I Reincarnated As A Stick

Chapter 152: Devourer of the Living

XXXX Continent, Seraph Kingdom, Arcana Tower.

Dane had an aura of seriousness radiating about him as he looked at Erea, his student, with a gaze also filled with seriousness. He then opened his mouth to ask her, “Would you like to join Vanadir’s faction in the fight for the throne?”

“Eh?” A few seconds of silence ensued between the two of them, before Erea let out a tiny sound of confusion as she cleaned her ears with her fingers. She then looked at her teacher not long after and asked, “Was I hearing your question incorrectly, teacher? Could you repeat the question one more time?”

Fortunately, Dane did not take offense to Erea’s request, since it was quite a surprising favor to get in full honesty. He then cleared his throat and said the question one more time. “Erea, would you like to join Prince Vanadir Seraph, the Ninth Prince of Seraph Kingdom, in his fight for the throne?”

“I didn’t hear wrongly,” Erea could not help but mutter in disbelief, still processing the fact that her teacher was actually requesting a favor from her, quite an extravagant favor at that. She then pondered over Dane’s question in silence for a few minutes and then asked him, “But why me, teacher?”

“Err…” Dane scratched his head as he lightly chuckled in an awkward manner. A few seconds later, he replied to her question, saying, “Well…as his advisor and helper, it wouldn’t make sense if the advisor’s student doesn’t help the prince in the fight for the throne, right?”

Hearing the words that came out of her teacher’s mouth, Erea could not help but feel like those words were forced, as if it was meant to coerce her into accepting his favor. Not only that, she also felt like what he said was more or less a blatant lie. With those thoughts in mind, she could not help but look at her teacher with quite a serious gaze and ask, “Is that really the case, teacher?”

“Hahaha, yeah…it definitely is…” Dane lightly chuckled in awkward manner, with silence enveloping the two of them not long after. Eventually, the silence between the two became incredibly deafening, leaving Dane with no choice but to let out a sigh as he replied with a light smile, “Fine, fine. I’ll admit to it.”

“Although I’m a Rank 4 High Mage of this tower, I’m not a pretty social guy,” Dane said. “So, when the Ninth Prince tasked me to build a team that had class ranks around the same level as him, I was more or less forced to consider you as part of his team. I hope you can understand.”

“Of course I do, teacher,” Erea answered back, adding not long after, “I would also like to apologize if my question hurt your feelings.”

“Not at all, not at all,” Dane replied with a light smile. He then continued, “To be honest, I should’ve been honest in the first place.”

“Anyways, would you help me out this time? I would answer anything you ask me in exchange, no limits whatsoever,” Dane asked one more time, adding on a reward at the end of it, like some sort of carrot on a stick.

“Although I would like to help you out teacher, I would have to decline.” Erea let out a sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to join. To be honest, I really do. It’s just that I could not help but fear that I would become a burden to the Ninth Prince’s team, acting as the weakest link which would lead to the team’s demise.”

“Why are you thinking about that? You don’t even know what you’re participating in.” Dane could not help but frown after hearing his student’s reasoning. “The fight for the throne consists of multiple rounds, and I can tell you with certainty that you won’t become a burden in almost every round it consists of.”

“But what if I…” Just as Erea was about to give another reason, Dane interrupted her from continuing her words, saying in exchange, “Trust me on this one. The fight for the throne doesn’t start until about a month from now, which is more or less enough time for you to transition to a Rank 3 class. Now, will you be a burden by then?”

Hearing her teacher’s words, Erea was left with no choice but to sigh, looking at her teacher and saying, “Alright then, teacher. If it is as you say…”

“I’ll join Prince Vanadir’s team in the fight for the throne.”

…

XXXX Continent, Tempest Cliff, Tempest Branch Alliance, Tower of Seclusion.

Whoosh! Fwoosh!

About half a minute has passed since Aurus left the room where Fenrir and Charisa was, teleporting here and there through the multiple floors that constituted the Tower of Seclusion, eventually finding the room that he was looking for after another minute or so.

Whoosh!

He closed the door behind him as he entered the room that had a dummy that could gauge the damage he would output. But then, just as he was expecting a training dummy that had the appearance of a scarecrow, instead, a long stone pole appeared in front of his field of vision, slightly surprising him in the process.

Seeing the stone pole in front of his field of vision, he could not help but recall back to the time when he was about to evolve to S-grade Inanimate, and how he tested the strength of his offensive skills back then. At that point, he then vividly remembered the fact that it wasn’t a training dummy that he was hitting to gauge damage, it was actually a long stone pole, just like the one in front of him right now.

Since that was the case, he decided to just get on with testing the damage output of his skills. Of course, he was going to first test out the skill, well…his offensive and reconnaissance trump card, that he made a while ago.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Due to being used to it already, eight soul vessels had formed in front of Aurus, not even taking a second to form. With a negligible level of burden affecting his mind rather than a severe level, he was able to command these eight soul vessels in front of him independently like a commander commanding his soldiers, moving the eight soul vessels in a circular pattern around the stone pole.

Just as he was looking at how the eight soul vessels were positioned, he could not help but notice their appearance as he muttered to himself, “Since this trump card is going to be used more as reconnaissance, rather than a sneak attack, wouldn’t it be better to hide them from being seen by others?”

