My Blind Familiar_The Ash Golem

by Nathan Valerio

  “Now young man, have your imp take 2 steps forward, you take 3 steps back and you have it attack with the innate ash golem ability Imp fire.”

  Xero was confused by this but did as ordered and took three steps back and the Imp took two towards the doll. He drew his magic sword and looked at the connection and after a while he found the magic formula and ordered the imp to attack and then fed it the mana necessary.

  That said, halfway through the grey imp suddenly turned bright red before it’s body burst into a ball of flame. The large red pearl flew up and flashed before returning to the familiar seal.

  Everyone started to cough but the windows opened quickly and the wind pulled all the ash out.

  “What you witnessed…” Professor Florance said and coughed a few time and stood up better, “What you witnessed was a familiar that isn’t adapt at using magic. Beings like dragons are naturally strong magic users and those with dragon blood can also innately use magic but not to powerfully without injury. Now I can see quite a few of you are sneering at the boy. Stop it because every last one of you will end in the same way.” The fat teacher said. “You two may sit down, now since we are doing this, we will have everyone come up and use magic with their familiars.” he said and pointed at anyone randomly.

  Xero was sneered at and he was depressed as he seated himself but very quickly he sighed. He wholly liked this teacher because soon more than 80% of the familiars blew up or were injured by their own magic. Even the high ranked Fire Ant Soldier that Chad had had its head blown up from the fire it was about to spit out which made Xero grin and sneer at the pale faced noble.

  By the end of class the dust and ashs from the blow up monsters actually contributed to allowing the Imp to respawn and it looked only a slightly bit thinner than before it died but he noticed that it was because it kept constantly flapping the slightly bigger deformed wings and kept stomping its feet as if anticipating something.

  When everyone went, those that had their familiars survive the magic were proud while those who didn’t were a bit sad to have their familiar die in such a way.

  “Good, you all seem to have learned that even if a creature is ‘higher ranked’ it can still sustain the same injuries as the ‘low ranked’ ones. From now on, no one is to ‘rank’ familiars because of the breed is better. The strong will naturally get strong and we teachers will help you all make powerful familiars to help you get better.” He said.

  Suddenly a loud ringing was heard, “Class is over, you're all free to head to your next class.” He said and sat down with an ‘uff’.

  As the students were gathering their things Chad walked over to Xero, “Don’t think you can laugh at me so easily you peasant.” He said and left.

  Xero just blinked a bit and shrugged and left the room for the outdoors class.

  Chapter 3

  Xero left the classroom and following students from his class out of the massive castle school he walked a path until the class grouped up with 6 others and met at a large field.

  Around the field were some stands, the field itself was a race track but it was extremely huge and spanned 1 kilometer for one lap. Within the space were fields and courts for different physical exercises. Looking upwards there were floating magic rings and huge pillars in a second field meant for training flying for the familiars and for those big enough mount flying so that the student could be accustomed to the heights.

  Xero walked around and sat at the far side of the stands and from a small magic bag he got to carry his things around, he pulled out his notes. Magic bag are a uniquely enchanted item, to make it the familiar needs to be trained with enchanting magic and space magic so that the familiar possesses the space magic to create the small dimension in the bag and enchant the bag with it. It’s a hard profession to become because both types of magic are incredibly difficult.

  After a while more classes arrived until there was a total of 9 on the field and in the stands. Each class has around 40 students so with nine classes that was over 360 students present. After a long time a hulking bear like man walked onto the field and he was grinning extremely widely showing his teeth. He was the PE teacher, the bearman Grunt Crack. As strange as his name is he is extremely capable of keeping to his name.

  “GET IN LINE BRATS!” He shouted and like a shockwave it slammed into the students causing them to shiver.

  Xero just looked at him and smiled before putting the book away and walking down. He knew the old bear for a year now and the old man took a liking to him. His philosophy is “If you want to fight, do it with your own fists.” The main reason for this is that his Familiar is extremely unique and can only augment his defense capabilities because it's a Living armor. He pounded the thing so much that it was akin to reforging and can now take a dragon's hit but because of this he needed to train himself tediously forcing him to forge an iron will and monster like strength which is why even his voice has such a powerful pressure.

  Because of the fact that Xero had low magical talent he would do more physical exercise so he got really familiar with the old bear.

  In front of the man that stood 235 cm 18 lines formed of 20 peoples every two lines would be one class.

  “Alright brats, I will say this right now. Forget your damned titles, they don’t mean nothing to me. You could be the crowned prince of any nation but I will still pound your flimsy bodies into shape no matter what it is.” He shouted at everyone like a military general. It wasn’t far off since he actually trained the commanders for many nations in the past.

  “Now then, lines space out 2 meters and summon your familiars. Need to see what I have to work with.” He said and the lines began to move to the sides until it was spaced out and everyone summoned their familiars.

  He walked slowly from one to the next and reaching Xero his eyes brighten and he looked at the Imp. “Kid, your pick is sure as unique. Also the white eyes…?”

  Xero sighed dejected, “He is blind, even worst then a bat.” Xero said.

