Life Hunter

Later, Arima and Night just left the place after sleeping for a day and a half. Arima used magic to wash like always. He also did his best to restore his clothes.

When they approached the capital. Arima stopped Night.

"Do you have a way to conceal yourself? I"m not blaming you or anything, but, I don"t think it"s a clever idea to bring a dragon in a city. I don"t want someone to suddenly charge at you and scream "For my family !!", you know?" He said

"Why would someone do that ?!" Night shouted

"Dunno, just an example, I mean, maybe there is a stereotype G.o.d somewhere" Arima said smiling.

"…Yeah, sure. I can shapeshift, I think it"s okay, right? Though I can"t change into a human. Because I"m still a beast, at best I can transform in another beast but human is totally changing my fundamental, it"s like a lock in my mind" Night explained

"I see, then go ahead, you can change in whatever you want" Arima said

"Okay then" Night closed his eyes and a magic circle appeared below him. His entire body began to let out some cracking noises while his appearance slowly changed. His neck shrank, his horns, tail, and wings slowly disappeared too. Then he got on all fours, his limbs changed and his bones followed. Finally, his scales disappeared like they were retracted, and fur appeared grew instead.

In the end, what remained was a five-foot-tall black wolf.

"Is it good enough?" The latter asked in the same calm voice

"Yeah, wolves are cool too" Arima laughed

"I thought of the wolf on the sheath of your sword so I chose this " Night said

They started to walk toward the city "Now that I think about it, you are a n.o.ble dragon, right?" Arima suddenly asked.

Night nodded. There are actually three different breeds of dragons in this world. The sky dragons, the land dragons, and the n.o.ble dragons.

The sky dragons are the snake-like ones, they usually spend their time flying and traveling when they"re not in hibernation. They"re usually magic experts.

The land dragons cannot fly and don"t have wings, they"re quadrupedal life forms. And they possess extremely good physical ability and regeneration ability.

And finally, the n.o.ble dragons, which are said to be the strongest. They are bipedal, possess a pair of claws and a pair of wings. They can boast about both their physical and magic ability. And Night was one of them. Although he is a soul beast, he"s still a life form born from the laws of this world, so there"s no doubt that he is a true member of the dragon race.

When Arima was thinking about that, they arrived at the gate of the city. The guards who saw Arima when he left the day before, were surprised to see him back a with ma.s.sive wolf at his side. When he explained that Night was his beast soul, they were shocked and curious at the same time. But they finally said to him that a subdued beast, or a contracted one, had to have a special badge to enter the city. The soldiers gave them a pendant with a special symbol on it. Arima looked at it a few seconds and then drew the same symbol with mana on Night"s fur. Leaving a gray symbol.

"Is that good?" Arima smiled and asked the soldier in front of him

"Y-Yes, you can go in now" The soldier said nervously.

"Thanks" Arima pa.s.sed the gate and brought Night inside.

There were still four days left before the compet.i.tion, so Arima had a lot of free time right now. So, he walked straight to the library of this city. When entered the library, the staff was a bit scared by Night but calmed down seeing the symbol on him. Arima said that Night would not do anything and will read with him. When they heard that a beast would be reading they showed strange expressions.

"I will" But when they heard the wolf talking, they shook a bit and let them enter both.

Arima began to read books about enchant and alchemy. He wanted to enchant his clothes and weapons if he could, he also found that enchantment had a lot of potentials. It was just like programming. On an object, you could give a variation and a condition with magic and do a lot of things. For example, something like "Activate engraved magic when supplied with mana". And the effect of that "program" can be "active" as well as "pa.s.sive".

In the case of alchemy, Arima just wanted to learn about the plants in this world. He wasn"t really eager to concoct potions. He could use healing magic if he wanted and he didn"t like poison.

Meanwhile, Night was reading books about the common things in this world like Arima did his first day. He was using magic to pick up books and turn the pages. Apparently, he was reading in English too. Maybe the translating gift from the G.o.d was transmitted to him.

The staff and people in the library were looking at the two of them with really complicated looks. Particularly, the black wolf reading books with magic.

And like this, they spent an entire day, before returning to the Inn, Aria didn"t react badly at Night and accepted him inside, she even tried to pet him. And Night actually let her do it and Arima chuckled on the side.

The next day, Arima got out alone for an hour and came back at the Inn with some equipment which he threw on the bed.

Night was laying down in the room half asleep when he heard Arima throw his things. He raised his head and looked at it "What"s that?" He asked

Arima furrowed "Things for enchantment" He was clearly upset.

"What"s wrong?" Night tilted his head.

"I tried to find decent quality equipment and so I bought this. Do you know how much it cost me?"

"How much?"

