Chapter 19: Discovered

  Damon sat atop his bed in his house with a solemn expression. He was inspecting his awakened Arcane Node. He had cultivated for so long and still only managed to gather seven strands of arcane energy. To accumulate the rest of the strands needed to awaken his node would have taken another year or so. Due to his impatience, he had formulated a plan he could use to expedite this process. This was to forcefully awaken the node through external means, similar to when he first awakened his Mind Node.

  He accomplished this by using nine essence stones in total to accumulate a large amount of arcane energy to force his way through the barrier. It caused the node to become cracked and unstable. Unfortunately, he did not possess a special tonic that could restore that damage. The Mindsoul Dew was only beneficial to the Mind Node and mind cultivation, nothing else.

  It had been over a month since the awakening, but it had not healed at all. Instead, it had actually deteriorated slightly due to his occasional attempts at practicing spellcraft. When Damon had first succeeded in reaching the early stage Node Awakening realm with the arcane path, he was so excited that he had immediately started studying the spells contained within the cultivation manuals and the spellbook.

  Damon thought back on his preliminary tests with the arcane arts. He discovered that his efficiency with learning spells was very good, only needing a day or so to grasp the necessary foundations to cast them. The chant used to cast a spell was designed by the creator of the spell to bypass the otherwise necessary comprehension required to form the spell. During his experimentation, he discovered that as his comprehension of the spell increased, the casting speed and strength of the spell increased as well.

  “Spells are not formed from the arcane power in one’s body; the power is only a catalyst to gather the energy in the essence of reality and manifest it into the form of the spell. Whoever managed to discover how to form these spells in the past must have been a genius. To be able to comprehend the secrets of reality, and create the art of chanting to bypass the comprehension requirement for spellcraft… I have no idea how they did it. Further training with the spells is required to actually comprehend the exact underlying mechanism of the spell, instead of just rudimentarily following the chant. I suspect the language of the chant is the verbal form of the primordial runes that are used in Runecraft. There must be some deeper meaning behind this.”

  This was Damon’s understanding of the mechanism of spellcraft after his experiments. However, that was exactly what caused his injury to worsen. He had to stop testing out new spells for the time being as he did not want to cause permanent damage to his Arcane Node.

  “I must be careful not to accidentally exacerbate the injuries on my Arcane Node. I must seek a cultivator settlement to trade for a panacea that can heal me. No. I may not possess enough essence stones to trade for what I need. I must head to a nearby association that will accept me so I can earn more cultivation resources… The closest association of an acceptable size would be… Verdant Sigil Tradehaven in the south, past the border of the Mugthorne Kingdom. It is a mercantile city-state run by the Verdant Sigil Assembly. That will be my next destination. I guess my period of peaceful cultivation near this small village has come to an end. I should depart as soon as I finish preparing for the journey. I just don’t know what to do with that child… Should I bring him along with me?”

  Damon thought about the next steps in his journey. It had been over two years, close to three, since he had left the Arcane Tower of Argent Flame. Thankfully, he had not been tracked down and managed to live quite well for this period of time. He decided to contemplate the matter regarding Lyndon over the next few days as he got the travel supplies he would need together. It would take several months to reach the Tradehaven, after all.

  The next morning, Damon finished his daily cultivation and emerged from the house, expecting to see the eager, yet impatient Lyndon bouncing about. However, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “How strange. He has been waiting outside my house for guidance with the bow every day since that very first day he started his training. I wonder if something happened back at the village?”

  Damon decided not to worry and went about his regular combat training instead. He would be visiting the village later to purchase some supplies from the villagers anyway, so he could ask about Lyndon then.

  Damon completed his training exercises and then bathed to clean his sweaty body. Afterward, he leisurely walked around the lake as he withdrew a brand new bow and looked it over. He had bought this bow from a traveling merchant several months ago as a gift for Lyndon. He had decided to leave Lyndon behind, so this would be a good parting gift. He smiled as he thought about how the boy would be running and jumping around in joy when he received the gift. Currently, Lyndon was practicing with the old hunting bow Damon’s father had used for decades. It was no longer in very good condition. The boy had even learned to fletch arrows from Damon to use himself.

  As Damon was thinking of these happy thoughts, he arrived at the entrance to the village. He was definitely not prepared to see the sight that lay before him. There were bodies of villagers lying about everywhere, all either cut into pieces or burned to a crisp. The surrounding buildings were not damaged, meaning the burns could only have been caused by one thing. Arcane spells.

  As emotions of shock and anger raged through his heart, Damon hurriedly ran into the village. When he came to the end of the road, he saw two masked men sitting on chairs in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by more corpses. Right in front of them lay the bodies of the village chief and what appeared to be Lyndon.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Oh, there he is, finally! We tortured and interrogated these villagers, and yet they did not so much as scream when they realized the one we were searching for was you. They glared at us until the very end and did not reveal your location. However, that reaction itself proved to us that they not only knew you, but they had grown considerably fond of you, meaning you were nearby.” One of the men said.

  The other man laughed and said, “Hahaha, did you think hiding here in a rural village, fraternizing with some mortals, would prevent us from finding you? I must admit, it was quite an ordeal tracking you down. We ended up having to cut out the information from some random food stall owner, leading us to a general goods store owner, before we finally managed to find this place.”

