With the sound of crashing trees, the dirt slowly worms as a wide road of packed dirt appears. From the road, a number of people walked up and in the lead was Zip and Xero.

When the Crost family passed through, they got rid of the three biggest threats to the village, Trolls, goblins and orcs. The very same day, Nil called Zip and Xero and told them that the goblins had access to a mine and the distance between the trolls mountain and the goblin cave was a short distance of about 5 kilometers. Of course the distances from the village was around 20.

Because he knew Xero had magic, his father offered him a city development mission to create wide packed dirt roads to the goblin village. Because there was already built village structure there, he wanted to take this and make a mining camp there to easily access the mountains in that side of the village on the west side while using the north east mountain with the mountain lions to make a second camp and expand from there.

As they reach the village, the road widens and hardens and the trees fall revealing the smoking scene before their eyes.

“Bloody hell!” one of the miners said in shock.

They had expected for the place to be burned since it was fire dragons fighting but the Crost’s had completely burnt the entire goblin village to the ground. Only the palisade was a bit standing but it was burned.

Zip sighed, “This is going to take a lot of work to rebuild but we at least have clean roads that will quicken the trip by many hours now. Transport of wood won’t be a problem, only a 1 hour trek with horse carriage in this clean road, it's all thanks to you Xero.” He said.

“Do you want me to help smooth out the ground in the camp?” He asked.

“Not today, we will probably have to spend the day breaking everything down and building the new palisade. Can you go back and tell father to prepare the timber for that.” He said.

Xero nodded and pulled out his flying sword and took off at a rapid speed following the road through the air.

“So boy, wut we gon do now?” One of the miners asked with a rough accent. The man was quite tall but had dwarven features. This was one of the mixed blood from dwarf and mono eye. He kept two eyes but also the size of the cyclops.

“I guess for now we break down the buildings, when the wood arrives we can replace the palisade, leave what is standing for now since it can still keep out the animals. Oh right, have someone look around the area and look for the mine that the goblins used.” Zip said.

Everyone started to move into the camp where they saw most of everything burned to a crisp. Zip summoned his imp and saw a lot of the ash in the air gather into his now muscular and scaled imp. It growled when it came out and looked around and suddenly jumped into a pile of rubble. Unexpectedly he pulled out a burned hobgoblin corpse and began to eat it.

“Asher, get down, we need to get working.” Zip said but the Imp ignored him.

He sneered and took out a large heavy hammer and suddenly jumped very quickly and swung the hammer hitting his shoulder. “I said get down here!” The imp flew to the ground with its arm broken. It sprawled in the ground and stood in fear of Zip. One cannot underestimate the strength difference between the two. Zip’s strength was already level 20 thanks to his heavy labor as a smith.

“Good, follow me.” He said and the imp stood up following him docilely. Even so there was both fear and awe in its empty black eyes. The current level was level 8 Scaled Imp (Variant). It wasn’t unique variant because Ashley had been the same type.

Shouting out orders, severely burned buildings were torn down by hammering while they looked through the ruins.

Zip and Asher, after giving out orders, walked to the top space where the house of the leaders had been. The place was broken but not burned so they walked in and found that there were things inside. Not a lot as the things with value were taken but surprisingly there were several sets of dented armor and weapons.

Zip began to organize the armor when suddenly he heard the sound of screeching metal and turned to an amazing sight. In the hands of Asher, the torso plate of the dented armor that would fit a large man, was held his grip and his mouth chewing on solid iron. The black teeth broke and rebuilt itself with the surrounding ash but there was a hint of metal as it eat. When Zip finally reacted Asher had entered an eating frenzy and was biting and swallowing whole the chunks of armor crushing it under his mouth full of black fangs.

“What the hell are you doing! That could have been repaired!” He said but could only sigh as he watched the Imp eat the already destroyed armor. Without the chest piece the set was incomplete and not worth selling or repairing. It was low grade anyway and someone with his eye would see that from a distance but still to see it eaten like candy, one had wonder the bite strength of the imp to chew through solid tempered iron like that.

Suddenly the familiar seal flashed and the Imp shouted as it turned to the rest of the armor and grabbing it, it crushed it into a ball and ate it in one go and frenzied even more. In a short second the mad rush caused it to devour all metal items inside. It only stopped when there was nothing left. The final thing that happened was when Zip felt the imp activating his magic but pushing it into wrong channels.

He turned and jumped out of the building before the Imp self destructed blowing the entire place to dust.