"Three f.u.c.king hundred golds" Arima said

"Oh"

"What "oh"? It"s like 30 000 dollars! If it wasn"t for me pillaging some no- bandits, even with the money from the guild and the precious stones I had, it wouldn"t have been enough" He complained and sat down on the bed.

He sighed "Well, let"s begin"

"You got over it pretty fast, and what was that pillaging story?" Night couldn"t help to ask.

Arima ignored him and looked at what he bought. Beside him, were three things, one was a sort of big and sharp white pen with carvings on it, next to it there was a box with twenty empty magic crystals in it and finally, there was a strange scroll with a magic circle drawn on it.

Arima took one crystal with his left hand and the pen with his right. He infused mana in the pen until the runes on it began to glow. Soon enough, he started to engrave something on the magic crystal.

Basically, he was infusing a certain amount of mana in the pen without making it leak out. Then he had to direct the mana in the pen toward the pen"s tip and then engrave something on the crystal, also, the amount of mana needs to be the same for each character engraved. In short, it"s d.a.m.n hard. The precision and concentration required were off the chart.

When Arima finished engraving the first word, the crystal restored itself, absorbing the word at the same time glow with a faint blue light.

Night was silently looking. When Arima was halfway through the second word, the crystal fissured. Arima felt something was wrong so he instantly set up a small mana shield around the crystal.

As expected, the crystal exploded in the shield.

"..."

"It exploded" Night remarked

"Yes"

"You failed"

"...Yes"

"I"m shocked"

"f.u.c.k off!"

******************************************************

Ultimately, Arima succeeded on his third try, after an hour. He continued to enchant until evening. And after he finished he ended up with eight enchanted crystals.

"...My head hurts" He complained

"You know. If I"m not wrong, from what I read, the average enchanter can only enchant once every two days. The most experienced ones can go to two per day. And usually, when a normal guy enchants three times a day, he faints and if he forces himself to four per day, he dies. For you... yeah, eight is not bad" Night lost it the moment Arima finished the fifth crystal. Now he just acted like it was natural.

"Anyway" Arima took one of the crystals and put it on the scroll listed before. He activated it with a wisp of mana. The circle glowed and the crystal cracked, but this time it was normal. The crystal broke until only crystal dust remained, floating above the circle like a cloud. Arima flicked his fingers and the dust flew to him and fused directly with his coat.

"What was that?" Night asked in curiosity

"The enchant, it transforms the crystal into dust and the enchant engraved on the crystal is applied to an object through it. The object here is my coat" He explained

"I see"

Arima then used the remaining crystals, three more on his coat, two on his shirt and two on his pants. He also realized then enchant didn"t work on Karma. Maybe because its power was too strong to accept enchantments.

The results of the enchant were:

Coat: - *Pa.s.sive*: When injured, cast [Sana] (The time the ability last depends on the mana capacity of the magic item) {Can heal for 30 minutes a day, in total}

- *Pa.s.sive*: When hit, activate [Defensionis est] (defense up) {10 times a day}

- *Active*: Activate [Sicarius umbra] at the keyword {Once a day}

- *Active*: Activate [Rest.i.tutio](Restoration) at the keyword {Once a day}

Shirt and Pants: - *Pa.s.sive*: When injured, constant healing [Sana] {30 minutes a day}

- *Pa.s.sive*: When hit, activate [Defensionis est] (defense up) {10 times a day}

The "defense up" and healing magic stacks three times. The magic "Sicarius umbra" is a camouflage one that transforms the caster into a shadow. "Rest.i.tutio" allows the caster to restore the clothes he wears.

a.n.a.lyzing that in his head, Night raised his voice "A country would try to kill you if they knew what you"re wearing right now. I mean, 30 minutes of healing and 10 times of mid defense per day, that"s pretty much as good or better than a national treasure"

"So, what?" Arima asked

"Nothing, I was just stating facts. By the way, why do you buff that coat so much?"

"What? I like this coat. It was a gift, I"m lucky I came into this world with it. Well, anyway, we still have two days before that compet.i.tion, tomorrow we"ll go train our teamwork and maybe master that thing"

""That thing"?"

Arima grinned "Resonance"

**************************************************

The next day, Night and Arima trained together. The day after, Arima messed around with alchemy to create some sweets.

"Why?" Night was perplexed

"What? I love sweets. I can"t live without my weekly dosage of sugar" He answered seriously

"..."

"You want one?" Arima said while eating a dragibus-like candy.

That day, he also enchanted five knives with an active enchant [Fulgur], generating electricity for 1 hour a day. He didn"t really need to do it but he was bored.

And me tired and had to find something to end this chapter.

Finally, the next day was the date for the beginning of the tournament.