Noah walked slowly toward the other side of the valley.
He would stop frequently to train in the writing showed in Uriah"s diary and to review the details of the spell.
"Since the body of the companion is made with its blood mixed with my "Breath" its rank is fixed. Well, theoretically it is possible to upgrade it but you would need a different technique and the risks of the companion dying will be high. It is simply safer to switch to a stronger one once you have the necessary strength to tame it."
He was drawing on the ground the shape of a snake with his saber while holding the book in his other hand.
"I wonder if I"m being too greedy going for a rank 3 right away. If I kill it I should have some advantages in taming it, yet can I sustain it? Well, having a rank 2 companion at my level is useless anyway."
His prey was a peak rank 3 Horned snake while he was only a rank 1 mage, it was natural for him to have some doubts.
"It doesn"t say anything about making more than one companion either, I guess it depends on the pressure I can withstand with my sea of consciousness."
There was another reason he was moving slowly and it was the "Breath""s density.
The density was so high that the effects on his body resembled those of the "Breath" blessing he found during the events with the Ironclad spiders.
Noah was having the faint sensation of getting close to a sort of limit.
"If I stay here for a couple of months I should reach the end of the sixth cycle, and that based on the density in this area. If I go further in the valley it will take even less."
He was purposely slowing his trip back to the mansion to make use of the quality of this place.
"There is also that King"s problem, but I"m really powerless about anything related to it."
The drawing was done and Noah nodded looking at it, he was satisfied with the result.
"Now where that snake can be?"
.
.
.
The rank 3 Horned snake was lying on the river to let the water filled with "Breath" enter its body.
There were many wounds on its body, probably due to its battle with the pack of Earth snakes, and no rank 2 snakes of its pack were present.
The snake was sleeping but it was right in the open, there was no way to take it by surprise.
Noah was hiding behind a rock looking at it, the saber in his hand was drawing the snake"s figure on the terrain.
"Mh it looks injured, this is good, but there is no way to take it by surprise."
The drawing was over, the snake"s figure this time had three little horns on his head.
"Time to get the main ingredient."
Noah smiled unconsciously, the prospect of having his first spell was making him elated.
He charged with his two sabers unsheathed and crossed in front of him.
The snake woke up sensing something coming in its direction and was enraged to see again the little human that caused the incident with the Earth snakes.
It immediately spewed a poisonous ball in his direction and then punched with its head where he was dodging to.
Noah jumped and rotated horizontally, continuously sending wind slashes on the body of the snake.
The slashes cut through its skin but only light wounds appeared.
"It is indeed powerful."
Noah admitted and then a.s.saulted it again.
Clashes kept on happening and the Horned snake fought fiercely, but new wounds appeared on its body on every clash and, added to the old ones, they were starting to affect the ma.s.sive beast.
The Horned snake tried a desperate attack launching a poisonous projectile at melee range but Noah used this chance to jump over its head and pierce it with both his sabers.
The sabers stabbed deeply into the snake"s skull as it started to thrash its body around the valley to remove the human from above its head.
However, Noah held strongly on the sabers and pushed them deeper into the beast"s brain.
After a minute of struggles, the snake finally fell dead on the ground.
Noah jumped off its body and could not help but feel surprised.
"What an incredible vitality! Even with my blades in its brain it still resisted for so much."
He could not put its body in the s.p.a.ce-ring as it was too big so he hastily made a deep cut along its body.
He took out a cask from his ring and threw the water inside it away, then he put the cask below the cut to acc.u.mulate the dripping blood.
Then, he entered the cut and explored the insides of the snake"s body until he found its heart.
After he came out of its body, he took off his upper clothes and washed in the river, he didn"t want any form of contamination to happen during the creation of the blood companion.
Noah waited patiently for the cask to be filled and then he put everything back in his s.p.a.ce-ring and went to hide in a cave nearby.
There were some rank 2 snakes inside but they were immediately cleared and he had to go back to the river to wash again.
When he was clean and in a safe place, he took out the cask and placed his hands on it.
"Breath" flowed from his body into the snake"s blood inside the cask while his acupoints where absorbing madly the one around him.
It took him an entire day to make the blood reach the standards described in the diary and when the process was over, the blood had become a dark dense liquid.
Noah waited some more time for his body to be filled again with "Breath" and after making sure that everything was set he unsheathed a saber and dipped its tip in the liquid.
His eyes were s.h.i.+ning in excitement as he looked at the black blade dripping the dark blood.
"Time to begin!"