The explosion attracted the attention of miners and they ran over only to see a red pearl, 13 cm big core, shoot out and into Zip’s hand. After a moment it shot back out and all the dust in the air and ash on the ground began to gather. First it formed a large humanoid figure, then from its back, a long and large lizard like tail grew and the head began to form large black horns in an S shape out the side of the head. Finally scales covered the body and only the head was covered in large plates, one large on the lower jaw and one on the face like a mask. There was a Rhombus shape over the eyes and from inside two glowing red eyes. The rest of the head, besides the ‘mask’ was covered in black metallic scales.

When everyone saw this, they were scared witless but the next moment, the body of the demon broke down and returned to Zip’s seal leaving the place in silence.

Only after a long minute, the big half breed dwarf walked up, “Oi boy, wut in bloody hell was that dat thing!” He shouted.

Zip snapped out of it and looked at his Familiar seal and quickly summoned the demon. “Stop the formation of the innate skills!” He ordered and the flashing familiar seal stopped flashing and the skills indeed froze. Although he did it at the spur of the moment, Xero had once said that Ashley had stopped the skills from forming so he tried it as well making it work.

He then turned to the others, “I am sorry about that, my familiar simply underwent an evolution. Most demons use fire magic to explode.” he said.

Everyone looked at the demon whose image was much less intimidating now that it wasn’t in the dust forming. The eyes in the mask were red with slit pupils while the mask and jaw plate was divided in a zigzag manner forming a kind a fang. There were large horns but the main feature that decreased the fear was that the size of the demon was the fact that it was only 170 cm tall and had a lean body instead of a bulky body like before.

“Jus don’t scare us like dat boy.” he sighed.

“Sorry.” Zip said scratching his head, “Let’s gather the rubble in a large pile, I will set it on fire and get rid of useless materials.” Zip said.

The big miner looked at him and turned, “Get moven boys!” He shouted.

The miners once more started to move and gather the burned wood and start to pile it around.

Zip turned and looked at Asher, “No more eating what we find!” He ordered and the demon just looked at him, “Now come on and help us move this stuff.” He said.

It looked at the rubble and jumped suddenly and landed near one of the fallen logs and wooden structures. It gripped the support pillar and pulled it from the ground. With one arm, the charred wood was ripped out pulling with it the other attached stuff. The walls collapsed and he looked before chucking the stuff making it land in the pile.

It grabbed the entire fallen wooden wall and threw it into the pile.

All the men were shocked by the strength but soon they began to pile on as well until there was a large hill.

“Asher, Imp fire on the pile.” Zip said.

Asher looked and lifted his hand causing a scarlet flame to appear and stretching his scaled hand the flames burst out and hit the pile for a short while before he stopped.

The pile had caught fire and smoke began to rise along with fire. They kept adding more burned wood, all except the palisade which would be replaced slowly.

After several hours of work, the camp was completely emptied, during that time some of the scouts found a cave opening on the far side of the village which had once been the cave of the goblins and was now a mine for minerals as well as possessing a primitive smithy. It made Zip happy to already have a smithy in the cave meaning it could forge metal goods to sell or use it to repair the pickaxes.

With the strength of the demon, he would be able to work quicker now.

The next day, Xero arrived with wood, this was mainly because it would have taken a long time to bring up from the village. At the time, Zip pulled Xero over and summoned his demon and asked what kind of demon is it.

“I don’t know, it seems to be a new type. It was a Scaled imp before so why not Horned Iron Scaled Demon. Normally demons are named by their features.” He said.

“Okay since you don’t know, it's fine but help me, he is forming innate skills, I had him freeze it so you can make them strong.” He said.

Xero laughed at his brother, although his strength was good, his magical knowledge was sorely lacking. “Give me your hand, I will show you hands on how magic formulas are formed and altered.” he said.

Zip nodded and gave the hand with the familiar seal.

The two immersed their minds and found the skills. There were two and they were similar to the two skills Ashley once formed, it was the Fire Claw skill and buff skill called Iron Scales.

Xero explained the skills and how he changed his own to his brother. “How do you want the skills?” He asked.

“His scales are like Iron so try metal element, maybe keep the fire so it is like a heated iron claw.” Zip said.

The combination was interesting so Xero nodded, “Tell him to release the skill them.”

Like that he skills began to form slowly, Xero took the time to tutor his brother in the forms of element types, even when the skill formed, he then showed the chain reaction that happened when he broke the fire rune and changed it with Metal and Fire.

When the spell broke apart and rebuilt itself it shocked Zip but with Xero’s reminder he held it in and Xero kept explaining how to spot deficiencies in a spell by letting it form and seeing the flow of mana in the way the shine of the spell works. A proper spell should maintain or even get stronger along the entire formula.

