Chapter 160: Bonding With Your Spirit
Four more low guttural growls echoed from the surrounding pine trees.
Stepping out from the shadows were four more Frost-Stalkers, joining the scorched leader.
A total of five massive saber-toothed abominations surrounded the small clearing, their glowing red eyes locking onto Tasha and the tiny spirit.
Tasha took a quick panting breath with her mind rapidly running the numbers.
She looked back over her shoulder toward the distant road.
The carriage was far away... at least three hundred yards out.
On the roof, she could see Klaus’s towering frame slumped against the railing, completely motionless from exhaustion.
’Klaus is asleep...’ Tasha thought with her teeth grinding together. ’He drove the carriage for hours, he dealt with the Cult, he fought the monsters... He’s completely exhausted. I can’t rely on him to save me again! I have to stand on my own two feet!’
ROAAAR!
The scorched Frost-Stalker lunged forward again, its massive jaws snapping toward her face.
"Yikes!" Tasha yelped.
She fell backward into the snow, barely dodging the snapping teeth.
As the monster overextended, Tasha drove her right boot upward with everything she had, kicking the beast squarely under its heavy chin.
PAH!
The kick landed, but because Tasha was entirely out of Spirit Mana and hadn’t reinforced her leg, the impact did zero damage to the monster’s thick ice-armor.
It felt like kicking a solid granite boulder, sending a sharp agonizing jolt of pain shooting up her ankle.
"Fuck!"
Tasha gritted her teeth, using the recoil to flip backward across the snow, landing crouched ten feet away.
The scorched Frost-Stalker shook its head, letting out a furious roar, and charged at her again with its razor-sharp claws raised to rip her face to shreds.
Tasha braced herself, wide open, unable to lift a guard in time.
CRACK-ZAP!
A sudden blinding bolt of high-voltage blue lightning shot through the air.
The infant spirit had flown directly between them.
The tiny blue sphere discharged a sharp wave of plasma, striking the Frost-Stalker’s extended claw point-blank.
KRA-BOOM!
The monster let out a high-pitched agonizing yelp as its ice-armored claw was violently blasted backward, smoking and charred from the high heat.
Tasha gasped, looking at the bright blue infant spirit hovering bravely in front of her.
"You... you protected me...!"
As she pushed herself up from the snow, her right hand brushed against something hard and metallic embedded deep in the frozen permafrost.
Tasha froze and she looked down.
Half-buried beneath a layer of ice and dark dirt was a long, elegant sword hilt.
Carried on the crossguard was a familiar, intricately carved crest... a silver morningstar rising over a crescent shield.
It was the crest of the House of Morningstar.
Tasha’s heart hammered so loudly against her ribs she could hear it in her ears.
’My family’s crest...!’ Tasha thought with her mind completely reeling. ’This... this is one of my father’s spare swords! He was a high-tier swordsman, he carried multiple blades in his storage rings!’
She reached down with her fingers wrapping securely around the familiar leather grip.
Just a few inches away from the sword, half-buried in the frozen snow, was a torn heavily frozen piece of cloth... a section of the Morningstar clan’s banner.
It was covered in old, dried blood and burn marks.
Looking at the charred banner and the buried sword, the narrative fully constructed itself in Tasha’s grieving mind.
’Father...’ Tasha thought with tears spilling over her eyes as her chest throbbed with unbearable agony. ’Father escaped the Death Cult’s initial ambush... He fought his way all the way out here into the deep Winterlands, bleeding and dying, before the Cult finally caught up to him and slaughtered him in this forest...!’
Her father had died right here and his spirit had reformed on the very spot his blood was spilled.
"Aaaaaahhhhh!" Tasha let out a raw blood-curdling scream of pure grief and fury.
SHING!
She yanked her father’s sword out of the frozen earth with a sharp, echoing sound as the steel blade gleamed under the moonlight, completely untarnished by the ice.
She spun around, facing the five growling Frost-Stalkers that were slowly closing in on her.
Her light blue aura flared, but without a spirit, her internal core was sputtering, unable to output enough raw power to break through five high-tier monsters on her own.
She was breathing hard with her body still aching from her previous fight.
’I can’t kill them all like this...’ Tasha realized bitterly. ’I don’t have enough mana...’
Bzzt!
The infant lightning spirit flew closer. It hovered right beside her right cheek, flickering its blue light rapidly, pulsing with an intense eager warmth.
Tasha turned her head, looking into the bright blue sphere.
"You..." Tasha whispered, her voice trembling. "Do you want to join me...?"
The infant spirit flickered brightly twice.
Bzzt! Bzzt!
