Chapter 23: 23
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A few hours earlier...
Draylen sat behind a desk with a pencil in one hand. He glanced at the gatling crossbow that sat to the side, before lowering his head and sketching a picture. Currently, he was creating a familiar armament for Barong, for several reasons.
First of all, whilst familiars were usually stronger in their original forms, their strength was limited by cultivation tier, a tier 5 Lioberus cub fighting against a tier 8 ShadowHawk would be suicide. Familiar armaments were essentially a weaponised form of the familiar and allowed someone to use a tier 1 familiar to fight against an opponent of higher cultivation, although a stronger familiar obviously resulted with a stronger armament.
Secondly, Draylen was lacking a ranged form of attack. He could make do with his wrist blades, however at the thought of being able to kill a target from a distance was too great a temptation for the young assassin.
Hence, he currently had a gatling crossbow by the side, which he wanted to edit and make more suitable for himself, before making it into Barong's familiar armament.
The weapon looked very different from a traditional crossbow, with no limbs pointing outward nor could any arrows be seen on the surface. It had a large cylindrical barrel, with five smaller barrels sticking out the end.
Gatling crossbows were essentially five crossbows reduced to only the firing mechanism, with a few adjustments and then fitted into a large barrel. This meant that the reloading was also manual, with 5 times the loading speed of an ordinary crossbow but 5 times the pay off.
There were small handles attached on the outside of the barrel, which were connected to the bow strings. This reduced the surface area and removed the need to expose the arrow and the chance for it to fall out, as well as make loading the weapon easier.
The Fallen had attached large quivers to their backs, with several hundreds of arrows. These were then attached to the back of the gatling crossbows, through flexible pipes. This directly reduced the steps of reloading to only pulling back the handles.
However, Draylen planned to get rid of the clunkiness of the weapon, he was going to be a stealthy warrior so why would he carry such a large tank on his back? He also decided to change the ammunition of the weapon, from normal arrows to magic arrows.
Now, his ammunition was his mana. He wouldn't need to buy or craft any arrows himself because his mana replenished over time, which also allowed him to slim down the gatling crossbow's size as well.
Instead of five barrels, he decided to cut the number down to three, retaining some of the rapid fire qualities of the original weapon whilst also removing lots of mass. He also removed the reloading mechanism, only keeping the firing mechanism and enhancing it with magic.
Now, the weapon which needed to be manually reset after each shot and reloaded would reset automatically with magic. It actually looked somewhat like a blunderbuss attached to his arms, but with more and slimmer barrels.
Of course, this was only the design he'd drawn, actually implementing this into a familiar armament was definitely more difficult. He'd have to implement the qualities of the weapon into the spell circle he was drawing.
For a normal weapon such as swords or hammers, there were few intricate mechanical parts, which meant that drawing the spell circle would be as easy as drinking and eating, but for something as complicated as a gatling crossbow...
Draylen hurriedly pulled out a piece of parchment from the stack in front of him whilst also moving his design sketch to the side, next to the actual weapon. Then, he thought for a moment before grabbing a brush, dipping it in ink and drawing the core of the spell circle.
He drew the symbol for 'familiar' and then drew a thin circle around it, before drawing a few other symbols around the outside. These were each of the different elements, fire, water, earth, air, light and dark. Draylen had found out from the old man that metal was limited to only draconic creatures, which meant that he currently possessed each and every possible element for a human.
Since having the ability to change which element his arrows were on the fly would be very helpful due to it's versatility, Draylen had to inscribe each element onto the spell circle so that his new armament would be able to handle them properly. What if it melted in the middle of a battle because he tried to inject fire mana?
Then, after an hour of painful trial and error, Draylen managed to finish the spell circle. He quickly committed both the circle and the design of the modified weapon into his mind before drawing the circle a few more times on spare low quality parchments. Then, he drew it onto a tier 8 parchment, with zero mistakes.
Draylen leant back and exhaled slowly. He placed the spell scroll against his chest, just below his right collarbone before injecting black and white mana.
-Zzzzzz
A low pitched buzzing sound was emitted, as a black tattoo slowly formed on Draylen's skin. All though one would be able to see the patterns and symbols clearly, they would have the illusion of looking into the jaws of three demonic-looking black lions.