He showed what kind of sequence repaired something and watched it all break one by one. He did it for both skills, Iron scales was a defensive buff of metal type which was kept but improved.

At the end of it the spells both evolved into Forged Demon Claws and Layered Scales Hardening.

The second spell was very strong, the formed many layers of scales and it became as hard as steel and this hardness was both defensive and offensive. If the two skills were used together the attack would be quite strong.

“There, you got really strong skills, there even stronger than Ashley’s at the time but yours are metal based so they are more defensive but I didn’t expect the buff to improve defense and hardness.” Xero said.

“Is it always so random?” Zip asked.

Xero nodded and smiled, “It’s part of the fun when skills appear, you should come to the lessons so that you don’t have to depend on me.” He said.

Zip laughed, “I’ll make some time then.” He said and pat his brothers head.

“You should take some time to train the skills, they will cause him to explode a lot, also if you beat him up like Grunt did it will improve his defense more. I also got this for you.” Xero said and pulled out of his bag a few sets of straps. “These are specific restraints, they will help you train your body, Grunt said you should always be able to beat up your familiar so you shouldn’t shrink back on your own training.” Xero said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He said.

“I need to go, it's almost time for mother and sister’s class. Even Nero is getting excited about learning magic because he saw me using it and thought it was cool.” Xero said.

The two laughed but Xero left flying and Zip turned to the demon then smiled before making it follow and went to the large miner. “Sir.”

“Oh, boy, what dija need?” He asked.

“My familiar got two new skills, it needs some training, wanted to say I will be busy, there shouldn’t be any problem if you took control right?” He asked.

“Nah, just scouten the mines here and builden the houses, deposits, palisade, watch towers, etc. Just need yer brother ta help smooth things out.” he said gesturing to the land. “Won’t be till next week maybe the other until we can start mining. Need ta reinforce the open caves as well.” He said.

“No problem, I was needing the time to get used to the familiar as well.” he said, “I’ll be going, if you need someone just send it down to the village.” Zip said and with his familiar they left into the forest and walked a bit closer to the river.

Arriving at the riverside, Zip turned around and pulled out the restraints and put them on how Xero explained to put them on and restrained his muscles and make him work more. He gripped his hammer and turned to his familiar and grinned. “Since your scales are made of Iron, lets see if I can’t forge them into steel.” He laughed and the eyes of the demon actually showed some fear. “Do not escape, stand there in a defensive pose and take each hit!” He said and walked forward with a lot of effort that was needed to move with the restraints.

PENG!

The sound of a hammer on iron was heard and the demon was struck flying while Zip ran after him and began ‘forging’ his body.

***

“Gryah!” A roaring yelp was heard as a beaten up demon feline was on the ground of the an empty training grounds of the guards.

Void was grinning while stretching his shoulders after going a few rounds with his familiar. Unlike Xero or Zip who was actively helping development, Void was actually training his familiar. Although he had been helping, after a small training arena was formed for the guards to spar, he took it upon himself to spar with his familiar to beat manners that it had been lacking.

“Oh is that all?” Void laughed.

“Hey young master, you already beat the thing 4 times without reviving it, shouldn’t you put it out of its misery yet?” The guards asked but on his face was a smile showing that he was enjoying it. The reason was because the cat was quite evil. It had caused not just a small bit of trouble as it ignored Void so watching it being beaten black and blue was a good feeling.

“Guess you’re right.” Void said and jumped up and landed on the cat’s neck breaking it and killing the cat demon.

The body soon burst into ash that was absorbed into his seal. The size of the demon core was 12 cm and he grabbed it quickly and looked at the size before letting it go.

“Hm, it increased two times, that means it evolved times, it was a cat demon then it grew bigger like a mountain lion and now it is starting to sound like a tiger. The fangs are really long as well and the claws are really sharp. The fact that its body is getting harder to injure should be a good thing since little bro said that beating it a lot would make the body strong.” Void thought. “Alright boys show is over, I’ll come back tomorrow where you can beat it up at your pleasure!” Void laughed and the guards also laughed at the prospect. Of course they were all between level 18 to 20 guards sent to train new recruits and guard the family.

Void walked home where he saw, far in the sky, a large beast flying away and walked only to see his sister in front of a 5 meter high, 20 meter long, tiger with her pot. The suction of the pot was distorting space and the huge corpse began to rise and was sucked in.

Behind the Tiger were countless huge mountain lions all of which soon followed the tiger and were sucked into the stone jar that stopped spinning and landed in Nadir’s hand.

“What was that!” Void asked in shock.