  “Hmph, stop looking like that.” He said and pats Xero’s shoulder and moves on. After a few more minutes he walked in front of the nine classes. “Alright, those with humanoid creatures stay where you are, this with winged four legged reptiles form a group on the left, those with wingless four legged reptiles on the right. Those with birds form a group next to the winged lizard group, those with winged snakes for a group next to the birds, wingless snakes next to the wingless reptiles, Aquatic animals next to the wingless snakes, aquatic humanoids next to the humanoids, winged humanoids next to the humanoids, all remaining beasts form one group.”

  The groups were determined by the familiar and would determine the training. Xero looked at the Imp’s back and saw the small wings so he led it with the mental link as a guide to the winged humanoids group.

  From there he began to go from one group to the next and instruct the groups on their training methods.

  Xero looked at the people in his group, there was seven people including him. One an elf girl with thumb sized hummingbird girl that was buzzing around her. The rest were humans, 3 boys and 2 girls. Their familiars were a blue furred winged bakeneko that walked on it’s hind legs, a cherub, a pink skinned white winged goblin, a green fae and a dragonewt hatchling. With Xero that was 4 human boys, 2 human girls and 1 elf girl and all the creatures were newborns or still infants meaning they were extra small compared to the adult. Xero looked more curiously at the pink goblin that was also female and had some hair but didn’t look so wrinkled.

  Looking at the humanoids there were goblins, kobold and common humanoid monsters and the aquatics had merrow which are ugly fish with human form, some crustaceans with human shape and all other different types of low grade fish with human form.

  When Grunt reached his group and he looked at Xero strangely. “Shouldn’t you be with the humanoid group?” He asked. Xero simply turned the Imp slightly showing the wings making him mutter, “Ah!”. With a nod he looked at the rest. “Alright you seven gather up.”
He said.

  The others walked forward and formed a horizontal line in front of him.

  “Now then, Fae and hummingbird sprite, your physical strength is too pathetic. Your physical strength is a manifestation of theirs and vise versa. With such small physically weak familiar they won’t be able to handle any of the burden from magic and will blow up several hundred times before they can do one spell at their limit.” He said. Then took out a 3 kilo iron ingot with a metal chain melded on the top and moving over he opened the little shackle and put it around their neck which quickly started to drag them down. “Their current objective is to fly 1 lap in under 10 minutes with this weight. As for your girls…” He said and pulled out leather bound ingots that had zippers that sealed the weights to the arm and legs. “Five kilos for each arm. You have the same objective.” He then points out Xero, the pink goblin and cherub. “Imp, Goblin and Cherub, only running for now, before you can fly fast you need to run fast.” He pulled strapped on the same weights but there was only 2.5 kilos in each leg and arm it kept the floating cherub on the ground and it was pouting. A cherub is a little angel with the physical appearance of a 3 year old with curly blonde hair. In truth when he hit the ground he was unable to stand because he didn’t know how to walk. “The three masters will also run for physical exercise.” He said and strapped down the two others with 20 kilos total but reach Xero he strapped him down with a large vest that weighed 30 kilos plus the 20 kilos.

  “Sir why does he have the vest?” the master of the cat asked.

  “Because he trained extensively last year and 20 kilos won’t affect him at all.” Grunt said and pulled a small military jacket that fit the bakeneko just right but it was weighed gear so now he was on all fours. “Stand on your hind legs and run 1 lap.” Similar to all the other people the master of the cat got the 20 kilo between his five limbs.

  “Alright just wait and we will start all together.” He said and moved to the remaining groups. No one talked to anyone and when he was finished.

  “Alright brats! You have your instructions, get to them!” He shouted and and everyone began to move.

  Xero looked at the Imp and then decide to tell it to follow his footsteps. It instantly follows him on slow heavy steps. He looks back and wonders something, “This is a good time to check how the commands work.” he thought, “You will follow me only by stepping on the trail I leave.”

  With that he suddenly bolts and runs while being careful and watches. The imp sniffs and after a moment it begins to follow his scent. “So it will try and use all its abilities to follow my order.” He thought and nodded. “If his sense of smell was even half as good as a dog's then it will be able to single out my scent in the middle of all these.” With that thought he picked up the pace and started to run but every so often he would look back to see the imp barely running.

  Drawing his magic sword he starts to channel mana through the Imp’s body. He doesn’t try anything big and just gives a small amount of mana that isn’t even one tenth what is needed for a spell. The effect was instantaneous as the imp felt the mana and gained energy to start running again. It moved the mana to its arms that were in pain and Xero withdrew his sword and started to run. Every two minutes he would stop and adds a little more mana and always pushes it a bit while watching to see the imps reaction. This was to see the limit that the body could handle mana.

  He eventually reached the end of the first lap and 15 minutes later the Imp came breathing ragged releasing puffs a black air.

  “Oi kid, your imp is weak as shit.” Grunt said.

  "I don’t need you to tell me the obvious, anyway what is going on?” Xero asked.

  “It’s body probably heated up and air passing through heated ash normally produces polluted air. It’s just tired from you pushing it.” He said.

