Morgan seemed pleased with his words as she smiled and asked.
"I'm ready now, are you going to pick out a weapon?"
Merlin didn't reply, instead he turned to Nephis, seeing that she wasn't in a hurry to leave, he turned back and answered.
"I don't need one"
In all honesty, he didn't need a weapon, he was a spellcaster not a knight, he was even considering the option of dropping the use of weapons even in battle, but he decided that it would be after he became a Saint, after all he would be confident of his strength then.
"Are you underestimating me?" Morgan's eyes sharpened.
"Not exactly… in the first place, I never considered you an opponent on my level, so I have no need to estimate you, another thing, my style of fighting isn't suited for weapons" He replied frankly.
Morgan scoffed, "really arrogant words, I hope you have the skill to back it up"
With that, she dropped into a battle stance, but did not attack first, she was watching him warily. After all, if your opponent could teleport anywhere instantly, then rushing in blindly was the most useless thing you could do.
Merlin didn't change his casual stance, instead he lifted his hand and pointed a finger at her forehead.
"Bang…" Merlin spoke the words in a soft manner.
Morgan heard the sound he made and tilted her head in slight anger.
"Are you joking with me?"
"You're dead…" Merlin stated flatly.
"What?" Morgan asked, confused.
"If this was a fight for our lives, this casual movement I made has already killed you" Merlin stated matter-of-factly.
Seeing his serious expression, Morgan tilted her head in full confusion.
"What?"
She turned to look at Nephis by the side, the latter wasn't giving anything out with her dead straight face.
"Sigh… let me show you" he pointed the finger casually at a wall by the side.
Air Bullet—
Bang!
The loud sound echoed through the training ground, and Morgan's eyes widened as she stared at him in disbelief.
Merlin noticed her expression and smiled, "don't look at me, check the wall"
Morgan turned to the wall, and her wide eyes widened even more, right in the distance, was a small crater formed from the impact of Merlin's [Air Bullet], the cracks still lingered on the reinforced wall.
"Like I said, you're dead," Merlin said with a smile.
Morgan slowly turned to him, her eyes relaxed as she raised her hand in defeat.
"You can teleport, and your invisible attacks are incredibly fast, that's enough for me to judge your strength, even if we fought, dealing a blow on you while avoiding your attacks will be incredibly difficult"
"You're backing out?" Merlin raised an eyebrow.
"Is that a problem?" Morgan asked.
"Since you're already discouraged, how about this, I'll grant you a free hit, I won't teleport, or move a muscle from my position, all you have to do is attack me with all you've got" He spread his hands.
"Is that arrogance?" Morgan sneered.
"Guess" he replied with a smile.
"I'd rather not find out, after all, I don't want to be responsible for killing the Prince of Song… yet"
"Don't worry, if anything happens, Neph over there can heal me" Merlin spoke confidently..
Morgan stared at him for a while, then turned to Nephis.
"Is that so, dear sister?"
Nephis stayed silent for a few seconds, then finally answered.
"I won't need to"
"Since you insist… here I come" Morgan didn't hesitate anymore, she immediately gripped her sword tighter and lunged forward with a sideways slash.
Swish—
Contrary to Morgan's expectations, the sword didn't draw any blood, it didn't even tear the clothes he was wearing, the slash moved right through Merlin like what stood in front of her was only a phantom.
As Morgan's sword completely missed its target, she pulled her hand back and stared at him with complicated eyes.
"Another ability of yours?"
Merlin chuckled, "don't mind this, I just figured that earlier, you were probably calculating how you would fare against me in a fight, so I decided to show you that you can't"
His smile brightened.
"My offensive attacks are almost impossible to avoid, my defense is top tier as I can ignore most physical attacks, and my movement speed is purely teleportation… in other words, I'm the living description of the perfect fighter, if I'm ever your opponent, just surrender nicely and I won't bother with you"
Morgan scoffed, "You really are arrogant"
At that moment, a voice sounded out from the door.
"You said you can ignore most physical attacks, not all, so that means some attacks can harm you" a young male voice sounded out.
Merlin turned to the owner of the voice, he was a blonde haired good looking middle aged man, he wore an armor that held the Valor sigil, and he had a sword on his waist.
'Who the hell is this guy?' Merlin thought inwardly.
He honestly had no idea what half of the people inside Valor looked like, nor was he interested, but this guy was giving off the pressure of a Transcendent, so he was a Saint of Valor.
"Saint Summer Knight" Morgan referred to the Saint directly.
'Ah… so Summer Knight is this guy, he looks strong' Merlin finally put a name to the face.
He was seriously happy that it wasn't Jest that showed up, if not he might just drop the guy off in the Spirit World.
As for why?
Well the old man was really annoying.
At least that's how Merlin felt when reading about him.
"Indeed…" He acknowledged Saint Summer Knight's words, "but naturally, that's not all I rely on"
He still had Paper Figurine Substitute, Illusion, Flame Jump, and the like if he couldn't avoid an attack.
Summer Knight didn't dwell on the matter, instead he got serious as he released a bit of his pressure.
"Now I'm curious, what is a Prince of Song doing in Valor"
To them, it looked like Merlin was probably on a secret mission, probably to get secret intelligence or something. When one has too many enemies, they start to suspect even flies of being mechanical drones.
"If I recall correctly, I'm a member of the Changing Star cohort before being a Prince, so I see no issues in me being here as long as Neph is around" he answered calmly.
As for the pressure Summer Knight was exuding, that was simply Silver's passive skill when she wants him to cook or her ice cream stash has finished, so it was completely useless on him.
"He's with me…" Nephis spoke up as she walked to him.
Merlin wasn't interested in hearing what the fine young lad had to say, so he simply placed a hand on Nephis' shoulder, and used [Travel] to leave the room. This time, he stopped using his ability while they were in the Spirit World.
"Where is this place?" Nephis asked as she looked around.
It was her first time seeing the Spirit World, after all every other time they [Travelled], Merlin always asked them to keep their eyes closed. Though back then, that was him doing courtesy like in the LOTM book, but it was useless because the Spirit World from before was empty, however currently, the Spirit World wasn't empty anymore.
If Merlin decided to let all the Spirits in here loose, they would probably cause a disaster anywhere if there weren't about three Transcendents around the area.
"It's the Spirit World, and don't look around too much, you might end up angering some of its inhabitants" He warned lightly.
"There are creatures living in this place?" Nephis asked as she kept her eyes on him.
"Yes" Merlin replied calmly as he floated upwards towards the gray fog above the Spirit World.
"They're all the nightmare creatures that I killed in here, their spirits become inhabitants of the spirit world" he continued.
Nephis nodded, floating alongside him.
"So this place is only accessible to you?"
"It's not only accessible to me, it's just that I'm currently the only person who's able to enter and leave freely" he replied.
"Why's that?"
"It's uniquely tied to my abilities I guess" Merlin said as he parted the gray fog above, revealing a path.
"Where are we going?" Nephis asked as she followed him through the path.
"My soul sea… that's where we'll do the training, after all I don't want you suffering the pain from your flaw"
"Wait… you can enter your soul sea directly?" Nephis sounded surprised.
"Yeah… turns out I can" he shrugged.
The path finally ended, and they arrived at the familiar foggy expanse of his soul sea, the castle itself was only a distance away.
"This… is your soul sea?" Nephis looked around curiously.
It was normal she didn't recognize it, after all the times she had been inside his soul sea, She arrived directly inside the castle, so she had never seen it from the outside.
"Try your abilities and see," Merlin said to her calmly.
Nephis immediately conjured a flame on her palm, the flame danced around her hand, before she finally extinguished it, then she turned to him and nodded.
"Great" Merlin clapped his hand, "now then, what class are you currently in?"
"I recently just became a Terror, why?"
"Well today, you're going to be reverting back a Demon"
"Huh?" Nephis tilted her head.