  These two men were late stage Node Awakening Cultivators. Damon heard their words, but he was focused on looking around at the carnage the two men had created. There was not a single villager left alive, man, woman, elderly, or child. Upon hearing the final sentence of the second man, Damon finally focused his sight back on the cultivators.

  They not only killed all these villagers, but also the kind-hearted stall owner and the helpful shopkeeper. This… Not even bandits take lives this easily. Bandits kill for their livelihood, not for amusement like these cultivators. These two… They’re even worse than bandits. They’re worse than the worst scum of this world. They don’t deserve to live.

  The look in Damon’s eyes changed at this thought. Previously, he was wracked with guilt as he blamed himself. Had he come straight to the village in the morning, perhaps he would have been able to save these villagers' lives. Had he not come to this village, perhaps this tragedy would not have befallen them. However, he then realized there was no point in blaming himself. The ones to blame were the two seated in front of him. They were the cause, not himself. It would be better to placate the dead by sending their murderers to the afterlife alongside them.

  Damon suddenly withdrew a quiver of arrows from his storage pouch before running his fingers over them. At this sight, the two masked men narrowed their eyes as they stood up and jumped back, beginning their spell chants. Twenty arrows shot toward the men with incredible speed. At the same time, Damon shot forth a mind spike at each of the men.

  A moment later, a pair of screams rang out in the distance. One of the men was unable to finish their chanting before being hit by the mindspike, causing their casting to be interrupted. The arrows followed soon after and turned him into a porcupine. The other man, however, had succeeded in casting a barrier. He had fallen backwards and was writhing in pain while holding his head due to the mind spike, but was otherwise uninjured as the arrows could not penetrate his barrier.

  After a few seconds, the man stood back up while still holding his temple with one hand. His eyes showed horror at the realization that Damon was not a physical cultivator, as had been previously suspected. Due to his fear of the unknown powers that Damon had shown, he immediately decided to retreat. They had already sent word to the Deputy Hall Leader, so he knew he would be able to survive as long as he escaped fast enough in the direction the Deputy Hall Leader was coming from.

  Damon frowned as he realized arrows would no longer be enough to take care of this man anymore. He withdrew Dawn’s Edge and tossed it into the air, upon which it zoomed straight towards the masked cultivator.

  The masked man had begun retreating backwards when he noticed the sword flying in his direction. He had a premonition that this sword would kill him if he relied solely on the defenses of his barrier; thus, he withdrew a scroll and activated it. This caused a spear of lightning to form in front of him, before shooting forward to meet the sword. The clash only caused the sword to change trajectory slightly, and it still punctured the barrier before piercing through his left arm, tearing it off.

  “Arghhhhh!” The man screamed out in pain as his arm fell onto the ground. He grit his teeth and quickly withdrew several scrolls before activating them all simultaneously. His Arcane Power quickly drained as a result, but he was too desperate to notice or care.

  Several different spells formed in front of the man: lightning spears, flame barrages, ice lances, and wind blades. At this sight, Damon formed a hand seal, causing Dawn’s Edge to separate into 11 exact copies before circling around the one-armed man.

  The cultivator from the tower became wide-eyed in shock at the numerous swords flying around him. Just one had already destroyed his barrier and torn off his arm. How would he be able to deal with so many? He had no defensive scrolls stronger than the barrier he had cast earlier, so he had decided to rely on only offensive spells. He was now drowning in despair. He regretted the fact that he managed to track down this boy, who was able to use powers he had never seen or heard of before.

  The man sent out his spells in a circle around himself to try and prevent the swords from reaching him in a final, desperate gambit. What he saw next made no sense to him. The spells just passed through the swords and ended up hitting houses in the distance instead. These swords… Were all fake? This was the last thought he had before a golden light fell from the sky and cleaved his body in two.

  Phew… Damon breathed out heavily as he recalled Dawn’s Edge to his hand. His diversionary tactic using the mirror images had worked wonders. He had the real sword secretly fly into the sky before flying at the cultivator’s blind spot. He quickly approached the two men’s bodies before searching them for their storage pouches. After grabbing them, he turned around to flee. There was a high chance these two had sent word to other cultivators from the Tower, hence he needed to run away as fast as he could.

  As Damon was turning, his gaze fell upon the mangled corpse of a boy with straw-like hair lying nearby. He noticed Lyndon was still holding half a broken bow tightly in his hand. There were also a few shattered arrows scattered about nearby, as though they had crashed against an impenetrable surface. He had obviously tried to put up a fight against the two cultivators.

  He bit down on his lips until they started bleeding in remorse. He could not leave the boy’s corpse to rot or be picked apart by scavengers. He cast a fireball spell and burned Lyndon’s body to ash as a final show of consolation. He then started sprinting down the road and into the forest, his face contorted by murderous intent. He still tightly held the new bow he had bought for Lyndon in his left hand. He looked down at the bow as he steeled his resolve.

  Arcane Tower of Argent Flame… Just you wait. I will have my revenge.

  Damon too much? Or was it the right thing to do?

  R.I.P Lyndon.