The Sword Devil

by Nathan Valerio

  Chad snorted, “I choose short sword and shield.” He said and took a short sword with a kite shield.

  “You have 15 minutes, your bodies are imprinted with life saving barriers but if they are activated you lose. Take a distance of 30 meters from the center.” He said.

  The arena was 300 meters wide and it was open to be completely used, after all there exists familiars of all sizes.

  Around the audience, a bright barrier shined to protect them from the incoming attacks that will definitely be wide while the walls rising around the arena that were nearly 4 meters high before opening to the seats. All this had magic formations to protect and repair damage that might happen.

  When a distance of 60 meters had formed the two stopped and turned around to face each other.

  “May the fight begin!” Francis shouted.

  “HA!” Chad shouted instantly and hit the pommel of his sword on the shield causing a magic formation to appear causing the defensive power to increase as well as form a thin barrier around him.

  Even with his eyes open Xero could feel in his sword his mana weaving into hundreds of sequences making mana gather inside the sword until it formed Ashley’s Elemental Cleave. It was a quick and simplified version though but the power was great.

  Xero bent forward while holding the longsword with his right arm.

  BANG!

  With a suddenly launch Xero suddenly covered 15 meters in one lodge, of course Ashley’s greatest feature has always been her jumping power. From the start as a level 1 imp, to a level 27 Sword Devil, this has always been her most powerful feature and after having his body tempered over and over and over again, his body had very little difference in comparison to Ashley’s making his own jumping power so supreme and it was the only level 30 strength the two currently possess.

  Chad paled when he saw the speed of the lunge that was pure leg power. It was something he could do but not as efficiently as Xero whose muscles are tempered and he trained his body in high speed combat with Ashley while constantly lunging and jumping around.

  He put his shield in front and bent down smashing the ground with the bottom of the shield. “Iron wall!” He shouted as the shield’s formation shined and fed off the earth mana changing it to metal mana and forming a strong barrier around him while he prepared the spells in his sword to attack.

  Xero jumped another two times before he grabbed the sword with both hands and jumped upwards. His body suddenly released a dense, thick aura that gathered around his body and sword. What caused everyone to shiver was that slowly the aura changed to look like a huge shadow of a black knight with a large sword that overlapped Xero. That image appeared momentarily before it gathered at the edge of the sword and his body as he dropped and swung down.

  SHEEE!

  A sound similar to a knife cutting glass caused many people a headache but they watched as the sword effortlessly sliced the barrier down the middle and his body dropped towards the shield.

  DING!

  The shield was hit as the sword was barely 10 cm above Chad’s head.

  “DIE!” he shouted as he pushed up to make Xero lose his balance but to his dismay pushing up caused the sword to suddenly slice through the shield and stop 5 cm from the middle of his arm where it was holding the shield.

  “Stop!” the referee shouted.

  Xero landed and jumped a few meters back pulling the sword out of the shield.

  “He activated your life saving barrier twice, the winner is Xero Null!” The elder announced.

  “WAIT!” Chad shouted. “When did he activate the barrier?!” He demanded.

  The elder snorted and looked at the VIP box.

  Francis stood with a grin, “Boy, when he slashed down and the sword hit your shield, the sword aura around his sword was extended almost 10 cm off the blade. That was the first time, when you pushed off, the barrier stopped your arm from getting cut off.” Francis said silencing the cocky noble.

  Chad’s face turned bright red with rage but he couldn’t do anything at this time.

  The two walked a distance of 150 meters away where a magic formation was set up after they summoned the familiar and told them the target of their battle and to fight as they please. The two then sat down to meditate and feed mana to their familiar so they can battle.

  The second battle was a battle of familiars, Ashley was looking at the ant and yawned, “What a low grade Elite Lesser Arachnid Fire Ant Soldier, the only thing worth scavenging of its carcass is the carapass on it’s abdomen.” Ashley muttered.

  “BEGIN!” The referee announced and the Ant screeched and began to stomp its legs.

  Suddenly around it, five holes caved in and a lot of skittering sounds could be heard.

  Ashley sighed and put her hand in a magic bag, unwrapping the top before waving her hand. Suddenly a few dozen swords flew out under her mental control and struck the ground all over surrounding the ant and it’s nests that were opening.

  “Collapse.” She ordered.

  Suddenly a magic wave came from the swords as the sandy ground was instantly changed into stone and compressed closing the holes but the elite ant soldier screeched and the holes reopened in the hard ground.

  “I see, it’s an ability similar to Ember’s cave summon. Even if the ground was covered in steel plates it would appear and disappear.” She said and waved her hand making the swords come back spinning and landing around her before shining and forming earth sword devils.

  “Oh ho! So these are the famous Sword Devil Minions, quite something, with a base strength of at least level 20 when freshly forged these in particular look around level 25 and their stance is quite good.” Marquess Crost said.

  “They are a good help for training knights. New ones have strength but no skill and are slow so they are like iron golems.” Nil said how he had once used them to train his knights who were steadily advancing up the levels. All he lacked was money to pay for more than 150 familiars.

