Chapter 95.
Lucas Pov.
“Key? What key? And what are we going to activate?” I ask in puzzlement as even I am unaware of what is Milo talking about.
“Hays.” Milo sighed as he rolled his eyes at me.
“Just forget about what I said earlier, none of you here can even use it right now. We better tackled your problem first.” Milo answered as he once again disperse into a cloud of dust-like particles.
“Wait, you still haven’t explained to us what you meant earlier.” Father suddenly said in distress.
“It’s no use, even if I explain it to you it would only do more harm than good. So you better forgot it, for now, your ancestor is right about this you can only use those swords and shield once you become a supreme rank. That’s already the bare minimum requirement for it.” Milo replied in a nonchalant tone.
“However, I’m interested to this little thing on your chest.” as Milo morphs into his mini kid-like figure, pointing his hands at the golden badge hidden inside Hubert’s armor.
Following the direction of his finger, my father discovers that Milo is pointing toward something that he hid inside his vest.
“You mean the shield of Obedience?” He replied as father put his hands on the small golden badge.
“Yeah, whatever it’s name is, this artifact is quite peculiar. It repels most of my preliminary scan on it, if not because of the strange energy coming out from this thing, then I won’t even know that it’s here.” Milo said as his gazed settled toward Michael’s body as if something have piqued his interest.
“Oh! Well, well, well what do we have here?” Milo says as I looked at him with a lost expression on my face, and following his gaze leads me in Michael’s direction.
Hearing Milo’s sudden question, cause Michael to suddenly become conscious of his body. As Michael looks at his body with a confused face looking for something wrong, before looking at Milo with a questioning look.
“Interesting.” Milo whispers to himself.
“Is there something wrong?” He asks after seeing Milo staring at himself weirdly.
“You’re a mixed race are you?”
“I am, but what about it?”
“Well, your existence is quite unique. If I’m not mistaken you should be a seed born from copulation between a human and a demon race. You see even during my time people like you rarely exist, the bloodline of the demon race is so potent that it kills off most of their children in the womb.” Milo explained as his metallic cube body disintegrates into a cloud of dust like particles forming an image of several demon races.
“Anyway, going back to what I was saying earlier this thing on your chest the shield of obedience is also unique the same as him.” While pointing his small hands toward Michaels face.
“Wow, where did you get this thing? This whole badge is made out of magic star dust, made from the same material as my original body.”
“We found this on a dead body of a Templar priest and this is a holy artifact that came from the church of Agatha and it was known as the legendary shield.”
“Church of Agatha? What Church are you talking about? Religion has already become obsolete during my time, the divinity they needed, in order to cultivate their power, is not appropriate for future development. People who use divinity to cultivate their power often lose their sense of self after ascending to a realm they called godhood. They even ban this technique as it was considered as an incomplete path, and divinity also has a lot of questionable practice that can be called as a taboo.”
My father’s face was in shocked, staring at Milo with eyes clouded in confusion. He could not fathom how the church of Agatha has become on what is it today, a religious behemoth that managed to gain such a large group of people under its umbrella, enough to go toe to toe with an empire.
A church that doesn’t exist in the ancient past has now has become one of the biggest organizations on this continent adamant to spread its beliefs. So, the question is where did the church come from and who is Agatha? And how it became like this.
Well, It’s actually easy to understand the reason why it happens. It all started a few thousand years ago when the Great Gregorian Empire of the northern continent collapses because of the sudden invasion of the Demonic creature. Their sudden appearance into this land caused huge chaos in the mortal world that almost put the entire civilization to go up in flames.
But the establishment of the church of Agatha has restored the order on the land as people finally find something that they can cling to in the middle of this crisis. The fall of the Gregorian Empire is not just a simple thing for everyone as it was the most powerful empire during this time.
But of course, I know all this information because of that old book we have in the basement. So, hearing those words from Milo who an artificial sentient being who lives inside a mysterious cube with age unknown, makes it hard for us to fully understand the truth of this event.