Draylen once again sat back, stretching slightly. Whilst his physical body wasn't affected much by the spell circle drawing, it had taken a lot of effort and he felt mentally tired.
"One last step." He muttered.
The 10 years old boy stood up and concentrated on the flow of mana in his body. He directed all of the elements into his new spell circle, whilst also imagining the modified gatling crossbow in his mind.
The colours of each element lit up the dim cavern, all being emitted from the veins in Draylen's skin and also their elemental symbols which were in the spell circle. After a while, he stopped sending mana to the spell circle.
-Poof
Different colours crawled from the spell circle through his veins and into the area under both of his wrists. In a flash of multicoloured light, three small barrels attached to his arms appeared under either wrist. Now he had wrist blades on top and crossbows on the bottom, somewhat completing his arsenal.
Draylen nodded in content and grinned widely, before rushing towards the cave's door and leaving behind a mess of parchment and a pot of ink.
...
Draylen crept across the large tree's thick branches, stalking his prey. He was hunting a common Giant Forest Boar, which he could take down easily but only if he hit it's weak points. The reason why he wanted to face the boar was to find out the gatling crossbow's penetrative power.
'Hmmn, I also need to give this weapon a new name as gatling crossbow doesn't suit it anymore.'
He silently raised his right arm, before taking aim at the defenceless beast. A dim red light formed within the middle barrel, resembling a small flame.
-Pew!
A streak of red flashed brightly as it left the barrel, moving at speeds several times that of an ordinary bow. It brushed past the panicked boar and flew into the nearby bushes. The nearby foliage caught fire quickly, causing several resting beasts to run or fly out of their burning homes.
"Tch, I missed."
Draylen quickly injected more mana, this time raising his other arm as well.
-Pew! pew! pew! pew! pew! pew!
6 streaks of red light shot towards the boar which surrounded in a ring of flames, with only three actually hitting home. Nevertheless, the boar squealed as it's entire body was lit up into roaring flames, quickly becoming a pile of black ash.
Draylen nodded in satisfaction, not at his skills but at the destructive power of his weapon. Since he didn't fire physical arrows, but instead condensed mana, physical defences like plain armour or in this case, hide couldn't stop his flaming attack.
The flames would just spread right across and roast it's target alive.
'I definitely need to practice shooting more.' He thought, as he injected water mana into his new familiar armament.
In no time, the fire was put out, by Draylen's constant stream of water which came from his weapon. He then brought the wrist mounted crossbows to his face and gazed over them affectionately.
'Since Barong in mythology was the spirit king, I'll call this weapon the Spirit Shooter and use it to get revenge on the Fallen.' The boy silently prayed to the Barong's deceased family.
'Watch us as we slaughter your enemies.' He thought cruelly.
At this moment, the 10 year old child seemed to be replaced by a cold and calculative personality, which would stop at nothing for revenge but he quickly returned to normal.
'Whilst Charcoal's Black Dragon Claws are strong, their range is too small. These Spirit Shooters will definitely be my main form of combat from now on.'
'Ah, I wish that these two would grow quickly. Charcoal takes up 20 mana capacity whilst Barong takes up 10, I don't have enough mana to contract a third familiar. Hurry up and get stronger you two!' He lamented silently.
Draylen felt Charcoal and Barong comforting him through their spiritual link, telling him something along the lines of 'Don't worry master, with our cultivation speeds, we'll shatter the heavens!'
He leaped down from his tree and began walking off the path. Although the Deepwood Pact protected him, with Charcoal and Barong's higher bloodlines and steadily growing strength, no monster dared provoke him.
'Speaking of which, I wonder how Aria is doing, I haven't seen her in a few months now.'
Draylen shook his head, kicking out the elegant dragon girl's image and shifting his mind onto training and practice.
...
-Pew!
Black flash whizzed past, slamming deep into the Golden Ram's rear end, causing it to cry out in pain. However, just as it was about to confront it's attacker, a black substance which was now circulating throughout it's bloodstream began to corrode at it's flesh, dissolving it from the inside out.
Draylen stood up from behind a bush and nodded in satisfaction. He had finally perfected his aim after a couple of hours of practice. Whilst it would take someone else his age a significantly longer time to master, Draylen's Spirit Shooter relied on mana control more than technique and Draylen's mana manipulation was already at an impressive level.
