Xero was getting a headache from all this talk that went around in circles instead of going to the topic he wanted, “Can you please explain clearly?” Xero said clearly starting to lose his patience with the devil.
“Those Sword Devils, they’re half baked because their souls are still sword spirits and not devil souls. Only when a demon core with a demon soul is forged together with the sword spirit does it become a devil soul making them true devils. That said, like i said, they are perfect for you to train your soul’s strength by training the merging technique with these lower class incomplete devils.” Lucifer said.
Xero nodded and looked at the Archmagus, “Is there something else?” Xero asked.
“There is not, come let us teach you the merging technique.” Valmor said standing and walked once more outside. “Call out any Sword Devil.” He said.
Xero nodded and took out his Bloodvine wood sword.
With a nod and looked at the blade, “Now, feel for the mental or soul link between you and the sword spirit. Tell me when you feel it.” Valmor said.
Xero nodded and held his sword up in a stance and closed his eyes.
He let his mana flow naturally and soon he found a very weak link between him and the sword that connected to his soul but also to the familiar seal that went to Ashley. “Found it, it's a soul link but it connects to me and Ashley.” Xero said.
“She made it, so it links with her as well. It doesn’t matter though, what is important is to focus on your link. Focus and then start to fill the link with mana. Fill it even beyond the limit and when you do pull the spirit towards your soul until the two hit against each other. Then use that link to tie the two together.” Valmor said.
“Kekeke! Don’t worry about failing kid, you will fail without a doubt the first hundred times due to the pain of two souls hitting against each other. Only through this will your soul's energy be stimulated.” He laughed. “Only once your soul is bigger and with more vibrant soul energy it will make it ‘stickier’ making it easier for the Sword Devil to ‘link’ with your body but it's just the first phase of the technique.” Lucifer said.
“There is more?” Ashley asked.
“Of course, full soul merging. It will completely merge the two souls. The first phase will make the power of the devil be exhibited to 150% while full merging brings out 300% of their power but the burden on the body is to be expected.” Valmor said. “Begin.” He said.
Xero nodded and through the link, mana filled and filled until it was a bright and powerful link. With Xero’s control he pulled the soul that started to struggle until the two hit each other.
Knowing that there would be pain and knowing the pain were different things but because Xero had been tempered he felt what having his soul almost ripped out of his body by sheer force. Although he jolted in pain he held firm was the two souls rubbed against each other.
The excess mana in the link was hanging and he began to form a bond around the two souls to hold them together but they kept grinding against each other making him feel extreme pain.
Finally he couldn’t hand the pain and lost focus causing the mana in the link to break apart and the sword spirit retreated to its sword and Xero dropped the sword and fell to his knee.
“Oh? He almost succeeded on the first try.” Valmor muttered and pulled out a potion and fed it to the boy.
In Xero’s body he felt a mystical energy come from the potion and slowly heal his soul but when it returned to its previous state it didn't stop as the soul began to expel a kind of blue gas that left the soul but then gathered on the body slowly causing the soul to grow while absorbing the energy from the potion.
“What is this?” Xero asked.
“Soul nourishing potion, it's for those training the soul and need something to heal it. It’s hard to get medicine but we have a large supply since we have our own personal dungeon where countless special herbs grow.” Valmor said. “Try again.” he said.
Xero took the sword and found it tried to escape momentarily and he felt the fear in the spirit but the link still existed so like before Xero pulled the spirit out but this time his soul was much larger and unlike before, where it seemed the spirit was grinding against his very soul, this time that strange blue cloud that gathered around his soul formed a cover making it less painful and slightly safer. It also helped to tie the spirit to his soul but it still fought and kept hitting his soul a lot but after a while, Xero bound it so much that he felt a strange connection form. In fact the soul link lines filled with mana wrapping the spirit sank into its spirit and formed a single short connection and the spirit no longer fought and instead moved closer just barely touching the body but that tiny contact caused a huge chain reaction.
BANG! WOOSH!
The rough emerald on the base of the wooden sword suddenly shined as countless lights shot out and started to impact Xero starting from his hands and then arms, shoulder, torso, lower back legs and finally head.
When the glowing lights vanished, Xero appeared wearing armor with small red veins in it and he looked at the sword and found it glow. Then it slowly lengthened before a beautiful black sheath formed with a ribbon near the guard while the wooden handle was covered in a strange vine fiber grip that was red in color.
Xero grabbed the sheath with his left hand and the hilt with his right hand taking a natural quick draw pose and suddenly pulled.
SWOOSH!
Just pulling the sword suddenly gathered all the nature and plant mana within a 100 meter radius into the blade sharpened by the Sword Devil’s aura and shot it forward like a sharp flying blade and impacted the wall, no it simply cleaved through it without resistance and kept going until it hit a tree splitting it in half, from 150 meters away.
“Bloody hell! The damn minion packs some power when in wooded areas.” Lucifer said and looked at the blade.
