Xero was flying over the road that lead to his family’s village and could only be startled by the conditions. First off he had trouble finding it more than half the time and even some sections were overgrown. Not to mention the fact that the road was winding. If the road was straight from where it began, it would be at most 10 km but the winding roads the travel be almost 60 km longer circling mountains and rivers.

After finally doing a run through the route of the road, Xero decided to simply cut through everything, of course he made sure to check with his father which monster territories passed where, because a road would usually avoid strong monsters but unlike the powerful tribes near the mountains, the forests were weaker.

Besides two mountains, were two strong monsters were that he had to circle around no matter if he cut through, the others, since the road that is cut through the first obstacles would link up there, so he didn’t see much problem in simply circling specific areas to avoid that dangers.

As such, he took off and reached the intersection where the road starts. The road connected the village to two other villages of larger size in the area.

There was no traffic because of the cold but this was a trade route so the road was large due to the passage of merchants.

“Let's start then.” He muttered as he pulled out his earth spirit blade. As for the earth control one, he left it with ashley while she was making a new earth spirit sword that he can transfer all the formula and sequences into the sword that would not die off.

Putting the sword on the ground the ground began to rumble as the barely two meter wide path, covered in snow, began to shake. The snow was pushed away and the path began to widen to nearly five meters. Trees within that range fell inward towards the forest keeping the path clear.

Some twenty meters were made in an instant and Xero smiled and started to walk with the sword ‘melted’ into the ground allowing him to keep controlling it as he walks.

Like that, Xero began to walk towards the village while all along the newly made road, a large pile of snow and collapsed trees could be seen. Stopping only at noon to rest and eat he walked forward and flying into the skies to get his bearings, cutting through several hills by making tunnels that crossed inside them and connecting to the path that had to curve the mountains.

Finally he reached the village after a day and night’s work having to constantly meditate to gain his mana, though this allowed him to train his mana pool as well.

***

SCREE! SCREE!

The sound of twisting metal could be heard from inside the mining cave. Specifically it was coming from the only smithy. Sitting at one side, the now more muscular Horned Iron Scale demon, Asher, was sitting in front of the lowest quality ingots that would never be used for anything but trial items or practice for novice.

The red eyes in the Rhombus eye sockets on the metal mask shined as it’s mouth opened and it took to its mouth another ingot and with massive force behind its jaw it bit a chunk of solid iron and began to chew.

Unlike a week ago, the demon’s scales that had a dull metallic shine were now bulkier and seemed to reflect light even in the dark.

“Asher, that is enough.” Zip said as he walked in. The demon looked at him, fear and awe in it’s eyes showing greatly. Unlike what one would expect, a familiar did not hold hostility towards its master beating it to death several times during training, their body becomes forged with each beating and his body even more so as the scales were formed of iron. Several scales have even begun to overlap forming large plated scales showing it was nearing another evolution.

Asher did not think much about it eating the lowest quality metals, it was actually a good thing because if he refined it once more, at least one fourth of all that metal was impurities and to refine it would make him decrease the stock by one fourth as well as needing complicated and annoying processes to remove the impurities from this low grade metal.

“Go pump the bellows and get ready to hammer.” he said.

Using his demon as an assistant, as well as using blacksmithing as a form for it to learn to control its strength, he turned the iron scaled demon with great deal of fire resistance, into a blacksmith assistant.

The bellows went up and down one at a time under the strength of the demon and the furnace lit up. Newly mined metal was dumped inside the chamber as the bellows burned and slowly it melted.

The process of blacksmithing lasted several hours as the metal was processed making good quality ingots that were piled away from the low quality ones. Finally he reheated a few and took on and flattened it with the hammer and then took another and hammered the two until they fused.

“Grab the hammer and hammer as I instruct.” Zip said and Asher stopped pumping and took a nearby hammer that was held in two hands. After Zip folded the metal once he told how to hit and gave the order with short shouts. With each shout the hammer would come. “Weaker.” or “harder” he would say if the swing was to weak or to strong. He took another ingot and added it and slowly forming a 90 cm long iron bar.

