Another two years pass.

The setting sun cast its yellow rays on a tavern. Inside the tavern, people were sitting around the tables talking loudly and ordering drinks to enjoy the end of the day. The waiters and waitresses were running to meet the unending demands from the dozens of customers.

In the corner of the tavern sat a hooded figure dressed completely in black. The figure was holding the handle of a mug in one hand, while the other rested on the table. However, instead of focusing on the drink, its eyes were instead locked onto a duo sitting on the opposite end of the tavern.

“Oh wow!” exclaimed the girl interestedly. “And then what happened?”

“Naturally, I beat up the demon and rescued the guy just before he was going to be eaten,” the boy replied with a hint of pride.

“Awesome! Amazing as always Sam!”

Naturally, the duo were Sam and Astoria. They had gotten much closer over the past two years. Occasionally Astoria accompanied Sam to fight in the front lines. Even though she could not summon as many artifacts as Drake, her multiple mana cores, training from Ray, and cultivation technique of the founding ancestor still made her powerful in her own right.

However, most of her time was spent with helping Hazezel handle village affairs, and with Sam. After occasionally helping in the front lines as well, she did not spend a lot of time cultivating. Despite this, she still managed to reach the middle-stage true mage realm and early-stage tempered body as well.

The two spent some time talking and laughing, clearly enjoying each other’s company. After a few hours, people slowly started leaving the tavern to rest for the night. Eventually, Sam and Astoria also got up and left the tavern too. They held hands and walked towards a quiet alleyway, unaware that the hooded figure was following them.

The figure hid before the turning and slowly peaked into the alleyway. It saw the two of them look at each other’s eyes and soon, Astoria placed her hand around Sam’s neck and pushed her lips against his.

Clearly in love, the duo shared a passionate kiss, unaware of the hooded figure smiling eerily.

“I did it!” Drake exclaimed, holding a sword.

For Drake, summoning artifacts was not a big deal. So, what was he so happy about? Unlike his other artifacts, this one had a very special symbol carved into the centre. If one looked closely, it was the same rune carried by his light orb spirit.

Drake had created his first, rank one artifact!

Creating artifacts with runes were significantly more difficult than just the simple artifact themselves, so it had taken him a long time to succeed.

Of course, Drake hadn’t spent the entirety of the last two years trying to create a rank one artifact. He also spent time cultivating martial arts and had now cultivated the perfect stage tempered body. Along with that, he was also secretly practising the martial techniques he leant from the Twelve Star Supreme Body Transformation Arts.

Along with shadow steps, there were four other martial techniques that were suitable for his tempered body cultivation realm. These were called hammer fist, metal leg, deflection palm, and acute sense. As the name would suggest, the first two were techniques to increase his punching and kicking strength. Deflection palm was a technique that allowed him to strengthen his palms in order to deflect incoming physical attacks without taking damage, even from sharp objects like swords or knives. Finally acute sense allowed him to temporarily enhance one of his senses, so he could see much further into the distance or try to listen into small, faint or distant sounds.

Given that he was practising in secret, it had taken Drake several months to master all those techniques. Afterwards, he also practised the few rank one spirit summons he learnt from the inheritance grounds. These were the fiery worm, which could cast a simple fireball spell, metal porcupine which could harden itself and so could be used for defence, and finally wind butterfly, which could fly quickly and be used for scouting.

By the time he finished learning all those spells and cultivated the perfect stage tempered body, a year and a half had passed. Of course, in this time, he also participated in numerous battles, earning quite a reputation for himself, and cultivated mana. However, his aptitude was too poor so he couldn’t increase his strength in a short time by cultivating mana. He vaguely felt that he was getting close to the middle-stage true mage realm, but he didn’t dedicate much time to it.

After mastering all the techniques and spirit summons he learnt, he was wondering what the quickest way would be to increase his strength. Since, his aptitude for mana cultivation was poor, he decided that he should try to learn summoning rank one artifacts. Unlike other mages, since he could understand his summonings at an atomic level, he figured that if he could summon one, rank one artifact, then he might be able to summon others more easily.

Having seen Ray’s shock at his artifact summoning ability previously, and also seeing Astoria struggle considerably to learn to summon her artifacts, he thought that he should practise his summonings in secret to avoid questions. Hence, though he was happy at having finally summoned a rank one artifact, he could not share his joy with his Ray or anyone else yet.

