Reborn: Knight's Code (9 page)

7-10

The next morning Ash woke early, slightly excited. Today was the first day in weeks since he had a free day. As Ash rushed down the stairs, he found that breakfast had already been prepared and was currently being placed on the table. “Did I sleep in?” Ash asked as he looked at the maids with a confused look on his face.

“No, master has not woke up early,” one of the maids said bowings. “Miss Gilda just informed us that master would most likely wish for an early breakfast today.”

“Gilda,” Ash said under his breath with a smile. She was the head maid and that position was well earned. No matter what Ash tried to do, Gilda always seemed to be one step ahead of him. Nothing he did seemed to surprise her.

As soon as he sat down, little Milly crawled up into his lap. She was no longer the small little child she had been. Over the past few months she had grown quickly. Even though she was only six she was still close to the size Yuki was when Ash first met her.

“Master,” Milly said after Ash had looked at her in silence for a good long while. “Does your tummy hurt?” She asked with a worried look on her childish face. Milly was really shy and rarely spoke at first, but now she was getting much better at talking to people. Ash felt she was getting slightly too big to sit in his lap, but it was hard to explain things to such a little child.

“Master is fine Milly I was just thinking how much you have grown lately,” Ash said with a warm smile.

“Milly is getting big and strong,” Milly said with a gap toothed smile.

Ash lightly patted Milly’s head and she gave off a delighted laugh. The food today was bread and soup along with cheese. As he ate, every now and then Milly would steal a bite from his fork with a mischievous laugh. Gilda would often scold her, but Milly would just look up at Ash with her large eyes and Ash couldn’t find the words to get onto her.

After the meal, Ash and Shina headed straight for the labyrinth. Yuki had a day off school and wanted to join them, but with her level, one hit from one of the monsters would mean her death. She pouted a bit, but when Ash thought of the danger he was easily able to turn her away.

Ash was so excited to have a full day to fight in the labyrinth that the walk to the labyrinth seemed to pass by almost instantly. In the next moment Ash seemed to be on the twenty-seventh floor of the labyrinth. The whole area was hot and the air smelled vaguely like rotten eggs. The smell didn’t bother Ash much, but Shina’s face instantly turned pale and it looked as if she was having trouble holding in her breakfast.

The flame spirits looked a lot like humans. They were about seven feet tall and as soon as they attacked, a sword made of flames would appear in their hands. The spirits didn’t have physical bodies so if he attacked with his sword alone, it would simply pass through them. Even if he added a blessing to his weapon, it did very little damage. The best way to kill them was with water magic, but the closest he had was ice magic and that only weakened them moderately. His best choice was using the ice spear ability that worked much like the flame sword, but coated his weapon in ice. It lasted longer and used up less MP though it still took a while for him to kill the flame spirits with it.

Ash gave a broad smile when he found the first flame spirit. After invoking ice spear, Ash charged forward, hitting the flame spirit in the chest. His sword passed through the body of the flame spirit, but it left behind a trail of smoke as the spirit’s HP dropped by eight percent.

The flame spirit attacked back using its own sword, forcing Ash to dodge. He could try to block it with his sword, but the sword had no more substance than the spirit’s body and would simply pass through the sword to strike him. As soon as he regained his feet, Ash struck again this time aiming for the spirits head, but once again the sword passed through only doing seven percent damage to its HP.

Again the flame spirit attack but this time Ash was slightly off balance and didn’t regain his footing in time and was forced to take the strike head on but it only did twenty damage to his HP. Growling, Ash lashed out spiting the fire spirit down the middle when his sword hit something of substance and the flame spirit shuddered once then a small red gem fell to the ground as its essence disappeared.

It hadn’t been till Ash’s fifth fight against the flame spirit that he learned they had a core that when struck, would instantly kill them. The only downside was finding the core. It would be one thing if they were always in the same place or if his dragon eyes could see the core, but whenever he looked at the flame spirit it looked like one large lump of magical energy. All Ash could do was strike the flame spirits and hope to hit the core otherwise he had to wait until their HP was completely reduced to zero.

