A whole week had passed since the assasination incident, and Aki was quite happy with his results.
While he had not had much time to just sit and train, his gains were mostly on items. He now had over ten! storage artifacts, and none of them were even in his person, so people would simply think his ring stored everything.
Granted, most were fairly basic, but these things mounted up and allowed for his homicidal ass to gather a shit ton of basic things on the front lines. Honestly, it was mostly a racial fight that he was rather reluctant in participating on after understanding the subtleties, but it was also the place most assholes supporting the war itself needed to be, together with their forces, because of their honor and strength based culture, so killing more and more demon kin nobles was a highly rewarding affair even if he could not give two shits about their resource grabbing tactics and/or derogatory propaganda.
It was, however, a fact that both demons and humans would not exitate in annihilating the other if given the chance. Though there were plenty who also understood this was mostly a war for the sake of combat and economical bullshit, that did not mean they would not mind grabbing all the resources on the other's territory as well, sans the current trouble, where the demons suddenly found themselves empowered by some freaky voodoo.
It was honestly not something he much understood, but it seemed to be something to do with blood magic forcing them to 'evolve' and become beserkers twice their original size and with greatly enhanced stats, though they barely retained sentience at best case, so the general consensus was to let them die before advancing again, which wasn't exactly the worst plan considering how those guys would have cardiac and system failures withing anything from thirty minutes to two hours and a half.
Most of his targets ended up having plenty of companies of those protecting them, but they were honestly quite weak to him, nevermind that they basically exploded with energy on death and added to his mana pool. Now when a demon noble used those crazy pills and went beserker... That was hella fun.
Only two of them had 'dared' till now, but they had been true monsters.
The first was a pure behemoth that crushed his bones at every strike, leaping from one place to another as the earth bellow his feet broke to even his weight, though he'd learned to jump on air as time passed, his bare skin receiving only small gashes from his kicks and slashes, which ended up healing quite quickly. It was only after a whole hour of wearing the thing down with arcane blasts and blood spikes to it's insides that he'd been able to kill the bastard, both of them having ravaged the whole battlefield in their furious exchange of strikes. While neither used grand scale magic, their bodies were still pretty good substitutes to cannon balls and earthquakes could still kill people if the epicenter was no less than a kilometer away and approaching.
Fortunately, Aki had succeeded in pushing the irated demon into it's own territory, minimising the amount of humans dead from his fight.
The second one had been much worse though, the woman had literally eaten her troops and retainers alive, being the one to retain most of her consciousness till now and gaining great power with her spells. She'd been overwhelming him with several skills he already knew and for some reason some she'd deined to not use even as she was close to death before, but then one of his insults distracted her enough for him to get close and decapitate her, Samy shoving several burning daggers coated in fire onto his would be assassin who'd also taken the chance to eliminate their target.
Samy was rather erratic, sadistic and vengeful, but a few nights had been more than enough to discipline her despite the newfound powers. She'd eventually become a good girl, he'd make sure of it.
Being someone's blade was nothing new to her, but she didn't exactly get much of an education outside of how to better stab things and reading. To her that ment she was completely shocked to hear what she'd become, why she should care, what luxuries she could now have, so on. To Aki that ment he would have a long way towards getting the girl a proper personality and taste.
The good news on that front was that when she killed things there would be loot. The same would not happen if a native were to kill another without a certain level of interference of a player. That ment she had already brought him over a hundred of items by killing everyone who she previously worked for and the guys that sent the kill order for him, plus their families and forces, which in this realm ment basically the same thing honestly.
It wasn't that he wanted her to murder children and their mothers, he'd explicitly told her to instantly kill those, but he was also not dumb enough to risk having them be whatever allowed for the trap that killed him. It was also rather merciful really, since he literally needed to kill most of their clan's powerhouses, which would fuck over with those that remained behind because of the grudges those people had accumulated in life, and he had no way to take care of them, so death was a much better alternative.
Samy herself didn't actually much think about it, which ended with her having her head hit several times as she grossly missunderstood this even as he spent hours explaining to her what she'd just done and why.
Tools were appreciated, but he was honestly too forgetful to always use them, nevermind unable to use 100% of their efforts most of the time, so he didn't keep many. Only after he told her that did she fully submit and try to learn to be a person as well. The girl really didn't want to die.
