My Blind Familiar_The Ash Golem

by Nathan Valerio

  He roared as he turned to the center of the goblin village. The eyes were red from anger as he reared back, a small vortex of mana surged on his open mouth before he breathed out. With the buff spell, and his rage which induced a strange aura evolving the fire into dragon flame that were many times hotter, the dragon caused a flashfire like beat to burst out and cover the camp.

  Before it reached, the goblin magic pointed the staff out and a huge barrier formed around the village. The thunder ogre stuck his hand out once more and launched an even thicker bolt of lightning and the fire and thunder impacted extinguishing each other.

  “This is much harder than we thought it would be.” Cain said.

  “Cain, do not just bulldoze through. Although we have strength, being able to properly use it is how your become strong.” Rufus said.

  “Yes young master.” Cain said.

  Rufus nodded and pulled out a wand and simply pointed at the magic barrier and shot a small ball that seemed like a mana bolt.

  That said when the ball hit the barrier, it was like a mountain impacting it and the ball exploding shattering the barrier.

  “Go!” He said.

  “All juniors, find and kill the goblins and hobgoblins! We shall deal with the leaders!” Yasmine shouted.

  The juniors all exclaimed and everyone flew in different directions while the dragons advanced.

  The three leaders put away the wand and pulled out a sword out as the dragons neared and suddenly dove down and landed with a crash smashing half of the village while the three jumped off and landed in front of the four leaders.

  “So which one wants to die by my blade first?” Rufus asked. The large muscular ogre growled and rushed out. “So be it.” He smiled slightly.

  Circling in the air Univa dove down on the back of Tryus and pointed to a group of two hobgoblins and 10 goblins. “Eat those hobgoblins, they will be good food for you.” She said and he roared and dove down. As she neared she put her hand behind her back where there is a small knob. Under her clothing was a restraint suit she used for training and she loosened it allowing her to use her full strength.

  She took out a sword to fight with. That said her swordsmanship was mediocre but compared to savages like goblins, it was still good. With her strength, she can still overpower them.

  Tryus crashed into the group making them disperse and swung his tail around. His several meter long body sent a few goblins flying while Univa jumped down and landed with her blade piercing the heart of one of the downed goblins.

  Although she had felt sick when she was in the camp, killing monsters, after two months of it plus another three months of heavy training, she wasn’t as affected but she had sleepless nights during that time.

  People who live peaceful lives from the start will always have trouble adjusting to a savage lifestyle. Xero had hunted with his father and so he had seen blood of butchered animals since young so he had little fear of butchering, cooking and handling dead creatures let alone killing them.

  Pulling the sword out she parried an incoming sword form a hobgoblin that caused her to stagger. Her strength was only at a level 12 standard, a hobgoblin, on the other hand, ranges from level 12 to level 25 and this one was a brute with lots of muscle showing it was several levels of strength above her. That said, with the sword, speed is key so after the first hit, she began to dodge with her speed when suddenly she ducked and a large tail came and smashed the hobgoblin back. Following that was a large claw cutting into its chest before lifting the still living hobgoblin to the drake's mouth and biting the head off and ripping it out.

  Tryus threw the body down to go kill the others before it feasted while Univa turned away from the scene and went to kill nearby goblins. In a few seconds the area had been cleared and Tryus finished killing them and began to eat them like crocodile, ripping parts and swallowing hole.

  When it finished it roared and her familiar seal lit up as he began to develop innate skills.

  “Finally!” She exclaimed as he examined the spells.

  They were as she had expected, Dragon’s aura, a unique ability that the dragons of her family develop, this aura mixes in with the spells of the dragon when they enter a state of anger which creates the famed Dragon fire. This spell was key to evolving a drake into a dragon and it makes the transition easier compared to other people with dragon type creatures.

  The aura skill was completely formed in seconds while the other two were slower, she smiled as she found that it was ‘Fire breath’ and ‘Lizard’s claw’.

  She spent no time at all as she broke the element of the Fire breath and added ‘Fire’ and ‘Air’ to make blue fire which was more powerful even if cost more mana. She quickly moved to the other spell and wrote down a very special magical formula sequence that was quite long and then broke a specific section related to the world ‘lizard’ and replaced the area with the new magical formula.

  When these were done she began to make the spells more efficient but she felt something strange from the Blue Flame Breath as if it wasn’t going right even if she was properly improving it. It was only at the last second that she looked once more at the elements at the very start.

  What she saw caused her to turn pale. When one is writing runes, especially elements there is a need to be very careful, the reason is because a few runes were very similar to one another which is what happened here. Instead of having the Fire and Air rune, instead she wrote the Ice and Air rune. This made the Blue Fire Breath to actually be the Blizzard Breath spell. It was a spell required for an ice dragon.

  Before she could change it the spell completely formed and even if she changed it the spell would not break apart. She was completely depressed at this moment even when the Lizard Claw properly transformed into the Dragon’s Claw skill which gathered the dragon’s aura into the arm bulking up the power of the impact of the next hit.

  Her depressed eye shine as she pulled out a few common mana stones. There were two ways to make an innate skill, wait for them to develop, or write one yourself.