Drake took his sword and observed it keenly. It looked similar to the iron swords he had summoned in the past. However, there was one glaring difference - a rune inscribed into the centre of the blade.

Closing his eyes, Drake slowly poured a bit of his mana into the sword and immediately the rune activated. The sword began glowing with a brilliant, white light. This would have the same effect as summoning the light orb spirit to blind his enemies but took considerably less mana than summoning a new spirit.

Drake stopped pouring in the mana and smiled, looking very pleased with himself. He was not going to stop here.

He closed his eyes and after a minute, a pair of leather gloves appeared in front of him, with a small rune engraved into their palms. Drake quickly wore the gloves and pointed his right hand towards a tree.

He poured a bit of his mana into the glove and a fireball shot out! The fireball ferociously crashed against the tree, leaving behind a large scorch mark.

Drake embedded the fire ball runes from the fiery worm into these gloves to allow him to shoot fire balls.

If we keep in mind that ordinary mages struggled to learn to summon even a few artifacts and spirits, the advantage of Drake being able to summon many artifacts and spirits easily by understanding their fundamental nature really shined through now. He could combine the artifacts that he can summon with the runes of the spirits, in order to make numerous powerful artifacts easily.

Happy with the gloves, Drake closed his eyes and, after a minute, summoned a pendant. It looked simple with a thin rope that was perfect for his size, carrying a circular crystal engraved with a small rune at its centre. This was the same rune as his healing fairy. In other words, by wearing this pendant, he could easily heal himself!

Drake tested it out by using his sword to make a small cut across his wrist. He poured a bit of his mana into the pendant and, as expected, the cut immediately closed. Drake smiled happily once again.

He then summoned robes with the metal porcupine rune which could make the robes extremely durable by pouring mana into it, increasing his defence. Finally, he crafted a pair of boots with the wind butterfly rune, which would use winds to push him along when he poured mana into it, increasing his speed dramatically.

Depending on the shape and body of the artifact, the runes would have to be slightly modified to work properly. Additionally, the appropriate mana pathways would have to be created within the artifact to make sure mana could flow into the runes and be activated. Even the slightest error would cause it to not work properly.

After learning to summon the sword, a normal mage who learnt through trial and error, would have taken an equivalently long time to go through the process again, and learn to summon the other artifacts.

However, Drake now understood how the runes he had learnt worked, so he could much more easily figure out which parts of the runes needed to be altered to fit the body of the artifact. Additionally, his understanding of the molecular structure of the artifacts allowed him to easily figure out the necessary mana pathways that needed to be created to accommodate the runes in all the artifacts as well.

Sure, even Drake couldn’t get it right the first time and required a bit of experimentation as well, but compared to how long other mages would take, it was nothing. What took Drake weeks would take any normal mage, years.

Hence, in the mage world, even rank one artifacts were highly sought after treasures.

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Having a runed artifact was equivalent to being able to use a spirit with very little mana. With all of these artifacts, Drake could effectively use the power of multiple spirits with very little mana. Combined with his martial techniques, Drake was confident that he could fight against even multiple warrior class minotaurs!

Martial artists also highly coveted runed artifacts. Since martial artists used mana to temper their bodies, they could use the small amounts of mana coursing through their veins to activate the runes in the artifacts. Since they can’t normally use spells, artifacts were an invaluable tool for any martial artist.

If Ray saw him now, summoning all of these artifacts, he would definitely have a heart attack!

Summoning runed artifacts consumed a lot more mana so Drake wanted to keep them with him to not have to summon new ones in the middle of a battle like he did with rank zero artifacts. However, he didn’t want to reveal their abilities to anyone just yet. It would simply raise too many questions for an eleven-year-old boy to be able to summon so many runed artifacts. Hence the reason why he made them to look as natural as possible.

However, he still wanted to test out their abilities, so he silently snuck out the back of the mansion.

With the war raging on, the villages were heavily guarded and strong demons and onis could be found easily in the Beast Woods. Drake knew it was risky going alone, however, he had fought many battles and so knew the geography and the general skill of the demons and onis in this area. Additionally, with his new artifacts, he was even more confident in his abilities. Even if he came across a pseudo-commander class demon, he was confident that he could at least outrun it.

