One month isn’t a long time for healing, if it were other people, even a year was too soon. Still Logan was strange because of Raitoningu.
The first week, he really didn’t do any sort of physical exercise. His entire body was still sore and he even walked with a limp for nearly four days.
During that time however, he began to talk with Raitoningu. Though it wasn’t completely talking. It was still very young like an infant but it was very active.
Logan still only was able to last more than 5 minutes talking with it each time and every time he did he would slowly try to pass along the sword art he had learned from his father.
Similar to his sister, he had learned most of his father’s legacy including his magic sword skills. He tried to pass these all to the sword’s spirit but besides the sections he learned for katanas, it wasn’t easy for it to learn other styles. Surprisingly, it was even able to learn the two handed katana style with ease.
The strange thing about it is that it was able to take all these and make very minor changes and feed the intent back to Logan and he understood each but couldn’t put into practice.
During that time, he also learned the limit of talking to it.
The five minutes he spent with it, in his mind, was nearly an hour and once he tried to talk with it right after but actually felt intense pain in his head as soon as he tried. He continued trying every half hour after that he learned that for an hour of conversation, he needed an hour of rest but if he waited exactly an hour, the next time he talked to it, the time spent was cut by half.
He later tried two hours after staying a full 5 minutes with it and found there was no pressure and he could last the entire time. This showed the limits of his mind and brain to accept this meeting for only a short time and require longer amounts of time to rest.
Figuring out the time frame, he began to work harder to make it learn the techniques that it wasn’t learning easy. He felt it was important, because to some extent, he was thinking about Weifang as well.
When thinking about Wind and Lightning magic, a special branch of magic does form and it is called Storm Magic. It sounded obvious and strange but storm magic was the combined result of merging the basic and advanced types of magic from the same magic system.
Merged magic was two branches combined for a unique magic type. Examples are earth and fire for magma, water and fire for steam, wind and earth for sand and more.
It isn’t all basic and advanced types that can do this. The reason he was thinking was because of the future. He wasn’t sure if he would merge the two katanas into a nodachi or if he would remain as a dual katana user.
As he told his father, using two katanas was a very impractical method used mostly by people with naturally abnormal strength to use the full strength of the katana with one arm. Of course, it isn’t like the katana couldn’t be used by one hand but it wasn’t as useful as using two.
Still, he pressed on and forced the little spirit to learn the basics.
After a week, he started training again. It wasn’t heavy, it was just simple things such as doing warm up stretches, low intensity jogs and simple stuff so that his body did not remain completely stopped for a full month and it also helped his sensitive nerves slowly regain feeling like normal.
This was quite effective actually because when he started, he felt a lot of pain in all his joints, bones, muscles and more. It felt like there were knots and pressure. Just his warm up stretches and workout caused a lot of his joints to pop as the pressure in them was released. His muscles warmed up and seemed to start relaxing.
During this week after feeling his muscles pains, he searched for a muscle therapist, also known as a chiropractor, who was well versed in helping relax muscles. What is amazing about the body is that as people get injured from training or fighting, muscles start to clench and feel pain. If they get too much pain, the body tries to compensate and makes other muscles compensate for the pain in that muscle to release the pain.
Muscle therapy focuses and relaxes muscles and reveals the deeper layers of pain going on in the body like peeling an onion, layer by layer. Relaxing the first ones, soon you notice the other muscles and eventually even things like joints that are off the center of the socket putting pressure and poking at nerves or muscles hidden in obscure places putting a lot of pressure and pain.
The entire body's movement range expands after finishing and it is amazing. A skilled muscle therapist is a very wealthy man because there is no shortage of people who fight, get injured, healed and still feel problems that need to be resolved because they can’t reach their physical prime again after an injury.
After the third week, his body was already feeling much better and he began to do low intensity sword training to make sure his body was not forgetting the arts. Basically, it was training the forms of the sword arts without using the flow of mana, using the mana was what pressured his body really.
He took up Raitoningu for the first time but it couldn’t learn much because of the lacking magical support but it did start to get a feeling for the forms. Along with the normal katana form, he also pulled out Weifang and used two sword form but this one had a lot of changes.
Just the use of the physical style, Raitoningu picked up a lot of good and bad habits and it didn’t hide anything during their next talk. Comparing what it learned and what it felt, it showed a great deal of problems in the form. Of course, he calmed it down until after he used magic.
Again, somethings that might seem wrong with just the body, felt better when magic was used.
The final week he finally started using weak infusions of magic to test the waters until the end of the week.
