Slowly stirring from his sleep, Xero saw the ceiling of his room at Everlight Academy. As his mind starts working once more, slowly a smile surfaces on his face as the events of the previous day flashed in his mind. It was already two days after the return.

***

1 day ago

After coming back, everyone was allowed to rest and relax. Everyone did their own thing from there until the evening were they would have the semester party. It was only the first semester of the 2nd year that did this because it guaranteed that they survived the selection of the academy and would probably never be expelled anymore. It would also grade and rank them based on work grades.

The biggest event thought was the expulsion of the students. During this time there is always someone expelled. These are people who negatively affect the results of other students while not putting their own weights worth into training themselves.

At the dinner party, everyone was enjoying themselves, with Xero being able to obtain some female school uniforms that fit Ashley so that she would not walk around naked with one of his robes.

She was quite irritated since she wouldn’t have his robe anymore but with his orders she put on the uniform that was a snug fit while her tail was poking out from below the skirt.

If not for the robe, her skirt would be lifted. One thing that irritated Xero to no end is the fact that she can put on clothing but she will not put on undergarments and even wants to get rid of the robe because it is hard for her to fly around in it.

Near the middle of the event when everyone had eaten and were enjoying the event, Mrs. Gilbody stood and using her spoon to hit against her metal goblet, the ringing drew the attention of all the students and the room was filled with silence.

“Good evening children, as you know the camping trip was part of your semester score. We have finally finished counting and ranking everyone based off their own growth, the growth of their familiar and the number of beasts killed. This also takes into account the growth, mentally, of each student.” She announced.

Everyone got excited about the ranking because it would be similar to the yearly ranking at the start of the year.

Mrs. Gilbody turned and with a wave her her wand a light shot out of her wand before expanding into a large orb.

In Xero’s mind his eyes were shining as he saw her use magic openly, one should know that humans don’t have magic formulas, if one wanted to use magic, they would need to build the entire sequence to use the spell. That is why spells like mana bolt and fireball were so low leveled, they didn’t need formula since it was simply elemental mana being shot after being compressed.

The orb expanded and within letters began to appear hundreds of names soon form and swam around before it began to settle into an organized manner. What was most predominant were the top 10 whose names were about 3 times larger and visible all over.

Everyone looked at #1 by instinct before turning to look at Xero. Although before the camping trip there would have been people contesting, after Ashley had her sudden burst of evolution she casually hunted level 20 creatures and above and would constantly hunt dragons and beasts to feed Xero. It wasn’t something the others could casually do.

#2 ended up as Univa, which is expected due to her Blue Winged Salamander becoming a Lesser Sapphire Drake Infant early on. Not to mention, due to Xero’s sudden growth, she forced herself to do a heavy workout program to grow stronger.

From 3rd to 10th, were some lower ranked nobles whose talents were obvious. From there all the way to 50 was a mix of merchant family and commoners mixed with nobles.

Everyone was looking to find there name. Sitting near Xero, Meldie was looking before she gasp. “I’m ranked 39 in the year!” She exclaimed in shock.

“Congratulations.” Xero said.

“But… how!?” She said.

Xero laughed, “Of course you got that far, your Lesser Yin Yang Panda Adolescent, went from level 4 to level 10 without losing either the Lesser or the adolescent. Your strength that was as common as a normal girl became similar to a monster bears, you are able to control that strange type of mana as well. You also became braver against monsters and can turn one of them at level 10 into meat paste with a punch.” Xero said.

The little halfling blushed when he was saying her good points.

“Hey! What is going on!? Why is my name not on this!?” A sudden shout.

Another came and soon almost 40 people were standing with frowns as they looked.

“If you do not say your name within the ranking it means you were expelled, poor growth, poor motivation, obstructing the learning and training of other students or simply out right bullying to suppress their growth. These actions shall not be tolerated. Also your parents have already sent servants to pick you up and your things are already being packed and by tonight you shall be escorted home.” Mrs. Gilbody said coldly.

"I can’t accept this!” Chad suddenly exploded from down the table as his familiar appeared, the 20 cm fire ant had turned into a massive 2 meter long red ant. “My father is a 5th ranked noble of the Kedoth Empire! How can I, his son, be expelled!? Especially when my strength and power rose so much during that stupid trip!” He shouted.

