Will Summoner
Tong looked at the youth that was slowly making his way towards him with a complicated look on his old face. What was this crazy person talking about? Being eaten alive? Leaf and the others?
"Master Sif, I don't understand!"
The youth smiled gently. His eyes moved across the darkness, looking over to the group of bodies of slaves in gray.
"Last time I didn't even notice that there were other bodies here... It must have been the shock and the pain of the fall. Plus, I was very terrorized. You know, dying isn't that easy."
An invisible ripple moved towards the large bat that was still blocked in the strange posture with its head facing the ceiling. The soul of the creature was incredibly agitated, and two completely foreigner spiritual imprints were flowing around its giant body. One was Juil's and the other was Tong's.
'An incredible mutation indeed, but a bronze ranked beast doesn't have the foundations to use it.'
The youth keen perception immediately discovered several traces of distortion on the soul of the beast. The bat's soul wasn't enough strength to withstand the backlash from the soul-corruption, nor has any way to assimilate such a large amount of foreigner soul-energy.
Soul energy wasn't something that could be mess with without any care. The soul was the most precious and delicate part of a living being. Eating souls? That led to soul-corruption, making the unfortunate moron that tried to feed of soul power to lose its mind and become a mindless devil.
Naturally, there were methods to protect oneself from the corruption and even to purify a corrupted soul, but a simple beast like the Bloodshed Bat had no access to such sophisticated cultivation manuals. Nor it would know how to use them.
Sif stopped analyzing the beast and focused his attention towards the two fallen men. He could see that their internal energy was completely a mess. It was a miracle that Juil didn't directly die under the suction power and even Tong wasn't a very good state.
Fighters were war machines. However, it was incredibly easy to target them with soul attacks."It must hurt, huh?" Sif shook his head looking at the trembling body of Juil and the kneeling Tong. "Being stripped of your soul isn't that pleasurable..."
'He's not going to help me...' The old man wasn't stupid. He understood that the youth wasn't coming near to him to help him. While he didn't get all his talk about being eaten and so forth, he could tell that the strange youth wanted him dead.
"But I'm not going to die here!" roared furiously the ex-mercenary. Two profound beams of red light shined in both his eyes as he worked to summon all his strength forth. His muscles were flooded with an incredible amount of life energy, doubling in size in a single breath. This was his greatest fighting technique! Tauro's Might, a skill that allowed him to temporarily double his strength. The man wanted to use the sudden power up to move away from the bat's influence.
"No, you're not going to get out that easily..." Sif pointed out with his right hand and wiggled his index finger towards the man. He then waited a couple of breath.
Nothing happened.
The youth rolled his eyes. "Here we go again…" he sighed. A dangerous flicker passed through his eyes, and immediately in the darkness behind him a long painful scream tore through the air.
A confused wave of feelings, mostly of pain, hate and fear appeared inside the head of the youth. The young man snickered. 'Oh, you already understood how to use the link to send information? What a smart girl. However, you also seem unable to understand that every time you disobey, you will get punished...'
He pointed again forward and in this time a white flash appeared from the darkness, darting towards the fallen mercenary. 'That's my girl, go get him!'
Tong was still accumulating momentum, looking at Sif as if he was a complete moron: what was he doing, wiggling his finger like a retard?
Then he heard a long wail that he could clearly recognize. 'The crying that we heard before?' Tong's eyes almost popped out of his head when he noted a thin figure darting in his direction. 'The white bat?' Tong was shocked. Even if he was a complete idiot, by now he could tell that the youth wasn't the harmless little fool that he pretended to be in their precedent encounters.
'How the hell is he able to control it?' Even if was true that summoners could bind beasts and made them fight for them, the process was a pretty lengthy one and required some precious binding material.
However, this Sif guy was clearly directing the bat towards him and the latter obeyed. Tong couldn't believe that a random youth was able to bind a bronze level beast in a couple of minutes.
'This is a setup! Is he using us as ammunition to weaken the Bloodshed Bat?' The man felt that his head was going to explode. How would the youth even know that there was a Bloodshed Bat here? They lead him there!
