The Sword Devil

by Nathan Valerio

  Nadir was next and a detailed report of her spirit and her knowledge base was showed but no spells were shown. Then the next child caused him to freeze.

  “T-This boy… he attracted the attention of the Dark Holy Church!” he exclaimed.

  “It is stated clearly, his devil seems to somehow form a connection with the holy attribute. I have looked into this and the devil is an unknown one but it required simply asking other demon users and they told me about it. This Sword Devil is a highly feared one within hell. It forms a ‘holy flame’ somehow but to what degree it is holy I do not know.” the voice echoed.

  “W-we have to fix this somehow!” He thought.

  “Don’t worry Glenn, the girl is more focused on spell research than anything else. Besides for class, when I was following her, she only remained inside the library researching magic.” the man echoed.

  “Still, we need to figure something out.” he muttered and opened the pages to Nadir once more.

  “She isn’t an enemy spy right?” He asked.

  “No, she is completely clean.” the voice said.

  “Then allow her up to 3rd year library rights and let her access the Training grounds and resource zones. Also, tell Bagwin to give her a few tutoring sessions in the library. Have her advance quickly and catch up to the 15 years old age group that was recruited from earlier years.” He said.

  "I shall pass the message.” the voice said and the presence vanished.

  The dean sighed and fell back into his seat with a headache while he wondered if there was anything else he could do but found there was nothing else he could think of.

  ***

  Ding! Ding! Bang!

  The sound of sword clash was heard and the ten 1st years and five 2nd year students watched Xero and Ashley jump and rush around sparring.

  With them was also Jasmine, who had been coming ever since Xero began using sword magic. She found that it would be a good idea to watch and try to learn from her younger brother in law.

  She was almost horrified by how strong her little step brother was. Both Ashley and Xero were putting their all into training to further improve because the weekly battles to keep Univa and Meldie as his fiance had grown even more intense.

  The rules had changed to anyone within the level rank of 31 to 40 below the age of 20. This meant that academy students all the way to the 5th year of Everlight and other similar strength academies could try.

  The pressure became even more intense so Xero stopped holding back in his training and was now fighting Ashley seriously. As a matter of fact, she was in her demon form to fight him at his command while they both were sparring by using the partially complete ‘Sword Devil Combat Sword Arts’ that had formed in blocks for Ashley.

  The reason that it formed in blocks isn’t because of inadequate spell building but because they both were amateurs in swordsmanship. At the time, they were only using the most basic sword forms and techniques in live combat to get used to them more. This is why it resulted in blocks. The compatible techniques would stick close while forming the ‘base’ of the sword arts were the more advanced techniques would be slowly assimilated.

  Also through the use of the spells, the two would subtly change small sections of the spell structure to better flow and merge with the physical movements and attack pattern.

  As the two suddenly broke off, they were both huffing and Ashley reverted to her Devil form and dropped to one knee.

  Surprisingly, her body was covered in cuts while Xero only had a few scratches.

  Xero smiled when he saw that he was getting better then Ashley even in her full power.

  “Wow! Senior is so awesome! No wonder everyone says you’re the strongest 3rd year!” one of the 1st years shouted.

  The other children were all excited as well as the exclaimed.

  Jasmine was in awe as she walked over, “You’re amazing little brother.” She said.

  “Really?” He said huffing, "I don’t think so, there is still a lot to learn and change.” He said as he took a bottle of water and drank it.

  “Senior! You learned tons of sword moves! Can you teach me!?” One of the boys asked.

  He was the owner of the Inferior Lesser Kamaitachi Infant that was formed from a weasel that had once merged with one of Ashley’s Iron Sword Devil minions.

  "I can’t, most of my spells are just adaptations from sword magic up to the 3rd year. You should wait until summer when you get permission for the 3rd year books and then look through the Sword spells in the library so that you can start to make your own techniques.” Xero said.

  “Alright!” The boy said.

  He was already level 13 and the Kamaitachi was level 17 which was within the average strength of the students of the year.

  Xero and his closest friends were really the strange ones that were very rapid in their growing through many coincidences.

  The students went to train of their own but Jasmine remained, “Little brother, can I talk with you?” She asked.

  “Sure!” Xero said confused.

  “Can you make the sword spells for me? I have never seen what sword spells were like structurally so I am unable to make them and I really need something like this to help Crystal grow stronger.” She said worried about the little junior knight she had had a difficult time growing until now and was worried he would soon stop advancing again without a huge development.

  “Um… our sword arts are developed from simpler ones adapted to Ashley.” He said.

  “Then can you build all the simpler spells for me? I have at least 2 years of magical knowledge and you recently began to tutor me on 3rd year studies, with time I could develop my own techniques with Crystal.” She said.

  “Master, let’s do it.” Ashley said appearing, though paler, behind Xero. “he will need his own sword art to advance probably but…” Ashley looked at her, “Try to think of your own spells. Otherwise you will limit his potential.” She said.

  “Alright!” Jasmine nodded.