After thinking about it for a while, he could not help but call himself an idiot for not thinking about it earlier. Fortunately, the skill that controlled the soul vessel did not just focus on manipulation and seeing using the soul, but also focused on suppressing the presence of the soul. With that activated, the eight soul vessels surrounding the stone pole had seemingly vanished into thin air, as if they weren’t there in the first place.

But thanks to the connection Aurus had with the soul vessels since those vessels were ultimately a part of his soul, he knew for a fact that they were there, molding them into small yet sharp swords not long after.

With the eight soul swords pointing their tips towards the stone pole, a thought popped up in his mind, prompting him to ask himself, “What name should this attack have?”

“Since there are eight soul vessels, which have transformed into swords, aiming at the same enemy…hmm…yeah, I guess that’s the optimal name for it.”

“[Soul Blade Octagon]!”

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

As he muttered this name, he then controlled the eight soul blades to attack the stone pole one by one, making sure that they were hitting the same area. Surprisingly, as the next blade hit the same area, a soft roar gradually became louder in volume, with the final blade resounding quite a loud roar at the very end.

After the final blade hit the area where the previous seven blades hit, the final blade dissipated into intangible threads as they made their way back to Aurus in a matter of milliseconds. These intangible threads were a part of his soul, which he retrieved since it would be stupid to not retrieve.

Ding!

A few seconds later, a holographic screen appeared a decent distance away from the long stone pole, allowing him to look at the damage he had dealt with the attack. Of course, he could see the damage he dealt through his system, but due to his current firepower, the numbers that he got from the system was just too high that he decided to ignore it instead.

‘Damage dealt: 12.537 points’

“Hmm…” Aurus could not help but try to recall the meaning of these points, recalling the memory of the first time he used this stone pole. Eventually, he was able to recall the meaning of the points, muttering to himself, “If I could remember correctly, a point of damage on the stone pole is equivalent to a thousand points of damage dealt to an Inanimate. In other words, I was able to deal around 12 thousand points of damage with that trump card. As an offensive trump card, it’s pretty average, but since it’s a stealth attack that’s meant to surprise rather than kill, it’s definitely more than enough.”

After that, he tested out the strongest spellsword in the [Nine Realms’ Myriad Spellswords] skill, also known as the Sword of Treachery. Thanks to the skill fusing with his Spell Core skill that leaned towards the element of Wind, the speed at which the spellsword flew towards the stone pole was more or less an instant for Inanimates.

Bang!

Not long after, a loud explosion sound resounded throughout the room, with a shockwave shaking the room not long after. While the shockwave was shaking the whole room, Aurus could not help but say, “Just with this spellsword alone, it has brought about a pretty destructive effect. I wonder how destructive it would be if it was a fusion of spellswords, or better yet, an ultimate move from the skill?”

Ding!

A few seconds later after the spellsword collided with the long stone pole, a holographic screen appeared in front of the stone pole, allowing Aurus to see the damage he dealt. This time though, he could not help but have a greater opinion about the fused skill, thinking that it was very worth it to fuse the two skills together.

‘Damage dealt: 53.285 points’

“50 thousand points of damage?” Aurus could not help but mutter. “That’s basically a one hit instant kill on those X-grade Inanimates!”

A few seconds later, a thought popped up in his mind as he asked himself, “Now…what if I had [Grand Spiritas Deification] activated? Wouldn’t that increase the damage I deal from 50 points with this single sword to a few hundred points? What about a fused spellsword? And what about an ultimate move?”

Just as he was itching to test out the combination of [Grand Spiritas Deification] with the spellswords, the rational part of him stopped him from continuing any further as he muttered to himself in realization, “Ah, right. With the spellsword alone, the whole room shook quite violently. If I had that skill activated alongside the attack, then this room might’ve probably vanished off from the face of this world for good from the aftereffects alone.”

And with that, he also refrained himself from using an ultimate move from the [Nine Realms’ Myriad Spellswords] skill, knowing very well that a greater destructive effect would come about if he tried to use it in this room. Nonetheless, he was quite satisfied with his damage testing, hoping that he would not be restricted in terms of damage once the war between the alliance and Chonk’s army starts.

Whoosh!

Since he was finished with the damage testing, he teleported back to the room where Fenrir and Charisa were grinding within the time span of a minute. He appeared in front of the two of them, telling them of his results as they continued to talk for a bit more about their plans, before the two continued on with their grinding.

After talking about their plans, Aurus went towards a corner of the room as usual. This time though, he opened up the Flux Equipment fabrication screen as he decided to dedicate most of this time before the upcoming war to craft Flux Equipment for his alliance members.

Ding!

‘Would you like to craft a single piece of equipment or an equipment set?’

Since Aurus thought that the more equipment he crafted, the more alliance members would be able to tank hits, he decided to just craft equipment sets instead of single pieces of equipment. Not long after that, the screen asked him as to what type of equipment he wanted to craft, deciding to just make all of the equipment he crafted in the future to just be that of the Ignition type, adding on the specialties along the way.

Ding!

‘What name would you like the equipment set to have? Note that the name of the equipment would affect the additional effects on the crafted equipment set.’

At this point, just as he was about to tell the system that he would like the equipment set to be named ‘Killer of the Sapient’ once more, he then thought of a greater name that would fit an equipment set made with the purpose of killing Animates.

Going over the name a few times in his head, he then told the system of the new name he had in mind.

“System, I would like to name the equipment set…”

“Devourer of the Living.”