An overwhelming wave of trust, protection, and deep, innocent affection washed from the spirit directly into Tasha’s mind.
Tasha’s eyes filled with tears, a brilliant beautiful smile breaking across her face despite her bloody dirt-stained cheeks.
She held out her right hand, palm facing upward.
"If you do..." Tasha promised, her voice ringing with unconditional warmth. "...I’ll take care of you forever."
The infant blue spirit didn’t hesitate.
It shot forward, slamming directly into the center of her open right palm.
KRA-BOOM!
The moment the spirit made contact with her flesh, the Spirit Embodiment contract was violently initiated.
A massive sweeping hurricane shockwave of pure, compressed wind and blue lightning violently erupted from Tasha’s body.
The sudden explosive pressure blasted outward in a thirty-foot radius, slamming directly into the five advancing Frost-Stalkers, sending them flying backward through the snow, whimpering as the high-voltage air scorched their hides.
"Nnnngh...!" Tasha let out a sharp pained groan.
The spirit didn’t stay a sphere. It dissolved into liquid plasma, sinking directly into her skin.
Starting from her palm, intricate, glowing, dark-blue lightning tattoos rapidly spread up her skin, wrapping tightly around her wrist, forearm, and shoulder like living tendrils of electric fire.
A massive wave of raw high-voltage lightning mana poured directly into her core.
The Spirit integrated seamlessly with her spiritual architecture, filling her empty sputtering reserves to overflowing capacity.
Tasha opened her eyes.
Her light blue pupils had turned into glowing electric silver with arcs of wild blue plasma dancing across her skin and hair.
She raised her right hand.
With a simple thoughtless command of her brand-new contract, the blue infant spirit materialized above her shoulder, taking the form of a bright glowing lightning bird.
Tasha looked at the spirit with a radiant fierce smile on her face.
"We’re going to kill them."
The infant spirit brightened with absolute, blinding intensity. A clear, melodic, childlike voice echoed directly inside Tasha’s mind.
’...Yes...!’
"Ha!" Tasha shouted.
She didn’t run away as she blurred forward.
Her Agility and Strength stats had been multiplied tenfold by the Spirit Embodiment.
She moved across the snowpack at high speed, leaving a trail of scorched, blue lightning sparks behind her boots.
SHHHHK!
Tasha materialized directly in front of the lead scorched Frost-Stalker.
She didn’t struggle with the weight of her father’s blade.
Enhanced by the lightning spirit’s aura, the sword moved with speed as she swung her father’s sword in a blinding, horizontal arc.
"Lightning Crescent!" Tasha yelled.
KRA-BOOM!
A massive wave of pure, condensed blue plasma erupted from the edge of the blade.
The arc of lightning sliced through the lead Frost-Stalker like a hot razor through butter, completely incinerating its heavy ice-armor, cleaving the monster cleanly in half before continuing forward to blast through three massive pine trees behind it.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The trees exploded into flaming wooden splinters.
The remaining four Frost-Stalkers panicked, trying to scatter into the woods, but Tasha was far too fast.
She leaped high into the air with her light blue hair trailing electric sparks.
She pointed her right hand downward, and her infant spirit merged directly with her father’s steel blade, coating the weapon in a dense, humming pillar of blue plasma.
"Thunder Fall!"
Tasha descended like a falling meteor, driving her father’s sword straight into the center of the clearing floor.
These spells... they seemed very native to her since they were stored inside the spirit itself.
KRA-THOOOOM!
The ground violently detonated.
A massive radial dome of high-voltage blue lightning erupted outward in every direction, scorching the snowpack to absolute ash.
The remaining four Frost-Stalkers were caught mid-air with their bodies instantly electrocuted, cooked from the inside out, before exploding into clouds of black ash.
Silence returned to the forest and the pine trees burned quietly with blue flames.
Tasha landed gracefully on her feet, holding her father’s gleaming sword.
The moment the last monster died, the overwhelming surge of adrenaline vanished.
"Ah... h-haah..."
Tasha’s knees instantly buckled.
She had burned through every single drop of her newly acquired mana in three massive explosive attacks.
She collapsed forward, falling face-down into the soft, cool snowpack, completely immobilized by total mana exhaustion.
The infant blue spirit materialized beside her head, blinking its glowing aura worriedly, hovering near her ear with anxious little bzzt sounds.
Tasha turned her head slightly in the snow, looking at the tiny spirit with a sleepy and deeply content smile.
"I’m okay..." Tasha whispered weakly, her eyelids fluttering shut. "Just... tired... Hey... what should I name you...?"
High above the clearing, sitting quietly on the broad oak roof of the stopped carriage, