Reborn: Demon's Legacy (5 page)

9-6

The next morning Ash was taken outside the tunnels where he and Seia waited for the clan head to speak. This time he didn’t gain any defensive skills so he was wondering what his task would be this time.

“Ash, you have gained a few poison abilities. Usually, you would spend a year here gaining more than fifty, but since we are short on time I picked those that seemed the most useful,” Silia said with a slightly pouting face. “There are a number of ways to use poison while fighting so Seia will be showing you some.”

Ash quickly learned that it wasn’t as simple as coating you blade in poison. If he did that with a poison that came airborne during attack it could hit him as well as the enemy. He was given a long leather belt with numerous small hollow needles about half the size of his pinky finger.

“Sadly you can’t mix poisons yourself, but Seia can. So we have already filled these with the best poison that we can make. Be warned though, each needle takes a full day to make and fill so use them sparingly,” Silia said before handing Ash a second belt of needles. “These are for you to fill yourself. Using the secretion ability, you can place any poison you have in these needles. Simply press your index finger against the back part of the needle and activate the ability while focusing where you want it to go and what poison you want used. It sounds easy enough, but it takes time to master. Over the next two days you will be filling the needles while trying to hit moving targets, namely Seia. Since she is of the Liam tribe she has immunity to poison so there is no fear of her being fatally injured. The day after that, you will be using a special dagger in your off hand for the same purpose. After that, you will be fighting in the labyrinth. Sadly most the monsters there have poison immunity as well, but it is more so you can learn how to deal with poison during fighting. I won’t tell you how fast you should go during your short three days in the labyrinth, but I do hope that you take the training seriously for your own good.”

The needles were meant to be lightly held between the index and ring finger when thrown. It took a while for Ash to get the hang of it, but at the end of the first day he could hit the target thirty percent of the time. The hardest part was filling the needles before throwing them. After his third try, Ash learned that he could fill them before pulling them from their holding spot on the belt which made his movements much more fluid.

The second day Seia, started moving more sporadically making it even harder to hit her with the throwing needles but Ash was steadily getting better with his aim.

When over half the day had passed and Ash had gotten his accuracy up to over eighty percent, Silia gave him a long dirk. The dirk’s handle and blade were made of a single piece of metal and had a thin groove that ran from the pommel to the tip of the blade. It was made this way so that the fighter could secrete poison into the grove and use it while fighting.

Though Ash’s sword was a one-handed sword, he had never used a weapon in his offhand. It wasn’t that he never thought about it, but with both hands free, Ash could switch between which held the weapon. Ash liked the freedom his style gave him, but he could see the value of having a secondary weapon held in reserve to be used only when needed.

The last half of the day, Ash used both the needles and dirk to attack. It felt awkward using both hands to use the ability and his MP was running out quickly. The Liam didn’t give him MP recovery potions like he had got before, he had to rely on his own recovery rate to restore his MP.

Once the training was over, Ash still had plenty of energy, though his MP had been devastated. Just filling the tiny vial in the needles took forty MP and the dagger took sixty to fully coat the blade. So while he had plenty of stamina left, he didn’t have enough mental strength to use it, so he returned directly to his room to lie down.

Flopping down on the large mattress that was laid directly on the ground that the demons used for bedding, Ash let out a groan. Unlike with Celina who had to wait until the day he left, Ash would be marrying Seia first thing in the morning before they fought together in the labyrinth. This time when they fought, it wouldn’t just be the two of them, but Celina as well. Ash had thought that she would be forced to stay behind again, but it seemed that the training was as much for the guards as it was for himself.

The next morning Ash was shaken awake by Celina long before the sun crested the horizon. When Ash saw the worried look on her face, he felt that what she was about to say wasn’t going to go well.

“Ash,” Celina said while biting the edge of her lip. “The sage is calling for you. He said he has received some news from his spies.”

Hearing this, Ash jumped to his feet and quickly dressed. He found the sage waiting on him in the large meeting room that they had used on the first day. “Sage, I heard that you have received some word?” Ash asked, his words almost stumbling over each other.

“Calm down my lord,” the sage said as he signaled for Ash to take a seat next to him. Along with the sage Celina, Seia, and Silia were also in the room.

“My lord, a few of my spies have reported back some news. The king himself has declared you an outlaw. They will be trying to get the duchess to renounce you again, but from what we have heard, few believe that it will be effective. It will take time for the king to draft a letter and have it delivered, but during that time the King will start to gather forces to take over the Hawkwing lands by force.”

“So they have pulled back for now,” Ash said, more to himself than to the others. “How long before they attack?”

“It is hard to guess,” the sage said with a troubled look. “It could be as soon as a few weeks or a half a year. While the kingdom seems to have turned against your wife, the people have not. Every day more and more nonhumans have been arriving in the Hawkwing lands to fight, though it is still only a drop in the bucket when compared to what the king can muster. The reason I tell you this is to hear your orders my lord.”

Ash tried to think of something he could do to help Emelia, but he was too lacking in knowledge and experience. “I don’t know what to do,” Ash admitted shaking his head. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I would suggest you start to position your own people near the duchess so that they can protect her,” Silia said smiling.

“That is a good plan,” the sage agreed. “We can send in the Shad clan along with the Fienor clan. Is there any place outside the city that we could hide a large force? We have less than three thousand demons that can fly, so unless we get them in place before the battle starts, there will be no way that they will be able to help.”

“Well the Hawkwing duchy is fairly large with a number of forests and mountains, but I don’t think there is any place that can hide a large force for a long period of time,” Ash said as he scratched his head.

“My lord, can I make a suggestion,” Silia said as she batted her eyes seductively and leaned toward him.