Now, he could accurately hit a target from several hundreds of metres away, as long as he could see them. Whilst Draylen was certainly a rookie when it came to combat, whenever he hunted strange instincts kicked in, making him feel as if he had been using the weapon for tens, even hundreds of years.
The young boy now had new goals in life.
-Find out who I really am
-Kill every Fallen on the continent, if not the entire world
-Reach the peak of all Dragon Summoners
-Get a really nice wife in the future
'Oh wait, not that last one.' He quickly thought, correcting himself.
Draylen blushed slightly, before coughing in embarrassment. Although there was only him and a pile of black mush on the floor, he still felt that it was wrong to think of such things at his age.
"Maybe I'll go find some stronger prey today."
And with that, Draylen disappeared into the depths of the Deepwood forest.
...
Meanwhile, in a dark room somewhere in the Auria empire...
"Very fascinating. I've found several potential saplings worth growing, his highness will definitely be eager to learn of them!" An old man chuckled.
An attendant approached from the side, bowing respectfully.
"Master Eisen."
'Eisen' turned to look at the attendant for a moment, before returning to his crystal ball.
"Take one of our finest Hell birds and ride with haste to the emperor's palace. Inform him that I'd like to hold an imperial gathering as soon as possible."
"Yes, master."
When the attendant left, Eisen then fondled the tip of his staff gently.
"I hope that his majesty will give me a pay raise!"
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A few hours earlier...
Draylen sat behind a desk with a pencil in one hand. He glanced at the gatling crossbow that sat to the side, before lowering his head and sketching a picture. Currently, he was creating a familiar armament for Barong, for several reasons.
First of all, whilst familiars were usually stronger in their original forms, their strength was limited by cultivation tier, a tier 5 Lioberus cub fighting against a tier 8 ShadowHawk would be suicide. Familiar armaments were essentially a weaponised form of the familiar and allowed someone to use a tier 1 familiar to fight against an opponent of higher cultivation, although a stronger familiar obviously resulted with a stronger armament.
Secondly, Draylen was lacking a ranged form of attack. He could make do with his wrist blades, however at the thought of being able to kill a target from a distance was too great a temptation for the young assassin.
Hence, he currently had a gatling crossbow by the side, which he wanted to edit and make more suitable for himself, before making it into Barong's familiar armament.
The weapon looked very different from a traditional crossbow, with no limbs pointing outward nor could any arrows be seen on the surface. It had a large cylindrical barrel, with five smaller barrels sticking out the end.
Gatling crossbows were essentially five crossbows reduced to only the firing mechanism, with a few adjustments and then fitted into a large barrel. This meant that the reloading was also manual, with 5 times the loading speed of an ordinary crossbow but 5 times the pay off.
There were small handles attached on the outside of the barrel, which were connected to the bow strings. This reduced the surface area and removed the need to expose the arrow and the chance for it to fall out, as well as make loading the weapon easier.
The Fallen had attached large quivers to their backs, with several hundreds of arrows. These were then attached to the back of the gatling crossbows, through flexible pipes. This directly reduced the steps of reloading to only pulling back the handles.
However, Draylen planned to get rid of the clunkiness of the weapon, he was going to be a stealthy warrior so why would he carry such a large tank on his back? He also decided to change the ammunition of the weapon, from normal arrows to magic arrows.
Now, his ammunition was his mana. He wouldn't need to buy or craft any arrows himself because his mana replenished over time, which also allowed him to slim down the gatling crossbow's size as well.
Instead of five barrels, he decided to cut the number down to three, retaining some of the rapid fire qualities of the original weapon whilst also removing lots of mass. He also removed the reloading mechanism, only keeping the firing mechanism and enhancing it with magic.
Now, the weapon which needed to be manually reset after each shot and reloaded would reset automatically with magic. It actually looked somewhat like a blunderbuss attached to his arms, but with more and slimmer barrels.
Of course, this was only the design he'd drawn, actually implementing this into a familiar armament was definitely more difficult. He'd have to implement the qualities of the weapon into the spell circle he was drawing.
