Xero was never one to ignore an experienced master’s advice. After almost two day with Ashley working with Ignia to refine Sword Demon Minions and changing all the bound sword Demons into true Sword Devil’s of different types since the sword they were made from were different, Xero headed to the portal and asked Valmor to go to the academy because he wanted to search for sword magic.

Valmor smiled when he saw the boy actually taking his advice and opened the portal to the academy so that he could visit the academy.

He could only go up to the 3rd year section but as long as he returned when summer break arrived, he would have 4th year permission.

He quickly travelled to the Library where he found the librarian waiting.

“Good evening, what do you need?” he asked when Xero arrived.

“I’m looking for sword magic, any type up to 3rd year level.” Xero said.

“Do you want the actual spells or books on constructing sword magic itself?” he asked.

Xero paused before choosing both since it would be a good idea to know how to make the spells themselves so that he can later develop them for himself.

The librarian guided him to a table before going into the library and coming back with piles and piles of books, separated between spells and reference books.

“These are grade 2 and 3 sword magic books, they count for around a third of the books and the other pile is knowledge compiled on sword magic. I picked out and piled them so that you can read them from top to bottom in order which would help you learn this subject of magic with greater ease.” He said.

“Thank you sir!” Xero bowed and the librarian nodded before turning to his seat at the register table.

After some thought, Xero decided that he would first learn about Sword magic principles. Since he had some food prepared so that he could stay cramming the knowledge in his head for a few days, he did not worry and instead he picked up the first book to start learning.

He referenced the knowledge gained off of the Sword Devil’s Flaming Slice and Elemental Grand Cleave to see how the knowledge connected.

He did not speed read, haste makes waste when it comes to gathering magical knowledge and learning. One cannot learn a subject with just reading so Xero tended to write what he learned as a second learning aid.

What he learned actually surprised him. A spell like Elemental Grand Cleave was actually a crude method to using sword magic. It was no different from Elemental mana bomb that Crystal could use.

Sword magic could be so intricate that it amazed him actually. Even the simplest reference book showed him different sequence that seemed extremely advanced yet fit into the age group. One such example was for nature element familiars that used the sword. It was a spell that caused hundreds of magic blades to be shot out in quick succession. The elemental Grand Cleave was a spell that gathered all the mana in one blunt attack but this one was a spell that used skillful mana manipulation to fire off small blade like ‘petals’ that would storm the enemy.

They could block some but never all which cut then like knives from unconventional directions while also being a long range spell.

Even the most simple spell which was just a regular slash that shot out a sword beam would instead use little mana but focus it so that the swing of the sword would form that beam into a penetrating slash.

This opened Xero’s eyes to amazing possibilities and Ashley also came out soon after and read with him.

The books were very enlightening and they spent almost a week reading all the text book’s before asking the librarian for a copy because there was too much knowledge.

Xero had to sign a magic contract that he would not share the books with other people though. If it was just common magic knowledge then it was fine but this sword magic knowledge was exclusive to Everlight and what their students and teacher have studied and discovered since its founding.

The spells were a different story, they were just common sword magic and the librarian didn’t care for them but the price for the copy was still a bit high being ten uncommon mana stones.

Xero started to think that it was a good idea to figure out how to make his own mana stones or else he would soon find himself broke due to the copied books.

Xero returned to the Snake Nest and soon reached his father’s manor only to discover Jasmine sitting at the table.

“Sister?! How come you are here?” Xero asked.

She laughed, “Father brought me because he and mother thought it was best for me to be in the dungeon for training.” she said.

Void, who was sitting on the other seat across grinned, “Mother actually just wants her first grandchildren.” He said laughing at her.

Jasmine’s face turned red as she glared at Void who was laughing at her cute display. Zip was also there and so was Nil as they were eating their noon meal.

“Where were you?” Nil asked.

Xero went and hugged him, “I was at the academy reading about sword magic. Archmagus Valmor helped me improve my spells and taught some about 4th year magic and helped brother improve his forge as well. He suggested I get more sword magic for Ashley so I went to study and get books on sword magic.” He said.

“Oh, that’s good, I had noticed your familiar didn’t have many attack spells but it see it is fine now.” Nil nodded and put his son down.

Xero went to his seat and they began to eat and after finishing, Xero went to his dorm where the 1st, almost second, year students came to him asking him some things.

Most of it was about breathing techniques and magic they were learning. Since Miss Gilbody put them in his care, he took them inside and began to share his notebooks with them and tutor them some while answering their questions. They soon left to do their own training and open as many mana channels before next year came and they had their familiars summoned.

The five 2nd years were more inclined to self study and did not overly pester Xero who was also studying.

The boy soon picked up to study the sword magic books once more.