“Y-yeah,” Ash said trying to move away but soon found Seia’s tail pulling him to her chest which made Silia laugh.

“We could have the Goren clan try to connect their tunnels to the duchy lands,” Silia said, her voice taking on a serious tone. “A few generations ago one of the Maoh’s had briefly thought about expanding and the Goren had started on that line, but it was abandoned. I have heard their clan head say that they could easily finish the plan if they were given a few weeks.”

“Excellent idea mistress Silia,” the sage said clapping his hands. “I had almost forgotten about the Goren clan.”

“I don’t blame you,” Silia said as if something distasteful had passed over her tongue. “They are an unsociable lot.”

“I see that you and lord Pern are still at odds,” the sage chuckled.

“Don’t speak of that oaf,” Silia said the look on her face full of disdain.

“Let us go with Silia’s idea,” Ash said, still not knowing fully what they were talking about but he knew that they had a lot more knowledge in this area than he did. “Can you organize everything?” Ash asked as he turned his attention back to the sage.

“I will see to it today my lord,” the sage said with a slight nod of his head.

“Just so I know, how long would it take for us to reach the Hawkwing capital if an emergency occurred?” Ash asked with a slightly pensive look.

“Do not worry my lord, even if we are at the far ends of the demon lands, it would at most take three days to arrive at the your ladies side.”

“Can the large birds really fly that long and far?”

“No my lord,” the sage replied, shaking his head. “At most the birds can fly for five hours while carrying a load, but we can exchange them when needed for fresh mounts,” he explained.

By the time all the details had been worked out, the sun had already risen into the sky. Just as before, the wedding ceremony was quick. Before Ash had a chance to wrap his mind around the fact that he had yet another wife, he was taken to the first floor of the labyrinth.

The first floor had an enemy that he had seen before, though it was slightly different. It was the slime, but unlike the slightly white jelly body before, this one was a dull green. Seia called it a poison slime and while its main attack was still a lunge, it would sometimes spit a green mucus at them that would bubble and boil wherever it landed. Other than the poison attacks, the slime was easily to deal with and died even with a weak strike.

Since he was not limited in his use of skills or abilities, Ash and the two women moved through the first fifteen floors of the labyrinth with ease. Not even the bosses gave them much trouble. A few times Ash had been struck by, poison but Seia neutralized it quickly. If it was an external poison she merely needed to touch it to render it useless and if it was internal she would bite Ash. Ash didn’t really enjoying being bitten, nor the warmth that rushed through his body afterwards but it was better than being poisoned.

As they progressed through the labyrinth, Ash learned more about Seia’s blood ability. Unlike Ash’s ability where he had to absorb numerous dead enemies to gain an ability, Seia only had to be struck by a poison once to be able to use it. Since four out of every five levels contained monsters that used poison, Seia had been training within it since an early age she had already gained poison from the first to the forty-fifth floor. Not only did she gain the use of the poison, but her body also produced a natural anti-poison that could cure anything she had encountered before. That ability alone made Seia a welcomed addition to his guard. As long as a poison couldn’t kill him within seconds, Seia could cure him.

At first Celina and Seia didn’t get alone, but with each passing floor they seemed to get along better. After reaching the boss room on the seventeenth floor they decided to exit the labyrinth. As soon as they were brought outside, Ash noticed that the sun still hung limply in the sky casting an orange glow over the horizon.

Ash wanted nothing else than to rest since he had pushed himself far harder than normal, but it didn’t seem like Celina and Seia were going to let him. Giggling, the two girls each grabbed a hand and pulled Ash back to the room. Like a pig being leg to his slaughter, Ash tried to reason with the two young ladies but they replied with silence and twisted grins.

The next morning, Ash left the room well before the two evil monsters were awoken from their slumber. Outside Ash enjoyed to cold air on his skin and noticed that snow had once again covered the ground. With a smile, Ash let out a deep breath and watched as it came out as a white puff of air.

“It’s cold,” Seia said exiting the underground tunnels and coming to stand beside Ash. Feeling slightly bad, Ash pulled a blanket from his inventory and placed it around Seia’s shaking shoulders. Seia grabbed the ends of the blanket and pulled it tight around herself. “You were supposed to offer to warm me up,” Seia said with puffed out cheeks while Celina laughed from behind them.

Rolling his eyes Ash ignored the two women and headed in the direction of the labyrinth to fight. The more time he spent with women the less he understood about them. Ash doubted that if he lived ten lives he would be able to gain that often sought after knowledge.

The small group quickly passed through to the twenty-fourth floor without trouble but that was where their luck ended.

The twenty fifth floor was a large forest and as soon as they entered he head Seia groan. Turning his head he couldn’t help himself. “What?”

“I remember this floor,” she said with an expression of revolution on her face.

“Don’t just end it like that,” Ash said with a slightly annoyed expression when Seia didn’t say anything further. “If you know it is going to be troublesome, then wouldn’t it be best to tell us what you already know.”

“This is the floor that gave me the most trouble out of all the others when I was in training. It is inhabited by the calius flower.”

“Calius flower?” Celina asked tilting her head cutely to the side.

“It has a unique poison that even gives the Liam tribe a hard time. Unlike other poisons, it doesn’t deal damage but instead blocks the person from using any MP or SP related skills or abilities. It even blocks my neutralize ability. So if I am hit, I can’t cure either of you from it either.”

“If you have been attacked by it before then shouldn’t you be able to use it as well?” Ash asked, thinking the ability would be useful in combat.

“That is true of most poisons, but we have learned that if we absorb the poison, it is constantly active within our bodies and for the rest of our lives we can no longer use abilities or skills. It is the only poison that I know of that we are warned against ever absorbing…Well there are a few others, but that is for different reasons.”