Ezreal placed his hand on the Owl Man's corpse, and a faint green mist, like swimming snakes, spread from his palm across the entire body.
Ezreal closed his eyes, his expression solemn.
The Owl Man's memories were not vast, with only a small portion dedicated to his own magic cultivation.
Ezreal carefully probed for information related to magic.
The Owl Man's magic was innate, named Devouring Magic.
Its effect was to digest and absorb everything he ate, inheriting the devoured being's Magic Power and magic.
The function was singular, yet incredibly powerful!
And this ability was exactly what Ezreal needed most!
The Summoned Beasts in the canyon currently had both advantages and disadvantages, which were very obvious.
The advantage was that they possessed infinite life; after dying, they could be resurrected infinitely after a short wait.
The disadvantage was that the Summoned Beasts' strength was limited to a fixed level.
If it weren't for Life Alchemy allowing Ezreal to find another path, the strength of these Summoned Beasts would not grow at all.
It would be fine if Elemental Dragons and Ancient Dragons could be summoned, but currently, such creatures simply didn't exist in the canyon.
Before Ezreal found the cause, the Summoned Beasts he could rely on were just these.
Although Life Alchemy could help them undergo a transformation in their life essence, it didn't solve the fundamental problem.
The strength of these Summoned Beasts could not improve on its own!
S-Rank Magic Beasts, even with Life Alchemy, were not so easily created; the resources required were astonishingly vast.
Cultivating one or two was manageable. But if he wanted to evolve all Summoned Beasts to S-Rank, the resources needed would be immense.
However, in the later stages, as battle intensity continuously escalated, a simple S-Rank Magic Beast would struggle to even defeat a Dragon from the Eclipse Gate Arc.
At the very least, they would need to be at the Ten Wizard Saints level, or even higher, at the Twelve Shields level.
Only then could they play a decisive role in subsequent arcs.
Following the main storyline seemed to have no problems.
But this feeling of completely entrusting one's life and death to others was not so reassuring.
Few main characters in Fairy Tail died, and the ending was a happy one, but in the final war between nations, the soldiers who died and the people slaughtered by the Black Dragon truly perished.
There were also powerful characters, with names and backgrounds, who died.
Without a protagonist's halo, Ezreal truly didn't believe he would be safe and sound.
That man who appeared in the Tower of Heaven Arc and had a crush on Elsa, was his name Simon?
He had interactions with the protagonist group and was quite strong, but he was still killed by Jellal.
Future Lucy, when she appeared in the Eclipse Gate Arc, didn't even have an arm, and was later killed by Future Rogue.
Fire Dragon King Igneel, Natsu's foster father, was close enough to the protagonist group, right?
Aside from the Black Dragon, the Fire Dragon King was definitely in the first tier of strength, but wasn't he still bitten in half by the Black Dragon and then killed by a single Dragon's Roar?
Elsa's mother, the founder of Dragon Slayer Magic, a human who lived for over four hundred years, had her head crushed by the Black Dragon!
Black Wizard Zeref's biological son, Magic King August, was said in the original work to be knowledgeable in all magic!
Such a powerful figure still exited the stage and died in a farcical manner.
If he overly relied on the protagonist group's ability to solve problems and then died due to some accident, that would be utterly disgusting.
Entrusting the direction of fate to others is the worst choice.
Life Alchemy was one of the solutions Ezreal found; through synthetic evolution, theoretically, the strength of Summoned Beasts could continuously increase.
However, in reality, each use of Life Alchemy required an exaggerated amount of resources.
Just for the Fire Crown Treant to evolve to A+ rank, it required synthesizing with the corpse of a War Ancient Tree and another Red Buff to achieve its current strength.
If he wanted to raise it to S-Rank, he would need to find an S-Rank Magic Beast as a synthesis material! Even ordinary S-Rank human Mages might not be enough.
Under the same rank, the strength of a Magic Beast is often greater than that of a human Mage.
One Magic Beast would require at least two Mages of equal power to be steadily defeated.
The massive Magic Power brought by a strong and large physique was beyond what ordinary human Mages could compare to.
This time, to evolve these six A-Rank Shadow Worgen, Ezreal released his Summoned Beasts and asked Ikaruga and her two companions to help him collect Magic Beasts.
It took a full month to complete the evolution.
During this period, at least nearly a thousand Magic Beasts were consumed! What kind of concept is that?
A thousand Magic Beasts are enough for a small beast tide!
There were over a dozen B-Rank Magic Beasts alone, and C-Rank and D-Rank were not even counted in detail.
Just evolving to A-Rank required such vast resources.
Ezreal also had two C-Rank Marsh Frogs, two C-Rank Crimson Raptors, and ten D-Rank Raptors.
Even if he only wanted to evolve this group of guys to A-Rank, the resources required would be an unimaginably huge amount.
And there were still about two years left until the main storyline began, and Ezreal didn't want to just be an intern for these two years.
Having no strength and just relying on familiarity wouldn't do.
Besides Life Alchemy, Ezreal scoured all his memories of Fairy Tail and finally found a somewhat 'bugged' person.
The Owl Man who appeared in the Tower of Heaven Arc!
This guy's performance was very interesting; he fought Natsu, ate the careless Natsu, and then was actually able to use Fire Dragon Slayer Magic!
Moreover, in the original work, he stated that once he finished digesting, he could completely master Natsu's magic!
What a 'bugged' ability this was!
It was no less powerful than his Life Alchemy!
He hardly seemed like a supporting character!
If he hadn't appeared so early, with this kind of magic, becoming a BOSS would definitely not be a problem.
"Devouring… so that's it…"
Ezreal had an excellent memory, but to avoid missing any details, he duplicated all memories related to Devouring Magic.
Ezreal slowly opened his eyes; the green light in his palm grew brighter, and the Owl Man's corpse gradually vaporized under the light.
After only a few breaths, the Owl Man's corpse transformed into an eye-sized, highly condensed green bead, which Ezreal swallowed.
He did not absorb the Owl Man; he merely compressed the life energy and soul energy into a ball, temporarily storing it in his body.
He had other uses for this energy ball.
He shook his hand, the green energy mist dispersed, and Ezreal suppressed the smile on his face, but deep in his eyes was an uncontrollable ecstasy.
"The part about absorbing magic can be omitted; Life Alchemy can do that, and even better," Ezreal murmured to himself.
"It's not as strong as I imagined, but it's reasonable; after all, he's just a supporting character. The most important ability is there."
The Owl Man's Devouring Magic consisted of two parts: one part was to absorb and master the magic of the eaten life form.
However, there was a prerequisite: it had to be magic that the life form had skillfully used during its life, deeply ingrained in both its body and soul.
Generally, only two or three spells from the original life form could be obtained.
The other part was the Magic Power Devouring, which Ezreal valued most!