Three weeks have passed since I woke up in Asteris and became a Deathwalker of the Shield.

And boy! Those three weeks were the worst!

I completed my third and fourth battles and have grown stronger in just those three weeks.

With the skills of my past life and my constant training, I was able to do better on the battlefield.

Well, better at staying alive. I am still weak and killing daemons would mean destroying my body in the process.

Not a fan of that.

So I try to avoid confrontations with the shadowy creeps, using my enhanced speed to zig-zag between daemons and Deathwalkers.

Sometimes I even use some unsuspecting newbie as my meat shield.

Heh. Old habits die hard I guess.

On the unlucky chance a daemon shows up in my face, I try to keep it at bay using my trusty strand and daggers until a more experienced Deathwalker takes care of it.

That twenty-five percent chance of paralysis saved my life a lot of times on the battlefield.

Master Lorvar is truly a master crafter.

But I would lie if I said I was unscathed after each battle.

In my third battle, I fractured all of my ribs, got my left leg sliced off, and an unnecessary hole was punched in my stomach.

In my fourth battle, I cracked my noggin, lost an ear, shattered my pelvis, and was paralyzed from the waist down due to a severe spinal fracture.

I heard the healers had a hard time taking out the bone splinters from my spinal cord.

Oh, and I also lost a lot of blood from multiple deep cuts and my butt looked like swollen blueberries.

If it hadn't been for Haema and the divine skills of Dr. Haytham and his team of healers, I would be chilling with the other dead Deathwalkers in the massive Tomb.

Yeah. It bloody sucked.

But the good news is, my growth as a warlock is going at a rather quick pace.

Along with constant workouts and a better diet, I am also slowly refining my already refined ardor control and gradually increasing my area of influence.

Now it has tripled and I have become a master E rank.

My growth was quite a surprise to Felix and Damien.

Usually, an E-ranker would take at least a month to go from beginner to master with constant and hardcore training.

And that is the least amount of time.

I was able to progress in just two weeks.

That rate of growth was insane.

Fortunately, Eravon was there to explain things when I lost consciousness on the battlefield.

Unlike what I previously thought, my soul has not fully assimilated into my body. Well, not all of it.

You see. My soul contains the knowledge and experience I had accumulated in my past life.

All that experience is slowly absorbed into my new body, accelerating my growth.

According to Eravon, the physical abilities and combat skills of my past were on the level of an A rank.

It will take time for my new body to absorb that strength from my soul. Until then, I must sculpt this new body into a vessel capable of holding my glorious strength.

I will also have to improve my strand control as well

It would take a long time for the full assimilation of power, about three years.

How convenient.

Fortunately, Eravon had provided me with some simple Haema codes.

And I must say. They are quite fun.

Using a code is a lot trickier than I previously thought.

A code is a group of runes arranged in a specific sequence that directs a strand to implement a specific task.

Sure, a warlock can control their strand with their minds and wills but that method is quite limited and wouldn't work for specific tasks.

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Let's take the example of my Haema attribute.

I can control it by myself and will the strand to do simple tasks like forming appendages on my back to attack and defend or controlling my daggers by soaking the handles in my blood.

They require only one or two simple steps.

But what if I want to make my blood explode like a grenade? That is a more complicated process.

First, I must gather my blood at a particular point in space like my palm.

Next, I have to separate the gathered blood into two. One part will form the center of the grenade and the other part will form a thin envelope.

Next, I have to make the blood rotate inside the envelope at an extremely fast rate. The ardor in my area of influence is directed to the swirling blood and sucked inside, increasing the energy and further empowering Haema.

As the ardor empowers my blood, it rotates faster and faster, resulting in more and more ardor getting sucked in.

Soon I will have a powerful storm of ardor-enhanced blood that gets stronger and stronger with every rotation.

The thin outer layer of blood is the only thing preventing this powerful swirling storm from going absolutely mental.