Unlike the common wood form it had in its normal state, the blade was black with dark green flame like lines on the blade as if green fire was captured within. An uncanny sharpness exited in that blade making it seem able to cut anything.
Lucifer couldn’t stay put seeing the blade and turned anxious. “Ah~! This feeling of a bloody Sword Devil makes me itch all over. So fucking unnerving being near one of these bloody things.” He muttered making Valmor raise a brow and form a shallow smile of interest at the words of his almost fearless level 95 demon lord.
With a slight smile Valmor pulled out several dozen potions and put them in Xero’s bag. “Child, you have succeeded exceptionally quick, your soul is already quite strong. Do not try your own familiar though until you can merge with a new sword minion in under 5 seconds. Or else it will not matter how much you try you might even be corrupted by your familiar’s soul.” Valmor warned him. “Just keep training this for now and make sure to teach those students well. I shall leave these potions for when you reach your limit. Do not waste it, only when you are nearly collapsing.” Valmor said.
“Yes Archmagus. Thank you for teaching me this technique and giving me the warning.” Xero said.
Valmor nodded and took to the air without a word.
Xero watches him walk away and suddenly feels a wave of energy and looks to Ashley and sees her with a yellow sword that was shining and suddenly she was covered in very heavy armor, fitting her small size perfectly, but the longsword suddenly expanded to a 5 meter long greatsword and yet she held it casually with on hand at the hilt.
“It’s not that hard, and like this i can exert more power.” She said before the armor undid itself and she nodded while tossing the blade up right back to Xero. “I can’t wait to hunt with master.” She giggled and skipped away.
Xero looked at the sword in his hand and sheathed it and with a though, loosened the link causing it to completely unwind and the spirit returned to its sword making all the armor come off and the sword revert to its original state.
He stored both and took a step before his body was suddenly covered in sweat and he fell to his knee and s
uddenly felt his body empty of mana. “T-that took so much mana.” Xero huffed but then frowned and shook his head, “No, the sword minion ate all my mana while leaving.” he frowned and took out a mana stone to get some mana back and stood up to go eat something because he was now very tired.
Chapter 12
DING! DING! DING! BANG!
The highspeed clash between the two creatures in front of the 15 children made them pale as they fought in a high speed combat on the sparring arena. With the final impact they jumped back and landed on each side of the arena. One had a curved blade with a black blade with green flames drawn on it. The other had Green metal armor and curved saber like sword while wind was flowing around it as if controlled by her.
This was Xero and Ashley who were sparring while merged with the sword minions. The reason for this was for both of them to train and experience the power of the Sword Devil at full power but for Xero it as something else. By fighting in high intensity battles, he had would feel the pain in his soul at each hit as the swords were ‘linked’ to him through the sword.
Of course the impacts weren’t strong but they would slowly build up because his soul was still weak. As the damage built up, the sword spirit he was using grew more wild trying to pull apart the link as well as taking all the mana with it.
Xero learned early on that simply undoing the link will make him lose all his mana.
He planted the sword into the ground as he huffed and slowly unwound the link while pulling back the mana into his body and released the sword spirit allowing the armor to come off.
His body was drenched in sweat while he was kneeling. Ashley removed her own armor and put down the sword minion.
Already a month had passed since Archmagus Valmor had taught him but even so, in this time Xero has only been training merging. It was simply that hard to accomplish even with just the swords he already did it with. One surprising fact was that there were actual sexs for the Sword Devils. The Bloodvine Wood Sword had turned female and after experimenting with a male and female common wood sword Xero found that for him, female Sword Devils are harder to merge with.
This was because a female spirit and a male soul were linking and they had fundamental differences but for him, this was actually a good thing. Ashley had trained her own merging with male swords while Xero with female so that they could train and get used to the differences. Of course they also learned what the ‘similarities’ were of the same sex spirits and souls.
Still this was the first time Xero fought in that state but the drain was quite intense. Not to mention that even as he tried to contain his mana and perfectly unwrap and hold his mana, the spirits would selfishly try and take his mana as they leave causing him to be in a state of weakness.
That said, Xero pinched the emerald core of the sword spirit and felt a lot of mana coming from the spirit and flowing into his hand refilling his body with mana. This was a trick he had learned from Ashley early on. It is something similar to what she did with the familiar seal once to heal him but doing this simply releases mana gathered by the spirit.
Standing and turning to the students, in this month their familiars had grown quite a bit, the main reason was actually because of Ashley and Xero who went out and to the shock of the children, brought back creatures above level 30 though only around level 32 was their limit but with Xero now fighting there was a chance to increase their hunting targets.
The food had allowed the familiars to grow as well as the students. Xero also taught them how to fight with the sword as well as Grunt’s martial arts to train their digestion to allow them to grow stronger.
Most of the five had already become between level 7 to 10. The slowest growing was the Puppy Horse but it should be noted that it hasn’t evolved, or grown up for that matter.
