In the early morning inside the Snake Nest Dungeon, Night and Ernest had finished an early morning spar and were at a cafe, owned by the Donima Firm.

“The pleasures of this world really are so much better than those in hell.” Night sighed as he smelled the fragrant Celestial Snake Herb tea. A special herb that grows near the Celestial dragon’s mountain abode under its immense and majestic aura.

“I don’t really understand tea, I like more a cup of the northern coffee brew.” He said.

Night chuckled, “That dirt water is too thick and smelly, it reminds me of savage demon blood that I had to drink as water.” Night said.

“NIGHT YOU BASTARD!” Suddenly a roar came from the side street. Wearing armor of an Ice Wolf Feral Demon linked, Void was fuming in rage.

“Oh, seems it finally happened.” Night chuckled.

BANG!

“YOU LYING IMP!” He roared.

Night’s face darkened as he put down his tea and jumped at Void with his trident appearing and hitting the shaft at the coming paw gauntlet. “I would refrain from calling a devil an Imp.” He said coldly.

It was a highly insulting thing to call a Devil an Imp, only something with absolute power could do that because no one and nothing could fight back against it.

“You lying piece of ash! You lied about Ember’s growth condition! Even after I was made to say it and spend nearly half the night with her and then the rest… AH! I won’t be satisfied until I leave you a bloody pulp at least once!” Void said.

“Oh? Still unsatisfied, you should have add some lotion then.” Night laughed at him before let his body be shot back but his wings spread and he casually landed back near his seat.

Ernest stood up and stepped between causing Void to stop but he was huffing in rage. “Ernest, I like you but unless I vent for that asshole lying to me I won’t be able to rest this rage inside me!” Void said growling in rage.

Ernest rubbed his head, “Night, tell him the real conditions before it gets out of hand.” Ernest said.

“I did tell him the right conditions… oh I did forget to mention something though, a Lesser Feral Devil will only evolve when they enter their first mating cycle when they reach level 30 which is when you have to dominate them.” Night laughed.

“YOU BASTARD!” Void shouted and suddenly a huge block of ice appeared above Night and crashed down like a meteor crashing the devilish angel under before suddenly becoming filled with spikes making him a pin cushion.

The attack was so sudden that it even killed Night making him return to the seal but it left a bit of the area damaged including the destroyed table, broken cups and damaged wooden outdoor flooring.

Huffing Void turned to the man that appeared, “Ask my little brother, Xero Null, and he can make a new chair, cup and fix the floor quickly.” He said and turned.

The face of the man was bright red at the damage but at the mention of Xero, who was famous for already defending ‘his position’ as the fiance of the head’s daughter, four times already, each in a tight even match but winning in the end.

Almost a month a passed since the first match and he was put under a tremendous amount of stress from countless 13 year olds that came in droves to try and become the husband of the two girls.

This intense pressure had already pushed Xero, as well as Zip and Cinder who have spent part of their day ‘forging’ Xero and Ashley to level 29.

Unlike the tempering before, forging was a 30 to 50 hit process and it even affected the soul slightly as well as having even greater effect on the bones and marrows, making them more flexible but harder. Zip joined them each time because the Sword Devil Flames were affecting Cinder too much while his own strength was getting left behind and this was not good since he needs to break through alongside his brother.

“I’m sorry for Night lying.” Ernest said while paying for the tea and drinks and running after Void who had unlinked.

“I don’t blame you, only your damned familiar.” Void said as the rage slowly subsided.

“Where are you going?” Ernest asked.

“To get my brother to forge me and Ember, we are level 24 but forging has a high level of improvement with just three times more pain, it's nothing I haven’t felt already.” Vold said.

True to his word, he walked to the Null smithy where he found some few dozen demons but suddenly stopped when he found a small devil looking like a three year old right next to Cinder.

“Hey who is that?” Void asked, “Your son?” he joked.

“No, though I don’t dislike the thought.” Cinder said, “This is an Inferior Lesser Plate Devil, my minion, he just evolved last night after spending two weeks in the lava pit.” She said.

“Why is so small?” Void asked.

