Six months later…
Merlin had been training with the duo for six months, he had taken the verbal tutoring from Azarax, The old fossil had almost worked him to death with just his instructions.
At some point Merlin was about to give up on the training and just leave with Eurys to find a second nightmare, but he gritted his teeth all while telling himself that he needed to at least be stronger than Sunny.
During two weeks after he started the training, Merlin would strive through it on pure will power, but anytime he rested, a silent voice in his head would keep telling him how his pathway was never meant for close combat.
He almost gave in to the voice, but he still refused, although his pathway had many long range and silent killing attacks, that was only useful when you wanted to kill the enemy, what about subduing, or sparring, leaving your sparring partner as a puppet wasn't really sounding good, well that was unless you're sparring with Thorax.
So he trained this way for two months, then after two months, he freed Azarax from the tree, safe to say that the ancient champion didn't hack his head off, but Merlin knew from that moment his training session would just get worse, and it did.
Azarax willed a brand new weapon and armour from the sand, at some point, Merlin was worried about him being overcome by shadow god's curse, but somehow Eurys said he had a way to deal with it.
Merlin was skeptical about releasing this god killer, but considering that any moment from now his head could be offed by Azarax, he decided to take the bet.
When he released Eurys, the relic also didn't kill him, partly because Azarax was determined to keep Merlin alive for their final battle, and the other part was probably some reason Eurys kept to himself.
Merlin didn't know what Eurys was doing, but as he promised, the fated skeleton was somehow helping, Merlin knew that the shadow god's curse would erode him in a matter of days, but for some reason it hadn't taken over the ancient champion.
Azarax spent his day training Merlin while he spent his nights fighting the immortal warriors, Merlin himself had no reason to get involved in a battle of that scale, forget finding an opponent, he would probably die as collateral damage.
Thankfully, the battle never neared the large tree where Merlin and Eurys stayed.
A month after he released Azarax and Eurys, he finally asked to learn a useful skill from them, that was the usage of will, he was only an awakened, but he was willing to try his luck to learn from the best, Azarax said he would teach Merlin when he finally managed to prolong their spars to ten minutes, surviving ten minutes against a supreme warrior that had fought countless battles was nothing short of impossible.
At first, Merlin had fought for seven minutes, but after Azarax had begun sharpening his sword in the endless night battlefield, Merlin's time had been going down considerably, for some reason, Merlin was also getting stronger with each battle Azarax fought, not getting stronger from training, but getting stronger from the buffs he was receiving for being part of Azarax's domain, but even with all the buffs, Merlin couldn't last three minutes, after all Azarax was growing stronger too.
Merlin offered a moment of silence for Sunny and Nephis when they would come for the Vile thieving bird, having a completely insane, immortal and incredibly buffed Plague of Steel to fight against would not be a good experience.
Since the ancient champion wasn't willing, Merlin turned to Eurys, but he wasn't going to learn how to use his will from Eurys, he wanted to learn something even better, how to mask himself completely, both his will, his presence and his killing intent, Merlin was going to learn it all from the one guy who had assassinated a god, He knew that for something of that caliber to be possible, Eurys would have had to be invisible while being visible, the kill was made with shadow god's blade, but the holder was Eurys, and if the god's avatar had sensed even the slightest will to kill from Eurys, that kill would have failed.
Unlike Azarax, Eurys was more open to teaching Merlin, he was so open about it that Merlin himself was suspicious, but he still went ahead, after all he was the one who asked.
The training was rather simple and difficult at the same time, the first phase was all about Merlin remaining calm under all circumstances, whenever Merlin went out of line, he would get hit with a rather strong stick. In the beginning, Eurys showed his killing intent, Merlin failed a few times but he ultimately adapted, then Eurys moved on to using his will, Merlin who had stayed in a city full of great nightmare creatures still took a little time on this, but then he still managed to keep his calm, then for some reason that Merlin couldn't understand, Eurys had moved on to straight up ragebaiting, the old fossil was so good at it that Merlin felt he could give Medici a run for his money, that process took the longest, mainly because he was constantly mocked for being weak, but after a week, Merlin ultimately became numb to the words.
During Eurys' training session, on a night that Merlin was meditating, a strange scenario occurred. Merlin went into his soul sea, but that was when he found something that made him rethink his entire life decision, twice… he saw a soul shard, a sacred one. He had already seen one like it before that Dorax used to help him, but seeing one like that in his soul sea left him shocked, and he couldn't remember how it got there.
…
Four months ago…
'Inner Peace…'
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'Inner… Peace'
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'Inner Peace'
Merlin sat meditating with his eyes closed, his body was calm and his breathing was even, he was in a stage similar to achieving enlightenment, but the only missing parts were the waterfall and the lack of cultivation system.
The meditating method had been taught to him by Eurys, and every moment he wasn't training or sleeping, he would always meditate to calm his mind.