For a normal weapon such as swords or hammers, there were few intricate mechanical parts, which meant that drawing the spell circle would be as easy as drinking and eating, but for something as complicated as a gatling crossbow...
Draylen hurriedly pulled out a piece of parchment from the stack in front of him whilst also moving his design sketch to the side, next to the actual weapon. Then, he thought for a moment before grabbing a brush, dipping it in ink and drawing the core of the spell circle.
He drew the symbol for 'familiar' and then drew a thin circle around it, before drawing a few other symbols around the outside. These were each of the different elements, fire, water, earth, air, light and dark. Draylen had found out from the old man that metal was limited to only draconic creatures, which meant that he currently possessed each and every possible element for a human.
Since having the ability to change which element his arrows were on the fly would be very helpful due to it's versatility, Draylen had to inscribe each element onto the spell circle so that his new armament would be able to handle them properly. What if it melted in the middle of a battle because he tried to inject fire mana?
Then, after an hour of painful trial and error, Draylen managed to finish the spell circle. He quickly committed both the circle and the design of the modified weapon into his mind before drawing the circle a few more times on spare low quality parchments. Then, he drew it onto a tier 8 parchment, with zero mistakes.
Draylen leant back and exhaled slowly. He placed the spell scroll against his chest, just below his right collarbone before injecting black and white mana.
-Zzzzzz
A low pitched buzzing sound was emitted, as a black tattoo slowly formed on Draylen's skin. All though one would be able to see the patterns and symbols clearly, they would have the illusion of looking into the jaws of three demonic-looking black lions.
Draylen once again sat back, stretching slightly. Whilst his physical body wasn't affected much by the spell circle drawing, it had taken a lot of effort and he felt mentally tired.
"One last step." He muttered.
The 10 years old boy stood up and concentrated on the flow of mana in his body. He directed all of the elements into his new spell circle, whilst also imagining the modified gatling crossbow in his mind.
The colours of each element lit up the dim cavern, all being emitted from the veins in Draylen's skin and also their elemental symbols which were in the spell circle. After a while, he stopped sending mana to the spell circle.
-Poof
Different colours crawled from the spell circle through his veins and into the area under both of his wrists. In a flash of multicoloured light, three small barrels attached to his arms appeared under either wrist. Now he had wrist blades on top and crossbows on the bottom, somewhat completing his arsenal.
Draylen nodded in content and grinned widely, before rushing towards the cave's door and leaving behind a mess of parchment and a pot of ink.
...
Draylen crept across the large tree's thick branches, stalking his prey. He was hunting a common Giant Forest Boar, which he could take down easily but only if he hit it's weak points. The reason why he wanted to face the boar was to find out the gatling crossbow's penetrative power.
'Hmmn, I also need to give this weapon a new name as gatling crossbow doesn't suit it anymore.'
He silently raised his right arm, before taking aim at the defenceless beast. A dim red light formed within the middle barrel, resembling a small flame.
-Pew!
A streak of red flashed brightly as it left the barrel, moving at speeds several times that of an ordinary bow. It brushed past the panicked boar and flew into the nearby bushes. The nearby foliage caught fire quickly, causing several resting beasts to run or fly out of their burning homes.
"Tch, I missed."
Draylen quickly injected more mana, this time raising his other arm as well.
-Pew! pew! pew! pew! pew! pew!
6 streaks of red light shot towards the boar which surrounded in a ring of flames, with only three actually hitting home. Nevertheless, the boar squealed as it's entire body was lit up into roaring flames, quickly becoming a pile of black ash.
Draylen nodded in satisfaction, not at his skills but at the destructive power of his weapon. Since he didn't fire physical arrows, but instead condensed mana, physical defences like plain armour or in this case, hide couldn't stop his flaming attack.
The flames would just spread right across and roast it's target alive.
'I definitely need to practice shooting more.' He thought, as he injected water mana into his new familiar armament.
In no time, the fire was put out, by Draylen's constant stream of water which came from his weapon. He then brought the wrist mounted crossbows to his face and gazed over them affectionately.
'Since Barong in mythology was the spirit king, I'll call this weapon the Spirit Shooter and use it to get revenge on the Fallen.' The boy silently prayed to the Barong's deceased family.
'Watch us as we slaughter your enemies.' He thought cruelly.