If the dark mages showed up… well that’s quite unlikely, Drake thought, not wanting to think about what they might do to him.

Reassuring himself that nothing would go wrong, Drake made his way out of the village and towards the Beast Woods.

Once he exited the village, he summoned a wind butterfly and sent it to scout ahead. In these few years, it became impossible to enter the Beast Woods due to the large number of demons and onis pouring out and roaming its outskirts. Hence, it wasn’t long before Drake encountered a pack of twenty, servant class demon wolves.

Compared to other demons, wolves were slightly weaker individually. However, they always moved in packs, so their true strength lied with their numbers. A normal tempered body stage martial artist or a true mage would struggle to take on this pack alone.

However, Drake thought that they would be a good warm up.

Drake slowed down as he neared them, using the scattered boulders and trees to hide. Wolves were highly sensitive creatures and would easily detect their prey by smell or sound. Hence, Drake used shadow steps to muffle his footsteps as he moved from one tree and boulder to another. Once he was at a reasonable distance, he raised his palms to the two wolves nearest to him and passed a bit of mana into his gloves.

Two fireballs shot forward towards the surprised wolves. They had not detected anything so couldn’t react at all before they were blasted away and crashed against some trees, whimpering pitifully as they were severely injured. The other wolves detected the attack and were enraged at being taken by surprise. They howled at Drake and charged towards him.

Drake smiled, knowing that his fireball was powerful enough to defeat a servant class demon in one attack boosted his confidence. He poured mana into his boots and jumped back. The rune, combined with his perfect stage tempered body allowed him to move at superhuman speeds. He raised his palms and fired two more fireballs, but the wolves were on high alert this time and easily dodged them.

Drake was expecting this so wasn’t surprised. He simply wanted some practice shooting fireballs at moving targets too. Since there were a lot of wolves, he decided to cut their numbers down a bit before practising his other moves. Drake suddenly came to a halt and drew his sword, holding it with his right hand.

The wolf closest to him howled with glee. Thinking that its prey was weak and tired from running, it pounced at Drake, talons outstretched to rip out his throat. Drake looked at the wolf calmly and blocked its swing – not with his sword, but with the robe around his left arm.

The wolf was surprised that it couldn’t tear through his robes, but that moment of distraction was its biggest mistake.

Without hesitation, Drake stabbed his sword through its heart. The wolf howled it pain but its voice quickly weakened, and its body became limp.

The wolves chasing behind the first were further enraged and charged forward. Drake smirked and pulled the sword out of the wolf. Then, holding the wolf with his left hand, he rotated a full 360 and threw the dead body onto the incoming wolves. They dodged to either side, but Drake predicted this and fired several fireballs in those directions. The wolves couldn’t dodge in midair so two more of them were blasted away.

Five down.

Half a dozen wolves were right behind those three. They were startled at the sudden death of their companions, but they continued chasing Drake fearlessly.

Drake stood his ground and calmly allowed the wolves to approach him. Within a few seconds, they were within arm’s range. Suddenly, Drake held his sword vertically and poured mana into it. The sword instantly started shining brightly, temporarily blinding all the wolves.

The wolves were powerful servant class demons, so they were only blinded for a second. But for Drake, that was more than enough. He poured mana into his boots and activated shadow steps, becoming a blur.

The next second, he appeared past all the wolves with his eyes closed, a single drop of blood falling from his sword. The moment the drop fell, all the wolves behind him split into halves and fell from midair.

That’s eleven.

The remaining wolves were aghast to see so many of their pack die within seconds. They watched Drake cautiously as they surrounded him.

Being surrounded by a pack of servant class demons was no joke, but Drake watched them calmly. One of the wolves lost its patience and pounced. Just before its claws could make contact, Drake moved like a ghost, shifting his body just enough to dodge the attack completely. The wolf landed on the other side, surprised that its prey was still alive.

The other wolves bared their fangs menacingly. In response, Drake sheathed his sword! The wolves were surprised, then enraged thinking that they were being underestimated. They started pouncing at him from all direction.

Acute sense!

Drake heightened his sense of hearing and sight using his martial technique. Although the wolves were moving faster than a normal human could see, to him it appeared as if they were moving in slow motion.

Pouring mana into his boots, he shifted his body at just the right moment to dodge the attack of the wolves. Drake moved so fast that the wolves thought they were passing right through him.