  With her skill, she would have trouble making it herself but she could do nothing except make the true Blue Fire Breath alongside the Blizzard Breath by relying on extra mana from the mana stones she got from her family.

  Because the area was guarded by Tryus and most of the goblins were already dead, she simply mounted him while working slowly to draw up the many complex magical sequences. She paid no attention to the servants who were cheering about the growth of their familiars as she worked.

  It was only after half an hour that she finally finished. It was a working formula but it wasn’t that good. She would need to return to school and get the help of a teacher without revealing it to her brother so that he would not report her blunder to her father. The family was quite keen on the fact that they raised fire dragons, not ice. To appear with an ice dragon she would be pushed to a branch family at best instead of remaining with her family. This was the cruel reality of a large duke’s family.

  “Haha! Good harvest! Not only was the ogre a good warm-up, his gear isn’t half bad, we could get a pretty coin from this axe.” Cain said as he flew up.

  “This mage staff is impressive, the gemstone is also large and a good magic conductor.” Yasmine said.

  “These Ogre cores are the best harvest, young master, what will we do with these cores?” Cain asked.

  Ogre cores are the monster core inside ogres. After a specific evolution, monsters from these cores which are similar to demon and dragon cores that form in the heart or brain. They contain the majority of mana and crushing a familiars monster core will result in a similar effect to what demons experience having all their mana released.

  “One holds magic capabilities but of lightning magic, the other is strength based, the magic one we shall hold onto and trade for a fire based core of equal value, the other, Yasmine you can choose a junior with low strength base that is putting in good effort and reward it to him. It should supplement his familiars strength to b
etter standards.” Rufus said

  Yasmine bowed, “Understood.” She said.

  “We shall spend the night at the village, it is dark already and winter nights aren’t more unbearable than the daytime so we will not move around during this time.” Rufus said showing even he was uncomfortable with that kind of cold.

  As everyone landed on the dragons, Rufus looked back and with some interest and smiled, “Tryus has begun to develop a dragon core, did he obtain a small evolution during the battle?” Rufus asked.

  “Yes brother, he developed the Dragon’s aura and Dragon’s claw but…” She frowned, “He lacks the Fire Breath so I am trying to draw it myself.” She said.

  He smiled, “That is good, it is good practice for you to try and draw it and learn to develop it without having the natural laws make it.” He said nodding approvingly as he saw his sister develop her dragon to be a powerful fire dragon.

  They flew back and set up magic tents to sleep in.

  Univa, reluctantly, left early the tent to ‘look around’ and moved to the Lord’s manor after remembering a specific fact from last year.

  “You need help making a Blue Fire Breath spell formula?” Xero asked.

  She nodded embarrassed, “I… I kind of messed up and drew the Ice rune instead of the fire rune when the Innate skills were appearing.” She said

  “Ah, that’s right, fire and ice do have similar runes, but why did you come to me?” He asked.

  She frowned and looked away, “Um… you were the top student in magic knowledge class last year, mostly because the others bullied you and you worked five times harder so I thought you would be able to help me. I was able to set up a basic structure of a common fire breath but it is harder to advance.” She said.

  Xero scratched his head, he never expected that others would know how much effort he put into learning magic during his first year, it caused him to feel embarrassed. “Um then let's see it.” he said extending his hand.

  Univa reluctantly extended her hand and Xero moved his mana into the familiar seal and looked at the Innate skills. “Wow, so these are dragon skills.” He muttered. Soon he found the two formula near the throat. One was complex and quite perfect while the other looked like a shriveled up prun.

  He could see why she wanted help, in one glance he could see several dozen problems. Efficiency problems, mana leaks, heat dissipation, problems that would even cause the spell to reverse and maybe injure the dragon from inside. He never saw such a broken formula but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fix some of them. The formula was already Blue Fire Breath and it indeed did what it needed to but improperly.

  “Do you want me to tell you the problems and solutions as I go?” Xero asked.

  “Sure, I want to learn what I did wrong.” She said.

  With a nod he began to fix the very basic areas were mana leaks existed in the mana gathering phase. It followed by how to properly connect the element runes, then temperature control, sequences that needed to be written to protect the mouth and throat of the dragon, another to increase the fire resistance, mana efficiency problems, more mana leaks, fixing the heat dissipating leaks, the proper propulsion sequence.

  As he went explaining one by one, she watched trying to get hints and actually admired him for being able to build off her trashy spell and how the shrivelled spell seemed to slowly gain life as the spell was slowly built and when it finished, it was glowing identical to the Blizzard Breath spell.

  “T-thank you.” She said and took out a gold coin. “Take this as payment, I can’t accept free help.” she said dropping the coin into his hand. He held it accepting the money that he was in need of to guarantee another month at the academy. Not only that he was able to improve his own knowledge of magic formula construction through building a true spell by hand. One belonging to a dragon instead of a demon.

  He lead her out and after she vanished into the night, he walked back to his room and picked up the large stone greatsword and felt the magic flow until he felt the magic formula.

  There were more than just a few, in fact, there were a number of earth spells built into the sword. Of these spells, there weren’t many that were finished as some were a bit advanced in nature and needed delicate calculations that Xero did not know at the time.