Finally Maxwell called him. He had been jogging while most of the month, his foster father had been working hard with many annoying high ranking avians that have been appearing. A flock had likely settled on one of the islands near their own and it required them to explore and kill the leader to break the flock or else it would turn into a pain later.
That said, that didn’t stop him from coming home.
What was surprising was both of Logan’s swords in front of him and Raitoningu was drawn out. It might seem simple but taking the sword wasn’t hard if you had creativity. A rubber glove was basically all it needed if he wanted to just draw it and put it down but this made Logan worried.
He sat down in front of his foster father who was silent.
The massive hand covered in a glove carefully lifted the restored blade. Small shocks tried to attack his hand but it couldn’t surpass it.
“Never in my life did I think I would actually be living alongside a Legend blade. Much less that my own son would give birth to one.” He said.
“Sorry I didn’t say anything… I'm not allowed to unless someone figures it out themselves.” He said.
"I know, I've heard about this from a precious friend at his death bed. He also had one when I met him in my early years but the sword was stolen and he had been poisoned. He was dying so he told me to retrieve it for him. Sadly, to this day, I never found the bastard. That is how I learned about this magnificent breed of swords but even as a B rank mercenary I was never able to come in contact with an uncontracted one.” he said.
“Did you never think of making it? The legend behind this one is pretty simple, it is a sword that slaying a thunder dragon and was reforged with it’s bones and survived a bolt of lightning. That is it’s basic legend. There are longer, more costly methods as well.” Logan said.
He lifted Weifang and began to tell his father about Elas who was also a great physician. He told him about the process of giving birth after the spirit had been born and the ‘quickest’ requirements for Weifang to actually give birth to a spirit.
“Do you mean to say that even Weifang can become a Legend sword simply like that?!” he said, shocked.
“Simply… to be used to kill a wind dragon and reforge with it’s bones, being placed at the central node of a wind mana well, do either of these sound easy?!” Logan exclaimed. “Every corpse has to be obtained with the weapon, there is no way I can do that with this and having other people use the sword would make it more likely to bind to that person than me.” He said.
Hearing his words, Maxwell nodded but he smiled, “The Wind mana well node isn’t actually that hard to find. One of the reasons our southern enemy, Shiarus, hates Eshen is because it has no access to the ocean. The mountain range from easter Eshen also extends south from it’s eastern edge completely circling around Shiarus and it is inaccessible from that side but we can reach beyond by the sea. That area however is a massive expanse of desert.” He said.
“What does that have to do with wind mana?” He asked.
“Deserts are one of the areas with greatest wind mana, the problem is finding nodes in that massive expanse while dealing with the heat and hunger.” he said.
“Yeah and all the freakish monsters hidden under the sand like Land Wyrm.” Logan said, rolling his eyes.
A wyrm is a worm or snake with dragon blood. It is a very powerful type of dragon while land wyrms, those found in the desert, are immense in size but what they have in mass and power they lack in intelligence.
“The desert has several known mana nodes however.” Maxwell said.
“Yeah but Elas said I need the central node.” Logan replied. “Aren’t there other famous wind based environments?” Logan asked.
“A lot, you can try the sky islands if you like. Not sure how an F rank will get to them though.” Maxwell said
Logan groaned upon hearing about the famous sky islands.
It isn’t as simple as a floating rock, the term ‘sky islands’ refers not to the random ones floating around but to the floating continent where great creatures live. No human settlements beyond the borders have penetrated deeply even to this day.
“Alright, we can think of this another time, it’s been a month so let’s get to kicking your ass.” He said and gave Raitoningu to Logan who sheathed both swords.
Maxwell didn’t instantly start though because he had to let Logan channel his mana to see if he was in good condition to release his full strength.
What really surprised both as he was slowly strengthening his mana to channel at full strength the amount. It didn’t have to be said that despite being a magical talent, his actual capacity was pretty small to start out but it was like it had been inflated and as he reached the most stable level, he opened his eyes and looked at his hands.
“Wow, Elas must have known this would happen.” he said.
“Your body and magic both got a lot stronger. Let’s see how strong you got.” Maxwell said serious.
Pulling the two swords he calmed down and began to channel like he had learned from his father and his father took out a wooden training nodachi and coated it in mana to survive against a legend sword.
Like that the two rushed at each other with just their body and no magical enhancement yet.
Logan felt an instant change as his speed was much higher then he was used to and he got caught in a lot of awkward moments as he moved much further than he planned. Speed, strength and overall power was higher but he made many rookie mistakes because the change was just too huge but with his father kicking his ass he was forced to quickly adapt until he slowly understood each facet of his body until he finally changed from defensive to offensive and began to attack much more skillfully.