“Stop and go pump.” He said.

Asher stopped and went back to pumping the bellows while Asher heated the iron bar and took a one hand hammer and after the iron bar was heated he began to hammer it into shape until it took the shape of a pickaxe head.

This was one of the most needed item, a constantly supply of pickaxe since the ones used by the miners would slowly wear down. Of course, he already had around 60 extra after a week of work and now he would soon begin working on expansion. In other words, he would start improving the entire smithy. At this time it was the most primitive type of furnace and was structurally weak. The vents out were all only natural cracks.

He would need to form proper vents to allow the smoke to vent. He was still a bit far from using magic well enough so he would have to depend on his brother to make a good furnace or he would be forced to make special bricks made specifically for this.

“The guards requested a few basic plate armor… let’s see if I remember how to do this.” he muttered and took several low quality ingots and melted them before getting a mold for armor. Although the mold existed, it still needed some forging to fix a few faults formed after cooling.

After cleaning the impurities as best he could he poured the metal and it slid into the mold perfectly and filled it all.

Letting it cool a few minutes he then opened it to a burning red chest piece and took it out and began to hammer the few faults in the armor like trying to mend cracks that formed due to using poor quality metal and such.

After it was all fixed he let it cool and nodded, “This is fine, it haven’t gotten too rusty.” he said and tossed the armor towards Asher though not at him but at a trash bin of low quality gear.

He then began to make the true items and even if Asher looked at the bin of metal items it focused once more on the task at hand.

As the morning sun rose unknown to Zip, he yawned as he finished the twentieth full set of basic guards armor before standing up and stretching. He put the last piece in a box to be transported and took a brand on the wall and heated it up before marking each box with a burn mark with the letters ‘CG’ for city guard.

Tired out he turned to Asher and looked at the iron pile, “You can eat the low quality armor and ingots but do not touch anything else. Return to the familiar seal after you are full.” he said.

Asher turned only after Zip was gone and walked to the armor bin and picked up the newly forged armor and opening his mouth, the screeching of metal was heard once more.

Outside, Zip went to a hut prepared for him, made of wood, and dropped into his bed and started to sleep.

***

“Is this really the place?” a man asked while riding a horse sized lion familiar.

“I have checked. I even disguised myself to go into Gravlin to make sure. The path is supposed to be narrow and winding.” the glasses said.

Upon a large Tiger nearly the size of an elephant, a snort came from Tiger Scar, “Of course it wouldn’t match, that information is from before the development began. The village lord is spending money left and right to expand quickly before winter is over so that there will be a rush of settlers, the roads were expanded as well.” He said and with a kick the massive tiger began to walk forward. “Let go, since they made a nice road, it would be dumb of us to not use it.” He said and laughed.

The others laughed as well as they leisurely walked as well.

A two hour travel lead them to an unexpected sight of a 6 meter high stone wall with a gate along the road. There was no metal gate closing but instead Palisade doors since they had no method to install anything better without architects and technicians to make the complex gears and such.

“How the hell does this city have walls!?” Tiger Scar shouted.

“Boss look.” One of the men pointed out to the corners. The walls did not surround the town but instead it was one section of walls. That said, there was a large 15 meter watchtower over the gate overlooking the road and on it were two guards already on guard against any possible bandits.

“The stone isn’t normal, I feel the mana in the earth being richer, they probably used magic to raise it.” the glasses wearing man said. He was a mage by trade and had a few years of national academy knowledge to his name. It isn’t compared to the magic academy but he knew his stuff and he was sensitive to the mana changes. “Seems they are focused on the circling around the west side first. From the distance, the walls will surround a land of at least 4 km inside, it's enough to make a minor trade city and would definitely attract settlement development in the region after the entire city develops. It will develop into a major farm land as well.” The man said.

“No wonder the new lord is investing so much.” The lithe woman said. “Doesn’t change that we want the monster cores though. Since the walls are only 6 meter high, we can just jump it.” She said.

