Arriving in his room, he didn’t instantly start training because he was curious about the different items he got. Although he was worried about checking Jin at this moment. His power to disrupt lightning mana even in Storm is worrisome. If Arashi had stayed a lightning sword, it might have even caused a lot of trouble as well.
Of course, there wasn’t a lot to see that was unique besides the hammers he had and the crystal orb.
He took it out and together, the four channeled mana together and opened a gateway in the air and went in.
When they appeared, they actually found the portal on this side had a small archway and right in front was a small round altar.
They spread out but the islands were actually much smaller than they expected. It was around 100 meters in diameter and soon Jin came over frowning and jumped back into Logan.
The reason was easy to understand, there was next to no mana in this place and they all felt uncomfortable because of it.
Finally they gathered at the small altar and Logan kneeled down to look on the sides. There were a lot of magic rune engravings forming what seemed to be a magical matrix of some sort in the altar but he knew nothing of what it meant so he looked at the flat top and found a readable message written in basic magic runes.
“To this altar, sacrifice the forces of nature and the blessing of the world will fall upon the land.”
“Blessing of the world?” he muttered.
He looked at Storm who shrugged.
“Master, what about mana?” Jade suddenly asked.
“Why do you say that?” He asked.
“Because it feels like my body is trying to break apart.” She said with a clearly uncomfortable expression. Her body was quite stable and that is why she no longer had to fear but she was feeling an active force on her body making her worried.
He thought for a moment and took out the items. One was the mana stone from a monster and the other was a bar of gold.
He put the stone on the altar and instantly the altar began to shine as the stone glowed and suddenly erupted as the bonds of matter broke and the entire mana stone converted into mana and instantly spread down and began to dilute into the area.
That tiny bit could not even fill a single percent.
Logan smiled and patted her head before putting the gold bar and as you would expect from 10,000 gold coins, the reaction was much more intense as the gold bar began to split and break into lower divisions until all the coins formed in the air before breaking down into mana and instantly getting released.
The mist of mana sprinkled down and seemed to be absorbed by the earth and little remained in the air.
“Master, i feel that the mana is being absorbed by the earth itself as if it is lacking a great deal of energy.” Storm said.
“Yeah i can feel it after that.” Logan replied.
The entire piece of land was covered in grass but the earth was hard like a rock, it was clear that either the grass was magical or the result of the creation of this or just some hardy weeds.
Logan took out ten gold bars and put it down and the process repeated but with an even greater effect and finally they felt the world shake a bit as the mana spread down and finally they felt a change.
Before everything finally entered, the earth seemed to become saturated and the hardness of the earth instantly softened quite a bit.
The remains hit the floor before diluting into the air itself no longer being absorbed.
Logan thought for a while, “Stay here.” he said as he activated a skill he had been developing for a while and this included during the time he was training his mana channels.
Wind began to gather and like bolts of lightning, a long root spread to the top of the spinning wind and spread roots down before they became tiny veins before it returned.
After the system formed, the magical channels vanished and formed a pair of green mana wings, Logan finished activating Wind Wings which had upgraded thanks to his training.
He swung down and his body took to the air and he flew to the edge of the island and floated off before going down.
Remembering the view of the orb where it was a dry orange colored rock, he saw the present island and saw it was a dark brown rock held by a magical force and mana was slowly radiating within as he circled from below. He stopped near the bottom and used magic to identify.
“It is just normal earth, maybe it just lacked vitality is all.” he muttered. In fact the island lacked a lot of things beyond just vitality.
Still he returned up and with new nimble control that came with the full creation of the mana channels, he landed skillfully. “The island used it to produce fertility like how dungeons produce it but I can't find anything strange.” he said.
“Master, the force on my body vanished.” Jade said as she no longer had the force trying to kill her.
“So it was starved for mana. Well, we can’t really do much else about this, although i can’t read the rest, it seems this isn’t some bad thing. It seems we can gather a lot of mana in here so it is a great way to have a portable home. If we gather mana crystals and feed it here, we will always have near dungeon level concentrations.” He said.
“That would be hard to sustain constantly.” Storm said.
“Well whatever, we can build a small home here and won’t have to sleep in the wilderness anymore. Even if we are in extremely dangerous locations we can have a safe place with beds and warm food, it is a luxury few people have.” he said and laughed.
Jade joined him but Storm just sighed.
After that he basically dumped all the stored up mana crystals and they all returned to mana form. The orb slowly filled with mana and after the mana crystals he dropped 100 gold bars to finish it up. The magical pressure in the orb was almost balanced to that of outside but none of them were foolish enough to think that it matched the dungeon. Unlike the dungeon, this place needed active replenishment while the main function of the dungeon was to gather mana. There was no passive draw so there is no way to compare the two.
