My Blind Familiar_The Ash Golem

by Nathan Valerio

  Richard kept grinding his teeth and in his mind he thought, “That demon!!! That boy!! I will kill them both!! I don’t need to wait I just need to find the materials for my spirit to make a good weapon! Once that happens the magical restrictions and capabilities of the sword will be even better and I can destroy them both before they even know what hit them!” he thought and grinned.

  This thought weaved itself into his head, this was due to the ability of the sword spirit to gather the material they were placed in and form a sword that best matched the element. It would even become a blade of wind if left without a target element long enough.

  He stands up and makes an emotionless expression and walks into the camp after a while to rest. The commotion outside repulsed him since Ashley’s Dragon turtle soup was being distributed to everyone and they were eating outside happily.

  Chapter 17

  “Stockpile!” Yulin shouts pointing her finger at a floating cauldron.

  “Yes ma’am!” a little fairy holding the massive cauldron that is almost 2 meters in diameter said.

  It dips the opening down and takes the lid off before a huge mana vortex bursts forth.

  Countless dead and alive monsters were swept up and dragged into the pot and roars of pain came from inside.

  “Process!” Yulin said.

  The cauldron’s outer appearance suddenly changed and was filled with many strange runes for a while and even more pained shouts came from within before going silent.

  “Done!”

  “Store!” Yulin said.

  “Aye ma’am!” The fairy said.

  “Ahahaha! This monster wave will bag us so much grub!” Yulin shouted.

  “Wow, even in this situation you’re gathering food.” Ernest said in surprise.

  “It was lots of energy doing this you know!” Yulin pouted.

  No one believed her words one bit.

  What was currently happening was a large monster wave had attacked. Since a week ago when the Hellvine Academy people came countless waves one after another would come attacking. This is already the eighth wave within the week and the teachers are quite worried but there are some people who don’t even see a need to be.

  “Master~! Catch! I filed your magic bag with several good cuts!” Ashley said.

  Xero looked up and caught the bag and sighed.

  It was obvious why, Ashley has been quite proactive in her advances to make him strong through food. In truth Grunt even agreed with her once since food builds a strong body but for non-monster races it's much slower. Since Ashley appeared and began doing this, and the appearance of Yulin helped to have him teach it, Grunt pulled out a strange type of martial arts. By doing this strange yoga it trains the metabolism and you do it right after eating because it causes the body to metabolise it all several dozen times faster.

  The movements mixed with a specific passage of mana through the body causes the food to break down incredibly fast and lets the body absorb more of the mana and process the minerals in the food.

  Yulin benefits from this greatly since she is a little fat. The yoga art has no combat purpose and is purely to train the metabolism. After doing it for a long time the natural metabolism will eventually become similar to and would become like the art. This is both good and bad since you would eat many times more than others but a person with this kind of metabolism wouldn’t need to eat as often because the body will build a very good reserve of energy without forming fat.

  Yulin, within the week, had lost quite a few kilo as her body broke down the incredible amount of fat she had burning it all but this was then transformed into muscle feeding her still developing body and making her natural growth accelerate. Places like the breast and butt weren’t as affected and actually developed a bit better while her body grew skinnier.

  Some of the boys began to notice her cute features after she went from fat to pudgy giving her a childish cuteness.

  As for Richard, he was still sulking about his utter defeat at the hands of Ashley. As someone who sees himself as the king of the world for being a Hellvine academy teacher disciple the loss was a big hit to him especially when Ashley did it so easily.

  Ernest quite liked the development, the Hellvine Academy and Holy Institute rivalry was quite lively at times especially between Richard and Silvia. Both unreasonable in their actions, whenever they meet it almost turned into a slugfest. Yulin and Ernest was much milder and would instead prefer to spar but Yulin was quite dominate. With her main weapon as a club similar to her master, she had immense strength and defense. The cauldron was also really unique. Besides absorbing living and dead creatures and processing them, it could cook as long as it had the ingredients and recipe, it could perform alchemy creating potions in large numbers and with the same she could use attack magic using the potions themselves augmenting it with magic.

  During the battle, she could process the meat into several items needed for a bomb. The bodies naturally contain countless types of salts so gathering those she can make a bomb, bundle it in a leather pouch, improve its power with mana, temporarily, and shoot it out like a cannon in the middle of the monsters making a big explosion.

  That said the fire rate was about 1 every 3 minutes since for items like this she can only make one within that time frame during combat. That said if she had it all prepared beforehand it's another story. The cauldron also possesses some space magic making the inside incredibly big allowing it to store pretty much anything and eject it when she wanted.

  Processing stuff includes, leather, claws, meat and organs completely separated and even the blood is gathered but for that you need to give her glass vials to store it in.

  At this time the wave grew more intense as twenty level 25 monster appeared and at the back was a level 35 Demon Drake.

  “So that's how it is.” Grunt said suddenly. “This is directed by demons huh? The church’s have been quite negligent in their efforts to stop a demon invasion.” Grunt said.

  The sudden cry of a phoenix came from overhead as Madrid rode her familiar towards the Demon Dragon.