The final step would be to aim my special blood ball choke full of destructive energy at my opponent and remove the outer layer.

And the result? A magnificent explosion of blood that can cause devastating damage.

As you can see. Creating this rather powerful explosive requires way more than two steps and a lot more control.

The amount of blood, the strength of the outer layer, the rate of rotation, and many other factors are to be in the perfect ratio

Any tiny mistake or miscalculation and my grenade will either become a dud or explode in my face.

So yeah. I need precise calculations and control.

And that will not be the only time I will be using a blood grenade. The human mind is quite an amazing thing but it is not infallible.

Even if the mind is capable of replicating the conditions for the blood grenade, there will be the slightest variation.

As I said, even the slightest variation can disrupt the formation of my blood grenade.

So yeah. It is a tedious and delicate process.

That's where a code helps me.

In a code, runes are connected by the ardor controlled by the warlock and are powered by their strand.

So codes are strand-specific and will only work when powered by a certain strand.

Since a code is connected to its respective strand in such a way, it is capable of manipulating the strand.

Let's get back to my blood explosive.

The code {Haema: Blood Grenade} contains the information that is necessary to manipulate my strand to form my bloody explosive.

The speed of rotation, the thickness of the outer membrane, and how much the blood should curve, all of this information is contained in the code.

The code is activated by my Haema strand and 'instructs' my strand to conform according to the information contained in it through the runes.

All the warlock needs to do is memorize and understand the sequence of runes forming the code.

I hope you all understood my enlightening class.

Now that will be a thousand draigos.

Due to my genius intellect, I was able to memorize the sequence for Blood Grenade, one of the codes Eravon gave me for Haema.

And I am planning on its debut during my spar with Damien.

Which is happening right now. And it's going well.

For Damien.

Sparks flew as my white daggers clashed against his red longsword.

We jumped back and charged at each other.

My opponent's eyes glowed and his sword ignited into red flames.

Damien Fray uses Ignis and is a formidable B-ranked Spiker.

As soon as we got close, he slashed diagonally downwards, flames trailing off the red blade. I planted my foot on the floor and shifted back.

The flames of the sword passed in front of me.

Immediately he leaned forward, flicked his wrist, and slashed upward, the roaring flames forming a bright red arc.

I quickly twisted my body to the left and slashed upward with my left dagger.

In the blink of an eye, he parried my attack. The force of which was enough to launch me some distance from him.

My boots slid against the smooth tiles of the sparring court. Damien immediately closed the distance between us.

His coffee-brown eyes glowed as his flames became stronger and he slashed horizontally at my chest.

I quickly parried the attack and took a step back. Damien recovered in a flash and swiftly did a cross-slash followed by a diagonal upward slash.

I barely dodged the first attack and parried the second.

Damien sure is a formidable sword user. His attacks are swift and heavy and his Ignis strand just makes his attacks more powerful.

His skills are quite amazing.

My lips curled into a smile.

But he doesn't hold a candle to my skills.

For this spar, I imposed a few restrictions on myself. I cannot use transcendence and blood acceleration. I can only use ardor enhancement on my body.

Also, I can use Haema only once.

I wanted to see how the skill learned by this body fares out against a proper swordsman.

I must say It's not that bad. The previous Mordred received only some training with weapons but he was able to keep up in a proper battle.

What an impressive kid.

I know guys.

I had three weeks to figure this out but I was spending most of that time in Althea and the gym.

Heck, the last proper spar I had was the one with Felix in the last chapter.

Wow. Breaking the fourth wall feels odd.

But now I have a proper grasp of things.

I ducked low and Damien's flaming sword went over my head, singing the ends of my beautiful white hair.

I then did a sweeping kick to make him fall but the Deathwalker quickly stepped back from range.

Using the momentum of my swing kick I got to my feet and faced Damien.

With a smile, I crossed my daggers.

It's time to give him a taste of the skills of Sir Mordred.