“I still haven’t crushed his demon core so he could lose the Inferior.” She said and pointed, “Go prepare the material we need, yesterday boss and lil bro reached level 30 so they are training outside before breaking through. Get preparing the two kilo of Devil Metal prepared so that I can forge Ashley and my own body as well as boss and lil bro’s body with it.” she said.

“W-what!? You're going to make them out of metal?!” Void shouted.

“Don’t overthink it lil bro, I’m just adding traces of the metal to their skeleton, unlike other demon races, we need to completely reforge our body or they would be consumed by the power in my and Ashley’s body. This metal will help them filter and reject demon corruption particles that enter their bodies when using our full power.” She explained and looked at Ember, “You will need even more, the girl is the most savage of us, not to mention it's going to be a pain in the ass to break her bones when the time comes since they are level 45 Giant Tiger bones she assimilated.” Cinder shook her head.

“Well… I guess it’s fine, anyway can you forge us?” Void asked.

“Sure, just let me finish giving out the orders that would take a few hours for them to accomplish.” Cinder said and began to walk around shouting at the demons to do something or another. What scared Void was that materials for making Devil Metal that soon began to come out. Mithril and Demon Core infused and smelted iron ingots. There was almost 400 kilos of each and they began to throw the material into a very small 1 meter wide plated devil forge which was definitely from the small one showing it would probably be forging as well. The forge lacked an altar though and there was only a black stone at the center but as the metal slowly melted it began to float up over the rock.

“Such a strange thing.” Ernest said.

Night appeared and looked at the forge, “Inferior Plate Devils can’t even access 1/100 of a true plate Devil like Cinder, he can’t even forge real demons, they can only prepare materials for their master.” Night said.

Void glared at them but still the demons kept throwing the metal in together until all 800 kilos were in and the little devil took out a hammer and turned into his demon form. He was at the size of a human adult and looked more like a Iron Scaled Demon instead of a Plated Devil if not for the armor on its body.

It jumped and smashed the hammer down suddenly causing countless symbols and things to appear on the mass of metal that was suddenly compressed slightly. He kept jumping and hitting and slowly the metal was compacted while dense streams of black mana flowed into it. Mithril is a shiny white metal while iron is grey, when mixed it remains white but with each hit the metal slowly turned more black. When he was finished, the liquid metal was one fourth of the size and the liquid ball slowly solidified and the demon jumped and kicked it out before jumping off its forge and reverting to its devil form and start to roll the huge ball to a store room.

Cinder soon appeared, “Come on, I’m busy today and I need to be rested for later, I’m doing tempering since I need all the energy possible for Boss and lil-bro’s breakthrough.” She said.

Although Void wanted to have a forging but he had to accept this.

After the intense session Void just glared at Night and walked out after healing to go drink more of his anger away.

Ernest just smiled wryly while watching him go away.

“What’s under his skin?” Cinder asked.

“Night told him only half the information for ranking up Ember.” Ernest said.

“You mean her needing to be level 30 before mating with her?” Cinder asked.

“You knew?” Ernest asked.

Cinder shrugged, “He never asked.” She said.

Night began to laugh loudly.

“You boys just stay out of the way, I still need to prepare the person who will be forging and as well as prepare the lava pit for all the energy it will need.” She said before walking away.

Ernest was completely confused by this and looked to Night for an answer.

“Err, there are rumors that say that a Sword and Plated Devil are a kit, a set need to be forged together and need to be the same level range to make the same break through. Problem is that they are very noble level devils and need almost five to ten times more energy to make the same breakthrough. It's the reason why Cinder has never once put away her forge here allowing it to constantly gather more and more mana as well as tempering Ashley so much to refine her own forge and make it stronger.” Night said. “They are just rumors though.” Night said.

The two stayed against the wall and soon enough Cinder came out with the little Devil and took him to her forge and put him in the center.

She then suddenly turned into her demon form after setting up the forge and began to pound the tiny devil.

Ernest cringed when he saw the little devil turn into a meat paste. In the chest, the demon core shined and the body was reabsorbed before it got hit again.

Thirty hits in total the Plated demon core became 10 cm big before it formed into a 5 year old devil boy that looked just like the one before but it was a bit bigger.