"That's the skill I'm about to teach you, you're going to learn how to blow up your core using your aspect… that way, you can create a wide range devastating explosion" He explained.
"Is that really going to work?"
"Ofcourse it is" He answered with a smile, "but before that, Silvy, Ari and Kai are about to head to the Chain Isles for a playdate, so I was hoping you could talk to Tyris about it, I don't want them having issues just because Silver is a Transcendent from the government"
"Okay… I'll try" Nephis nodded in agreement.
"Thanks… now, let's get to training, I'll leave you to figure out how to do it yourself, after all you know your abilities the best" Merlin said that, and immediately gave her space.
He had no intention of receiving the Eternal Blazing Sun treatment. Although he could heal himself instantly, it wasn't worth experiencing.
As he gave her space, he immediately activated his ability, an illusory book appeared in his hand, and on the surface of its pages, it held the words.
I Came.
I Saw.
I Record.
…
Merlin reappeared in his house looking tired and smelling a little crisped, but he was still happy, after all he had managed to record all three core explosions from Nephis.
Although he got caught in the crossfire a little, it didn't matter much to him, the gains already outweighed the losses, even if he were burned to a crisp once, the scale still wouldn't be level.
And best of all, that wasn't the only ability he recorded, safe to say his current set of recorded abilities had Nephis' and Eubin's abilities stacked like bricks on a house.
"Sigh… next up is Sunny I guess" he sighed as he mentally compiled his plan.
He needed a few abilities before he would head out to Antarctica, and he had only managed to collect two out of four.
He had Silver's and Nephis', but he still needed Sunny's and Saint Tyris' , the latter he was planning to record during her battle in Antarctica.
As for the reason, it was simply his preparations for the Sequence 4 Bizarro Sorcerer ritual, which was.
'Relying on one's strength and strategy, orchestrate a grand performance before many spectators to kill a Beyonder creature at the level of a demigod'.
There was no better time than during the Antarctica crusade, there were spectators, and with a few talks here and there, he would be able to set up a performance to kill a demigod level creature.
Killing a demigod was not a problem for him, what was the problem was him making it a grand performance. For that reason, he chose to pick the toughest Corrupted creature of Antarctica as his target.
The Winter Beast.
That was his designated enemy, a Corrupted Titan strong enough to keep Sky Tide at bay and tough enough to claim most of Eastern Antarctica as its base, that was what he was going to kill, and right in front of the Great clans and the Government.
As for the Sequence 3 Sholare of Yore ritual, he honestly had no idea.
'Be separated from reality for at least three hundred years and consume the potion after one becomes history and doesn't belong to the present era.'
It sounds simple and all, considering that the Tomb of Ariel warped time unreasonably, but the problem came at the end, the phrase, 'doesn't belong to the present era'. Although he could spend a thousand years in Ariel's Tomb, the moment he returned, it would probably be a few weeks after he left, in other words, three hundred years spent, but still belongs to the present era, which means the ritual would inevitably fail.
There was also an alternative he could use, but he wasn't sure if it would work. That alternative was simply taking one of the inhabitants of the Tomb of Ariel, then inside his soul see, graft his fate with the inhabitants, and then hope for the best outcome.
That way, when he returns from the nightmare, the grafted fate of the inhabitant that doesn't belong to this era would act as an anchor, stabilizing the ritual and achieving his desired advancement.
But that method also came with problems of its own, one being that the ritual would serve as an anchor for him to not get lost in the Historical Void, but if the fate and history of another person was mixed in with his, it would be a catastrophe, not to mention the fact that he wasn't even sure if the effect would wear off the moment the inhabitant or him left his soul sea.
Either way, it was a risk, one that bordered on either getting lost in the Historical Void, or losing control, or even death.
"Looks like things get difficult when Celestial Worthy and EverMommy aren't coming in crutch…"
Merlin sighed as he sat down on the bed, just staring into space.
Then he raised an eyebrow, "hold up… aren't I supposed to be doing something"