The headmaster looked his way and his gentle expression chilled. “Child, do not humiliate yourself, I have no desire to do anything to you but do not think us old folk will accept…”

“SHUT UP OLD BAG! How can I! A noble! Be ranked below ‘THAT’ TRASH!?” He suddenly pointed to Xero. “That shitty trash who only had a small Imp as a spawn! How can I be ranked below!? How can you old bags rank him first!? Have you all gone senile already!?” Chad shouted.

“Oi brat!” Grunt said coldly from his seat, “Watch your tone. Even you father would bow his head to the headmaster.” He said.

“An old wort filled old bag of bones that has gone senile doesn’t deserve my father's respect. Just a weak old man halfway into his grave.” Chad sneered.

As if suddenly something broke the headmaster lifted his hand and Grunt, whose chair had suddenly exploded, stood there.

“Alright boy, if you believe I am unworthy of your fathers respect then tell you want. If you can remain standing for 10 seconds when I summon my familiar, I will recognize what you said and you will not be expelled. What's more, I will give #1 place on the ranking to you and you will get double the rewards given to the #1.” He said.

Chad’s eyes shine but although he was stupid, he was still a noble. “What are the rewards for the #1 rank?” he asked.

“One demon drake heart, a demon core from the same drake, 10 uncommon mana stones, 100 common mana stones. If you get double, this old man will hunt a drake of similar strength and give you a drake heart and demon heart and 30 uncommon mana stones but...” he said.

“DEAL!” Chad said instantly.

The old man grinned, “... but of course, if you fail, the current #1 will get double your proposed reward, in other words 3 drake heart, 1 demon drake heart, 1 demon core and 60 uncommon mana stones.” He said.

Chad’s eyes became wide.

Before he said anything the Headmaster looked at all the nobles and expelled people, “This is a condition each of you can do if you wish, if you all fail then the rewards will increase for Mr. Null but if even one of you can remain standing for 10 seconds without collapsing, you will get the reward and the person that remains standing the longest after 10 seconds will get 1st place.” He said.

The greed in their eyes shined after saying that. Even if one fails, they were all indignated by Xero’s sudden growth so to remove his reward from him was more than enough and if they could survive they can get even more then him to improve their chances of growing.

“From the looks of it, everyone agrees.” the headmaster said with a slight mischievous glint his eyes as if he loved doing this part. “Since you are determined that I am senile, let us begin, remember 10 seconds.” The headmaster said.

“Just start you old ba…”

BOOM!

From the hand of the old man, a small flame appeared but it quickly spread and grew . It filled the completely empty area behind the headmaster and slowly the beak of an eagle started to appear.

KREE!

The shout of an eagle came from the fire.

Bang! Bang!

Two large clawed feet appeared but by then half of the students that wanted to go against the headmaster had fainted.

Woosh!

A huge set of wings spread out and the flames were absorbed into the burning body of a bright red eagle that stood proudly looking down.

Puff!

The last to fall was Chad who collapsed face first into the ground.

“Take a good look kiddies, this is an example to those with a big mouth. It is because of this that our Everlight academy is as strong as it is now. Never forget this fact that it is because of Headmaster and Feng, a genuine Flame Phoenix, that we can study in peace without having to always battle other academy to show our strength in the lower rankings or be pushed around.” Grunt shouted.

Everyone was looking amazed at the massive flame bird that had folded its wings and looked down at them, than at the old man. The body began to burn strongly once more before the flames seem to turn liquid and flow to the center before the giant bird became a small pigeon sized thing and flew down to the table. All the fire was contained within the body not letting a tiny bit out.

The headmaster pet the head and it chirped, he turned to Grunt and nodded. Grunt nodded in response and clapped his hand. The doors suddenly opened and butlers wearing different kinds of suits walked in and walked around picking up on of the failures and taking them away.

“Now lets enjoy the night, the rewards for each place shall be distributed tomorrow and will be delivered to your room by the time you wake up.” The headmaster said and toasted to the silent room and drank deeply.

***

Xero lifted his body before frowning as he saw the naked Ashley sleeping on top of him. His mouth twitched before he sighed, “Ashley, return to your seal.”

Her eyes shot open and became tearful as her body vanished and was absorbed into his Familiar seal. He stood up and got dressed and after doing a search of the room, he found that there was a magic bag hanging on the door knob so he walked over and opened it. There was a letter tied to the top.

Xero opened it and began to read before he chuckled as the letter came from Grunt telling him to leave the stuff in the bag so that it will remained preserved by the magic in the bag and only after he can beat up Ashley should he pull it out and feed her. The mana stones on the other hand should be used to train his mana pool that was still closed and it showed him how much he should absorb every day before training.