  They headed to some seats in the dormitory grounds and had Crystal summoned and Ashley took out a earth element Sword Demon minion that she planted into the ground.

  “Alright, that should supply the mana easily enough.” She said.

  From there, the two began to work to remake all the original spells that they had used to make their spells while using the mana that the Crystal could absorb.

  It took a few hours before they were finished.

  “Thank you.” Jasmine said while pouring tea for the two that were resting after that.

  “It’s nothing.” Xero said.

  “It’s a lot more than you know for me.” She said. It was then that she looked at Ashley’s eyes, “If I remember correctly, Ashley is supposed to be blind right? Are you still blind?” she asked.

  The question caught them by surprise but Xero himself became curious and looked at her.

  "I am blind, I can only see the mana in the world but after my breakthrough I could see even clearer and many more details have drastically cleared such as the human body isn’t just a solid form but instead it has details. The human eye that was blank before now has a ‘black’ pupil and iris I can see. I can even see clothing now.” She said.

  “So you were seeing everyone naked before?” Xero asked.

  “No, clothing caused the covered body to be blurred so their figure was usually disfigured most of the time.” She said.

  “Seeing mana…” Jasmine muttered and looked at Crystal before looking back, “What is it like to ‘see’ mana? Is it any different to sensing it?” She asked.

  "I can’t sense mana besides the free and loose mana in the air.” Ashley answered truthfully. “Well, I can sense it partially but I’m not overly sensitive. As for the difference, well seeing mana is just like looking around, I don’t know the difference for you. As for sensing, it’s like sitting in a river of water and the water constantly flowing. It’s always around you so you can feel it.” She said.

  Jasmine nod
ded and indeed, someone who has a familiar is much more sensitive to mana. She turned to Crystal, “What about you? Do you see mana?” She asked.

  “No, I have regular vision?” he said.

  The three looked at each other, “For your race, what is regular vision?” Ashley asked.

  “This crystal hair on my head that functions as the source of crystal matter for making my weapon, it aids me in identifying color and light. So my vision is the same as humans, following the visual spectrum.” He said.

  “Oh, I see.” Jasmine said still curious as she looked at the glowing eyes in the crystal helmet. “Let’s go train these moves and start to adapt them to us?” She asked.

  “Of course, mistress!” He said excited.

  Jasmine bid them goodbye and went on her way to go deal with her own training while Xero and Ashley took up their weapons once more to start the next round after they spent a short time to do the small adjustments to the forms they had tried and decided which group of techniques they would use next.

  Chapter 29

  BOOM!

  A loud eruption was heard followed by hundreds more. In a land that was covered by smoke and ash, where the green life was withered, but extensive in areas, lava flowed like rivers and demonic creatures covered the land.

  This was Hell, the home of the demon and devils.

  All through the land, demon spawn pits covered the land and millions to almost billions of imps ran and slaughtered each other, changing and growing rapidly through the lower levels.

  Only a rare imp would have a rare mutation and become a devil or gain sentience before level 31. Only those above this level were allowed into the demon cities that littered the land.

  Demon cities were home to all devil kind, in hell, devil’s were the rulers. Demons domesticated by devils never gained sentience as they were raised to remain demons.

  The relationship was no different from humans and animals, devils were the intelligent humans and demons were the irrational animals.

  Hell was huge in size, because there is one ‘hell’ for hundreds of separate dimensions and worlds, hell itself was considered one of the largest kinds of worlds. In this immense world, the territories of the demons were all divided but this division existed solely because of one kind of creature, the demon lords.

  Demon lords are all Devil’s who have reached level 91 and above. They are the masters of this world and with each demon lord comes his demon king's, commanders and pawns.

  These loyal pawns are all minion creatures bred by the Demon Lord himself. Devil minions are graded depending on their level range, from level 0-30 they are simple minions, pawns of the demon lord and their largest bulk. Level 31-40 they are called Captains, this grade of creature can take control of the Demon Lord’s minion pawns depending on their own intelligence and form squads to do the work for the demon lord. Commander is from level 41-50 and they command several captains with their power, of 10,000 devils, only one can reach this stage. Following that are Nobles that go from 51-60, these are highly intelligent devils who can spawn their own huge force of minions even though they are minion’s themselves. This further increases the bulk of the demon lord's army. High nobles are the second highest rank among the nobles and are from level 61-70 and usually command a few Nobles under them. The next rank is the Demon Duke, a level 71-80 demon that commands all high nobles within a specific region, aiding the Demon lord to control his power in these places. Level 81-90 is the Demon King, a one in a hundred million kind of demon that is second only to the Demon lord. In a demon lord’s army, there is usually no more then the number of fingers in a person's hands at the same time. Finally there is the Demon lord himself.