  "I didn’t push it, I told it to follow my trail and I just ran. Every two minutes I would add some mana to his body to energize him.” Xero said.

  “Ah! I see. You idiot!” He shouted and hit Xero’s head but not hard but enough to hurt.

  “Ouch! Damn it old man! What was that for?!” he complained.

  “What you did was like adding steroids to him for momentary boost. No wonder it's releasing poisonous gases, damn it kid recall that thing and let him rest a bit. There is still about 15 minutes before the next exercise by then he should have recovered.” Grunt said and stalked off shouting at other kids.

  Xero looks back at the imp and orders it back into the familiar seal. He then goes and sits down and drinks some water and looking at the seal he starts to move his small amount of mana into the seal and it lights up a bit as the mana was sucked in but soon it began to reject it so he just stopped.

  He walked to his group for the second round of exercise and summoned it and found it had indeed recovered.

  “Alright brats, you're all semi flyers, besides the fae and hummingbird are natural flyers due to their size. Now besides the physical training to help build muscle you have to actually ‘fly’. From what I can see the imp is wholly incapable without time and effort in developing its wings, goblin should be able to glide at best, the cherub can float but its flight speed shouldn’t be much, and cat…” He looked down at the wings about the same size but the cat was flying circles around the master before it landed on his head and curled up in a good spot to sunbath. “Yeah, stamina is his problem. Boy you will need to put him in shape with a lot of running, remember running before flying this is because stamina is extremely important.” He said and everyone nodded. “Now, the two tiny ones fly one lap at top speed while your two time them, I want a rough estimate of their speed, the cat I want timed as well. Goblin is to learn gliding, cherub train to fly faster and imp… you two remain here.” he said and dismissed them.

  “So how do I train it?” Xero asked.

  Grunt pulled out a piece of paper and began to write something and handed it to him. “Go to the cafeteria and give this to the women there.” He said.

  Xero blinked and looked down, ‘Familiar is an Imp, all rotten or nearly expiring food can be given to him.’ He frowns and looks at the bearman.

  “This thing is the one that most improves from balanced food and training. The thing is that to balance food and training you need a hell of a lot of food. His body burns energy faster than any other creature which is why they have a harder time training if you don’t feed them.” He said.

  Xero still didn’t believe him which made the bearman sigh, “Put it like this, see the miss with the Blue Winged Salamander?” He asked and Xero nodded, “That little lizard’s training diet will be set for one sheep every two days at this present time because it's still an adolescent and because it hasn’t become anything bigger. That things metabolism can only break down the meat and bones after two days which is why it will eat much less but this.” He pointed to the Imp, “This thing can eat everything placed on the cafeteria tables like a bottomless pit because his body will constantly burn the energy to fuel its growth. This is why demons are mindless eaters until they become intelligent, they simply need too much energy to fuel their growth.” He explained.

  Hearing to this point Xero’s lips kept twitching. “Won’t the type of food affect his future evolution?” Xero asked.

  “Only after a while, it doesn’t matter with Imps because they are bottom feeders and normally scavengers eating even festering meat. To them it's better since the food is already softening up but that is why they need a lot of trash when compared to fresh meat.” He said.

  “How much fresh meat would satisfy it?” Xero asked.

  The bear man scratches his chin a moment, “Ten live bull down to the bone and you will satisfy the need for his daily training.”

  The words caused Xero’s jaw to drop and he looked back at the imp after discovering it was a glutton.

  “Alright, I'll be going.” He said and the bearman nodded. Xero called the imp to follow him as he took the note and walked to the building and made his way to the cafeteria. T
he place was mostly empty but there were was one old lady with a floating witch in robes floating on a broom. The thing is that the witch looked to be in her mid twenties and the robe as glued to her body showing off her curves.

  He walked to the women.

  “Young boy why are you here at this time?” she asked.

  He holds the note out and the old woman takes it and reads. Her left brow raises as she looks at the Imp and a small smile appears as she folds the note and stores it.

  "I see, follow me then.” She said and turned on the spot. She lead him to a door on the left side on the side of the main table where the principal and teachers would dine. Passing through he found many short goblins moving dishes, clothes and many other things. The old lady skillfully walked through them and to Xero’s surprise the Imp was also able to easily move through the crowd probably due to his hearing allowing him to pick up the position of the others around him.

  Soon they reached a large door and opening it they found a large room with many trash bins.

  “From now on you may come here directly, just wear this and no one will stop you.” She said and handed him a metal chain with a small charm at the end.

  “How much can we take?” He asked.

  “Just tell your familiar to eat until he is satisfied and you will know.” She said and turned on her heel and left.

  Looking at the charm he put it around his neck and put it under his shirt then gave the order to the Imp. “Eat any trash in this room until you're satisfied.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth the Imp took in a deep breath and suddenly grinned before it jumped. It would beat its wing but they were too small and he ended up landing face first but after sniffing he smashed into one of the bins before jumping into it before digging his way into it.

  Xero scratched his head unsure of what to do so he just finds a spot near a pillar by the wall and watches. The pile in the bin slowly decrease and soon the Imp shot out of one trash bin and sniffed before rushing to another.