World Keeper

Chapter 207: Aeon Training

“Phew.” Aurivy wiped some imaginary sweat from her brow as she saw the wolf being killed. “Okay, now where were we? So, just go ahead and use your mana to directly refine the spiritual energy. You learned how to do that a long time ago, right? The whole, mana in your voice thing.”

She must have been referring to when I first started practicing the Spirit Tamer class, and had accidentally destroyed a spirit when I tried to communicate with it. I suppose I might have just used too much energy… or not been fast enough to collect it when it dispersed. Either way, I gave a brief nod.

I stepped off of the hill, and then took a single jump to land in midair next to where the wolf had died. My feet channeled my ki, condensing the air into a solid platform for me to stand upon. Pushing mana into my eyes, I saw the spirit of the wolf slowly rising from its falling parts.

Okay, I’ve done this before, like she said. I told myself internally, before opening my mouth. “Shatter.” With the mana pushed into my voice, I saw the energy of the wolf do exactly that… The mist that had begun congealing into a recognizable shape shattered and returned to being a shapeless mass.

For this, there wasn’t much need to debate what kind of aeon I wanted. The wolf was simply a disposable monster that we were using as a test subject. Wrapping my mana around the remaining energy, I pulled it towards my hand, willing it into the shape of a simple dagger. Sure enough, the process felt extremely similar to creating a weapon through the Spirit Hunter class.

However, once the dagger was formed and resting in my hands, it seemed… restless. It felt as if it would break and vanish at a moment’s notice if I stopped holding it in place with my concentration.

“Alright! Final step now!” Aurivy called out, grabbing a rock and running towards me, her feet landing on the air as if it were solid ground. When she got to me, she placed the rock in my free hand. “Pull the dagger into this rock, and then seal it in place with a mark of spiritual energy.”

I raised an eyebrow at her as she said that, but did indeed follow along. I held the dagger up towards the rock, and willed for it to enter. The dagger seemed to shrink down, fading away inside of the rock. Just as I again felt like it was resisting my control, that it would break out as soon as I was done, I imagined a wolf’s fang locking it in place.

Along the surface of the rock, blue lines began to form, drawing the outline of the fang that I had imagined. When it was done, I felt as if the dagger had calmed, as if it had found a proper home. And at the same time, the expected message windows began to appear in front of me.

I glanced at the series of notifications, noticing how they were subtly different from normal. For the name of the dagger, I simply chose to go with ‘Wolf Fang Dagger’, after which another message appeared to tell me that it was accepted.

“Okay, good!” Aurivy gave a quick nod. “You have now stepped onto the path of being a Summoner!”

“Didn’t Udona say that it was possible to draw energy directly from the Underworld?” I couldn’t help but ask, remembering the talk that I had with Emona during my long voyage on the sea.

“Well, yeah… it is…” Aurivy shifted her eyes away. “But I didn’t want to lead with that. It’s a technique you unlock at level ten. And, if you tried to brute force your way there without properly understanding how it works, you might tear open a hole too big… I don’t wanna make extra work for Irena, okay? She has it hard enough already.”

I gave a brief nod of acceptance at that. “Alright. So, what’s next? I assume you want to get me to the point where I can draw that energy safely before moving on to the next class.”

“Right!” Aurivy suddenly looked at me again, nodding her head. “So… next we’ll need another monster.” At least this time I had a bit of warning when her golden cloud of mist stretched out. “We’ll go with something stronger this time… one of the best of the best monsters. It’ll make a nice aeon.”

As she said that, the golden cloud grew bigger and bigger, and I immediately aimed my left hand at it, pushing the ki into my fingers. Sure enough, the creature that came out was far larger than the wolf. Wings that stretched a hundred meters in either directions. Black scales covering its entire body. Four large, muscular legs supporting beneath it. And the long neck ending in a reptilian maw, fire jutting from its jaws.

“You called a DRAGON!?” I couldn’t help but shout out, confirming that the beast she had summoned was a level five hundred black dragon. If I wasn’t mistaken, this should definitely be one of the most powerful adult creatures in any of the three worlds.

“Oh, it’ll be fine! Dragons right now don’t even know any of the neat tricks!” Aurivy shouted over the heavy beats of the wings, the giant beast staring down at us. “They’re really just overgrown fire-breathing lizards.”

I let out a groan upon hearing that, I fired the ki bullet that I had been building up in my two fingers. The golden bullet launched out at the dragon, cracking its scales and making it stumble back with a pained roar. It turned its head to look at me, its eyes narrowed with anger. Its mouth opened, a wide cone of flame spewing out.