While he was meditating, he suddenly felt the darkness within his vision get deeper, then after a second, he returned back to normal.
"Huh? What just happened?"
Merlin asked as he opened his eyes, the regular word pattern he always recited in his head had suddenly stopped, and he felt like it had been stopped for a long time, but in his mind it also felt like a second.
"That's strange… Did I forget something?" Merlin muttered as he unconsciously touched his neck.
He turned to Eurys on the side, but the skeleton ragebaiter was on his feet, the last time he checked, Eurys was sitting at the base of the tree, and he hadn't felt him move, so when Merlin saw Eurys not far away from him he tried to make a guess, but considering what the ragebaiter had taught him all this while, he was not surprised that he couldn't detect him moving.
Merlin swallowed the question he wanted to ask Eurys and he went back to meditating, during the process, he slipped into his soul sea to divine about it, but the divination failed, even dream divination showed nothing, Merlin knew something was wrong but he had no clues, so he let it go, that was when he turned to the box in the side and saw the massive sacred shard inside.
…
Strangely, after that moment, Azarax decided to teach him to control his will, and the ancient champion's class was a rather hectic one.
Merlin felt what it meant to be crushed by greater will, and that was the lesson, stay conscious. The sheer weight of Azarax's will had sent Merlin unconscious almost immediately, and after one week, Merlin could finally stay conscious.
Then the training entered its second phased, fight while being crushed by the will, at that point, Merlin learnt to fear supreme creatures, for two days straight, he couldn't lift his weapon, the sword in his hand felt like a mountain, when he finally could, he couldn't move his feet, safe to say that before Merlin could engage in what looked like combat, it took two weeks of constant effort.
After he finally overcame the barrier, Merlin was now able to fight while being pressured by the will, though he couldn't last two minutes, it was still an improvement.
The final part of the training was him fighting back against the will itself, Azarax taught him how to protect himself from the will, but the final lesson was him negating the will to an extent.
As he was an awakened, negating the will of a supreme was straight up impossible, so Azarax offered him a way out, that was killing intent.
Killing intent was simply the will to kill, but that was one that even a mundane person could harness, though it couldn't match the will to kill of a supreme, but if used well it could negate it to an extent.
Most supremes used their will to show authority of their presence, they hardly showed the will to kill, especially against something weaker, so Azarax was giving him that as a method to use.
But as Azarax said, the only way to truly use killing intent was if you were absolutely sure you could kill the target, and Merlin was absolutely sure that he would die before he landed a hit, so the training on killing intent was rather slow, and after another week, Merlin finally progressed in that part.
He spent the remaining three weeks training with Eurys, the reason was that Azarax had ultimately succumbed to the curse of the shadow god, Merlin was first terrified, but he later noticed that Azarax never came near the tree, always avoiding it like a plague, so he swore never to leave the comfort of the tree unless he was running in the opposite direction from Azarax.
After spending six months, Merlin was finally ready to proceed on his journey to find a nightmare seed, inwardly, he hoped that Eurys wouldn't drop him in a nightmare seed for saints just to spite him.
After they departed, in the direction opposite Azarax, Eurys and Merlin travelled for a while, the journey was much smoother than Merlin expected, He was warned by Eurys about approaching nightmare creatures before he could even detect them, and for the ones he couldn't handle, Eurys easily killed them all, the constant supply of cores and soul fragments was enough to push him to a devil, he also found out that the cohort had gone to challenge the second nightmare.
When he arrived in his soul sea and tried to look into their stars, but all he could see was darkness, and he felt like something was watching him from the other side, Merlin felt that if he brute forced it, he could view into the nightmare, but his rank wasn't high enough.
Also about a few months ago, a few points of light had appeared in his soul sea, ones that he didn't expect, those were from Eurys, Azarax and Mordret, he had no idea about the first two, but for Mordret, he guessed that when beastie must have reflected Sunny, it must have reflected the corrupted state too, so a point of light came up, and when Mordret used that shard to connect to Sunny, the corruption must have transferred through it.
Merlin was rather happy to be able to keep an eye on the guy, after all they would have more wonderful meetings in the coming days.
Meanwhile in the dream realm, on the way, Merlin turned to Eurys and said.
"Hey… by the way I know you're heading to the shadow realm, but please don't take me anywhere near the underworld, I'm not interested in going that far"
Eurys stared at him for a while, then said.
"If that is what you want then so be it, after I'm done with you I'll continue my journey… being with you gives me a bad feeling"
"A bad feeling? That's not a nice thing to say considering that we've been together for six months right" Merlin smiled calmly.
"I've been stuck with Azarax for years and I still don't like him, what makes you any different…" Eurys replied flatly.
Merlin chuckled then stopped talking.
After a while he then asked in a calm voice.
"So tell me Eurys of the nine… Have you decided how to kill me yet?"
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Final chapter uploaded... I'm going to sleep.