  “This is not good, I did not expect for there to be demon escapards. Flakes, contain that with Frost Prison.” Madrid said.

  The Phoenix cried and pointed its beak releasing a concentrated beam of powerful ice magic.

  The drake roared and bellowed out a black flame but it wasn’t a match for the phoenix. The flame and the dragon were frozen solid and all the monsters within a 50 meter radius as well.

  As soon as the Drake was dead the wave of monsters began to retreat.

  Not like the students allowed too many to get away, the strongest familiars rushed forward raining spells.

  Ashley laughed as she flew in the crowd cutting the legs of hundreds of creatures causing them to lay in pain on the ground. Strangely, there was little blood being released but this was because she had used the blunt side of her weapon to break the joint of the elbow of the legs. To her blood from monsters was quite a good thing. It ruined the meat but when used separately it was quite good. For some things, cooking in blood was even recommended but not like sentient creatures did that but demons definitely would.

  Obviously, this was an immoral action against most ‘good’ church and even some ‘dark’ church but most of them were against the drinking of blood directly like vampires while in Ashley’s mind she wanted to bathe meat in specific types of beast blood with seasonings before roasting or cooking. Then there is using a very small amount of blood within a broth to season it. This is done naturally by any cook since it's impossible to drain 100% of the blood without it being a specific monster like a blood slime that drank blood completely without contaminating the meat. After half an hour there were no more monsters and the students had began to pile the monsters.

  Yulin drank a mana potion to regenerate her mana so that she could process all the goods for the students. This was an agreement they had made when she had first done this and so she ejected most of the goods except the blood allowing t
hem to take it inside the camp and separate it by grade.

  Grunt walked over to the frozen Drake. It stood 8 meters tall and 15 long.

  “Damn, so it was wild demons all along huh?” Grunt sighed.

  “To think the demons within the holy aura had gotten so strong already. To have formed Demon Drakes, what happened to our forces?!” Madrid asked no one in particular with a worried expression.

  "I doubt this is the only one, Niska probably had even more demons attacking it and we just got a side wave from them. I still wonder why the opening is here? I thought it was to the north?” Grunt asked.

  “There are probably more openings, the Institute will probably call a convent to build up a crusade into the deeper reaches of the frontier to find the opening. The opening will probably become the second Holy city.” She said.

  Grunt sneered, a Holy City isn’t as nice as it sounded. Although after the danger is gone it becomes quite beautiful but it is the front most frontier of a warzone into hell itself.

  Openings between this world and the underworld are made through Space cracks. These are unique openings that have a chaotic energy within normally nothing can pass except during times where this energy stabilizes. Over time it will eventually break down and close but that time takes many years but during the first crusade the humans discovered how to make a special type of magic using the space crack as a base where they could seal and open it with control and safety as well as pass through it.

  Unfortunately it was unexpected that another would appear meaning it would become a time of war again. Once the space crack is found and the city is founded it would surely attract many people for the unique possibility to fight in hell.

  “This is troubling, if not for the fact that daily attacks come I would have gone back to Niska already to send a long distance message to see what was going on.” Cress Snide said looking at the drake.

  “What do we do with the dragon?” Cascade asked.

  “It’s only sealed for now. This thing shouldn’t have intelligence enough to talk so the most we can do is try and find the area within hell it came from. We will watch the situation for a bit and if no more waves come I will take this back so that the bishops can mark its soul so that we can locate it when it is killed and it returns to hell.” Madrid said.

  “How long will it be frozen?” Grunt asked.

  “Until I want it to. It’s too weak to unfreeze itself but it won’t die.” She said crossing her arms, “It would be a different story if I froze and broke its demon core.”

  “Don’t think of doing that, if we keep that thing we can give Earnest a huge boost.” Cress said eyeing the woman with a glare.

  “Oi! Don’t forget about Xero. That thing is a big help to him as well.” Grunt glared fiercely at the two.

  “Shut up you two. It's not like we can do much about it. Also Grunt, it’s not like the Holy Institute will allow these cores to go when they have so many holy attribute familiars to feed demon mana to empower them.” Cascade said and pressure came from Grunt.

  “Give it up Grunt.” Cress said and looked at him from the corner of his eye, “These things are protected by the bishops. Do you think they will let an animal like you to take even one?”

  “You asking to die snake!” Grunt said looking down on the man.

  “Stop it you two.” Madrid said. "I will make sure to get one of these for your boy Grunt so stop the fighting already.” Madrid said.

  Grunt clicked his tongue and walked away while smashing the smaller monsters caught in the crossfire.

  Madrid sighed, “Come on, help me store this thing.” She told her companion who looked back and began to aid her in putting a space containment barrier around it to shrink it so they can transport it.

  Back at the camp Xero was looking at the huge pile of different kinds of leathers. The floating cauldron carried by the small fairy was quite a sight considering the size of the cauldron not to mention how much kept coming out of that thing.

  First came the leather and skins, reptilian scale leather, furry leather, even leather from small humanoids, nothing was spared and came out in an organized pile each with their own kind.

  “Your familiar is quite handy.” Xero said to Yulin.