After walking off, it suddenly shined and became like Cinder looked when she first appeared but a bit smaller, at three meters seventy five centimeters tall.

“He still needs some tempering.” Cinder muttered and put him back on the forge in his small form before going into the storage pulling out several dozen low grade steel armor sets that seemed scrapped and tossed everything into the lava pit.

The armor was turned into liquid and soon it was completely purified making 100% pure refined steel that magically climbed the side of the forge altar and filed the etchings of the formation with liquid steel.

Cinder began to forge him again while that liquid steel was slowly eaten by the demon core that increased another centimeter finally reaching 11 cm and his demon form being four meters tall.

“This will have to do.” She complained but was forced to go with this arrangement.

She sent him to sleep before she went and grabbed the ball of Demon metal, shaking her head and called for some more materials to be dumped in her own forge before she dropped the metal. Soon a ball of liquid metal formed on the altar and she forged that as well until it split up and became four 30cm big solid pure black metal balls. It looked no different to a cannon ball and another she picked it up easily and nodded when she put the metal balls carefully on the ground, the area around it instantly cracked under the impressive weight.

Ernest’s face twitched when he saw the metal balls, “I-is that metal really going to be forged into Xero’s bones?” Ernest asked worried about his friend.

“It is, that is very high quality Devil metal. It’s very resistant against demon magic, it can be called a semi-holy metal and is the one and only metal a Sword Devil would accept to be forged with. Their natural body, that is the sword body, is formed by raw horrible quality Devil metal and only after being completely reforged during the level 30 breakthrough will their bodies get rid of the many impurities in it that was weakening it including the weakness against Demon corruption particles. Plated Devils are similar.” Night said. “If only those little cannon balls didn’t weigh a few ton I would have taken one for myself.” Night said reluctant “My Nephilim Trident is also made of very low quality devil metal, if only you had the money to buy at least 100 kilos of raw mithril then I could reforge it.” Night complained.

“Don’t even dream of it, only if the Light church would help us in that regard could we ever hope to get that much raw mithril. What I’m more surprised about is how she got so much of it.” Ernest said.

“Is it that surprising?” Night asked completely confused, “I mean, they’re the best miners, not to mention she has Ashley’s sword minions to help her mine inside a heavily dense mana environment like this. Mithril is a highly abundant resource in this place and all she needs is for the earth controlling minion to walk around and separate the mithril into rocks and bring it back.” He said.

Ernest realized this point and nodded understanding.

After a few hours of preparing a number of materials Xero and Zip returned along with a number of sword minions and some level 10 or so demons. Carried by each minion were a number of level 30 and above monsters that could be found in the surrounding outer city still as well a few even further out.

“Cinder, we are back.” Zip said.

“Boss, welcome back. You boys got a lot of materials and food.” She said.

“Master over hunt so much, no it's better to say that he had a contest with brother-in-law, and overfilled their magic bag.” Ashley said complaining.

Xero and Zip chuckled before opening their bag and releasing the many snake creatures as well as a few none snake beasts but almost all are reptilian.

Cinder nodded, “Throw everything into the lava pit, all the metals in the blood, muscle and scales will be extracted in a few hours.” Cinder said.

Ashley waved her hand and the minions began to drop everything inside the lava pit causing the pure lava to slowly darken as the material began to drop in and absorb the heat. The pillars began to light up, already set up to refine materials, impurities almost instantly began to bubble up as toxic gas.

The rest slowly got extracted in the lava and was slowly refined and improved slowly into magical metals. Cinder put the four Devil metal balls on the altar leaving them there to slowly absorb the slowly gathering minerals that were slowly starting to snake up onto the altar.

They then let Ashley make food and enjoy the food while waiting, Cinder would look towards the altar through from their table outside.

“So, compared to my breakthrough, isn’t the preparations for your breakthrough many times more complicated?” Ernest asked.

“This is the minimal we could prepare actually?” Cinder said eating a huge chunk of meat. She fed the little devil boy that would be forging them as well as soon to upgrade to full Plated Devil Minion.