They eventually left after getting the pressure to something stable and healthy by channelling mana into the doorway and opening the way out.
After that he was finally forced to look for an identifier in the adventures guild and get a proper analysis of Jin.
“Amazing, this is a spirit animal?” The man said.
Logan nodded and didn’t hide that he used the battle beast command to help close a lot of the leaks making it much easier to develop.
“What did you need exactly?” he asked.
“Well first off is that strange ring and the drum and second is the hammers that I was lucky enough to draw from a silver chest. All I could identify was the name which is a Spirit hammer.” he said
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“So those aren’t part of it. The hammers are easy enough to explain, they are a unique breed of magic items formed by nature itself. Normally they do not possess form but when a spirit actually achieves a physical form, such spiritual bodies are drawn to them. If it is lucky, an event resulting in a great deal of mana forming will occur. The ring is similar.” he said.
Logan frowned, “But the ring and drum formed naturally with his growth. He was born with the ring and the drum formed after the third cycle of mana development when it finally formed the complete mana channel system.” He explained.
“Oh?! Naturally?!” he said and took out some glasses and began to use higher level magic and examined Jin.
After a bit he gasped, “This! This breed is amazing! Your spirit animal, a Lion Spirit the specific race it is evolving to, is a genie!” he shouted.
“Genie? Like the genie of the lamp?” he asked.
“That is the most famous, yes. Those are some extremely powerful spirits who willingly serve and trap themselves within a vessel for who knows how many years and after that time period or a specific number of people served, it is set free with so much supernatural power that it is rivaled by few. Of course, the world doesn’t tell me exactly. It is shifting between a Genie, a Majin and a normal Jin.” he said.
“Huh?” Logan muttered.
“Majin is another name for a demon spirit, a Jin is another name for nature spirit. We don’t really understand a lot and the classification in Nuntip isn’t greatly developed. You are likely to learn a great deal more about spiritual life forms in continents like Juntip or Elrukia. These continents are simply more spiritual than Nuntip.” he said.
“Alright… So what is the ring and drum?” he asked.
“Well, in a sense, they are like extremities similar to our limbs. Although his mana channels don’t appear mid air, there is a magical connection and the ring does have mana channels. He knows of them but can’t develop them because he doesn’t know the system for it. Very likely, the lack of control you say he has where just regular drumming causes lightning mana and electrical energy to discharge erratically is a result of his drum not being properly developed. Most magic weapons fail to work as designed because of that and many are even considered failures because of it, sold to the public purly to regain their invested material cost. You should look into this unique form of body extension, there is likely to be similar creatures. After all, he isn’t the only one in existence even if nuntip doesn’t have many manifested spirits, that doesn’t have any.” He said.
“What kind of people train with spirits?” He asked.
“Well shaman form contracts and channel mana through nature spirits like mediums and can have them house element specific materials so that they are capable of leaving their points of origins which they normally cannot. Others would be a branch of tamers and trainers called the Spirit tamer and the Spirit rearer. They can tame spirits and form contracts and help them manifest but only when under contract. The death of the master will release the contract and the spirit will be returned to its home in safety and can reveal the death of the owner and who or what it was. Mages can sometimes utilize spirits to enhance magical effects, in this case mages also form manifestations of spirits in the form of elementals.” He said.
Logan instantly thought of Olivia.
“Alright, I finally get the problem with my spirit animal. Thank you for the help.” Logan said and paid the fees before going to the mage tower and asking about books on genies, majin and jin spirits.
“What exactly do you need?” the receptionist asked.
Logan summoned Jin, “I need to learn the mana channel system of spirits similar to him who have this ring object that he is born with.” he said.
The identifier had made both a referral and page of analysis that he could turn in to help narrow the search gap so he gave it to the man and he looked through it and began to work on the monitors.
Soon, a shocking book came down. It was massive to say the least and stopped on a table. “That is the book of spirits. The book is massive because many spirits are unique even if they are the same element or type. The specific thing you are looking for should start appearing around page 700 give or take a few dozen.” he said.
Logan knew that he obviously couldn’t take the book like others. He paid a rental fee to read it here and quickly opened the page to 700 and went looking around. He finally found it on the 900th page.
“Let’s see… spirit elemental rings. It is a rare ring that is manifested with spirits of extremely high affinity towards any particular element. As they develop, they spawn drums upon which the spirit can control his element and even disrupt enemies of the same element. The most famous among them are thunder drums as they resound the sound of thunder and control all lightning within the sound reach.” he read out.
