"You don't think we did a good job?" Etienne looked at Charles, making him nervous. 'You don't think we should sacrifice our own?'
"No." Charles kept his suspicions to himself, knowing that there were things he could not say to Etienne.
"I broke into the dark wizard's marketplace, made a scene, and killed a bunch of powerful wizards and witches. Come to the ceremonial altar in the very center and see you tied up with eight or nine other young children. Why did I keep you close to me and raise you as a demon hunter?"
"I don't know." Charles did not quite understand, the other children were let go and sent back to their parents, only Charles, Etienne insisted on teaching him the skills of the hunter.
"Because you didn't cry, you were the only one who didn't cry."
"I never shed tears." Shire was surprised. "People in the village said I didn't even cry when I was born."
"We have only one criterion for recruiting hunters -- determination, and you meet that criterion."
"Dalton... Dalton is also a hunter, but he ran away, and he decided to go home. Is he determined?"
"People change. Maybe one day in the future, you will cry because of something."
"It won't."
Etienne turned to look into the forest, then back to Charles's face.
"This is a serious question, either we sacrifice one or two wounded or even killed, and at the same time succeed in subduing the Blade Demon, banishing it, or imprisoning it in the church... Either we don't sacrifice any demon hunters, but we can't catch the Blade and let it escape to other countries and regions... Think about it, as long as a demon's real body appears in the public eye, those mortals have no chance to resist, and will be eroded in an instant and fall into depravity."
"So... Denver is dead." Shire whispers that Denver, too, has struggled for life.
"Yes, he died, but he also saved thousands of innocent people." Etienne nodded. "That's why I said their deaths meant so much."
"What if one day it's our turn to be sacrificed?"
"... I was once placed in a similar situation, decades ago. Shire. If you do not have the strength to escape from the fate you have been arranged, you can only be arranged."
Shire felt they were in a bind.
"If Denver dies, knowing what he died for, that's a sacrifice." Let him die without him knowing anything... What is this?" Charles stared at Etienne.
"Don't give it a second thought." Etienne put his hands on Charles's shoulder, stared at him with muddy eyes, and raised his voice, "In the stage where the devil and the hunter fight for their lives, as long as you focus on the ultimate goal of 'defeating the devil', all other thoughts are put aside for me!"
Shire was silent.
"Now I'm going to teach you another important mantra. Memorize its rhyme, rhythm, and tone, and make sure you repeat it perfectly, you understand?"
"... Understood." Char nodded.
Etienne faces the clearing and pronounces the hunter's mantra: "' Banish the sky. '"
"' Exile from heaven, '" Shire repeated.
Etienne stared at Charles, straightened his cloak, and saluted him: "You practice here until we come back."
"What? Monsieur Etienne, aren't you going?"
"Nonsense, I stayed only to worry about you. I have to go, and if we don't succeed in defeating the Blade Demon because I wasn't there, what a terrible loss that would be, and I would live with that loss for the rest of my life. You stay here and never leave."
Before Charles had a chance to speak, Etienne turned quickly away from the remains of the campstone, and went also into the depths of the Twilight forest.
Shire leaned on the camping rock. The rock was cold.
As a demon hunter, his job should be to hunt demons, since he has decided to fight demons when he joined the ranks of hunters, then he should give his life to destroy demons, it should be understandable.
But... Char shook his head vigorously.
It's sad, but it's not his place to make the rules.
As in chess, Shire had seen gamblers play a game of Kings in the tavern, in which two men fought against each other on the board with wooden pieces of unusual shapes, named after knights, soldiers, or officers, but which, however glamorous, were all equivalent to the players, and could be easily moved, destroyed, and exchanged, so long as victory was assured.
Frederick's the chess player, and we're the pawns? The more Char thought about it, the more depressed he became.
What if they kept me in the camp as a ploy? If the Blade Demon...
Shire dared not dwell on it, decided to eliminate inner distractions and focus on practicing the hunter's spell.
"Phantom power." He concentrated his attention, and the words he uttered in a special tone became spells with magical force, and the air moved slightly, and invisible forces flowed through the air.
What can be done with it?
According to Jaffney, it's a force that manipulates the winds of flow. Shire mused. Good demon hunters are able to maximize the effectiveness of a spell by subtly altering its content through concentration, thereby altering elements such as the spell's reach, level of power, and so on.