“We are ‘material’ creatures, he need a high demand of metal and material to reforge our bodies every 10 levels.” Ashley said while she and Xero were eating off a huge corpse of a Giant Boa Xero had killed.

Their bodies released steam as they ate but all that was slowly converted into energy and heat.

As the time for the breakthrough drew near, Nil, Univa and Meldie soon came to see their breakthrough. Had seen Ernest’s but it was a very worrisome process because it forged the soul as well.

“Alright, the refining process is done, strip down boys because things are going to get hot!” Cinder laughed.

Of course, semi solid metal wasn’t hot enough to injure them after they activate their auras and circulated their mana to protect against the heat. Only when the forging process started would it hurt as their bodies would be crushed into the molten metal before it was literally hammered into their bodies.

As the two undressed, Meldie shrieked in shame covering her eyes but in a rather cute manner she slightly opened a crack in her small fingers while Univa blushed greatly but only diverted her eyes a moment before looking again only to blush harder when she saw how lean Xero’s muscles were.

There was no need to mention that neither girl dared look a Zip’s sculpted tan adult figure since it was simply too much stimulation for two young girls so in the end they turned to Cinder where it was a bit more comfortable but made them question if they would grow that ‘big.’

The four soon walked to the Altar just as the Hilda arrived, curious about this breakthrough. She said that Void was exhausted from drinking but chuckled a little after but said no more.

With the four finally on the Altar the Plated Devil Minion took his place, the forge was already previously set up by Cinder so all it would take was for the forging to start and it did as he let out a roar.

His body grew to four meters tall while his hammer expanded until the head was 6 meters wide so that it would hit the entire altar.

The altars mana gathered around hammer infusing it and his body with immense mana while arms grew out of the pillars and sent out beams of light to chain down their souls just as the hammer crashed down.

Puff… BANG!

After a small muffled hit the effect of the first hit had, unexpectedly, caused Ashley’s devil flame to burst like a spark on a gun, destroying all the defensive power of the four and increasing the power of the hammer, lightning up all six pillars and giving unparalleled power to the forging Lesser Plated Devil Minion to destroy all their bodies breaking it down to the last connected cell and ripping the four souls out. With all this, an unimaginable amount of mana suddenly skyrocketed making every person with a minimum of level 60, feel the immense magical disturbance.

Archmagus Valmor shot his eyes open and looked at the roar like impact. “That impact felt different to the ones Xero used to undergo common forging, its like at least the attack of a level 50 demon was shot off in the center of the city.” Valmor said.

“That means the kid started his breakthrough. Want to go watch? I once saw a Sword and Plate Devil breakthrough, it’s quite a sight.” Lucifer said appearing.

“The child really lifts up tremendous winds.” Valmor stood up and space in front of him bent as he stepped through appearing in the air near the forge only to see Xero’s body turned into a pile of meat while his soul was chained down by the six pillars.

At once Valmor paled and intended to do something drastic to revive him before being punched in the face by Lucifer, “Stop doing stupid stuff you old devil. The breakthrough is incomparably brutal, he needs to forge his soul and remake his body like metal.” He said.

Valmor watched in stunned awe as Xero’s body slowly remade itself in the molten glowing lava that was burning it.

The hammer fell again while the metal slowly fell off and climbed up once more. Slowly the metal began to be hammered into the four bodies while the souls were hit, crushed and reformed with mana filling it. The broken souls instantly pieced together becoming more powerful while forming a nebulous cloud around it making more and more protection while the soul grew stronger as the hammer still reached it even with that protection.

“This seems more like a torture then a breakthrough.” Valmor said.

As a man who has lived many years, there are few events he has not witnessed but the forging of a Sword and Plate Devil is one of them and in his opinion, it is by far one of the most brutal body tempering methods he ever witnessed.

On the ground, everyone had their hearts in their mouth seeing the breakthrough, even though a few of them saw it once, it was something that made them very stressed about it because it was required this sort of breakthrough.

What was unexpected when more and more powerful people flew over to the smithy and were shocked to see the ‘dead’ corpses and souls being pounded while liquid metal was being ‘eaten’ by the corpse forming a kind of ‘pit’ as the liquid metal was sucked into the body.