The flame spirits only dropped a flame gem so far which was the center of their gems leaving Ash with a hard choice. If he absorbed the dead flame spirit he lost the gem but if he didn’t he couldn’t get the abilities. Thankfully he didn’t need the coin so he always absorbed them, but it felt slightly wasteful whenever he got a moment to think about it.

After killing eight more flame spirits Ash got what he wanted when he heard the welcomed “Tring,” ring through his mind.

[You have reached the needed absorption level for Flame Spirit. Abilities available: Burn Out (active.)]

“Tring.”

[You have been awarded the ability Burn Out randomly.]

[Burn Out- Turn 10% of your HP into a white hot flame to attack your opponents.]

After having gotten the last ability from the flame spirit, Ash headed straight for the boss’s room. Shina followed behind Ash silently. She didn’t have to fight to get experience since she was carrying one of the party crystals. At first Shina tried helping with the fighting, but soon she found that Ash fought better when she was in the back since anytime she was about to be hit he would block for her even if he had to take the blow head on. Shina had mixed feeling about Ash protecting her. It both made her feel warm inside, but at the same time made her feel slightly ashamed at her own weakness.

Ash didn’t hesitate and quickly pushed open the door to the boss’s room. When the darkness cleared, a large red being floated in the air. From reading the plaque, Ash knew that it was a Fire Jinn but somewhere inside he had thought that it would look something like the genie from the movies but it looked far different. The Jinn was about nine feet tall and more than five feet wide. It floated in the air and while it didn’t have feet, its body did not end in a wispy smoke but instead seemed to simply cut off at the waist. The main difference that Ash saw was that the Jinn’s face didn’t look remotely human. Instead it looked like a mix between that of an alligator and a bull.

The Jinn didn’t attack, it just looked at Ash and Shina. The creature’s eyes didn’t seem hostile, just curious as if he were watching a play. An evil toothy smile spread across its face as a large sword appeared in its right hand while a whip appeared in its left.

Ash didn’t wait to see if the Jinn would attack first as he brought his own sword to the ready and used ice spear on it, coating his blade in a soft white frost.

As Ash closed the distance between him and the Jinn, he moved in a zig-zag pattern as the Jinn attacked with its whip. Each strike of the whip left deep black gouges on the ground. The sheer power behind the Jinn’s strikes left Ash slightly amazed, but it was not to the point of scaring him. What really amazed Ash, was that the Jinn never had to lift its arm to use the whip. It was almost like a snake moving around freely on its own.

Ash didn’t know it, but as he fought a thin smile spread across his face. When he got close enough, Ash struck with his sword but his sword simply slipped through the body of the Jinn only dealing thirty damage to its HP. The Jinn’s body was much large than that of the flame spirits and if the core was the same size then even with a hundred strikes Ash would be lucky to strike the Jinn’s heart.

Ash didn’t fear that he would be killed by the Jinn. With his strength and speed unless the Jinn had an unexpected and deadly ability, he was relatively safe as long as he stayed on his guard. What really bothered Ash was that he was so close to his goal and the only thing standing in his way was beating the Jinn.

If the Jinn was pure essence, Ash had an idea. Ash invoked Dark eyes while looking at the Jinn’s eyes. The Jinn let out a loud piercing scream and the weapons in its hands started to flicker, but after a few seconds it regained its strength though its body did seem slightly weaker in color. It was too faint to tell for sure so Ash quickly used Dark eyes again and once again the weapons in the Jinn’s hands flickered but this time Ash could clearly see that the Jinn’s color had become weaker.

Ash quickly used analyze on the Jinn and it was clear that the Jinn’s Max HP had been reduced. This had made Ash look closer at the Jinn and not only had it gotten slightly weaker in color it had only lost a bit of its size. Ash continue to watch the Jinn’s stats and noticed that its max HP was slowly recovering, but not at a rapid pace. Ash wasn’t sure but since the Jinn was a being made up completely by essence, then the soul attack effected it to a much larger degree then it would other creatures. When he thought of this, Ash used Shadow Whip and just like he expected the whip did not pass through the Jinn, but stuck it hard forcing it to move back about five feet while leaving behind a dark red wound on its chest that seemed to leak out a fine red mist that slightly resembled steam.