Because the book says it was the wizards themselves who formed this church and they did this by converting their magic to divinity. They did this in order to restore order in the land as the fall of the Great Gregorian Empire has destabilize the entire continent. And what Milo just said to us conflicts with what is written in those books.
But seeing my father’s exaggerated expression is something that Milo finds amusing, and as for me, my face is painted in surprise as I find this information new and unexpected. But for Michael, this is some grave news for him, as it reminds him of his mother’s unknown fate under the church's hands.
“But still, you guys really revive the path of divinity? You must be pretty desperate.” As Milo morphs into his cubic form, floating above my head.
Sounds coming out from his metallic shell bounce to our surroundings causing his voice to be amplified throughout this room. Causing the three of us to fall silent as we really don’t know what to do with this information.
“So what are we going to do now?” Michael asks as he broke the silence.
“As I said earlier I’m here to help you regarding the pollution in your land, but I just want to remind you that it would still take me a month to clear it away.”
Which causes my father to stand up from his seat, eager to know his solution to this problem.
“And how would you do that? What do you need from us?”
“I need access to the magic formation buried underneath your city, I can modify it’s energy field to cleanse all the pollutants around your territory. But I’m warning you now, that It would make me fall into a sleep state, and you Lucas would need to be present during those times as the cube can’t go far from your body.”
“No problem, as long as you can help us restore the land you are free to use that place.”
“Is that really necessary I thought you can just modify it on a whim?” I ask, unconvinced that a being like him can’t do it on his own.
I mean come on, we're talking about an artificial sentient race here and Milo is the result of an experiment done by an advanced civilization capable of space flight. Their knowledge of magic technology is unquestionable. Just look around the ruins spread around this continent, they might be old but many of them are still in a good condition.
“Don’t you see my current situation?” Milo asks as stretches his arms wide presenting his miniature form.
“Just looked at me.” Milo uttered in a high-pitched voice.
“You Lucas should better know it! You have seen my real body before, inside the consciousness of this cube, where I showed you the virtual sight of my old world. You saw how massive my body is during that time, and this small cube is not even enough to match my full capabilities.”
“So, in short, you can’t do it.” Michael suddenly says attracting Milo’s piercing eyes.
“With my current self of course I can’t do that, I’m not an omnipotent being. I also have my own limitation. Besides, this cube is not that powerful to sustain my full capabilities so I can only use a small percentage of it.”
“But if it would take you months to clean the pollution on our land, and you said that it would make you fall asleep, then what am I gonna do during those times? I can’t just stay there with you doing nothing, but watching you float in the center of the magic formation.”
“You don’t really have to stay there with me for a whole day. This small cube also has it’s own limits so we can only do the cleansing part for several hours a day, and you can use that time to cultivate. I would help you gather and purify the surrounding mana on this land using this giant formation, in this way it would help you fasten your progress speed.” Milo answered as his small body stand at the top of my head.
“Wait, you can do that?” I ask in excitement as I tilt my head up.
“Does the magic formation had that function? I thought it was there to deploy a powerful barrier around the city walls when needed.” Father asks
“It doesn’t have that kind of function before but with my help and this little cube, it won’t be hard to modified some of it’s magic circuit, and I can do it without affecting it’s defensive capabilities. But whoever made this formation, they must be a beginner on this field, there are so many things here that are not optimized wasting a lot of it’s potential.” Milo said as he displayed an image of the miniature version of the entire magic formation covering the city made out of metallic dust.
Milo then proceeded to circle out several places in red. “You all see this circle? This is where most of the mana elements would be concentrated once I’m done with the modification of this formation. So, you can use this place and build a room or some kind of training facility where knights or wizards can cultivate using all the mana elements that the formation has gathered.”
“That’s fantastic, that would be a great help for us, with more than a dozen transcendent knights in the city it is hard for us to provide them with cultivation materials but with this, we can supply them with mana elements as much as they want without relying too much on the magic beast core.” I said in glee as I can finally waste some of my aura for experimentation because it still takes me a day or two to fill up my entire reserve.
Forcing me to ration my usage of aura in my daily training, not having enough juice to continue my experimentation with it. And I will start it with the skill I created from my previous experiment also known as the sword of destruction. It was the same skill that I used before the invasion of the mutated creatures.