A snort came from the leader, “Who needs sneaking around, we will just walk in from the front door, lets see if there is someone here that can stop us.” He said and boldly walked forward on the back of his familiar.

***

“Finally another section done.” Xero said wiping his forehead after finishing another section of the city walls. Although they were short, he just needed to set up a base for it and later on they will grow along with the city. After all, which small village can say they are protected by strong stone walls like these. The only thing was that on the ground lay three earth mana stones, drained of mana making him sigh.

Common stones are different from uncommon stones. They don’t gather mana without being placed within a very specific magic formation and their capacity is small. Being made of only 10 earth slime nucleus, their capacity is very poor.

BANG!

Suddenly hearing a huge explosion, Xero, standing on the wall, frowned as he saw smoke coming from the direction of the gate.

“What's going on?” He said and took out his sword to fly over the tree line that stood above the wall.

Bang! Crash! Snap!

Suddenly the sounds of many things collapsing was heard and when Xero flew into the air he saw countless trees falling as they were toppled by some kind of strong power. Following the line in which the trees were falling, the cause was heading directly for the manor.

“This smells like trouble. I should get big brother.” Xero thought and turned to the mine and putting down his foot to accelerate at the fastest speed he bolted to the mines in a mad rush.

At the manor, the sounds were heard from far and Nil rushed out of the house. “Opal! Keep Nadir, Nero and Zilch in the house. Don’t come out!” He roared.

“Father in law, I shall come, my gem spirit isn’t strong but the firing rate of the Gem Ray is high.” She said.

“No, don’t come out in the open, if you want, hide the spirit along the wall and fire from a hidden vantage point but no coming out.” he said.

She nodded and looked around before finding an area that had a gap for her to see there and she spawned her Gem spirit and had it float near the top of the palisade around the manor.

Nil stood at the gate and behind him Silver appeared and he pulled out a sword, ready for combat.

He watched the destruction from a distance and when it neared the trees crashed and suddenly a huge tiger burst out slightly bigger than Silver. It stopped some 10 meters away before six more felines appeared. Upon their back were riders, each of who had a seal upon their hand.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Nil asked.

The glasses wearing man walked forward on the back of a large panther beast, “You are the Rank 1 Lower Knight, Nil Null?” He asked.

“I am? Who are you?” Nil replied.

“We go by the name Seven Cat’s. I assume you have heard of us?” He said smiling.

Nil’s face turned into a scowl at that moment, how could he not have heard of them? They were infamous all over the nation, they were a group of mercenaries once famed for being a complete party of level 30 feline familiar owners. Then a certain incident were Tiger Scar had found a very special herb, something called Cat’s eye, happened. At the same time he had found it, he had a run in with the nation’s prince, who equally has a feline familiar. Obviously both of them wanted it but because Tiger Scar’s familiar was used to dense forests he was able to outmaneuver the other who had a higher level feline but couldn’t maintain speed in a jungle.

That day the prince returned home furious and a bounty was put on Tiger’s head for ‘stealing an item from a royal family member’ and so the entire party was hunted but he had used the Cat’s eye and evolved his tiger beyond level 30.

The entire party is tight nit due to going through many battles together so they remained with him and soon the bounty of 250 gold for tiger’s head became 1000 gold for the parties head and after they formed the bandit group of the same name, the bounty shot up to nearly 6,000 gold for just Tiger’s head. They are ruthless, skilled and quick in what they do, never attacking small targets but never something beyond themselves.

“What do you want with my village? We have no grudges or riches, as for women, there is only old and poor hunters.” He said.

“My dear knight, let us cut to the chase, as long as you hand over all the Mountain lion monster cores, corpses and items we will leave. Also we want the complete Mountain Tiger corpse as well as its core. If you hand it over, no one gets hurt, we leave in peace and that will be the end of it.” The glasses said.

“We have no such thing anymore, we sold it to merchants since the Hellvine student did not want to carry around such things and took all our money.” He said.

The man sighed, “We already know that you are planning to auction it off, if not do you think we would waste our time coming all the way to this barren wasteland ourselves to deal with you.” He said his tone getting ruthless.