  What he did have was an Earth Sword Barrier spell, which caused a giant wall in the same of his sword to appear from the ground and block incoming attacks, breaking apart after a short while if the sword was removed from the ground.

  He took the volcanic sword and equally it had its own spells like Flaming Slash and a newly formed spell combining the principles of his flying sword and vortex. It was called Fire Blade Tornado. It made countless fire slashing spin and advance towards the enemy.

  The green sword was made of a unique wind attribute rock found in a windy canyon training ground in the academy and it had similar spells like Gale slash and such. The final was the wood sword, under Grunt’s suggestion, it was tempered in the Bloodvine tree and it indeed developed the blood sucker skill. By analyzing the spell Xero found some runes and sequences that when put in a specific order, allowed his sword to spawn tentacle like vines when stabbed into the ground that he could control with his mind.

  All these spells were slowly forming his repertoire of stored spells and with his recent exercise to help Univa, he began to look through the formula and change a few things to further advance.

  Chapter 26

  With the sound of crashing trees, the dirt slowly worms as a wide road of packed dirt appears. From the road, a number of people walked up and in the lead was Zip and Xero.

  When the Crost family passed through, they got rid of the three biggest threats to the village, Trolls, goblins and orcs. The very same day, Nil called Zip and Xero and told them that the goblins had access to a mine and the distance between the trolls mountain and the goblin cave was a short distance of about 5 kilometers. Of course the distances from the village was around 20.

  Because he knew Xero had magic, his father offered him a city development mission to create wide packed dirt roads to the goblin village. Because there was already built village structure there, he wanted to take this and make a mining camp there to easily access the mountains in that side of the village on the west side while using the north east mountain with the mountain lions to make a second camp and expand from there.

  As they reach the village, the road widens and hardens and the trees fall revealing the smoking scene before their eyes.

  “Bloody hell!” one of the miners said in shock.

  They had expected for the place to be burned since it was fire dragons fighting but the Crost’s had completely burnt the entire goblin village to the ground. Only the palisade was a bit standing but it was burned.

  Zip sighed, “This is going to take a lot of work to rebuild but we at least have clean roads that will quicken the trip by many hours now. Transport of wood won’t be a problem, only a 1 hour trek with horse carriage in this clean road, it's all thanks to you Xero.” He said.

  “Do you want me to help smooth out the ground in the camp?” He asked.

  “Not today, we will probably have to spend the day breaking everything down and building the new palisade. Can you go back and tell father to prepare the timber for that.” He said.

  Xero nodded and pulled out his flying sword and took off at a rapid speed following the road through the air.

  “So boy, wut we gon do now?” One of the miners asked with a rough accent. The man was quite tall but had dwarven features. This was one of the mixed blood from dwarf and mono eye. He kept two eyes but also the size of the cyclops.

  "I guess for now we break down the buildings, when the wood arrives we can replace the palisade, leave what is standing for now since it can still keep out the animals. Oh right, have someone look around the area and look for the mine that the goblins used.” Zip said.

  Everyone started to move into the camp where they saw most of everything burned to a crisp. Zip summoned h
is imp and saw a lot of the ash in the air gather into his now muscular and scaled imp. It growled when it came out and looked around and suddenly jumped into a pile of rubble. Unexpectedly he pulled out a burned hobgoblin corpse and began to eat it.

  “Asher, get down, we need to get working.” Zip said but the Imp ignored him.

  He sneered and took out a large heavy hammer and suddenly jumped very quickly and swung the hammer hitting his shoulder. "I said get down here!” The imp flew to the ground with its arm broken. It sprawled in the ground and stood in fear of Zip. One cannot underestimate the strength difference between the two. Zip’s strength was already over level 20 thanks to his heavy labor as a smith.

  “Good, follow me.” He said and the imp stood up following him docilely. Even so there was both fear and awe in its empty black eyes. The current level was level 8 Scaled Imp (Variant). It wasn’t unique variant because Ashley had been the same type.

  Shouting out orders, severely burned buildings were torn down by hammering while they looked through the ruins.

  Zip and Asher, after giving out orders, walked to the top space where the house of the leaders had been. The place was broken but not burned so they walked in and found that there were things inside. Not a lot as the things with value were taken but surprisingly there were several sets of dented armor and weapons.

  Zip began to organize the armor when suddenly he heard the sound of screeching metal and turned to an amazing sight. In the hands of Asher, the torso plate of the dented armor that would fit a large man, was held his grip and his mouth chewing on solid iron. The black teeth broke and rebuilt itself with the surrounding ash but there was a hint of metal as it eat. When Zip finally reacted Asher had entered an eating frenzy and was biting and swallowing whole the chunks of armor crushing it under his mouth full of black fangs.

  “What the hell are you doing! That could have been repaired!” He said but could only sigh as he watched the Imp eat the already destroyed armor. Without the chest piece the set was incomplete and not worth selling or repairing. It was low grade anyway and someone with his eye would see that from a distance but still to see it eaten like candy, one had wonder the bite strength of the imp to chew through solid tempered iron like that.