Also using the flame of Yafen to burn the soul, Char can only ignite his own soul to wake himself up, allowing it to come out of the palm of his hand and ignite things around him, creating a soul fire without temperature. But he has also seen Etienne use this spell to summon the spirit of gold flame, which covers the hunter with fire, a supernatural golden glow that burns everything.
Shire believed that if he could master the rules of Phantom magic, the spell's potential was limitless.
The first was the method Jeffery had shown him, "blocking."
He picked up a rock and threw it high. The rock flew up quickly, reached a pole, and then fell quickly.
"Phantom powers! Shire uttered the incantation, looking intently into the air directly below the stone and bringing his mind to a point.
There it is -- surging.
rustle The stone landed gently and rolled across the grass, unhindered in its path.
Looks like a long way off. You want to keep practicing? Shire pondered. The Hunter spell uses the soul as its primary energy, so the practice must also be calculated, and when the spell is used repeatedly in a short period of time, the cost will increase exponentially.
Reduce the use of spells and preserve your soul, so that you can live to the age of seventy. Practice hard, master all the details and techniques of the hunter's spell, become an expert in the hunter's spell, and become a hollow shell of your soul at the age of forty.
simply Practice! Shire's heart was cruel.
From what he saw, he realized that without enough strength, others would see him as a expendable price. Or you'll end up like Dalton, unable to protect yourself, running away. But he was alone, and there was a high probability that he could not walk out of the forest.
Practice from morning to evening.
Shire repeated a spell one hundred and twenty-seven times.
At first, the effect of the phantom power is very weak, and the position is too unstable to work at all. But as Shire used and understood and thought about it, the more he understood the meaning of the whole mantra.
Shire himself devised a way to record the spell.
Each syllable had its own schedule, and he programmed the tones into different levels, the lower the number, the lower the number, the higher the number, the higher the number. Charles had a limited understanding of arithmetic, but he could grasp it from one to twenty.
After marking each syllable of the spell with a tone symbol, he deliberately varied the tone of each byte, and then experimented with the changes produced by the spell.
Through this trial and error, he tested which syllables were the core of the spell, and which syllables regulated the power of the spell, and which affected its scope.
The land in front of the campstone had been cluttered by Shire, with meticulous notes, notes, and his own inscriptions.
He ate only a little in the afternoon, and the rest of the time focused on experimenting with his understanding of the spell. He had never shown his habit to other demon hunters, not even Etienne. Because Char was afraid that others would laugh at him, he had not seen other demon hunters record spells in his way; other hunters simply wrote down the rhyme of the spell and then released it, not analyzing it as carefully as Char did, so Char felt that his method was stupid.
While painting on the ground and studying spells, Char felt more pleasure than ever, and this became his form of entertainment. Shire felt a jolt of encouragement whenever he discovered the connection between the tone change and the effect of the spell.
The results of this whole day will soon be verified.
Char picked up a stone and threw it high into the air.
The stone was the size of a hand, not the kind of crushed stone used before. The stone flew high into the air and then fell quickly.
Char watched intently as the stone fell.
Change the tone, adjust the intensity of the force, determine the position with concentrated mind...
"Phantoms -- divine powers!
Whew - There was a strong wind in the air, and the invisible force changed the direction of the wind and the airflow. In the eyes of Shire, it was as if an invisible stick hit the stone in the air. The whole stone quickly changed its direction and flew out flat, and the speed was extremely fast, hitting the distant relic stone wall with a loud knocking sound.
Seeing this effect, Shire felt very satisfied.
But then again, is that how the spell works? Shire was confused. According to Tiffany, it's probably just a protection spell. Because of the long practice, his mouth is not only parched, but also dizzy and unable to think carefully.
At the moment when the sunset was slanting and the sky was getting dark, the thing that had been worrying, or expecting, or fearing Shire happened.
"Ha - ha - ha -" came the hoarse laugh.
Char heard footsteps on the edge of the forest, and the sound of heavy objects being dragged. In order to prevent the hunters from seeing what he had drawn and laughing at him, Shire quickly erased all the marks on the ground with his hands, kicking and scratching to erase the marks and symbols.
The hunters returned from a fierce battle.
Shire looked at the figures, but felt palpitations for no reason.
People were creeping toward the campstone, dragging behind them huge shadows that seemed to be...
The Blade Demon.