chapter 16: Melli

Iris stood next to Zemar, her chimera, with a beaming smile. She was about to face Aion in their last last duel before she entered the Royal Academy. She was now eight years old she had a duty as the daughter of Valt Corvidae to properly attend, meaning that she could not run off to fight Aion anymore, so this would be their last duel until she had time off to look for him.

Over the past year Iris lost only once to Aion after he reached his equivalent to the fourth level of the Primary rank in the human stage. But after that he did’t rise in strength quickly, and she was able to just squeeze out a victory using her sword and every trick she could.

The duel that followed went a lot smoother for her as she teamed up with Zemar and took down Aion with a combined effort.

And shortly after she raised to the fifth level of the primary rank in the human stage, making her victories against Aion much easier, if she won this duel she would have five victories and Aion would only be ahead by one.

She looked at Aion once more he was holding his wooden dagger in a reverse grip taking a defensive stance, he was a little shorter than other kids at the age of seven but had much grater intelligence and fighting capabilities.

Today Iris was determined to fight Aion one on one leaving her chimera out of the duel, and began taking her stance holding her two handed wooded long sword in front of her. Her strategy had never changed from when they first fought, she would strike fast and hard while confronting her opponent form the front, this worked in favor of her overwhelming strength.

As she dashed towards Aion she prepared an overhead strike but was shocked at Aion’s response instead of parrying or defending he charged in forcing her to swing downward prematurely, and as a result the swing didn’t contain much strength.

Aion dodged the swing as he knew it was coming and punched out with his left arm striking Iris in her wrist in hopes of breaking her stance and striking with his dagger. This attempt failed and he paid the price as Iris had released her hold of the sword with that hand and was already in the process of a horizontal swing of her sword that targeted Aion's chest.

When the sword connected Iris jumped in joy on the inside this was her first victory against Aion without the help of Zemar.

She was able to tell what Aion was after, shortly after his initial movement because of the duels they had in the past as sometimes those duels would last hours until one of them would lose from exhaustion, therefore she had learned some of Aion's habits.

“Aion this victory is mine and although I want to even the score we agreed to not duel more than once a day so you have to wait for me to have time off then I'll win again.”

“Un, I'll win.”

“I'm going to reach the sixth level soon and your still in the fourth plus Zemar can help me. You should ask Grandpa to find you a contracted beast and become a knight, then we can join the knight corps and graduate early from our academies and be the greatest Knights in the kingdom.”

Iris had constantly tried to convince Aion to become a knight reasoning that his fighting style was closer to that of her fathers and would make a great knight, she thought that together they could be legendary Knights for the kingdom.

The reason for this was also because she didn’t have many friends her age and none of them could fight her on the level that Aion could so she wanted him to be a knight together with her.

“No, I'm an assassin.” But he stubbornly insisted that he was an assassin even when all his misconceptions of Knights had been cleared up.

“Fine I'll give up for now but I have a great idea on how to convince you, sadly it will take time but you'll be surprised. I have to go back before too many people realize I left. Zemar lets go.” Saying so Iris jumped on the two meter long chimera stood and it ran into the small house and headed back to the nobel district where her home was.

Aion fell to the floor after Iris had left feeling the pain from the strike he took on his chest. As an almost full grown devil bull sat in one corner of the yard laughing at his loss.

Aion glared at him for a moment then began to think to himself that he really would need a contracted beast to at the least distract the chimera while he fought Iris. Making his decision Aion stood up to get some rations and head out to the forest nearby and find a beast that could aid him.

But Aion knew that this was only a temporary assistance as the most important thing was his own strength, the problem however was that his soul was recovering at a slow pace and he had no way to speed the process.

Regardless he looked towards his house and then inside his house where his Grandpa was likely in his study. Walking inside the house Aion directly went to his Grandpa.

“Grandpa I'm going to find a beast to contract.”

“Hm and what beast are you looking for?” Aion had a good idea of what he was looking for, he had gone through an entire encyclopedia of elemental beast and found the perfect one, a will-o-wisp.

His reasoned that they would be perfect as he had studied the soul and arrays that dealt with the soul extensively in order to heal his soul faster. After discovering that will-o-wsips were basically souls that clung to their body after forming a semi completed core with no element he had a brilliant idea.

But it was just a theory of his and he would have to find a newly formed will-o-wisp in order to do this.

“Will-o-wisp.” Ban didn’t know if he should support Aion’s idea or shoot it down now as he thought that forming a contract with one was pointless as they didn’t have bodies and could not assist an person in combat.

“Well if you want to find one look for a pack of wind wolves and follow them and you might find one.” Ban didn’t tell Aion not to follow his idea and instead told him the way to have the highest probability of finding one.