The Rabbit had become a hare but after that, by developing magic for fast digging, as well as a super bound skill similar to Ashley’s, it developed strangely. From the two sides of its head, small horn stumps grew.
It wasn’t until the eyebat that one of the boys had evolved into a ‘Peering Eyebat’ and developed a preliminary identification magic. This was an incredibly magic to have and allowed them to see the race, level and basic statistics like Strength, agility and basic attributes like elemental alignment. When the Eyebat developed this, they finally learned that it was a Lesser Horned Bullhare.
The Frog had become a Giant Bullfrog, it was about 3 meters long and had a 10 meter long tongue. The tongue was flexible and it could use it like a whip by contracting it making it hard or leave it loose and sticky. Its leg muscles were enough to send to 15 meters with one jump. It’s skin was poisonous and its vision was good in murky areas and underwater.
The last one, the weasel, was really a mystery as to what happened. Previously the owner if this animal had made it a monster with earth magic and metal magic to help it dig and harden its claws and fangs but something happened. When Xero had put down an ego sword forged out of iron recently forged so that it could absorb mana, the creature walked over and, with its 120 cm height already, it was as tall as the children and strangely it gripped the sword and to Xero’s shock, pulled it out.
What happened after was the strangest evolution. The sword spirit came out of the sword and merged directly with the weasels soul merging the two but it didn’t end there, the merged soul of the weasel split and formed two floating ghost like spirits that accompanied it. The brown fur of the weasel had turned greyish white with a red fur around its black eyes. What was strange about this was that it grew thumbs but the blade transformed into daggers in its hands but what was even more mysterious was that the weasel had full control of the form and could make it attach to its tail, cover its hand in the form of a single metal claw, form a bracelet with a curved blade pointed out. Not only that but the two spirits were independent and the larger one had good control of earth, water and metal magic allowing it to do subtle changes and form traps to aid the fighter and amazingly, the small one could release healing auras.
The bat identified it as a spirit called a Inferior Lesser Kamaitachi Infant.
Because of the double negative status it made Xero confused and they went to ask Miss Gilbody about it at the time. She explained, “Such creatures with such low status most likely are high level creatures but was born at an extremely low level. This is a spirit but it’s a seemingly high level one with three bodies as one familiar so calling it a double negative while the other two have yet to form solid bodies is normal.” She explained.
Of course, it was all fine at the start but when Ashley had come out to see how the metal sword devil was, she went into a fit of rage and instantly killed the Kamaitachi ripping the tail off that had the sword attached it trying to regain her sword minion.
After that she calmed down but not until after she would hit, kill and torture that weasel with swords at least seven times, even eating it completely once to make sure that it learned it place while cursing it for destroying her hard work that took extremely long to make since the iron ore used in those sword devils was the best of the best that the sword spirits extracted from piles of mineral ore.
Then making a spirit sword and letting it absorb enough mana and grow yet it was ruined so easily. It was more than obvious that she would be completely pissed off.
After that she left for around two days and returned with another ten new iron ore spirit swords and glared at the weasel and it’s owner as she planted the swords to absorb the mana in the dungeon.
***
“The last month has been a great success. Not only for our student’s strength but also for our stability here. At this time within a 25 kilometer range most of the strongest monster herds have been routed, now all 2nd and 3rd year students can safely train, and hunt within a 15 kilometer range which is a safety zone. Beyond that is for only children of the 4th year and up or those beyond level 35.” Lucius announced.
Miss Gilbody walked up, “In a little while many people will start coming in, be
wary as there are many ranked nobles as well as students from other academy. Even so, do not back down if someone tries to pressure you with status or power. As for anyone that might have family coming, if there is space around your home, you can claim it for them. The job is to develop our Everlight city with safety and order in mind.” Miss Gilbody said.
Everyone nodded and were dismissed but most of them remained near the gate. Many children wanted to see their parents, if they had noble ranked family, while others returned home if they did not.
Unlike a month ago, the entire city had road development separating all the ‘lots’ that will be ‘sold’ by the academy personal.
Also unlike a month ago, countless level 60’s, 70’s and a handful of level 80’s were ready in front of the gate. Some older students knew some of them as previous teachers of the academy while others were powerful fighters that worked with Grunt and called him master.
These were Everlight academy’s fighting force. To control the countless nations and forces that will come at full strength, the academy had to show force as well, which is why Archmagus Valmor himself was here.
Soon the first people entered and it was actually an armored King in full heavy knight armor and following him were his crowned prince and then countless royal knights, none of which were below level 50 and numbered no less than 30 with the strongest being level 70. Then behind him came the dukes and other noble ranks.
They all paid respect to Valmor and began to ask about the layout before they moved to the upper city, not wanting to feel reduced.
Soon more and more people came in a steady stream through the gateway all of which were nobles from countless nations. That said, thankfully before this day arrived, a second set of city walls had been formed 10 kilometers away from the original remained. This was part of the 10 km hunting zone were only weak creatures lived.
The Sword Devil Page 16