Because I strongly suspect that I still haven’t fully mastered this skill and I believe that I can still do something to make it stronger and more efficient because, with my current usage, it still takes me some time before I can launch this attack. Although it has an insane amount of explosive power but since it takes an insane amount of time to prepare, if I am in a real fight with a wizard or knight they might have already killed me before I can even launch my attack.
Aside from this, is also the issue with its terrible energy consumption of creating one aura sword unlike the ordinary aura sword held in the hand of a knight that has direct contact with skin mine is different as it floats around me and because of this it takes me more energy and mental strength to control it. One aura sword alone takes a considerable amount of my energy reserves and it takes me a couple of days to fill it all up if I’m not going to consume any mana potion or magic beast core.
It also didn’t help that the fog had trapped us here for two months. In fact, All of the magic fruits that Gaspar has brought to us have already been converted to a potion, and half of them were already consumed while the other half is still sitting in our inventory and as for our stock of magic beast core, we currently have a thousand bronze core or rank 1 from the weakest magic beast, a hundred silver core/rank 2, and a dozen golden beast core/rank 3.
It might sound like a lot but trust me it is not.
“Wait, can you repeat that again did you just say that you guys use magic beast core in cultivating your aura?” Milo suddenly said in shock as if he heard an incredible thing with him morphing back to his child-like form.
“Ah yes, is that something bad?”
“Not really, but it’s wasteful to use those cores just to cultivate your aura. Your body is not suitable for it as those cores have specific elements attached to them, once it was absorbed in your body it would accumulate until it blocks the passage in your mana veins, and cleaning them up would burn a considerable amount of aura and time.”
“Instead of using mana cores why don’t you guys use mana stones instead, they contain a much purer energy than this.”
“Well, this is how the world works today Milo this is far from the time you were born and many things have already changed since then. Besides Mana stones are not that easy to procure even my father only has several pieces of it.”
“Yeah change, I know that but everything changes into something worst. And since when did mana stones become so rare? The last time I remember before I was put to sleep is that a huge amount of mana stone mine had been discovered and that’s enough to supply the planet for a hundred thousand years”
“Yeah we know, but don’t you remember where they are all located at? A big portion of mana stone mines are located on the northern continent, and that place has now become the land of demonic creatures.”
“Ah! Demonic creatures those things are really tenacious and with your current strength you won’t even stand a chance to face them, so you all better be quick and just bring me to the control center of this formation so that I could start my work. I also need it in order to fill up the missing energy in this cube.”
“Wait I thought you already replaced it with my aura?”
“With just you? Your dreaming this cube might be small but the energy it contains is immense. Your aura alone won’t be even enough to fill it up in a year. And besides, this cube has suffered several attacks when I’m trying to escape that place most of it’s energy has already been drained.”
“What are you both talking about?” suddenly said by my father as he listen quietly to our conversation on the side.
As Milo then proceeds to touch my father’s head with his small hands inputting all the event’s that happens in the time when the metallic cube merged into my body.
“Ah, the heck is that.” My father said as he put both of his hands on his head as if experiencing some kind of headache.
“So you should know everything by now, right? I don’t have time to explain but you all better put me and him in that secret room in the basement. I already detected several powerful entities approaching your city it seems like your visitors have finally arrived.” Milo said one last time before banishing in my chest as the metallic cube quickly melt and sinks into my skin.
“No matter how many times I see it I’m still not used to it. Besides, where did the cube go every time it merged into your body its too big to fit in your size.” Michael suddenly said behind me as he closely observe the merging process of the cube.
“I have no idea but I don’t really want know.”
“Lucas and Michael go in that room and just stay there for an hour to begin the purification process of our land Milo has already told me everything that he will do just trust him in this matter okay? While I’ll be going out to meet our visitors it seems like the kingdom has finally noticed the disappearance of the fog.” Father said to me before walking outside the room calling for the attention of other knights.
“Well, you can lead the way.” I said to Michael as we both proceeded to enter that place.
(End of Chapter)