Nil looked back and smiled wryly, “A young genius from the Helvine Academy’s 4rd year passed by and did the mission to clear the mountain lions. Unexpectedly there was an alpha monster that had surpassed level 45 and evolved into a Mountain Tiger.” Nil explained. He then turned to his daughter, “Now sweetie, extract the meat, pelt, bones, fangs and claws, and the monster cores all separate, everything else left can be eaten by your pot.” Nil said.

“Alright.” She nodded and began to process of extraction.

“What are you going to do with it?” Void asked.

“There are merchants in town, of course I will sell them to regain the money we spent, the student didn’t want to keep holding on to it so we were somewhat forced to buy it.” Nil sighed.

“Well, I was wondering how to improve my familiar, why not give me that tigers monster core.” Void laughed.

“Dream on, that thing is concentrated mana, if fed to a feline beast at a bottleneck of level 30 or 40 it will most definitely break through and maybe even evolve.” Nil said instantly.

“Really? Does that work for the body parts as well?” He asked.

“For weaker creatures only, since you are asking it seems you're interesting in it.” Nil said.

Void froze and smiled, he rarely shows his desires. He was trained as a hunter but had no magic talent until now, to him he thought he was going to be a small time hunter his life so he had not showed desires but now that he had the chance to grow, his desire for strength had subtly shown.

His father laughed, “The monster cores are the most expensive part, the value is equal to the entire corpse alone so I can’t give it to you since it is also useless to you at this time and may even cause problems. The skeleton on the other hand.” He grins.

Void hide it well but his eyes burned brightly as he heard that.

At that time his little brother arrived, “Father, Big brother’s familiar evolved, I think he is going to start training heavily now.” Xero said. “What is Nadir doing?” He asked.

Nil explained what had happened and frowned but Nil just smiled, “Nadi, sweetie, just do the biggest cat first and give the bones, fangs and claws to your big brother, then it will be time for class with Xero.” Nil said.

“Okay.” She said simply, the shining dimmed but the spinning was faster and after three minutes the lid opened and a massive skeleton with fangs and claws fully attached were thrown out of the stone pot.

“It’s always interesting to see that storing ability that sister has now.” Xero said and everyone nodded.

“Alright Slash! Come out and eat those bones!” Void said and the cat demon that looked like a grey furred mountain lion. It looked at the bone with desire and it opened its jaws showing the burning heat inside as it jumped and bit into the bone. The fangs broke but like all demons, it regenerated by the time it bit once more. Again and again it bit the skull then it got frustrated and jumped off before jumping at the huge saber fangs. This time the fangs firmly crunched into the yellow bone breaking a piece off.

First the fangs then the claws it devoured them. Following that it suddenly burst and reformed after breaking apart and it now had white claws and was a saber fanged mountain lion after incorporating these features. It jumped on the skeleton and the white fangs that were much harder broke but reformed and it suddenly crunched into the bone.

Breaking it with its claws, while breaking its own body, biting and breaking its fangs, it grew stronger to eat and after a while all the skeleton had been eaten.

“It seems it will start soon.” Nil said.

The Cat demon began to tremble and roar as its body lit up from inside Nil was quick as it ran over and kicked the cat over the wall of the manor more than 30 meter away before the feline burst into a ball of flames.

“Hey it’s make skills while evolving!” Void said.

“Let me see!” Xero said.

Like before it was the same as all demons, a Claw skill and a buff spell, it involved a roar skill to intimidate enemy while boosting his own strength.

“The claw, make it fire and metal, that should make it really strong.” Void said. He had more notion of magic since he works less but studied more.

The end result made it be called, Savage Tiger Claw and Mountain Lord’s Roar.

When they formed the red pearl, 13 cm big, flew out and from it the skeleton of a large tiger, 3 meter height and 8 long formed before ash and dust flew at it but the skeleton landed and suddenly a large amount of earth mana began to flew into the body and the body started to form from the feet up. Finally a Saber Tiger Demon stood in front of them with an intimidating aura that made one suffocate.

“Wow, this looks strong.” Nadir said.

“Yeah, now that I think about it, after Ashley had her second evolution and became a unique scaled imp it was when we broke her demon core. Although now I am weaker than her but her power shot up from level 10 to level 20 before my body couldn’t handle it while my own strength went from level 7 to around 12.” Xero said.

“I’ll wait little bro, I want to make sure I am stronger than him first like big bro then we can go all at once and break it together and be healed together.” He said.

“Okay, then let's go inside for class.” Xero said.

They all headed inside were a room was prepared for them and notebooks and notes were put out and Xero began to explain from where he left off.