WOOSH!

Suddenly a wind blew above and a large blade flew overhead. Zip, Void and Xero jumped down, armed and each of them suddenly summoned their Familiars.

“Father, what is going on? Xero suddenly came and woke me saying something was going on.” Zip asked.

“The Seven Cat’s, they want the monster cores from the Mountain Lions along with all the corpses and items.” Nil replied.

The man on the panthor narrowed his eyes, “What’s this? Children huh? Are you planning on fighting back?” He asked snorting and laugh.

“I’ll say it again, we sold the items, how else do you think we have been expanding so fast?” Nil said.

The man shook his head, “You underestimate us to much, of course it was through magic you made the walls, how else would you build so much stone wall so quickly. Do you take me for a fool. I am a trained mage.” He said.

With the situation turning bleek Nil’s face darkened greatly.

“Enough talk.” Tiger suddenly spoke, “Capture the brat, his strength is level 15 at best but he is most likely some Magic academy talent, I’m sure he will become more generous for the head of his brat.” Tiger suddenly ordered.

“Ho~!” A high pitched voice said, “You want to capture master huh?” Ashley said grinning as she showed her shiny fangs. In her hands, a large butcher knife and kitchen knife appeared extending to the size of a great sword. She pointed them at the bandits, “Let’s see you try.” She said in a suddenly deep, serious and emotionless tone.

Her blue eyes shined brightly.

“So be it. ATTACK!” Tiger said and his tiger suddenly roared.

Silver howled and it had some magical effect. It was his Great howl, it slammed into a similar roar from the tiger, the two cancelling each other out.

As the two stopped Silver stepped forward and suddenly from his paw, an icy blue wave came out. It extended forward covering nearly 500 meters, around them, except into the manor. This was Silver’s Tundra Field, the perfect land adapted perfectly to the Alpha Silver Ice Wolf.

The snow and hail began to bombard them as all the trees and plants were frozen solid within the area of influence. Then from the snow and ice small cyclones formed gathering all that ice mana and snow. Slowly they formed into a large number of ice wolves, each with red glowing eyes that shined through the snow.

The Seven bandits turned serious as they saw the scene, they somehow realized the reason why a Rank 1 Lower knight was sent to a place with level 40 and above monsters, the fact that his familiar could spawn minions was a huge advantage. Even if he was alone, the number of minions could keep the other six occupied. Not to mention, the field advantage spell that increased the cold in the surroundings, even the normally unaffected Tiger Scar was feeling the cold in his bones.

Still, this made his blood boil, a good fight don’t come often.

The Tiger roared once more before it bound forward and Silver did the same. The two riders jumped in the air and swords met.

CLENG!

Suddenly all the Ice wolves jumped out and the six bandits dispersed and began advancing.

A 10 meter gap wasn’t a big thing, especially to felines. In one bound, the panther was in front of Ashley. He was grinning but his face suddenly turned serious as he suddenly dropped his body tightly against his familiar as he saw a massive butcher knife almost cut him in half. The aura it gave off was that of the feeling of dread and death.

Another blade coming crashing down on the two from above, or it should be said that Ashley had simultaneously sent the butcher knife attack and a second later the kitchen knife came down as she had anticipated the action.

The man paled but an amulet on his chest lit up and a barrier formed. Still as her blade hit the barrier it pushed down on the man and feline crushing them into the ground stopping their momentum.

“Didn’t I say that you need to go through me to reach master?” Ashley said in a deep grave voice. It did not seem her own, her blue eyes shined as it was trained on the man. The white pupil could see through all magic tricks including the one he had tried to use by forming an illusionary afterimage.

The others had not seen him but such a spell would never trick Ashley and she saw through it clearly and blocked him at a moment’s notice.

Although the man was shocked, the feline was quick and they both jumped away only to be attacked from behind by the ice wolves. He wielded a wand and fired fire bolts at them to break them. Sadly for him, Tundra Field and Ice Wolf Summon work in conjunction, the field spell improves the number of spawns if they are in a snow covered place as well as increase the recovery rate of mana for Silver. Not only that, it becomes impossible to completely destroy the ice wolves as long as they are within the Tundra field. The wolves will simply piece themselves back together and attack once more.