It mentioned to not push Ashley to train so that he can teach her a lesson.

With all that done he pulled out an uncommon mana stone. It was dull blue glowing stone with lots of magic symbols and almost seemed to have a magic formula on it.

“So these are the formula symbols used to make an uncommon rank mana stone.” Xero said as he looked mesmerized at the stone. He could feel the pent up mana and how the stone was also gathering mana.

Once mana stones reach the uncommon stage, they will regenerate mana but for an empty stone to restore all its mana would take around 2 months without being used but it has enough mana for three people to practice for a week. Of course this is talking about normal people, Xero had all his channels open by Ashley so his absorption speed was many times greater though he wasn’t one to disregard the words of advice from the teachers as it was explained in the note.

Since it was early and there would not be class for the rest of the week, Xero just sat down and putting one mana stone on his left hand, so that Ashley doesn’t absorb the mana herself, he held it and began his breathing technique. Quickly the mana began to surge through his body's channels and he was surprised. Until now, he had used food to regenerate his mana and even his mana pool had grown about ⅓ times bigger than it once was but he still has only a commoners size mana pool. Only by overfilling a certain amount, so that the mana pool will stretch, will the mana pool grow.

The mana rushes up his arm and into his chest where it fills his mana pool and starts to flow around his body.

The method to fill the mana pool required the entire body being full so slowly he filled it until he felt ‘full’ before he started to force the mana into his mana pool. He felt as if something was tearing like ripping paper and after a bit he sighed and stopped filling it up.

His body was very full at this moment and he was energetic and wanted to work the energy off. He put away the bag and the stone before summoning Ashley who was still naked.

“Get dressed, I will be going to train.” Xero said.

She frowned and pouted, “Ah~ master! That is boring~! Let’s go on a date~!” She said hugging his arm.

“No, I want to grow stronger so get dressed so you don’t walk around naked.” He said.

She pouted and put her skirt and shirt on but this time he wasn’t able to get the robe on no matter what he said. She was floating around him like a little fly while being exposed in the air but as a demon she didn’t really care. She would feel better walking around stark naked after all.

Eventually they reached the Gym that had many different tools to exercise the body and all of them were magic tools that adjusted to the strength of the person. The user could control the weight in increments of 10% of their own strength.

For warm ups Xero put on a full body jump suit that when activated, would try to pull his arms and legs backwards making him look like a backwards shrimp. This was training for the back muscles as well as the body since the leg, abs and back muscles all help control the arms and legs.

He started to run while Ashley simply watched bored and soon flew to the nearest roof area and stripped down before falling asleep under the sun.

Xero didn’t mind her as ordered and kept doing the warm ups before he began to training exercise that Grunt had made him do in the camp. In the month he did it while there he could complete it so after that he was made to do it with a specific suit that causes illusions in the mind as if he was burning or freezing while causing electric pulses to shock his body.

Not only that but he had weights on his arms and legs that he needed to train with so the exercise was slowly getting intense while causing him to feel the burning sensation on his entire body.

When he was finished that he moved to the barbells. They were easy to lift at first and with the same suit he did the first exercises, he got in position to do squat reps. He set the weight to 70% of his full strength. This is because of the suit’s interference so only when he felt good about it would he increase it.

Setting a goal of 30 for 70% he started while his body was pulsed with the electric currents while his mind was attacked by the illusions.

When he was finally finished, this was much later when he reached 90% of his full strength to exert, he was sweating greatly but his body felt great.

As he removed the suit in the locker room and took a shower he found that the tattoos around his left arm and legs had shrunk a bit. He knew that the yoga martial arts that Grunt gave him had a huge impact on his muscle growth but as they say, the best result came from pure physical exertion.

Eating is good to gather the material in the body but only through exercise will that material be put to use after breaking and healing his body and only this way he can catch up to Ashley.

He dressed up once more and outside he looked around but didn’t find the little devil. “Ashley?!” He shouted.

A moment later she appeared, stark naked, flying towards him. “You called~ master~!” She said throwing herself at him but he sidestepped her.

“Where are you clothes?” He asked.

She looked down and looked at him, “Oops, I forgot to put them back on!” She said and flew off to get them and about a minute later she returned dressed.

Xero shook his head, “Come on, I want to examine the sword spirit spell that we have ignored until now.” Xero said.

“What material do you want master?” She asked.

“That is the thing, explain the skill in details?” He asked.

When he asked she looked at him before closing her eyes for a long moment. "I am not sure about this but~ it seems to be a permanent summon skill.” She said.