  “Good use.” The Marquess nodded

  On the field Ashley watched as a red carpet of ants finally rose out of the holes before she covered her mouth snorting and laughing. “W-what is this! Ahahaha! A-are those really level 10 Fire ant soldiers!?” She fell back laughing, “What a joke! Don’t you feed your swarm?” Ashley asked. She looked around and noticed only Soldiers. There were no workers that usually outnumber soldiers 100 to 1. “I see, he can’t spawn workers so he lacks food. The fool should have searched for a smart magician and made more types of nests.” Ashley said shaking her head.

  Still, the numbers were unending but it did not matter to her, with a mental command the red eyes of the minions shined and all of them began to radiate their Demon’s aura and casually walk forward.

  Everyone wondered what would happen but they were shocked, as the first ants reached the feet of the metal knights, unexpectedly it was cut apart.

  They stopped and let the ants slowly crawl and bite but the defensive power was too high and after several seconds under the aura, the life of the ant would end and it would be cut up by the wind passing through the aura that became like sword blades.

  Anything with the Sword Devils aura would become sharp like a sword. Even more so thanks to Ashley’s aura that amazingly extended 5 meters from her and she was making a very weak whirlwind around her but that weak wind made it so that ant corpses were rapidly piling up around her while she took out a piece of raw meat stuck to a bone and summoned out a flame to quickly roast it to the shock of the public who began to ask what was going on.

  It took two minutes to roast the meat and she ate it quick. Then she looked at the meter long bone and summoned out a small butcher knife and began to slice the bone forming a stake on one side. She did it casually while ordering the minions to start using magic.

  From there, carnage began to happen as each step caused a field of spikes to rise and fall and with it piles upon bloody piles of ants littered the arena.

  Chad was pale as he watched so many die while none co
uld take down the minions of his enemy. He wanted to shout and order it to use something different to swarm tactic but the ant was simple minded, it did not think about tactics beside overwhelm with number. The problem was that the ant was strong when it listened but weak when it used common ant tactics.

  When the magic item that was counting down 15 minutes had reached 30 seconds, Ashley finished the bone spike and turned towards the large ant.

  “Time to end this game.” She said and bent forward like Xero had done but something about her form being more natural, and her female muscles being more flexible, caused her sudden jump to launch her 40 meters right on the back of the first minion of hers. From it’s back just jumped high and spin while her entire aura gathered on the spike. This wasn’t any ‘spike’ it was in the shape of a thrusting sword, or in this case, a throwing sword. She bent her body in the air while spinning and launched the aura infused bone sword like a missile.

  Before the ant soldier could react to the pheromones surrounding the bone, the projectile pierced its torso clean through it and into the abdomen nailing it to the ground, dead.

  The body broke down and the ants retreated to the closing nests leaving behind the countless ant corpses.

  “What a waste of trash material.” She said but she did find the ant corpses interest because of their fire affinity. She gathered a pile to see what the effect would be in feeding these to her fire swords. After that she sat on Xero’s lap hugging him. “How was I master?” she asked.

  “You wasted too much time.” he said.

  “But I was hoping for a good fight and he disappointed me so I wanted to at least pay him back for the disappointment. Humiliating him was quite nice though. Tell me master, do you want a quick end next match or a low slow one?” She asked.

  “Let's end this already, I feel bad under the stares, much less the headaches that come after.” Xero muttered.

  Like promised, 10 minutes was given for the two of them to rest as well as betters to get their money, Hilda came back shaking a magic bag with 30,000 gold coins for betting that Xero would win without receiving one hit on him. She had wanted to bet once more on Xero but after two matches, the odds had turned from 6:1 for Xero to win and 1.5 to Chad to win to 1.5:1 for Xero and a 10:1 chance for Chad to win.

  No one believed he would win any longer after the spectacular win but there were those who bet he would win because a master and familiar battle was much different.

  As the ten minute end the magic formation broke and the two stood up. Around Chad the ant nests and the ant’s began to exit but this time it was much different ants.

  “Ah so that is how he does it.” Ashley exclaimed.

  Behind Chad ten one meter long red ant’s walked out and stood behind and around the boy.

  “The familiar is stupid and follows common ant tactics but Chad breed Royal Fire Ant Soldiers. Possibly because of the lack of food he would have even had them cannibalize.” Ashley said. “He is much less of a fool then I thought.” She said.

  Even so she opened her magic back and all her minions came out and unlike before they were sharp and half became minions while the other picked up the nearest partner. She took the volcanic black red sword and Xero took out the Metal Sword minion.

  “I will show you what my real strength is like!” Chad suddenly shouted as the largest Ant that stood next to him began to shine and suddenly broke apart and suddenly began to fly around him making him grow to the size of an adult as the bulky armor built around him. What is more, the armor allowed him to understand and emit pheromones that could direct the ant’s with great precision.

  What is more, with an order, another ant linked with the familiar making it look like an overly armored bulky centaur like ant. Still they could not be underestimated but still.

