like buckets and a few tools to measure the poison.

The lake had a diameter of one hundred meters. It was quite big, but with their plan and strength, draining the lake shouldn’t be a problem.

Noel asked, “How do you usually test the poison?”

“There are a few ways. Test it ourselves, evaporating the water, all using some reagents to incite the poison.” Jonathan explained while staring at the lake.

“I see.” Noel didn’t know much about this work, so he had no comments.

“I’ll bring you a bucket to see how much Spiritual Energy you need to purify one. You should be able to do some rough calculations, right?”

“Yeah.”

Jonathan nodded and waved his hand to the others. “Let’s get to work. Ben will take care of our sample. I will be conducting the test. Zion and Rose can split up to scout our surrounding while Anna and Noel would work together for the purification.”

After assigning their work, Jonathan handed over the bucket to Ben so that he could acquire the sample for Noel and everyone else.

The bucket wasn’t that big. Even Noel felt like he could purify the water in the bucket in an instant.

As soon as he received the sample, Noel closed his eyes, concentrating. He often used this skill to purify the water to drink, but this was the first time he purified poisonous water. So, he didn’t know whether this ability would work or not.

The Spiritual Energy began to gather around his hand and gradually move toward the water. The water looked clear already, so there was no change in its appearance.

It took him three seconds to do the purification. As soon as he opened his eyes, he realized everyone was staring at him, wondering if he had finished or not.

“Is it done?” Jonathan asked.

“Yeah.” Noel nodded with a serious expression.

“Well, I’ll also test the sample and compare it to the poisonous one to see their reaction.” Jonathan nodded and thought for a moment. “Since it doesn’t seem to be a hard work for Noel, why don’t you help Zion and Rose, Anna?”

“Ah, alright.” Anna knew that she wasn’t needed here. At first, she would become Noel’s bodyguard, protecting him while he was purifying the water, but since they were just testing the sample today, he didn’t need the bodyguard yet.

After Anna left, Jonathan began testing both samples together. The poison would trigger the demons, so they caught a few demons. Jonathan immediately lifted the water and formed a small ball before putting it into the demon’s mouth.

As expected, the purification worked. When the demon drank the water, it didn’t react too much. They were just following their instinct which was trying to kill Jonathan.

But the moment they drank the poisonous water, their eyes turned bloodshot as if all the reasons in their mind had disappeared. The demon was rampaging and tried to break the cage even if they had to hurt themselves.

The reaction was so different compared to the pure water, proving the poison.

“Mhm… It seems that your purification works. How much Spiritual Energy do you need?”

“To be honest, I don’t feel any change in my body. I think I need a pond to measure it.”

“A pond huh…” Jonathan thought for a moment before lifting the soil. “2x2x2 meters should be enough, right?”

After making the hole, Jonathan moved the water from the lake to the pond and asked, “Can you do it again?”

Noel nodded and purified the pond. This time, it took him twenty seconds before he opened his eyes again, giving the signal that he had done the purification.

Jonathan tried to feed the demons with this water and didn’t receive any exaggerated reaction from them. “I see. It seems to be working.”

“Also, I don’t think I have used even one percent of my Spiritual Energy…” Noel paused for a moment, contemplating. He almost forgot that his Water Purifying ability was still level 1.

Water Purifying (1/3) 𝒷ℯ𝒹𝓃𝓸𝓿ℯ𝓁.𝒸ℴ𝓶

‘What if I make it to level 3? Won’t this make my contribution bigger since I can purify more water? The system split the contribution according to the impact I’ve made. So, if I do this… I might help around one thousand people.

‘The city has the population of eight thousand people… Except for the fight, which hasn’t happened yet, the only way to save them is through this water…’

When he saved a city with Anna, the calculation came twice. The first one was when he helped the people with their water supply while the second one was after the siege.

He wanted to replicate this situation and got all the benefits. With enough Honor Points, he could level up a few Spirit Abilities.

Noel couldn’t help but smirk. Exchanging a few Skill Points to level up the Water Purifying Ability was worth it.

With that thought in mind, Noel asked Ardagan to level up the skill in his mind before asking, “Jonathan. Can you increase the size of the pond? I want to see how much I can purify…”

“Instead of increasing the pond size, I should do this…” Jonathan lifted up the ground he had dug earlier and threw it into the lake, forming a wall that separated a portion of the lake. “This should be enough, right?

“Oh!” Noel nodded with a serious expression. The size of this pond was ten times bigger than what he had purified earlier. With this, he should feel the change in his Spiritual Energy.

Without hesitation, Noel hurriedly used his ability. Due to leveling up the Spirit Ability, the effect and Spiritual Energy cost to activate this technique became lower.

Even though the pond size couldn’t be compared to the lake, it was still quite big. Noel took a few minutes to purify it and he felt his Spiritual Energy decreasing, albeit by a small amount.

“This is…”