After Ash had attacked with the Dark Eyes and Shadow Whip the look on the Jinn’s face changed. It no longer had a look of indifference about fighting, now it looked as if it were not outranged but slightly worried. Ash had fought many monsters but most of them didn’t have enough inelegance to feel complex feelings but higher level spirts were different. Even if they were born within the labyrinth which limited their growth, unlike wild monsters they still closely resembled those that you would find in the darker parts of the world.

Since Ash had been forced to spend much more time working lately so when he did have a few spare moments, he had spent it studying about the different monsters. Ash had expected to find something like a game manual book with pictures and descriptions, but they were more like dictionaries. They were full of information, but Ash had tried to keep from reading about monsters he had yet to fight in the labyrinth since he enjoyed the challenge.

Ash used his Dark Eyes then quickly followed it by using his Shadow Whip making it impossible for the Jinn to dodge. Ash could see the hate radiating from the Jinn’s eyes, but that only made the smile widen on his face as he knew that the fight would soon be over.  When the Jinn’s whole body began to flicker like a flame in a strong wind, Ash jumped forward using Shadow Whip one more time and the Jinn disappeared in a flash of smoke, leaving behind a large and small red gem.

[Jinn’s Heart- heart filled with the fire essence of a dead Jinn.]

[Jinn Core: +10 spirit, +5 Intelligence.]

Ash’s first thought was to sell the core, but with the current tension between the duchy and the kingdom, Ash didn’t see the benefit of selling a core that would end up strengthening what may become a future enemy. Shina mainly needed to focus on agility and stamina. Yuki also focused on agility, but her second focus was strength. Since neither of the stats were of use to them, Ash pushed the core to his own chest. He knew that he really didn’t need it but after researching the top fighters in the kingdom, Ash knew he was still lacking in many areas. The kingdom itself could not match any guild for the top in one field, but overall they had the most balanced strength. For instance knight mages at the highest ranks were about level seventy while guilds had a number of level eighty fighters the only difference was that the kingdom had far more level seventy mages then any one guild had level seventy and eighty mages put together. The level seventy kingdom mages had an average of four hundred point in intelligence and two hundred in spirit while the guild mages had an average of four-hundred and fifty points in intelligence and two-hundred and fifty points in spirit. It was not just limited to mages either, each area had about the same differences. Yet while the guilds focused on one area the kingdom had a large amount of occupations.

Ash had sat a goal in mind to reach the point where he had five hundred points in each attribute. At first it seemed daunting, but thanks to the boost his high luck gave him, it no longer seemed out of reach. High level stats mixed with his numerous abilities could make him comparable to any one of the top ranked members of any guild.

After absorbing the dead Jinn, Ash sat in the corner of the room and pulled out a large book and a few pieces of parchment. It would take a bit to recover the stamina and MP he had used and while he could still continue fighting without much worry he still preferred to be fully recovered before attempting a new floor.

The book was one of the few he had bought on his own since neither his nor Emelia’s library contained what he had wanted. He had thought the book would be easy to find, but in the end he had to search high and low for it before finding it and paying a hefty sum of two platinum coins for it. The book was simple enough as it detailed different abilities and families and occupations that they were mostly found in.

From what had learned before, everyone was born with at least one ability though most were born with two or more. The most a single person was born with was six abilities and that was considered extremely rare. Abilities were passed down from parents to children. Just like anything else inherited, most the time it was the strongest abilities that were passed along. The ability Ash had gotten while hunting the bandits called mana manipulation was not that rare, but it was one of the abilities that was highly sought after in the mage guild. It alone could only do so much, but it was essential to make it possible for people to learn certain skills or make use of other abilities to their fullest. Lore had stated that the abilities were originally handed down by the gods but the writer of this book believed that they had come from the first adventurers who had gained abilities from scrolls from defeated monsters. If that was true, then all abilities that people had could also be gained from monsters.