At this moment, the 10 year old child seemed to be replaced by a cold and calculative personality, which would stop at nothing for revenge but he quickly returned to normal.
'Whilst Charcoal's Black Dragon Claws are strong, their range is too small. These Spirit Shooters will definitely be my main form of combat from now on.'
'Ah, I wish that these two would grow quickly. Charcoal takes up 20 mana capacity whilst Barong takes up 10, I don't have enough mana to contract a third familiar. Hurry up and get stronger you two!' He lamented silently.
Draylen felt Charcoal and Barong comforting him through their spiritual link, telling him something along the lines of 'Don't worry master, with our cultivation speeds, we'll shatter the heavens!'
He leaped down from his tree and began walking off the path. Although the Deepwood Pact protected him, with Charcoal and Barong's higher bloodlines and steadily growing strength, no monster dared provoke him.
'Speaking of which, I wonder how Aria is doing, I haven't seen her in a few months now.'
Draylen shook his head, kicking out the elegant dragon girl's image and shifting his mind onto training and practice.
...
-Pew!
Black flash whizzed past, slamming deep into the Golden Ram's rear end, causing it to cry out in pain. However, just as it was about to confront it's attacker, a black substance which was now circulating throughout it's bloodstream began to corrode at it's flesh, dissolving it from the inside out.
Draylen stood up from behind a bush and nodded in satisfaction. He had finally perfected his aim after a couple of hours of practice. Whilst it would take someone else his age a significantly longer time to master, Draylen's Spirit Shooter relied on mana control more than technique and Draylen's mana manipulation was already at an impressive level.
Now, he could accurately hit a target from several hundreds of metres away, as long as he could see them. Whilst Draylen was certainly a rookie when it came to combat, whenever he hunted strange instincts kicked in, making him feel as if he had been using the weapon for tens, even hundreds of years.
The young boy now had new goals in life.
-Find out who I really am
-Kill every Fallen on the continent, if not the entire world
-Reach the peak of all Dragon Summoners
-Get a really nice wife in the future
'Oh wait, not that last one.' He quickly thought, correcting himself.
Draylen blushed slightly, before coughing in embarrassment. Although there was only him and a pile of black mush on the floor, he still felt that it was wrong to think of such things at his age.
"Maybe I'll go find some stronger prey today."
And with that, Draylen disappeared into the depths of the Deepwood forest.
...
Meanwhile, in a dark room somewhere in the Auria empire...
"Very fascinating. I've found several potential saplings worth growing, his highness will definitely be eager to learn of them!" An old man chuckled.
An attendant approached from the side, bowing respectfully.
"Master Eisen."
'Eisen' turned to look at the attendant for a moment, before returning to his crystal ball.
"Take one of our finest Hell birds and ride with haste to the emperor's palace. Inform him that I'd like to hold an imperial gathering as soon as possible."
"Yes, master."
When the attendant left, Eisen then fondled the tip of his staff gently.
"I hope that his majesty will give me a pay raise!"