As for the three brothers and two demons, they remained in shock by both the combat efficiency of the wolves as well as Ashley’s sudden change of personality.

BANG!

Suddenly Nil crashes into the ground and Silver was pinned while biting and clawing into the tiger.

“You disappoint me. I was expecting something better.” Tiger said.

Nil stood up and held his shoulder that was trembling from the impact.

“Fine, Silver, use Silver Brilliance!” He shouted.

Silver Brilliance was a spell from when he was a Silver Wolf. The mana filled the magic formula and suddenly the silver hair of the wolf began to glow. His eyes glowed a savage light and suddenly it opened its jaw as a white ball of mana burst out and slammed into the underbelly of the tiger.

The beast roared in pain and was thrown off but before it did it bit into Silver’s front leg.

“Quickly help father!” Zip said.

The three nod and the Demons did as ordered. The demons run to attack the man, Asher’s metallic scaled hand begins to glow, gaining a grey shine like metal while soon turning bright red like hot metal.

“Humph.” Tiger snorted and punched at the incoming claw.

Pop!

Only that was heard as Asher was sent flying with his arm shattered and another big fist hit the gut sending it sprawling.

Demons have an almost perverse healing capability so as soon as it landed, it began to gather scattered ash and dust in the air.

As for Slash, he came from behind and with his fangs and claws gained from the Mountain Tiger, he slashed down.

Tiger simply turned around and with a roundhouse punch hit the paw and made the beast spin before grabbing a fang and pulling it into a headbutt causing the skull to crack before it was thrown back near its owner.

BANG!

A sudden blast was heard and suddenly Ashley was hit by something coming from under the snow. Being sent flying with a large spike of ice, several chains of ice shot out and hooked her arms and legs before slamming her into the ground.

“Pathetic.” Tiger said as he looked at the glasses, “You took your sweet time.” Tiger said.

“Didn’t expect the demon to be so quick and the wolves so annoying.” He replied.

“Now tell those pesky things to stop.” Tiger ordered.

Nil, seeing the situation turn south in an instant, turned grave but the wolves suddenly stopped. Nil, Zip, Void and Xero got close to one another while the familiars stood up injured. The demon’s wounds were healing and Asher’s arm could already move. They stood in front of their masters. Only Ashley was chained down.

“I said it already, hand it all over, if you do you will not die. I shall give you one final chance.” Tiger said. He obviously did not know where it all was, maybe there was even a familiar with storage capacity. It was known that such familiars would die and take everything with them. Until he was sure there were no more familiars or there were no familiars with storage capabilities, he would not risk it.

Nil was frowning but sighed, he would not endanger his family and the village for some monster cores. He would lose a lot of money but he still had the herbs in the surroundings that could be gathered and sold and there was metal that was coming out.

As he was about to speak something unexpected happen.

Asher suddenly roared and turning to Slash, he suddenly plunged his whole arm into the tiger’s head and from it, ripped out a red pearl. Then turned to Silver and did the same leaving a gaping hole in their heads. From Silver, a crystal like orb came out. This was his monster core. As for the reason that Asher was even able to pierce the skin was because Silver had dropped all defense and let it happen.

The masters of the familiars were shocked, wondering what was going on. The two dead familiars were pulled and sucked into the familiar seals but the cores remained.

“What's it doing?!” the one of the women asked.

KRAAA!

Asher roared and suddenly his gripped tightened, cracks appeared and Xero’s eyes widened. “Don’t!” He shouted but at that instant, both cores shattered and it opened its hand straightened it before plunging it into it’s own chest and grabbing its core inside its body and crushing it from the inside.

Asher looked up with clear red eyes, glaring at the bandits. Resentment and rage filled them and the desire to kill that filled its being.

His body dispersed and was sucked into Zip.

“Master! RUN!” Ashley shouted and Xero turned and flew with his sword reaching 20 meters before it finally came.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three massive eruptions burst forth from the bodies of the three men.