It should be said that F rank is already beyond normal human limits while his power without using either of his innate skills was clearly E rank already.
With his mana moving and using his two sword style he fought for nearly half an hour until he jumped back and finally sheath Weifang causing his father to stop.
“Giving up?” his father asked.
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“No, I am just showing Raitoningu all my sword form in it’s full strength. It seems to have innate talent and is making a lot of tiny changes it could catch off the top of it’s head but now it will likely do a lot more because of feeling it for herself.” He said.
Maxwell smiled and Logan rushed while holding it with two hands and his style instantly changed and became much sharper and the speed increased without having to manage two swords.
After another half hour, he finally began to activate the lightning accelerator causing his brain and heart to move faster and his speed continued to rise but he felt the strain so he finally activated Lightning Clad.
Jumping back and carefully pulling lightning while cladding his entire body in lightning, he instantly felt a rush.
From his arteries and veins to his muscles, skin and even bones he felt the power of lightning infuse into the mana filling his body. The two innate skills blended as his entire body filled with lightning but he didn’t activate the limit of his power, he used the lowest output required to clad his body.
“This is…” Maxwell said, surprised.
“This is Raitoningu’s innate skill, Lightning Clad. It covers every missing part that Lightning Accelerator doesn’t affect and now my entire body is being charged.” He said.
“You are turning into the embodiment of lightning, kid.” He laughed and grew serious. His mana powered up and he began to get a little serious.
Logan bent his feet and instantly accelerated but as expected, he had just grown accustomed to his normal speed, as soon as he accelerated, he passed Maxwell and struck the wall and the clad came off.
“Ah!” he said, dropping the sword and holding his face, “What is with that speed?” He groaned as he rubbed his face that was in a lot of pain.
Maxwell looked at the boy but looked at the spot he launched from and saw the faint marks left.
“This kid is going to be a real force to be reckoned with but I feel like I have to do something about the idea of Weifang. Knowing that legend swords can be merged, I feel that it is important for him to reforge them together but it needs to be a legend sword first.” he turned to Logan, “Hey kid, tell me exactly what the elf said about the materials for the slow creation?”
“Huh? The slow method… 100 E rank wind element monster corpses, 10 D rank wind monster blood and a high quality wind mana crystal. If you want a higher quality quickly, 1 C rank wind element monster corpse and another C rank for the blood and high quality wind mana crystal. The last option is a B rank wind dragon bone.” he said.
“Did he explicitly say that you had to kill the monsters?” He asked.
Logan froze upon hearing this and blinked before frowning thinking hard. "I think only the dragon one because that would match Raitoningu like twin swords with the same legend.” he said.
Maxwell grinned, “Good, I knew something felt wrong when you said you needed to hunt everything, that didn’t feel right. The corpses didn’t matter who killed it, it was just material to make a high quality magic sword. He wants to upgrade the low quality magical core of the sword likely. What comes after is likely different.” he said and laughed.
“Are you thinking of something?” Logan asked.
“Naturally, how many avians do you think I've been killing over the last month?” he said.
Instantly Logan realized what he meant and his jaw dropped. He turned and went into his room and tossed an old looking pouch but he could feel mana from it, he felt the interior and was shocked by the amount of corpses he had gathered.
“Why do you have so many E and D rank monsters?” He asked.
“The island can’t easily consume all this, that pouch slows down rot so I usually sell them at the adventurers guild every two month's.” He said.
Logan rolled his eyes and put down the pouch and went to his room and returned with a tiny chest. Opening it and channelling mana through it, it began to form a suction, he tipped the bag while releasing everything and all the corpses into the box.
“Huh? Is that an inventory box?” Maxwell asked.
“Yeah, Elas gave it to me and it can freeze time so corpses are always fresh. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to find a smith to forge the swords.” He said.
He then looked at his father for a while, “Are you going to reforge your own sword?” he asked.
"I handed it to your sister, I'm retired already.” He said.
“Then do you want to call sister? Since we are doing this, we might as well aim for a famous family, children raised by the great Maxwell McEwan.” he said.
Maxwell looked at him and suddenly felt like that was a great honor having two children with legend swords. Even more, his own sword was already quite famous due to his own work. It was possible that it was far better compared to Weifang that will need many more forging processes to finally form a spirit.
With that in mind, he took Logan to the adventurers guild and tried to get in contact with the girl. With luck, she wasn’t out into the wild and was within eastern Eshen so they called her to the city Elas was staying in. Maxwell went and prepared high quality magic creature corpses, even buying entire bodies just to store it fresh and headed to the city.