A few hours earlier...Draylen sat behind a desk with a pencil in one hand. He glanced at the gatling crossbow that sat to the side, before lowering his head and sketching a picture. Currently, he was creating a familiar armament for Barong, for several reasons.First of all, whilst familiars were usually stronger in their original forms, their strength was limited by cultivation tier, a tier 5 Lioberus cub fighting against a tier 8 ShadowHawk would be suicide. Familiar armaments were essentially a weaponised form of the familiar and allowed someone to use a tier 1 familiar to fight against an opponent of higher cultivation, although a stronger familiar obviously resulted with a stronger armament.Secondly, Draylen was lacking a ranged form of attack. He could make do with his wrist blades, however at the thought of being able to kill a target from a distance was too great a temptation for the young assassin.Hence, he currently had a gatling crossbow by the side, which he wanted to edit and make more suitable for himself, before making it into Barong's familiar armament.The weapon looked very different from a traditional crossbow, with no limbs pointing outward nor could any arrows be seen on the surface. It had a large cylindrical barrel, with five smaller barrels sticking out the end.Gatling crossbows were essentially five crossbows reduced to only the firing mechanism, with a few adjustments and then fitted into a large barrel. This meant that the reloading was also manual, with 5 times the loading speed of an ordinary crossbow but 5 times the pay off.There were small handles attached on the outside of the barrel, which were connected to the bow strings. This reduced the surface area and removed the need to expose the arrow and the chance for it to fall out, as well as make loading the weapon easier.The Fallen had attached large quivers to their backs, with several hundreds of arrows. These were then attached to the back of the gatling crossbows, through flexible pipes. This directly reduced the steps of reloading to only pulling back the handles.However, Draylen planned to get rid of the clunkiness of the weapon, he was going to be a stealthy warrior so why would he carry such a large tank on his back? He also decided to change the ammunition of the weapon, from normal arrows to magic arrows.Now, his ammunition was his mana. He wouldn't need to buy or craft any arrows himself because his mana replenished over time, which also allowed him to slim down the gatling crossbow's size as well.Instead of five barrels, he decided to cut the number down to three, retaining some of the rapid fire qualities of the original weapon whilst also removing lots of mass. He also removed the reloading mechanism, only keeping the firing mechanism and enhancing it with magic.Now, the weapon which needed to be manually reset after each shot and reloaded would reset automatically with magic. It actually looked somewhat like a blunderbuss attached to his arms, but with more and slimmer barrels.Of course, this was only the design he'd drawn, actually implementing this into a familiar armament was definitely more difficult. He'd have to implement the qualities of the weapon into the spell circle he was drawing.For a normal weapon such as swords or hammers, there were few intricate mechanical parts, which meant that drawing the spell circle would be as easy as drinking and eating, but for something as complicated as a gatling crossbow...Draylen hurriedly pulled out a piece of parchment from the stack in front of him whilst also moving his design sketch to the side, next to the actual weapon. Then, he thought for a moment before grabbing a brush, dipping it in ink and drawing the core of the spell circle.He drew the symbol for 'familiar' and then drew a thin circle around it, before drawing a few other symbols around the outside. These were each of the different elements, fire, water, earth, air, light and dark. Draylen had found out from the old man that metal was limited to only draconic creatures, which meant that he currently possessed each and every possible element for a human.Since having the ability to change which element his arrows were on the fly would be very helpful due to it's versatility, Draylen had to inscribe each element onto the spell circle so that his new armament would be able to handle them properly. What if it melted in the middle of a battle because he tried to inject fire mana?Then, after an hour of painful trial and error, Draylen managed to finish the spell circle. He quickly committed both the circle and the design of the modified weapon into his mind before drawing the circle a few more times on spare low quality parchments. Then, he drew it onto a tier 8 parchment, with zero mistakes.Draylen leant back and exhaled slowly. He placed the spell scroll against his chest, just below his right collarbone before injecting black and white mana.-ZzzzzzA low pitched buzzing sound was emitted, as a black tattoo slowly formed on Draylen's skin. All though one would be able to see the patterns and symbols clearly, they would have the illusion of looking into the jaws of three demonic-looking black lions.Draylen once again sat back, stretching slightly. Whilst his physical body wasn't affected much by the spell circle drawing, it had taken a lot of effort and he felt mentally tired."One last step." He muttered.The 10 years old boy stood up and concentrated on the flow of mana in his body. He directed all of the elements into his new spell circle, whilst also imagining the modified gatling crossbow in his mind.The colours of each element lit up the dim cavern, all being emitted from the veins in Draylen's skin and also their elemental symbols which were in the spell circle. After a while, he stopped sending mana to the spell circle.