Mana flowed in like a tsunami. Their blocked channels were ripped open painfully all the way to the mana pool before everything was sucked into the familiar seal.

From the two brother, while Xero thought the demon tattoo would have appeared, it did not, their bodies were several times stronger than Xero’s when the same thing happened and so they could handle the sudden surge of power. Even his father was under the baptism of mana.

Countless raging bursts happen.

“Boss what happened?!” The shouts from the bandits came from the bandits.

“Those fuckers broke their own cores! It released all the mana inside!” Tiger roared in rage.

When he had used the Cat’s eye on his familiar, it had simply formed the monster core, he had used the chance to crush it and surpass the limit since only level 31 and above monsters have the core. Only demons, dragons and angels develop cores before level 30 and are said to be the strongest creatures.

As the waves stopped three things appeared. A bright glowing crystal and two red pearls.

The crystal pulsed and collapsed in on itself growing bigger and forming a crystal orb becoming a bit more perfect. As for the two 13 cm pearls. Their size slowly grew, 14 cm, 15 cm, 16, 17, 18 and finally stopping at 19 cm.

They each occupied a distance of almost 10 meters from each other. Slowly they began to vibrate as mana surged from each. They slowly grew, two into four legged giant bodies and one into a large body.

On the ground, something suddenly lifted into the air. When Xero saw that he remembered about Asher’s two large horns and the large scaled tail. These two things hadn’t completely been absorbed and remained and now they were floating to the horned and tailed creature. The horns were facing opposite directions when the tail got near and they wrapped the edge forming a strange hammer like shape.

As the three figures touched the ground, a wave of mana surged and from their feet they took form.

The first to take form was the middle creature who grabbed the much too small hammer. As it grabbed, a large armor formed over its arm and climbed up its arm and began to form scale like heavy plate armor. Two very large S shaped horns were formed and a large mask with a rhombus shaped eye socket formed. The lower jaw was separate and split like it had been previously. From the mask, large plates grew and covered the body.

When the entire body was covered in armor, the tiny hammer suddenly expanded to fit the body. Now the Horned Iron Scale Demon stood 4 meters tall, slightly hunched and with a gorilla like figure. The large almost lizard like plated tail on its back was nearly the length of its body from head to the base of the tail.

A loud roar came from the second demon. Four meter tall, 10 long, with glittering white fangs and claws, having obsidian black fur and glowing lava colored stripes on its body, and glowing red eyes, a Demonic Tiger loomed.

BANG!

An eruption happened as suddenly almost the entire city, was covered in ice, all the way to the top of the palisade of the original village to the top of the new wall. Ice covered, only within the villages and manor the ice did not invade.

Looking towards the monster that towered at 7 meters high and 15 long, Ice climbed up the four paws and formed large powerful legs. Soon silver fur grew on the lower body as dark blue appeared on the back as if it was made of some kind of soft ice. Two clear blue eyes appeared snarling with a mouth full of shining white fangs.

Bending low the wolf open its jaws and howled.

AWOOOOO!

Being able to see a slight visible soundwave vibration, everyone was stunned and towards the intruders a shock wave hit them all. A feeling of dread filled them as they felt a cold in the depth of the soul.

Seeing these three demonic creatures suddenly appear from the three weaklings he had taken care of personally, Tiger knew that this wasn’t going to end well. He took a step back and suddenly found countless large silver shadows, double the size of the previous ones, glaring from the shadows of the trees.

“Not good!” Tiger though.

He looked at the three men on the ground, Nil was standing up but was having trouble until Xero helped him. The two boys were unconscious because the impact from demons were many times more powerful.

“You came and threatened my family. Now I will threaten yours.” Nil said.

Tiger’s pupil shrank and he suddenly turned and his leg tightened, “Retreat!” he roared as he escaped. He knew shit had hit the fan. The wolf had an even more powerful aura than himself and he knew that this wolf had surpassed another bottleneck in one large burst.

“Get them.” Nil ordered and the pack of Ice wolves attacked.