A high pitch growl accompanied the white creature while it dashed against him. Tong's eyes narrowed, but he didn't want to stop his effort to break the suction power to defend against a cub.
'I can take it... I just need a little more time' Steeling himself, he let the small creature's head bump right into him.
"ARGH"
A large quantity of blood exploded from the mercenary's mouth. The energy that he had managed to gather was immediately lost on the instant. Tong's eyes widened in surprise: so strong! The man could feel his ribcage had broke in several points. A cub was this dam strong? This was insane! It was almost a third of the mother bat's strength!
"Little Luna here is one of a special kind... I guess that we can say that she won the genetic lottery. With enough resources, she could even become a ranked beast." explained Sif, seeing the confusion on the other two human's faces.
Tong's face fell. A ranked beast? That was the equivalent of a rank 6 Fighter! A peak Great Fighter would need to be very careful to kill a ranked beast alone. Even a Grand Fighter wouldn't take it completely as a joke. Tong started to believe that the white beast probably wasn't even a bloodshed bat, but some stronger race that looked similar.
"Why?! " The old mercenary's eyes were red. He really didn't understand why this was happening to him. This guy had evidently already binded such a strong familiar and was pretending of being an harmless foolish youth.
"Your excellency, why are you doing this? A powerful summoner like you is taking all this time to toy with two small fighters? Isn't this bullying the weak?"
Sif laughed. "Indeed, I'm bullying you. That's true. However, I'm not a powerful summoner anymore. I only have a single familiar at the moment, and I binded it not even a dozen of minutes ago…" the young man pointed at the white bat at his feet.
"I am just a lowly Fighter, sir. But even I understand that a soul-bridge technique requires at least days to fully bind a new familiar!"
"Uh, soul-bridge techniques? I don't use those things at all... " Confessed Sif. Seeing the disbelief in the his interlocutor's face, the youth laughed lightly. "I don't really walk the traditional Path of Summoners. I don't use my soul to bind things. I use my Willpower."
Sif twisted his fingers, letting invisible ripples trace waves in the air following their movement.
"You Fighters believe that the soul is divided into 12 parts, right? Well, that is partially true. However there is also a thirteenth section, that although isn't really a part of the soul, it is encapsulated inside it." explained calmly the youth. "Some would say to protect it, other to suppress it... who knows… it isn't something particularly secret either, we call it 'Soul Roots' and we use it only to determine the elemental affinity and the talent of a person…"
The waves in the air started to become dark green. "I, for example… I come from a very peculiar place. We have Earth and Curse Soul Roots."
Suddenly the large mother bat stopped its attack. It gave a high pitched painful wail and it crashed loudly on the ground. White foam started to come out of its mouth, as its giant body trembled under violent spasms.
Sif observed the contortions of the beast, continuing to speak with passion. "Karuis call it the Will. They see it as much more than a simple indicator of a person's talent. They also found a way to train it. Unfortunately, Will Cultivation is way more harder than Soul Cultivation. Moreover, more one cultivates the Soul, the harder it is to have significant advancement in the Will. " He smiled again. "If it wasn't for you guys, my soul wouldn't have been eaten by this little fellow here and I wouldn't ever be able to become so proficient in using the Will. "
Sif clapped his hands. "That's why I thanked you before… However, you also let me to die in an horrible way and it was only because of my Curse Will that I managed to survive and take control of the bats that ate my soul." The youth stopped moving a few dozen meters from the kneeling middle aged man.
"Normally I'm not this talkative with people. But, I guess I owe you that much." Sif moved his sight on the large bat, his tranquil eyes touched the large wound on her flank.
"Now, please… die"
He pointed again forward with his hand and this time the white bat darted immediately towards Tong. Luna moved rapidly, this time using her sharp teeth to open the poor man's throat. Although Tong wanted to defend himself, he just failed to use his most powerful fighting technique and he was at lost of breath. Blood splattered everywhere, and the man fell to the ground with a hole in his neck.
"Don't forget to feed on him while he's still conscious, my dear. Leave the other for later." Then his attention passed to the beast lying on a pool of black blood and white foam.
"Now, to you."