They watch in horror as the Plated Demon, burning in Sword Devil Flame, pounded them. At the 45th hit a change happened as the souls reentered the body and he ‘forged’ the link between soul and body once more.

At the final impact, a pillar of Blue White Flame lifted from the altar.

Soon that pillar bent and dropped upon the four bodies, lifting them while the rest of the liquid metal entered through the wounds closing behind it while healing and dissolving the metal into the muscles and bones leaving no true metal in the body and it was completely flesh and bone.

The two devils were sucked into their now completely reformed demon core, Ashley’s 3cm ruby crystal core slowly expanded to 6 cm while Cinder’s 1 cm ruby crystal core expanded to 3 cm and they shined.

Cinder appeared with two meter in height, sculpted muscles under her tan skin held immense power. She looked no different but was taller and looked like an adult now.

As for Ashley, her body was much smaller but unlike her 12 year old budding curves had suddenly turned dangerous in many sense of the word. With full, well shaped breasts, an hourglass figure with a wide hips and a perfectly round sculpted butt, cute small white horns with a tiny blue white flame on top, pale blue skin and a full teen adult figure looking at least 18 years old like a mature young woman. Her long silky hair was hanging on her back while a smile on her face showed her confidence.

On the outside, the Plated Devil minion also underwent a huge change as it changed back to normal and soon turned into a young man of 13 year old.

When the four on the altar came to, they looked up only to find countless powerhouses looking at them. The two boys blushed instantly and quickly jumped to their clothing and put on their pants before turning to them, “Greeting sirs.” Zip said.

Nil finally realized many powerful people had arrived and were overlooking the event.

“Quite an interesting display.” Valmor said.

They remained quiet but Valmor suddenly turned to Morgan who had come as well, “Congratulations Morgan, your empire has two more fantastic knights.” He said.

“Huh? W-was that event just a breakthrough!?” Morgan said in shock, “What kind of bloody people destroy their bodies for a breakthrough?” He said.

“There are many things in this world and many other ones that are very brutal, these are devils we are talking about, destroying the body and forging the soul is their method.” Valmor said chuckling making all the people pale.

To do something to the soul is suicide, how fragile is the soul and yet they just saw their souls be ripped from the body, pounded and forged back into the bodies.

The powerhouses all looked at the two young men with admiration because these people would not dare such a risky thing like that without prior preparation.

Puff! Puff!

Just as they were talking the sound of bodies collapsing was heard and they looked finding the three devils and the two boys unconscious, the two familiars then retreated to the familiar seal but the family of the boys ran forward and excused themselves before taking them to rest.

The Null family rush back home and put the two in bed to let them rest. Nil returned to the dining hall were Void, Hilda, Univa and Meldie were here. “They’re asleep now, it must have been a huge burden.” Nil said.

“I wonder how long they will stay asleep?” Meldie said worried.

“Don’t worry, they succeeded, they just need rest because their method was extremely heavy handed.” Nil said and suddenly felt a cold feeling run down his spine.

Void saw his father's strangeness at this moment as his face turned serious. “What happened father?” he asked.

Nil shook his head, “I don’t know but I only got this feeling once in my life. It was when I angered your mother the one and only time in my life. I think something is happening back at Lurian.” He said.

Hilda laughed, “Now isn’t that sweet, being able to feel your dear from so far away.” Hilda joked.

Nil looked at her serious, “Hilda, girls…” he said looking at all three, “One thing should be known, never infuriate Opal, it is a very scary sight that is even scarier than a demon attacking you with all its killing intent pressing down on you.” he said.

The three girls looked strangely at him.

“I’ll go see the king and see if I can’t go back home, I have a bad feeling about this. Void stay here and take care of your brothers…” he pointed at him, “Don’t do anything without thinking.” He said.

“Don’t worry, I will think for him so don’t worry.” Hilda said.

Nil nodded and made his way to the king and report what he wanted to do. Morgan was curious about this but since it was quite the small problem he simply offered a tamed mount to return to the empire.

Nil thanked him and wasted no time even when a few people greeted him as he left through the gate and left the dungeon to return to the Lurian empire.