“What does that mean?” He asked.

She stuck out her hand and summoned a small white orb, “It means when I summon them, the spirits won’t unspawn and will only die. When like this they will just drift until they hit some kind of material and form a sword of it. As long as that sword remains in the material, it will remain alive as it is surviving off the mana in the material but when removed, without some kind of host it will die.” She explained.

“Richard put several dozen stone swords together to make one stronger sword, how does that work?” Xero asked.

She froze a long time but shook her head, "I don’t know, not until I try it.” She said.

“Okay.” Xero looked around and gestured to her to follow as they good to the forest edge. “Put 10 sword spirits into 10 random trees.” He said.

Feeding the mana ten spirits appeared and she pushed one into each tree and after a while, a ‘branch’ grew out but it looked like a sword handle. Gripping the sword he pulled it out and found the crystal eye like gem at the base of the hilt and blade. It was a long sword unlike the great sword the earth sword formed into.

He pulled them all out and began to pile them one on top of each other. They were all the same, about 90cm long, with 20 cm for the hilt with now sword guard. The blade itself was dull and everything was made of wood.

“What do we do now master?” Ashley asked

Xero didn’t say but just pulled out his sword and began to twirl it in front of him. Slowly the earth around the ten swords began to climb up and bury it. This was a basic element manipulation skill that they learn in the first year. It has a simple formula that allows the mana of the mage to interface with the ambient mana giving them a small degree of control for something like moving dirt or gathering air, making or controlling a small bit of common fire and so on.

“Ashley, put another one in the pile, I want to see the effect of wood swords being grouped together.” Xero said.

She nodded and summoned another one and put the spirit inside.

As soon as the spirit was pushed inside something strange happened. Earth and nature mana began to gather around the pile and the earth began to form into a very dense rock.

Suddenly the familiar seal began to glow and Xero saw this and examined what was happening as found that the Sword Spirit summon skill was growing a bit more complex and stopped as quickly as it appeared. The next moment Ashley was happily jumping around. “Master! Master~! My Sword Spirit Summon skill upgraded as I completed the sword merging. Now I know what happens. The first sword spirits create Magic Swords, just like masters but they range in different material and strength but they all help with magic casting. When master groups more than 10 sword spirits with swords and buries it before merging it will create what is called a Spirit sword.” She said excited.

“Magic Sword, spirit sword, what is the difference?” he asked

She happily hugged him, “Of course there is a difference, for one, a Spirit sword made from random materials like common wood would be as hard as iron and they can conduct more mana and help with making spells. If master used iron on the other hand the swords would be turned into some magic iron many times more powerful. If master used a wand it would transform the wand into a kind of sword wand with more efficiency. It depends on the material used!” She said excited.

She turned and looked at the now brownish rock that looked like a tree trunk and it was indeed starting to look like that. Slowly a dark brown handle began to appear from the center and extend upwards.

“Go on master, pull it out. The Spirit sword is a sword with a low level conscious, it will choose its master but because you are my master it will instantly recognize you as its master as well. All sword spirits summoned by me will.” She said excited.

“If it doesn’t recognize me?” He asked.

“It remains stuck and no matter how strong the person it would break before coming out.” She said.

Xero looked at the sword and gripped it and felt a presence from the sword and he pulled it out while the large stone shrank forming the body coming nothing more than half the size it was.

Ashley grabbed the rock and put it against the blade and slowly the rest began to shrink forming a cover and eventually became the shape of a sheath.

“There master, all the power was preserved and now you have a better nature magic spirit sword. If master works well you will be able to develop magic formula for it as well. You just need to feed it mana and it will eventually develop it.” She said before licking her lips, “When master does, heh heh, let me eat it cause it will taste really tasty then!” She said wiping the drool from her mouth.

He frowned and flicked her head, "I thought you didn’t like eating swords.” He said.

“What! Since when!? The taste depends by the sword spirits all taste good!” She said looking covetly at the wood sword.

“Whatever, this will be useful to help me protect myself.” He said and put it on his belt sash that held his first sword but now he put the new sword there and put the other in his bag.

“What is the life expectancy of a spirit sword?” He asked.

“Magic swords last about an hour but Spirit swords can actively eat the mana in the air so they can survive as long as they want but only being ‘planted’ on the ground would they ‘grow stronger’ I am certain there is stronger forms but~ I don’t know~!” She said playfully

Xero shook his head and turned, “Come on then, let's go get something to eat.” He said and the two left to go eat lunch.”