-PoofDifferent colours crawled from the spell circle through his veins and into the area under both of his wrists. In a flash of multicoloured light, three small barrels attached to his arms appeared under either wrist. Now he had wrist blades on top and crossbows on the bottom, somewhat completing his arsenal.Draylen nodded in content and grinned widely, before rushing towards the cave's door and leaving behind a mess of parchment and a pot of ink....Draylen crept across the large tree's thick branches, stalking his prey. He was hunting a common Giant Forest Boar, which he could take down easily but only if he hit it's weak points. The reason why he wanted to face the boar was to find out the gatling crossbow's penetrative power.'Hmmn, I also need to give this weapon a new name as gatling crossbow doesn't suit it anymore.'He silently raised his right arm, before taking aim at the defenceless beast. A dim red light formed within the middle barrel, resembling a small flame.-Pew!A streak of red flashed brightly as it left the barrel, moving at speeds several times that of an ordinary bow. It brushed past the panicked boar and flew into the nearby bushes. The nearby foliage caught fire quickly, causing several resting beasts to run or fly out of their burning homes."Tch, I missed."Draylen quickly injected more mana, this time raising his other arm as well.-Pew! pew! pew! pew! pew! pew!6 streaks of red light shot towards the boar which surrounded in a ring of flames, with only three actually hitting home. Nevertheless, the boar squealed as it's entire body was lit up into roaring flames, quickly becoming a pile of black ash.Draylen nodded in satisfaction, not at his skills but at the destructive power of his weapon. Since he didn't fire physical arrows, but instead condensed mana, physical defences like plain armour or in this case, hide couldn't stop his flaming attack.The flames would just spread right across and roast it's target alive.'I definitely need to practice shooting more.' He thought, as he injected water mana into his new familiar armament.In no time, the fire was put out, by Draylen's constant stream of water which came from his weapon. He then brought the wrist mounted crossbows to his face and gazed over them affectionately.'Since Barong in mythology was the spirit king, I'll call this weapon the Spirit Shooter and use it to get revenge on the Fallen.' The boy silently prayed to the Barong's deceased family.'Watch us as we slaughter your enemies.' He thought cruelly.At this moment, the 10 year old child seemed to be replaced by a cold and calculative personality, which would stop at nothing for revenge but he quickly returned to normal.'Whilst Charcoal's Black Dragon Claws are strong, their range is too small. These Spirit Shooters will definitely be my main form of combat from now on.''Ah, I wish that these two would grow quickly. Charcoal takes up 20 mana capacity whilst Barong takes up 10, I don't have enough mana to contract a third familiar. Hurry up and get stronger you two!' He lamented silently.Draylen felt Charcoal and Barong comforting him through their spiritual link, telling him something along the lines of 'Don't worry master, with our cultivation speeds, we'll shatter the heavens!'He leaped down from his tree and began walking off the path. Although the Deepwood Pact protected him, with Charcoal and Barong's higher bloodlines and steadily growing strength, no monster dared provoke him.'Speaking of which, I wonder how Aria is doing, I haven't seen her in a few months now.'Draylen shook his head, kicking out the elegant dragon girl's image and shifting his mind onto training and practice....-Pew!Black flash whizzed past, slamming deep into the Golden Ram's rear end, causing it to cry out in pain. However, just as it was about to confront it's attacker, a black substance which was now circulating throughout it's bloodstream began to corrode at it's flesh, dissolving it from the inside out.Draylen stood up from behind a bush and nodded in satisfaction. He had finally perfected his aim after a couple of hours of practice. Whilst it would take someone else his age a significantly longer time to master, Draylen's Spirit Shooter relied on mana control more than technique and Draylen's mana manipulation was already at an impressive level.Now, he could accurately hit a target from several hundreds of metres away, as long as he could see them. Whilst Draylen was certainly a rookie when it came to combat, whenever he hunted strange instincts kicked in, making him feel as if he had been using the weapon for tens, even hundreds of years.The young boy now had new goals in life.-Find out who I really am-Kill every Fallen on the continent, if not the entire world-Reach the peak of all Dragon Summoners-Get a really nice wife in the future'Oh wait, not that last one.' He quickly thought, correcting himself.Draylen blushed slightly, before coughing in embarrassment. Although there was only him and a pile of black mush on the floor, he still felt that it was wrong to think of such things at his age."Maybe I'll go find some stronger prey today."And with that, Draylen disappeared into the depths of the Deepwood forest....Meanwhile, in a dark room somewhere in the Auria empire..."Very fascinating. I've found several potential saplings worth growing, his highness will definitely be eager to learn of them!" An old man chuckled.An attendant approached from the side, bowing respectfully."Master Eisen."'Eisen' turned to look at the attendant for a moment, before returning to his crystal ball."Take one of our finest Hell birds and ride with haste to the emperor's palace. Inform him that I'd like to hold an imperial gathering as soon as possible.""Yes, master."When the attendant left, Eisen then fondled the tip of his staff gently."I hope that his majesty will give me a pay raise!"