  It is normal for high potential demons to appear in the wild, these kinds of devils are usually either killed, or they recruit them. Recruiting is usually by force though, normally the soul is bound to the demon core and after sealing it into the core the core is then ripped out of the demon's chest where it undergoes many rituals to cause it to be bound to a demon noble before it is returned to the demon’s body and brought back to life. If the demon shows more potential, the binding will move to a higher level demon to not impede the growth until it reaches the demon lord itself.

  Its is rare though and most high potential demons usually don’t surpass the dukes being their direct masters.

  At this time though, am amazing occurrence was happening in hell.

  In what is regarded as one of the capital cities of hell itself, in the center of the territory of one of the current six most powerful demons, taking the title of Sin of Gluttony, the current leader of the Seven Deadly Sin’s, Beelzebub, had convened a meeting of lords.

  The Seven deadly Sin’s were the seven most powerful demon lords. Only one above level 95 could fight for the title and only when heaven deems the true holder, completely dead.

  The reason that hell only had six of these seven at this moment is directly tied to the previous Leader and directly linked to the previous invasion of the World Quinn.

  At the time, the demon lord had attacked on his own but at the time, the world relied on summoning a hero from each nation and religion, both Light and Dark, and this ‘force of heroes’ lead the nation armies and fought back eventually leading to the reversal of the war and invasion of hell where the spawn pits were discovered and studied while the heroes warred against the demon lord and eventually killed him.

  Of course, Demons don’t die and only resurrect but in doing so, they revert into imps once more and lose their immense power but are born with even more potential.

  The remaining six heads tried to locate him but were unable to find his reborn form.

  At this city, besides the other five deadly sin’s, many other demon lords came. They would come of grand flying chariots but as they arrived at the city, it would lower and go by land after entering.

  Only the other five sin’s had the right to fly directly to the massive black castle that was owned by Beelzebub himself.

  These Demon Lords came only with their Demon Kings and were gathered at a war room, that was more like a massive seven seat throne room. The seven seats circled a large magical artifact that displayed most of hell and included even space distortions where space cracks were located. These places were controlled by smaller demon lords who had successfully invaded a world and taken control of a section of land and slowly advanced forward.

  Only one area was ‘colored’ which was almost the entirety of what was once the previous leader of the deadly sin’s territory that was ‘cleansed’ by the holy aura blessing that the humans had prayed for and offered a Godly ranked Mana stone to the gods to form this barrier that weakened demons to near death.

  Behind these were seats that other weaker Demon Lords were given while their Kings were standing behind them. The number of kings directly showed their prowess as, ironically, a demon lord will only gain a new King after each level increase after reaching level 91.

  Soon the seats were filled and only one seat remained vacant and it was one that many demon lords looked coveting the power that came with that seat.

  “Shall we begin already!” a growl came from a large bulky male with two large protruding horns and a blood red scaled tail coming from behind while his skin was bright red and his eyes blood red with slit eyes. Besides his demon horns was a crown of dragon horns. This was the Demon of Wrath, Satan.

  The names of the seven sin’s are always the same as each demon inherits the name of the original seven sins.

  “So loud…” A small voice said from a seat where a small child was barely awake.

  “We shall begin.” Beelzebub said standing up himself. He was tall and humanoid with pale blue skin and pitch black hair. On his head was a pair of bug antenna and he had a black and yellow bug abdomen on his lower back while a pair of fly wings that were folded behind his back and formed a sort of thin cloak.

  No one dared look down on the thickness of those wing because they were harder than Devil Alloy refine
d six times and incredibly sharp.

  “It is about this new space crack that has opened.” Beelzebub said coldly.

  “What is the point of calling so many of us to this only to talk about another world opening!?” Satan roared.

  “Shut up, you bag of wind.” Beelzebub said coldly, “If this was a normal world, I would just send one or two of the weaklings but this isn’t!” he said and turned to the others, “This is the world Lucifer had invaded over 300 years ago.” He said.

  The face of all the Demon Lords changed as they began to growl.

  The World Quinn was the first human world to invade hell and were even enough to kill the leader of the Demon Lords back then. Since then they have grown and it has been a constant battle in hell to reclaim the immense stretch of land that once belonged to the Demon of Pride, Lucifer.

  “Although this world is stronger, it can’t be that much right?” A sensual voice asked.

  A lightly dressed ‘soft’ woman with large breasts and wide hips, wearing only some skimpy clothing covering herself, said. Her pink hair and eyes held a strange appeal and the scent of her body caused men to rage with Lust. This was Asmodeus, the Demon of Lust.

  Beelzebub snorted, “What do you know, the humans we have seen were limited to only up to level 50 and the holy aura barrier caused a drastic drop in the power of demons inside that accursed aura. There has never been a need for stronger ones to come but do you think that is the case now? I have captured and trained several demons for spawn pits of that area specifically for them to reach level 80 and pump the spawn pits with their demonic aura just to weaken that barrier and have already fought back the humans to their final threshold only for five level demi-god ranked beings to appear and annihilate a large section of the demons that attacked. Those things the humans called Familiar, they are using them in the same manner we demons grow now. Their true fighting power should be no less than Hell.” He said.