Will-o-wisps were actually not all that uncommon and would appear when a beast or human was killed in the process of first building its core, following a pack of wind wolves would increase the likely hood of finding one as they tend to hunt week and young creatures rather than stronger fully matured ones.

“Also I’ll have a skeletal eagle follow you from the sky so don’t worry to much, if the wind wolves spot you following them. This is also good training for assassins.”

“Un, Grandpa.” Aion had been following a pack of wind wolves for three days now and they had hunted various creatures but none of them became will-o-wisps.

As for the pack they had spotted Aion a couple of times but he would soon disappear and they couldn’t tell is anything had been there in the first place. After the tenth day Aion was ready to give up and ask for help from his teacher or Grandpa if the current attack on the a huge gathering of saber rabbits didn’t produce a will-o-wisp.

These rabbits were half a meter in size and did’t look very threatening aside from the huge canines they had witch gave them the name saber rabbit.

Saber rabbits were normal across the whole continent and reproduced fairly quickly if not for their weak strength they would be capable of overrunning a small city in a mater of months.

The battle between the rabbits and wolves was fairly one sided as the wind wolves where second ranked elemental beast while the saber rabbits would only occasionally reach the second rank and primarily stayed in the first rank.

As the battle continued Aion finally spotted what he wanted a will-o-wisp its appearance was odd as it looked like a burning great ball with a line of fire attached to the corps of a young saber rabbit.

The wind wolves were fairly used to seeing will-o-wisps but did not go near them and continued to devouring the rest of the rabbits before moving on. Aion watched the wolves leave and slowly approached the will-o-wisp, as he did so he could feel a slight pulse in his head.

This is why the wolves would not approach a will-o-wisp as it had an adverse effect on the soul of those around it. But this helped Aion greatly as he got closer the more he could feel the pulse, because of this he was able to feel his soul. He quickly sat down in front of the will-o-wisp and began to meditate ad feel his soul once he had located it he slowly began the process of healing it.

Most people didn’t know about the Wisp’s adverse effect on the soul and only knew it would make them uncomfortable but Aion had a deeper connection and understanding of his soul than most so after confirming that he could now feel his soul and heal it at a more rapid pace Aion began with what he had planed.

His idea was simple as the will-o-wisp was connected to its body he would first form a contract with it after inserting it's incomplete core into his dagger.

The contract array had been modified slightly by Aion to incorporate the new but weaker version of Soul Rune and by using it he would combine the dead body of the saber rabbit with his dagger and putting the soul back in the body essentially creating a living weapon that would strengthen itself like an Elemental beast.

As for how it would train Aion had also figured it out, he would imprint the Lightning Tyrant’s Body technique into its soul. After having imprinted the two arrays into his soul Aion always had them on his mind so if he imprinted the technique into the saber rabbit’s soul it would unconsciously train.

Aion then began by inserting his dagger into the rabbits chest and fixing it with the rabbit’s core in the hole of the blade. Using his modified Contract array this took time as he had to gather Lightning elemental energy and mix it into an array drawn from a mix of Aion's and the rabbit’s blood.

Once it was completed Aion backed up a little to watch what would occur. On the blade cracks started to form and all of the rabbit’s flesh, blood, and bones seemed to be eaten by those cracks as they made their way inside, soon after pieces on the blade started to fall off, the color of the blade changed from black to white, and white fur began to sprout from the handle.

Realizing that he had succeeded Aion quickly entered his soul and followed the passage from his soul into the saber rabbit’s and began imprinting the entire Lightning Tyrant’s Body technique. Upon finishing Aion retuned to his soul and woke up to see the blade that would be his new partner.

The new dagger was odd as it looked alive with white fur growing from the handle, the blade was now in the shape of the rabbits saber fang and had red vein like lines that pulsed. The last thing Aion noticed about the blade was that under the fur of the handle were six runes very different from his as he couldn’t make sense of what they meant.

He was extremely happy with the outcome as the blade’s element was lightning and would hopefully be able to help him in the future. Looking at it, he decided that he would name it Melli as he found out from their contract that the saber rabbit had been female and remembered the stories he heard long ago about the millennium rabbit.

Aion began to walk back home, it would likely take a day or two to return as he had traveled far into the woods fallowing the wind wolves. Once he was home and in his room Aion looked at the dagger that he would show his grandpa to ask for a new sheath.

“Melli wake up.” Responding to his words the dagger began to glow green and seemed to light up with an ethereal green flame. Although it could not speak and had the low intelligence of a young saber rabbit in his mind Aion could hear it yawn.

This was one of the benefits of a contracted beast the two could communicate mentally to better coordinate. Aion smiled now all he had to do was strengthen himself and his new partner by inscribing lightning runes on it when it's soul healed.