After a while he finally picked up the copy of one group of spells. It was a very basic set of sword spells.

“Hmm, they're based off a sword martial arts.” He muttered and flipped through and saw that each spell would form a kind of combo set and flowed together to gain strength from each successive spell.

“Ah!” Xero exclaimed, “No wonder Archmagus said what he said.” Xero muttered.

He took another book and found that it was also the same as the other and was in the form of sets.

“So that is why, the sword spells are formed from sets of spells forming a kind of art form.” He muttered in awe.

When he thought about the two spells he had, the Sword Devil’s Flaming Slice actually had the best development potential while the Elemental Grand Cleave truthfully needed either to be replaced or improved upon.

Xero already saw the countless improvement possibilities for it but it didn’t fit Ashley anymore.

Xero called out Ashley and they talked about this point and even she agreed that the elemental cleave wasn’t fitting her fighting style since she used more fire.

“Maybe if master improves it while changing elemental for Sword Devil Flame it could improve the compatibility between the Sword Devil’s Flaming Slice.” Ashley said.

This was an Innate spell so how could they simply trash it? They would best improve it and adapt it to their needs.

They thus began to improve the spell on their own initiative so they had to slowly use mana to find where divergence happened in the spell. After an hour they soon did the final touches to the now changed spell which was now Sword Devil’s Divine Fire Smite.

The looked at it and at each other and almost laughed at how they improved it. Of course the name was imposing but it was still a cleave attack but now, with the added improvements, the spell actually required specific movement to match with the spell sequence like a sword form. It would require Ashley and Xero to train this to be able to extract the full might of their sword technique.

They tried to improve the Flaming Slice and did improve it by adding sword forms but it didn’t change the ability.

Of course, Ashley said that the ‘pull’ between than that had been unnoticeable had finally appeared and it seems they to have gone the proper method.

“So… do we add random spells?” Xero asked.

Ashley nodded, “We do but we then have to adapt them to my magic and being.” She said.

It made sense since the spells were now attracted to each other.

The two began to look through the books, they found that spells should have specific pathways but more advanced ones would have three or four of each level of spell. Usually five was the highest level and each higher ranked spell would have another 2 or 3 for each spell.

This meant that with one finisher, there was two or three that came before and each of these would have two or three all the way to five levels and each level would grow simpler.

Not knowing if the two spells they had were finisher or not, they went outside and tested them and found that Flaming slash no longer allowed fire to leak and instead concentrated it into a bright blue white ‘beam’ that, upon impact, would explode but the flame would act like more swords burning and cutting as well as adding the explosion damage.

Divine Fire Smite on the other hand was a massive downward flaming smash that strikes the ground that caused an area of two meters in front of Ashley or Xero to suddenly erupt like a volcano with blue white fire.

Both were without a doubt finishing moves.

Since it was like that, they decided to go with two moves each and reading through the finisher moves first, they thought that the two moves were distinct styles, one was heavy berserker style using heavy weapons and the other using lighter weapons. They narrowed down several books with similar spells and Xero began to write down the spells in their current form as well as two spells following that.

The new spells were all attracted to each other and soon formed the combo while linking with naturally formed runes that connected them.

The two kept choosing more and more spells and filling Ashley until there were 62 sword magic spells there were dozens of combos but none were one massive group.

It took a long time and a lot of mana to draw them up but the two were far from finishing as they began at the highest ranked spell and began to adapt the spells to Ashley.

***

BOOM!

Countless stone shards of a small pot flew in all directions before shining and flying in one direction.

Nadir was the focal point and these stones were her familiar blowing up from the attempt to use the spell she made. She pouted as she looked at the seal. “Hmm, did it fail again because of the spell?” She said angry.

She used her own magic and flowed it through but it did pass easily but she obviously didn’t activate it.

“Maybe it isn’t used to it.” She muttered.

She began to absorb more mana and let it go to the seal until it had recharged and she summoned it.

The vase like stone pot appeared, it was already the 20th time it blew up and the small pot had grew longer by almost twice it’s own size while the stone went from rough to more sculpted.

The level 14 spirit pot had already risen to level 16 due to more magic channels being developed.

Nadir pouted causing her cheeks to puff out as she began to activate the spell once more.

Vrrrr!

Suddenly the pot began to vibrate as it was covered by a glow. It suddenly jolted and hopped up landing once more but causing the ground to shake. When it hit the ground it jumped up again, then the bottom of the pot started to grow four stone legs that were in an S shape to support the pot.

Then the smooth stone surface began to change as lines appeared forming brick shapes while the top of the pot suddenly melted away into the pot revealing the top.