  “Now it’s our turn!” Xero said as all the swords on Ashley, his and the Minion’s hands shined. The armor equipped them all and the minions grew large and wielded dual blades while Ashley wore black burning armor and Xero used Shining steel armor. It had turned from a group of sword devils to a platoon of knights and what is more is that they released a very strong aura from their body that said, ‘death’. The weak minded spirits were no longer so weak minded as two spirits worked together to drive the body making them smarter.

  “Attack!” Xero said and the Minions marched forward.

  Chapter 18

  “Ouch!” Xero shouted as Meldie was passing some healing salve over a very large bruise as well as several not too serious cuts.

  Meldie pouted, “Xero stop jumping around.” She said and grabbed his arm firmly holding it with her unexpectedly monstrous strength. “Muu~! Why did you have to go at it so hard?” Meldie complained while finishing and wrapping his arm with a bandage.

  “It’s not like I could help it.” He said, “Chad was actually really strong together with his familiar.” He said.

  “Did you need to go into a mad frenzy with him?” Univa asked and sighed.

  “I couldn’t help it, his armor was hard, much harder then the dragon scales on the Wyrm. The Dragon scales was just hard because of the dragon aura which Ashley’s devil aura could cut but his armor was actually that hard.” Xero said.

  The battle that happened was actually beyond what anyone expected, were Xero had been dominant during the first to battles, the final match made it seem as if the first two battles were illusions.

  ***

  When the Minions began to march forward they all followed the same movement by Xero’s command, the jump high up. All earth minions were set up with similar spells. This was for one simple reason.

  BOOM!

  As all Earth minions landed the earth below them seemingly bends down and with each growing deeper and as the earth rose up once more a massive earthquake spreads out and completely destroys the 300 meter radius circle arena completely shattering the ground, raising stone pillars or some cliffs.

  Soon a maze of rock and stone had formed. This was a spell Xero devised called rock valley. One minion using it alone would change a landscape around 20 meters around it but this was not a field spell it was a terrain altering spell. It allowed for stacking to happen so when almost 10 minions activated the same spell, the effect was more than 10 times stronger completely altering the entire terrain of the coliseum field.

  “Hmph!” Chad snorted and with a movement of his shoulders, amazingly, a set of wings spread out and turned invisible as he beat them and took to the air. He pointed his hand forward and soon the other ant’s took to the air. “Exterminating breath.” He said. All the 18 ant’s plus his familiar suddenly screeched as, from their mouth, a very powerful flame breath came down from the sky in all directions including down bathing the arena in flames.

  They were so intense that the earth began to melt and gather in rivers of lava while large earth outcrops became islands.

  Those who were common people could only watch in horror as these two ‘children’ changed the landscape to that of a hellish badland. What was amazing was that the sand and earth was melted and even began to form obsidian glass and volcanic rock. As for the Minions and Xero, they just stood in the sea of flames unaffected. The Sword Devil was a race born from flames, forged under the searing Holy flames, a small flame like this would not penetrate their armor never reaching their soul. What is more, the Devil’s aura around them resisted the magic attack weakening it to becoming a nonexistent threat.

  Of course, if it was fire from something at least level 50 or higher it would be a different story but they were a very resistant race, if at least at normal levels towards physical attacks, but towards magic they were as resistant as Plated Devils, where were weaker towards magic.

  At this time, Ashley stepped up and began to manipulate the sword minion’s magic. Suddenly all the flames around her began to gather around her like several rivers slowly forming a large blade of flame.

  She then suddenly jumped out of the Sea of flames before spinning in the air, “Flaming Grand Cleave!”
She shouted as the flames began to storm out and a powerful flame storm burst out while a magic blade lead the charge.

  Chad looked at it coldly before flying forward and met the blade with just his fist that suddenly released an explosive flame when coming in contact with the fire blade causing all the fire to be extinguished by the shockwave weakening the spell considerably and with his unexpected strength breaking the spell apart.

  In the VIP stands the nobles were a bit surprised, “Oh? The Liquivet family sure taught him well after he was expelled from Everlight, he learned instant combustion of fire to cancel out fire.” An old voice said.

  When everyone looked to the unfamiliar voice they found Archmagus Valmor standing.

  Instantly Marquess Crost stood up, “Archmagus, please come join us.” He said gesturing for him to take his seat.

  “No need, it is your event so stay within your own seat.” He said and with a small wave behind him, slowly rose a large throne made of black stone. It looked majestic yet demonic.

  “As expected of the Old Devil of Everlight, his throne makes his presence quite prominent even in this place of so much energy.” Francis said looking back.

  Valmor leaned on the throne’s arms and smiled, “You boys have sure made quite an event of your own daughter's’ marriage, not that I mind, I have been curious of the boy’s true strength myself.” Valmor said.

  BOOM!

  At this time a huge explosion happened as the Minions on both side attacked. The blade like crushing ant maulers bit down while the Minions were pushed back by the immense strength smashing into the ground where it finally stopped the advancing but after blocking jaws of the beast but the strength was equal and on par.

  “A Royal Fire Ant soldier at level 20 normally has level 31 strength. This means that the linked Sword Minions also have similar strength while the linked familiar and minion have at least level…” Francis began to say but they were hit but an explosion and looked up as they saw Ashley impact sword on the familiars fist.