***
Elas look with a smile as he saw Logan. "I knew you would have returned and that you wouldn’t be able to hide it from your father.” He said.
“It is my honor to meet you sir.” Maxwell said uncharacteristically.
“No need for the formalities. From the fact that you brought your other foster child, I assume you wish for your famed sword, Dahai Lieren, that this child inherited to possibly be reforged into a Legend sword?” he asked.
"I am retired but everyone wishes to see their legacy grow and flourish. My son said that as long as Weifang is a legend sword, it can be merged and reforged into a nodachi fitting perfectly into my legacy. As for my daughter, she is the full inheritor of my art.” He said.
“You are not the first I have met who desired such. You also have a very good eye for talent and picked the correct child to learn your full legacy.” He said and waved for Olivia, who had been filled in by Maxwell, who was also restricted by the laws of the world but showing Raitoningu and talking about the hero and demon lord, she eventually got the hints and figured it out herself that the sword was a legend sword.
When she did they could finally explain in detail.
She walked up and presented the Nodachi unsheathed.
Elas looked at it and smiled before taking it and admiring the beauty. It had been repaired and it even had very tiny scars and he saw everything but the masters who fixed it were all Junpin continent masters. Maxwell never allowed the masters of Nunpin to touch his sword when it needed repairs, even if it cost him a lot to go to that continent to repair it.
“It has undergone a number of repairs but also improvement. You had a magic smith reforge quite a number of your best hunts into this. The ‘Great Sea Hunter’ that it’s name mentions isn’t even the true name anymore considering all the creatures forged into this.” He said.
“It is true. I have only allowed it into the hands of true master swordsmiths of Junpin when repairing and reforging it. I have already reforged it 76 times, improving it from a normal master work Nodachi into a Magic sword without elemental restriction. The last few hunts I went on were for the materials of every element that made it have affinity for all elements.” He said.
“Yes, it is very skillful forging but there are conflicts in some areas.” He said.
Maxwell groaned and he knew what it was. Some of the material didn’t fully blend and had been the cause of the tiny scars.
Suddenly Elas’s finger lightly shined and he ran his finger along the blade and suddenly a beautiful hum resonated from the sword.
“This beautiful sword can already become a Legend sword. That said…” he said and looked at the two who have used it.
“Let me see the back of your hands.” He said.
The two looked at one another and they put their hands out and he smiled. “It seems it recognizes both of you as candidates to use it. It would seem the legend of the sword is also tied heavily to the legacy of your sword art. You are truly lucky as the legend will grow with the power and prestige of your sword art. This will be a powerful sword but it can also fall into disuse easily as it would recognize only those who know your sword art.” Elas said.
“Is that true!?” Maxwell said excitedly. He never expected his hard work to have benefited his legacy to the point that it would engrave his sword art into legend. That said, he smiled at his daughter, “Make her the one to carry the sword. I am already old and cannot take the sword far.” He said.
The old man admired this man for giving up the chance for the next generation.
“Alright.” he said and called her. A strange mark on her hand had appeared. Logan asked when she got it. She had said that in her first adventurer to kill those demons she had to fight a serious fight and came out bloodied and after she healed, that was the only scar left.
Elas passed his finger over it and like the scar Logan had, it began to glow and formed a magic circle and greatly changed.
He then looked at Logan, "I assume your father already had all the materials?” He asked.
“Yeah, there are many E and D rank monsters to work with.” Logan said.
“Good, I can do several reforgings at once then if the amount is high enough. That said, each reforging requires a high quality wind mana stone. The mana is incredibly important because this mana becomes the sword’s spirit.” Elas said.
Maxwell knew of this naturally and he reached into a special pouch on his side and took out ten wind and ten pure mana high quality crystals.
"I had to tap into a bit of funds to get a lot of these but this is for their future.” he said.
Elas smiled, “Just remembered that they will both be out of commission for a month. This includes Logan again.” he said.
“Huh?! Again?!” Maxwell said.
Logan smiled weakly and began to explain the true relationship and how it affects the user. The destruction leading to their demise and the process of forging actually affecting the body of the current user of the sword.
He was shocked by this but suddenly something clicked, “No wonder your strength suddenly jumped to E rank even without the lightning clad!” He said and looked at Elas, “That is a sneaky way to train the users of the swords. The more times they gather and reforge the swords, the more their own bodies are forged.” he said.
Elas smiled, “This is only good for those creating the swords. People following in their footsteps will not get such a cursed blessing.” he said and finally called them into the building.