With no intention of attacking, Drake spent several minutes simply dodging the attacks of the wolves and using deflection palms to block any that got close. Using acute sense increased his perception, but this meant he had more information to process in a shorter amount of time. Given that he had nine wolves to track who were attacking him from all different directions, this was very mentally taxing.

However, he had the mind of an adult, and was also a mage who was used to controlling many daggers, shurikens, and other artifacts simultaneously in battle. Hence, he quickly got used to this technique without issue. After confirming the effectiveness of this technique and his ability to use it, he stopped dodging.

Thinking once again that Drake had become tired, another wolf pounced at him, delighted at the opportunity to finally kill its prey. However, Drake watched it as calmly as ever. When it was close, Drake moved slightly to dodge its claw and before it could react, punched its stomach with all his might.

Hammer fist!

He used the martial technique he learnt to enhance his punch, sending the wolf flying. The wolf crashed into a tree and actually broke through it, coming to a stop only after crashing into a boulder afterwards. The impact formed many cracks on the boulder.

The wolf screamed in pain and fell limply on the floor. Its ribs were broken and internal organs were ruptured. The remaining wolves all paused, surprised to see another of their pack member die so quickly.

However, their fear and hesitation only lasted a few seconds before another two wolves attacked.

Drake jumped and rotated his body.

Metal leg!

He kicked one wolf directly in its face and used the momentum to drag it with his feet before kicking it into the other wolf. Both of the wolves went flying and crashed against several trees.

The remaining wolves did not seem to learn their lesson so continued attacking him. Drake used his acute sense and his boots to dodge their attacks easily by slightly shifting his body, and counter attacked with hammer fists and metal legs, each of his attack sending another wolf out of commission.

Three more left!

The final three wolves glared at Drake, but their eyes now carried a tinge of fear. They looked at Drake and at each other. Then, as if coming to a silent agreement, fled in three different directions.

Humph! You’re not going to get away from me that easily!

Drake activated his boots and shadow steps, becoming a blur again. He quickly caught up to one wolf and crushed its face with hammer fist.

Without wasting time, he ran towards the other wolf and caught up in a few seconds. He leaped into the air and brought his knee down onto its face, crushing it with metal leg.

The other wolf had already run quite far but still heard the screams of its last two comrades. Unwilling to share their fate, it forced its legs to run even faster. Drake poured much more mana into his boots and gave chase. Soon, he appeared directly in front of the terrified wolf and grabbed its face with the palm of his right hand.

Fireball!

At point blank range, there was no escape. Within seconds, the wolf was incinerated, and the burnt corpse fell on the floor.

The whole area became quiet. The fight had only lasted a few minutes, and that too was only because Drake took his time to test out his skills. Otherwise, Drake was confident he could have ended them all within a minute.

A pack of twenty servant class demon wolves, in less than a minute!

Moreover, he expended very little mana and energy to do, and was completely unscathed. In fact, Drake thought that he could single handedly taken on a small army of several hundred of these things alone.

This was the power of mage who could summon numerous artifacts!

Drake looked up at the night sky, seeing the beautiful moon light up the night sky.

‘If only I had these that day, I could have saved so many more of them,’ Drake thought, reminiscing about the day he was ambushed by Jin Tong and the demon tide. Hundreds of soldiers died that day, and given that Drake was leading them, their deaths weighed heavily on him even now.

Drake sighed, deciding not to ruminate on the past too much.

This fight had given him plenty of insight into his new skills, especially shadow steps and acute sense as he used them a lot. However, he still wanted more practice using fireball, hammer fist, and metal leg. And he also wanted to practise using these skills to fight, while also using his boomerangs and shields like he did normally.

Hence, he decided to hunt some more demons to practise his various skills.

That night, the village guards heard distant screams of various demons. Wolves, bears, tigers, lions, gorillas, and various other demons could be heard screaming before going silent. The guards were confused, and started wondering if the demons were fighting amongst themselves for some reason.

After that night, they would occasionally hear more demons scream in terror on other days too. Rumours started spreading across the village. Some thought that a powerful but mad demon was hunting other demons. Other talked in hushed tones about a legendary demon hunter that was silently working in the shadows to slaughter the demons.

But nobody took that idea seriously.