I could feel ki within the flame, elemental ki. If I had to guess, its breath was not really fire at all, but a simple expulsion of fire ki. Which made things both more and less problematic at the same time.

I cast a simple shield spell around myself, fueling it with my rather ridiculous mana pool to block out the elemental ki. I could feel my mana being drained away by the inefficiency of the low level spell. Gritting my teeth, I opened both of my hands and lunged towards the dragon. I could hear it beating its wings to try to escape, even if I couldn’t see it through the fire, but that didn’t matter.

Soon, I had gotten close enough to come out of the path of its fiery breath, my body just below the monster’s chin. My hands like claws, I swiped them at the dragon’s neck, pushing my ki into them to further strengthen myself.

Right now, it was undoubtedly my body that was my most powerful weapon, not my spells or trained abilities. My hands dug into the neck of the dragon that was bigger than my body, and I felt its scales shatter beneath my fingers. Leaning back, I planted my feet against its neck, and gave a strong pull.

The dragon barely had time to scream as its neck was ripped apart, its head falling down to the ground below. The island beneath us shook from the impact, and I briefly worried that it might tip over. However, the island soon stabilized itself, the dragon’s body resting limply on the ground.

I saw the messages flashing by in front of my face as I descended next to the body of the dragon. “Alright, so what’s the next step, then?” I asked towards Aurivy, since it seemed like she had something special in mind.

“First, refine the energy, and then use your new Create Aeon ability that the system gave you! Udona really hates to use it because of how inefficient it is, but it’s good for practice.” Aurivy said with a smile as she appeared next to me.

Once again, I followed her words and refined the dragon’s spiritual energy with my voice, before mentally activating the new ability I had received. As soon as I did, a new window appeared in front of me. It seemed to be a window to design a custom-made aeon.

The settings currently were those of my previous creation, a simple dagger which excelled in sharpness. And in the top corner, there was another line. Telling me how much spiritual energy I had spent from what was available.

“Now, with this you can design the aeon to be whatever you want! Whether it’s another weapon like your dagger, or an actual creature. You can even give it special abilities, if you have the spare energy.” Aurivy explained from behind me, her hands clasped behind her back.

Currently, I had spent five thousand out of just over seventy thousand… meaning that there was significant room to improve the aeon using the energy from the dragon. Curious, I began navigating the windows, looking to see at what was available. There were options to further enhance its cutting force, or add elemental powers to the dagger. It was even possible with the points available to make the dagger change its shape.

However, I didn’t particularly want a dagger for this. Moving to the display of the aeon, I changed its shape into a long red staff. And for its ability… I gave it the power to convert ki into fire element ki to expel. There were still a few points left after that, so I simply chose to strengthen that ability.

When I was done, I hit the button to finalize the aeon, calling it the Dragonfire Staff. Then, I felt my energy moving on its own, latching onto the spiritual energy of the dragon and pulling it towards me. I felt myself twisting the energy into unique patterns within the staff itself as it began to form, until it appeared exactly as I designed it.

Once again, Aurivy handed me another rock, and I sealed the staff inside of it, this time using a simple picture of fire as its symbol. “Okay… so that is how an aeon is normally made.” I mused, recalling how the energy had gone out of control when I was doing so. And once again, I had managed to gain another level through the creation of the aeon.

“Well, that’s how the system handles the automatic creation.” Aurivy confirmed with a shrug of her shoulders. “I think Udona said that this method uses about five times as much spiritual energy as if you learn how to efficiently do it yourself. There’s really a lot of waste involved. But it takes a while to get used to designing the abilities manually, so it’s good for beginners.”

“For the next few monsters, try to beat them with your new aeon.” Aurivy suggested as she jumped back a bit. “It’ll help you level up the new class more if you get used to fighting with them. Then once we get you high enough level, the real fun will begin!”

She let out a laugh at those words, and I shook my head, focusing on the second rock. The mark of flame began to glow, lifting from the rock itself and turning into the staff I had just finished creating. “Well… might as well get this started.”

As I said that, I gripped the staff in my hand. Behind Aurivy, over a dozen golden clouds began to form. Each one was nearly as large as the dragon that I had just killed, but Aurivy still had that same innocent smile on her face. Okay… Aurivy is definitely the most sadistic trainer out of all of the girls. I mentally confirmed this as my eyes shifted to look at the various clouds, waiting to see what would come next.