Jin was looking and listening curiously. They could see a figure of a human with little detail since the shape likely changes but the ring on the back. It showed the location of the magical connection where mana channels existed and soon he found the complete network. Surprisingly the ring could grow to hold as many as 9 drums each symbolizing a great increase in power. That said, the mana channel system of each drum is the exact same as each is created by the world.
This breed of spirit is not native to Nuntip and manifests naturally in Junpin. The only known lightning spirit to form 9 drums was called unbeatable and when he broke his limit, it is said that angels descended and led him to heaven where it became a god of thunder.
All similar spirits are feared and respected as earthly gods upon reaching even 6 drums.
When he finished reading, Jin’s eyes were sparkling as he discovered he was a similar creature to a being that ascended to heaven as a god.
Logan laughed before calling a mage tower employee who used special magic which copied the information of the mana channel system on a scroll and all relevant information.
When he was done, they finally closed up for good and each of the four took their own corner and began to train in earnest.
In the room to the side, Olivia was frowning greatly as she read a huge archive of rules but most of all, she was reading the top section which was a magical ritual which made every recruit loyal.
The Golden Lion was a very strict mercenary group as you would expect from their origins as a Knight’s order. The leaders never drop the rules and just revise them to make them fit with all the most general rules of the continent while imposing their own.
The magic ritual came in many stages and these stages were represented by their positioning.
The rule book was broken into many segments and as it went up the higher the penalties and to even become the leader even she had to do a special ritual among those making her completely loyal to not reveal any secrets and so on.
Each level is matched up to a rank of strength. A disciple who reached the peak of F rank would get a promotion but at the same time would undergo a new ritual for E rank before obtaining that rank of development skill.
It went all the way to the grandmaster even. Another thing is that they can’t recruit or form it without the leader doing the ritual. Finally, the previous leader and the new one had to go to an adventurers guild together to pass along the ownership of the group’s name to the new leader or it would be considered a violation of adventurer guild regulations to have the same name as an existing mercenary group.
It was a huge number of rules and it hurt her head to read it all but she had to do it.
She sighed and together with Logan she closed up to train her elementals and the goblin as well as herself but her close up was closer to what Logan did when he arrived. He had to train extensively the sword arts to comprehend their mysteries to the point of forming the dawn’s horizon and rising sun.
Lastly was getting Hydra to catch up to her strength so she had to put even more effort because her initial strength was already higher and she had to dial the power back to develop it safely.
A curiosity between Hydra and Arashi is that Hydra did not eat mana or elemental forces. He slowly generated that himself over time as he absorbed mana in the air and distributed it into the forces.
This difference was caused by Arashi’s original requirement and habit of eating lightning which later extended to wind mana. Although she did generate mana of all types but the two swords were unique from each other which proved the point that no two beings of the same race were the same and each had their own peculiarities.
As the two close up, the world did not feel the lack of them but unconsciously, the memories lost in time by the golden lions began to periodically appear in conversation of higher level beings with knowledge. This fell on the ears of the servants who spoke of their master’s conversations of what was once a powerful knight's order and slowly the legend that had slept for nearly 800 years began to awaken from slumber.
At the same time, the demons began to finally put their first plans into motion as they performed rituals on the next generation awakening their demon bloodline to enhance their strength, magical power and talent to a higher peak that all pure demons possessed and making them even more compatible with demon swords, the original legend swords on the mortal plain.
The young demon prince and all the future generals had their first bloodline awakening ritual and under the guidance of their masters, they began to learn magic and to awaken more of their bloodline and eventually flush human and other racial genes from their bodies to become the great demons of the past.
Each of them gained their own demon swords, each allied a demon general sword and the legend of each connected to the legend of the demon lord.
Unlike the prince, these were heavily brainwashed from a young age and were now the prince's direct subordinates to grow and train together.
However, within a short time, they all started to feel confused, no different from the prince when his sword was born and the legend formed. The legend of the generals was a part of the legend of the demon lord just as the legend of the golden lion knights was a union of legends formed by the collective effort of many powerful, loyal and effort they placed in the past.
The young generals were confused and asked their young leader if he understood the strange legend that did not match their origin story.
He smiled and called them to his room and held his sword in hand, “I do understand, the quiet whispers among our people spread the legend was reborn. That said, I only know a little more than you but I can see the origins of our people.” he said and ran his hand on the sword, “Cast from heaven was not just our demon race, all demon beasts and demons we know today were cast from heaven. At the start, we were known as the Prana race.”