"Great, it's good to be in the same page for once." He said, suddenly looking at the horizon through the 'walls' of his personal tent, which he acquired due to several merituous deeds (They wanted to give him a gigantic one instead of one he'd actually use). When he looked back to her, he had five legendary equipments in his hands. "Now wear this shit and remember to use it instead of me." He told her, grinning at her falling jaw.
Shades could be equipped with whatever he gave them, make it part of them. By giving her the equipment, he would never again be able to use either of the two daggers, the earing, the ring or the soft mail, though she could still incorporate more items and even 'delete' these if she needed more space for better equipment. But on the bright side, they would work no matter how many fucking times she died and respawned, staying glued to her body and unusable by any other.
"Why, how can you not remember to use such artifacts?!" She screamed at his face, immediately shutting her mouth after noticing what she'd just done. Her new master just laughed though.
"Of course i would remember to use legendary equipment, it's just that my body would lose part of it's defensive capability when using the mail, the ring literally can't affect me with it's regeneration boost, the earing is useless with my detection capability and it's mental defense literally just doesn't work on me because of an ability i have, but i literally just don't have enough hands to use these daggers." He explained, pointing one by one. While those could have been a lot more useful than the uncommon itens she currently used with her techniques, Aki wouldn't simply be giving her equipment that could not be removed before knowing if she would be a permanent companion or not.
On that same line of thought, he'd at least had her sign a contract of non-agression right after gaining consciousness for the first time since there was a good chance that she could in fact kill him in his sleep after reaching her current level. Subservience would come later.
There were still two more legendary equipments he'd obtained by killing commanders and nobles, but neither of them could use a flail or a great sword. Maybe he'd have raised another undead to wield those since his skill was resonating with the idea of having companions, but Aki was honestly not that desperate. Just ressurecting someone he'd beat up would have a shit ton of problems to deal with. Maybe if they firmed a contract before death or something, but he didn't have any targets in mind either.
He didn't go to the mess hall, didn't sleep, only showed up to the debriefing after basically everyone else... As a result, he knew jack shit about the human camp of the eastern front or the people inside of it.
Sure, he'd read stories before and knew he should be looking for specialists to complement his fighting stile, but there was no mage, secretary, archivist, researcher, cook, alchemist, blacksmith, booster, controller or tanker that caught his attention on either side of the battlefield. Maybe the guy that made those beserker pills counted as a good enough in skill, but his personality was also something he took into account, so he would not be dealing with the ramblings of a mad scientist and their demands for no reason, nevermind he had no clue how to get to said person even if they were found.
"Now that we've talked about arming you up." He pointed towards the shadows that'd fused with her body. She could look like a normal short haired chinese girl that didn't get to grow much, but if she reverted to shadow form she could summon the equipment at will, the same for the set of common clothes he asked her to wear before finding something better in a shop or the other. "We should probably use the chance to talk about the future. You are young so you might not know, but there are other planets and other realms in far away places, an amount that if put into a number would simply be incomprehensible to even the minds of the strongest immortals and some of the weakest gods. After about three more weeks or so, we will both be returning to my original realm, and i can't guarantee i will be able to bring you out of my shadow when away from the connection hub, but there are still a lot of things you will need to know as a base for understanding what will actually happen. Number one to that, is that you should pick your vision of what power represents and push it way, way down your list of priorities. It's important, but with me here you will be happier by putting more efforts towards happiness and joy instead." He sagely nodded, leaving a confused girl in front of him as he did not explain his words anymore.
"Is that..."
'Roll backwards and don't stop backing away before two hundred meters or so.'
The command came together with a sudden kick, she obeyed. The explosion sent her flying farther away, the fire burning her back and diminishing her despite her new nature.
'Later...'
The connection was cut, the infuriating voice of the man that'd beat her so many times over non-sensial things retaining it's non-chalance even as the dome of black fire around his tent exploded outwards again.
Smelling blood and battle far away, she gave one last look towards the barrier with a horrifying energy and ran. Samael knew not if her new master would survive this trap as well, but from the bottom of her heart, she pitied whoever was stuck in there with him.