Elas spent several minutes casting healing magic on Olivia before finally throwing the sword into the flame and like Logan, she felt the pain of the reforging process no different from his own but she faced much more pain. Every element was present and every element attacked and was forced back into the swords metal and into her body.
It tore her apart and he built her back while the pure mana crystal filled the sword and supplied mana to the elemental mana increasing each amount as they each consumed the pure mana in a balanced manner.
When the sword was finally dunked into a tank of pure magic oil all the forces rippled through the oil until it calmed down and he drew the blade out.
The scars, the imperfections and impurities in the blade was washed out, a perfect white blade with a perfect curve but a magical presence unlike any other.
He carefully put the hilt and sheath back upon it. Each of which was forged of the hide of every creature he had forged the sword with.
“And so it is done. Child, during this process, you likely heard a new name for the sword different from its original. This is the name given by the world. Your father will take you upstairs, you meditate and call the name. It will allow you to meet the spirit of your sword. Do not delay this as it is important to form the bond.” He said.
Just like him, she was in a daze but Maxwell carefully took her up with the sword and let her wake up while Elas took the inventory box and began to take monsters out.
“Elas, if I ask the swords, even if they don’t absorb the weaker monster’s blood, would they still help draw out the blood from creatures? Raito previously did that and it made for a great market to sell monster meat.” he asked.
“Yes, if it does not need it but you ask, it can easily draw blood from the entire body.” He said and used some magic to actually rip the blood from the wounds and put them inside the quenching tank where he added the required magic oil and took the needed number of monster blood and blended it carefully.
Then he took E rank corpses and threw them into the forge and began to use magic and slowly began to process all their materials.
All of them were avians and wind type monsters. Their feathers gathered, then the minerals in the muscles, organs and bones eventually all gathered into orbs of material and remained in the magical fires.
He went to Weifang and removed the hilt and guard before putting the blade into the flame. Lastly he tossed a high quality wind mana crystal.
With his control, the mana rushed out and circled the blade followed by the flames that split the core and the body.
All the bone matter rushed into the core and began infusing deep into the core but this increased the size. The same happened to all the rest but after it turned white hot, he pulled it out. The intense wind mana around it was enclosed by Elas’ own mana and he forged hard slowly compressing the metal as he stretched and folded three times.
He did the same with the bladed body and placed it back and drew out the mana until it was folded nine times until he reforged the blade.
When it was dunked into the tank, powerful wind mana rushed out but was contained by his magic.
“Wind is truly an unruly force. It causes all the liquid to nearly mystify.” he complained.
Finally he took it out and it had turned into a green blade radiating wind mana.
He called Logan, “Hold it with your left hand as the right contains the seal of the lightning sword.
As soon as he grabbed the tang, the mana’s force attacked and his arms were covered in scars. He instantly forced mana out and protected his arm.
“Try to control the unruly thing, it is already starting to form an instinct.” Elas said, “Only when you control it will your start to form the requirements to control it.” He said.
Logan groaned as he tried to control it and it was rather hard, the force was very hard to control and eventually he swung the sword and a blade of wind shot out.
Feeling the feeling he began to feel more comfortable, “Sorry.” He said simply and saw the damage he caused.
Elas lifted a magic barrier and he began to swing it around like it had a hilt and slowly he got the feeling and affinity. The wind slowly began to get under his control. When he started using the legacy he learned, he found that instead of lightning, wind gathered in the same manner and he slowly adapted to doing that. Finally it settled down with just a gentle breeze coming off it.
“That was good, this is just the first reforging.” Elas said and carefully took the blade and ran his finger along it. The weak hum had grown much stronger but it wasn’t at the same pitch as the previous two which almost seemed to sing.
With a nod, Elas started the next forging using the blood of C rank and the bled bodies of D rank to reforge it with higher quality materials. The amount of blood was much lower and the tank much smaller but the energy within was far greater.
Like before it worked and this time, the force of mana was many times greater and it nearly tore apart Logan’s arm when he grabbed it and it was the true test he had to face to tame it.
At the end, it finally formed the new mark and Elas prepared the mark into a true seal.
He grinned at Logan who sighed, “Am I even capable of handling two back to back forging?” he asked.
“Don’t worry, the last forging is C rank and C rank blood which could have jumped but the accumulation has resulted nicely. It will cut up your body but your affinity for wind magic and your resistance will quickly increase as it has been through the two tests. After that is just combining the two into the form of a Nodachi and you will finally be able to also inherit your father’s full legacy.” He said.
Logan rolled his eyes but prepared himself as he held Raitoningu and Elas began.