Anyways enough rambling and happy reading.

Enjoy!

Chapter 15: Birth of Phantom

 As Nalser stood side by side with Curo, having a stare down with the soldier's from the fortress, a loud rumbling noise echoed out through the passage. "Seems like they got out and delivered the letter. Now all that's left is to get out from here quickly." Before the soldier's eyes could get used to the darkness of the passage way, Nalser had already wrapped the black cloth around his head again, only leaving a little slit for eyes. He currently looked like an assassin, that was there to kill someone.

When the soldier's regained their footing and calm nerve, someone who looked like a captain eyed Nalser suspiciously and asked in a commanding tone, "Who are you? What's your purpose here? Was is to escort some peasant's across the border? What's the use of some low-life wimps who can't handle a few hardships?" Being bombarded with questions like that, only one thought rose in Nalser's head, "Is being a cocky arrogant son of a bitch a requirement to get a friggin high position in this god damn kingdom?"

Nalser felt fury welling up in his heart. One of the few things that could piss him off was when someone screwed up big time and then blamed others for it.

 "What is it to you? You arrogant bastard can go and enjoy your slaves upstairs. As to who I am, I'm nothing but a Phantom." When he had said those words in a cold voice, he immediately moved out. By using every skill in his arsenal, he went straight for the Captain. Since the other's hadn't opened up their mouths, Nalser didn't feel much emnity towards them. The captain with his arrogant speech however was another story. He had ticked off Nalser and Nalser was certain of one thing. Even if he died, he's taking that arrogant bi*ch as a companion on the road to afterlife. Seeing that all the soldiers were in full body armor, Nalser went for the only weak spot a full body armor has, the throat.

As he used Phantom steps to close in on them, he arrived in front of the captain and immediately slashed his throat. The captain's eyes were full of disbelief and it was clear that he hadn't realized, what Nalser exactly did. All he saw a blur and then felt a sharp pain from his throat and then his strength started to fade rapidly. As soon as Nalser had slashed the Captain's throat, he immediately pulled out the five throwing knives he had.

During his stay in the forest, he developed another skill besides Phantom blade. This skill was used with these 5 throwing knives. When he coated the knives in Mana, he could remotely control them and their strength was only slightly inferior to Phantom blade. He developed this skill by combining various aspects from Phantom Song Sutra's attack methods. The knives were also made from black metal making them very advantageous in a dark enviorment like this. As he threw out the knives, he split his mind into two: One controlling the body the other controlling the knives. Since his battle mode was like a hyper concentration, it was an easy thing to do. Usually when he was in combat mode, he split his mind into two like this: One part controlling the body, the other surveying the surroundings. Now, he just added controlling the knives to surveying the surroundings. In theory it may seem like a simple transision but practise proved that wrong fast. Controlling the 5 knives while at the same time battling by hand was extremely taxing on both his mind and his Mana pool, Since he had completed the first cycle, he was stronger than a person who had trained continiously for 5 years.

This was the biggest advantage of Phantom Song Sutra. What Nalser didn't know was that this particular Sutra was extremely hard to train in. No one had succeeded in even the introductory steps in the past 40 years. As Nalser dashed around the squadron of soldiers killing everyone that showed him emnity, Curo was doing a fine job as a scare crow. Just him being there and growling in a low voice, had scared all the soldiers who were closest to him witless. They had completely lost their will to fight. Seeing that Nalser immediately killed off all the people there and gestured to Curo to come closer to him.

When Curo drew right

next to him, Nalser said in a low voice, Change your size to the little form. We are going to make a run for it. There's no way in hell, I can take on a whole fortress of people by myself." Hearing that Curo understood. He turned into the little lion form he usually was in and Nalser picked him up. With Dreamer in one hand and Curo in the other, he jumped up to the mess hall. When he jumped up, he saw a few people there, around 6. The throwing knives immediately flew towards the five who weren't in Nalser's path, charging through their throats. With Dreamer then slit the throat of the last one, who was currently in front of the door, blocking it. Before the bodies could even hit the floor, Nalser had disappeared from the canteen.

While he sneaked through the fortress, he mentally brought up the map from the last time he was here. After sneaking around and killing a few guards that discovered him, he had reached a familiar location. Since it was quite dark out and most of the soldiers had gone to the secret passage the security was lax. Although it was still stricter than it was the last time he was here.

He had used up a majority of his mana. He had about 3 times larger Mana pool than your average person. From his calculations, he could use Phantom step only 2 more times before he was completely out of mana. Sneaking around on foot, he had reached the fortress gate. He immediately killed the guards on duty and made a run for it to the nearby woods. The soldiers chased him to the outskirts of the woods but didn't enter. After running for about half an hour, Nalser finally stopped,

He was out of energy and he was out of Mana, He found a cave nearby and poured the last bit of Mana he had into the formation discs, putting up the last defensive formations that he had. Seeing that it was safe now, he fell into to deep sleep from the exhaustion.

From that day onward, the tales of his deeds spread far and wide and out of proportions as well. A mysterious person calling himself the Phantom broke into the fortress and slaughtered thousands of soldier's. The rest of the soldiers were too scared to even breathe so he knocked down the fortress gates and just walked out of the place unscathed and with no one pursuing him. Those were the rumor's at least. That person was like a Saint to commoners and like a Death God to the officials.