Finally the pot suddenly tripled in size, with the round bottom part of the pot becoming as large as a small cauldron while the vase top grew higher into a chimney. Finally the sound of cracking was heard as a ‘mouth’ formed at the area between the chimney and ‘cauldron’ of the strong pot. A stone lid fit into place with hinges and a knob to open.

Nadir just sat frozen as she looked at it before her face turned bright.

At that time she felt something and looked at her seal to see it shining.

She felt into the familiar and found a new spell forming.

It was simple like all the others and she began to modify it causing it to crack into more spells. She kept making them all looking through the same areas and making them proper for each spell as her brother and teachers taught until they finished.

When she was finished she looked and smiled. The spells were Smelt, Purify and Alloy Smelting.

When she finished she was so happy that she began to jump and suddenly jumped on the pot.

“AH!” she jumped back as she felt the heat on it. She carefully opened the lid and found that a very powerful fire was inside heating it but the chimney didn’t release smoke meaning there was something else about it.

“Hmm, I don’t get it.” she said but she closed it and clapped her hand and suddenly the pot returned to its normal form but when it did, she found that the vase shape had shrunk down again but left it in a teapot form with four legs and the material was very smooth stone with some greyish materials.

“Hmm… it changed again.” she muttered and picked it up and opened the lid but only saw darkness before pondering. “Hmm… I made a forge but it has more alchemy spells… maybe it can transform into a lot of other stuff…” She thought and smiled as she absorbed it back before running to her room to try and adapt new spells.

She found that transformation magic was actually much simpler than she had expected it to be. She even asked some people why no one uses transforming magic to which a teacher said that it had little to no practical use and because humans themselves can’t transform. Even the number of familiars that could transform were few and only spirits items could but there was no point because ‘changing the form doesn’t change what the spirit item is and it’s abilities.’ as they said.

Even though they said that, she still made what she called her Forge pot transformation that had just succeeded. Still, she wondered if what they said was true.

Because she had lots of rocks and stone, as well as raw ore in her pot she actually wanted to try so using her mental command, with her pot in its natural form, she had it smelt the raw ore into a single ingot and spit it out.

The result was greyish black material of low quality. She put it in and had it use purify and it came out dark grey.

After putting it to the side, she went and had it transform outside and do the same thing and make a single ingot. When the iron ingot was coughed up through the lid, the metal was in the middle range of grey and when she purified it, it turned very light grey and high quality due to the low impurity inside.

She was confused by this, since she didn’t normally think about complex ideas and only did this because others were speaking against it but she realized that for her pot, although it could use it’s spells like normal, if she transformed it she could focus or improve its abilities.

After thinking of that, she looked at the metal and had her pot swallow it. There was a difference between swallow and store.

Swallowing was like eating and some creatures evolved only by eating some materials. Of course it didn’t evolve just like that but each time it blew up it would absorb some raw ore which is why the grains appearing on its body were metal grains.

Nadir thought that since she could be a really good alchemist then with her magic, she could make a large cauldron from it to help her. With her childish spirit lit she adapted the transforming spell changing the purpose and focus to form a cauldron and slowly wrote it down in her familiar.

In fact, she got so into it and knew that she had cooking type transformations, she even went as far as to make an Oven form so that she could use it for cooking.

She wholly immersed herself while giggling and laughing at each new idea she came up with and wrote down using her magic knowledge.

***

“Today we shall begin working on your alchemy classes!” An old woman said. Nadir sat in the middle of class while sitting up straight. “Those with alchemy based familiars, summon them, those without, go and pick up a cauldron or take out your own!” The old teacher said.

Nadir summoned her pot, it was shining a black color with a metallic glow. After two weeks of her constantly blowing it up with her countless spells, it had finally assimilated the large amount of iron it had in itself becoming an Iron Spirit Pot. It was already level 18 and she was fully immersed in her experiments.

She took a step back and let the pot float a bit before she activated the transformation spell causing the Iron pot to suddenly turned round and the thin S shaped legs turn thick. The thin walls grew to almost 1 cm in thickness and turned into a cauldron the size of the others, because she told it the size. The cauldron spell caused Nadir to realize she could control features and so she could change it of her choice after experimenting.

The cauldron was put on the table and waited.

“Today we will pass around the spells required for Alchemy. They are Mix, Boil, Dry, Grind, Cook, Combine, Extract and Synthesis. These skills and spells are essential for alchemy. No matter if you have a demon, monster or spirit, these spells can be used given time and training. For today, you will make sure you have all of these spells for preparing and properly producing alchemy such as potions. This is basic level alchemy.” She said and some teacher aides began to walk around and hand all the students a book with all the spells.

Nadir took it because she was curious and began to ready the book and gasp before raising her hand. “Miss! Why is the spell so different from the ones my familiar has?!” She asked.