  The familiar in question giggled, "I am responsible for making sure Yulin isn’t lazy. I am even forced to store her clothing in my cauldron so that she doesn’t forget where it is. That and because she is so lazy she would even use week old pa…”

  “STOP!” Yulin said completely embarrassed with red cheeks. “Didn’t I say not to tell others~!” Yulin complained.

  “Ah? Did you? Sorry I forgot. Nahahaha!” The little fairy laughed scratching the back of her head while holding the cauldrons handle with one hand.

  “Still you're quite strong to carry something like this.” Xero said.

  “Yep, originally it was just a big cup but master Cascade had me change it for an iron cup then an iron pot for training. Here look.” She said and entered her cauldron and took out a small clay cup that looked poorly made. It radiated a lot of mana. “In truth the cauldron is just for looks and to be used as weight. Everything is stored in here.” she said laughing.

  Everyone was a bit slack jawed looking at the little clay cup and at the laughing fairy.

  “So what is your familiar race called again?” Xero asked.

  “Pot Fairy.” She said.

  “Then why does the cauldron get those weird magic runes like a magic formula was drawn on it?” He asked.

  “Oh that? Well as a Pot fairy anything that is used as a container acts like a wand for me as long as my original pot is inside it. If I use Innate magic the cauldron makes the spell stronger and work faster.” She said.

  “Ah~! Such a thing really exists. So you're a fairy that knows space magic?” Xero asked.

  “Yep! Not only that but Fire, water and wind magic since I need to be able to cook and I form all that with magic but master is a fatty so she has lots of mana.” The fairy innocently said.

  “Who is a fatty huh!” Yulin said gripping the fairies head with her thumb and index finger and ribbed it like giving a double noogie.

  “Wah! Master I'm sorry!” She shouted while gripping and pushing the fingers but she had a firm grip which surprised everyone since many looked at the cauldron and a few tried to lift it and frowned at the weight.

  “You think you can get away with calling this slim young miss a fatty!” Yulin said tightening her fingers causing the little fairy to flail until she was dizzy.

  “So-sorry master.” She said with tears falling down.

  Suddenly the pressure let off and she fell down on the other hand of the little girl, “It's okay, you understood your fault so I forgive you.” She said with a smile.

  Xero’s forced smile was twitching as he firmly recognized what had just happened, “This… this is without a doubt what Master Grunt had said. Being able to beat your familiar. In other words she can do the carrot and stick completely and overpowering her familiar that has immense strength for her size.”

  Xero looked at her and swallowed hard as he saw how weak he was. Even if his master said she was level 17 how strong was the Pot Fairy.

  He sighed and just let it go.

  “Hey master do you need something?” Ashley asked suddenly.

  “Not really, with the waves we need to be on the alert.” He said but suddenly a loud growl came from his stomach. “Ah! Ahahaha! I guess I'm hungry, can you prepare some food for me?” he asked holding his stomach.

  “Alright~! Hey Potty Fairy get me lots and lots of non humanoid beast meat!” Ashley said cheerfully.

  "I already told you! I am a Pot Fairy! Not a Toilet Fairy you stupid Blue Imp!” The fairy appeared in front of Ashley’s face glaring.

  “Ah~! What an annoying little toilet bug! Just get me the highest quality meat. Master needs lots of high class meat to grow stronger.” Ashley said.

  “HA! My master needs it more. I'll give you the minced meat tha
t master Cascade left behind.” The fairy said.

  Ashley just looked at her a moment before showing a small piece of paper and the fairy suddenly became depressed and nodded before dropping several large corpse's, butchered and bled, and Ashley pulled a large barrel for her to gather some blood.

  She then took Xero’s bag and began to slice up several dozen spices before running off with the corpses.

  “Ah~! Hungry.” Xero muttered and stretched before casually walking back into the camp with the others that were slowly following behind laughing. The sound of growling could be heard from everyone since they had all chosen to follow in the food training like Xero. They probably couldn’t stomach the fact that he would get even stronger and began to train harder.

  When he reached his tent circle Univa was sitting with her dragon who had grown much larger since it had evolved and was now several meters long and it had leveled up a few times since it had been fighting and training.

  Looking at Ashley, Xero smiled wryly as he saw her using her Imp flames to roast the meat but the growling in his stomach grew even more and he had to whip his drool. The recent days have been met with countless meals like this spiced in quite unique methods which some people might look down on as barbaric but when eating the food the meat is rich in mana and cooked skillfully.

  “Seriously, where did she learn to cook? Even if I had a cook book with me the things she does aren’t there could she have unexpected skill with cooking.” He wondered but the smell of food clouded his thoughts and he sat on the side as he looked at the bright flames cooking the meat.

  He was curious as to how she cooked and so he injected mana into his eyes. After doing so he was able to see the flow of mana. At the center of the fire he could see Ashley with a line of mana connected to him which was pulling mana at the moment. He looked at the flames and noticed how the flowed strangely calm then at the meat that was their own bundle of mana thanks to the mana the monsters absorbed.

  He noticed how strands of Ashley’s fire mana would strike at specific points and slowly the bundle of mana began to unwind and spread apart but then it would braid the loosening strands as if it was weaving and once more enter the meat.