The old teacher looked at her and her cauldron transformed pot. “Those are a particular group I have refined, none of you will probably understand half of the knowledge on it but they have been refined to a high level. It will take a very long time for each of you to properly perform these spells but the end result would be very high level alchemy spells with higher success rate and refining rate.” She replied.

Nadir nodded, partially confused but she looked at the book again.

Soon the teacher's aide did another round and dropped a small normal bag of common mana stones.

“These mana stones are so you can copy the spells. For today’s assignment, you must work on properly implementing these spells into your familiar and try the spells.” She said and sat down.

The looked into the bag and saw a large number of common rank mana stones.

Nadir then blinked and took a stone, feeling the little bit of mana inside. She counted them and counted a few hundred.

She looked at the book and then thought that the teacher sure was nice. Still, a little think at the very far back of her mind, for one reason or another, told her to make a new spell sequence instead of replacing her old one.

She didn’t know why but she did just that and slowly built the new one and soon found why she had that strange sense. At the end of the sequence of the start up for the spell, there was a very dark feeling sequence that she didn’t know for what reason it existed. She frowned and thought a lot before getting rid of it and building the spell.

To her surprise, there were more than a dozen of the same dangerous feeling sequences that she broke down and built the spell until it finished. The spell sequence broke down though because those bad pieces that made her feel danger were key parts to making the spell work.

Nadir looked at each part and copied down each part one by one and then slowly put them in order that they were found until it formed a single spell and when she did she felt a horrible feeling and instantly crushed it.

Unfortunately the spell activated just before it was crushed causing a very dangerous aura to come from Nadir and stimulate the spell of each and every student that had almost finished.

The eyes of the teacher shot open and she quickly got up and walked to Nadir and grabbed her hand. “You little thing! You! What did you do when making my spell!? What kind of evil thing did you make!?” She shouted.

“I-I didn’t…”

“Silence! You little devil spawn can actually make such an evil spell from such a grand spell of my own design, you still have cheek to talk back!” She shouted back and pulled Nadir close, “If you tell anyone about the hidden spell, you will not know how you died.” She said in a cold but extremely cold tone. She then pulled the girl up. “Get! GET OUT! Never come to my class again!” She shouted and threw Nadir and her familiar out of the door and slammed it behind her.

Nadir just looked at the door and heard the voice inside, “Don’t any of you become like that little brat who did random things and almost created a spell even demons would look down on! Now get back to copying the spells exactly as the books tell you!” She shouted.

Without noticing, the old alchemist had thrown Nadir out along with the spell book. The girl just looked at it and was about to throw it before she thought about how advanced it looked. It did indeed match a huge number of spots to her real spells except for the dangerous sections.

When she thought of that she grabbed the book and looked sad at her familiar and unsummoned it and went to the library.

At the Library, the librarian frowned when he saw Nadir there, “Child, shouldn’t you be in class?” he asked.

“I was!” Nadir said almost in tears, she then slammed the book the old alchemist put gave and turned to the page of the first section. “The teacher told me to copy these spells but while I was building it these sequences felt strange and I took them out and the spell failed! Then I put this one and this one…” she began to point out all the sequences to the librarian. “...then when I finally tried to activate, it gave a really really dangerous feeling and I smashed it instantly but then the teacher called me devil's spawn and mean things!” She said crying.

The librarian took the book and looked at each sequence but didn’t feel anything off but then he took a sheet of paper and began to write each one she had pointed out filling the page. His eyes opened wide and he slammed his fist on the table. “That woman!” He hissed.

“I-Is something wrong?!” Nadir asked afraid.

“Yes, but not with you.” he said and looked at the spells. “Which of these spells do you have and don’t have?” He asked.

“Um… my brother was a 2nd year student when he helped me make all but the dry and grind spells.” She said.

The librarian nodded and went into the library and took out a book. “This has the same spells, they aren’t as advanced but they are completely safe, trust me. You can copy this but I will take this book with me, I need to see the dean about this and quickly.” He said and let the girl stay in a backroom that was quieter and probably safer should the alchemy teacher come after her.

She looked at the book and like the other spell she built it separate from her original but unlike the first, this one was indeed safe and when she finished it, the original spell and the new one overlapped and the stronger spell absorbed the old one.

She sighed in relief, she felt a shiver when she remembered the alchemist. She pouted her cheeks and clenched her fists making her knuckles white, “That old granny is mean, I don’t like her! Hmm… hehe, doesn’t she have a herb garden?” Nadir thought and a mischievous grin appeared as she kept replacing her spells and adding the two new ones first before getting up and going out of the academy towards one of the green spots of the academy.

She returned the library not even 20 minutes later and grinned and went to a section of books she had checked with the librarian about and took a book she had started to read and went to the quiet room to study.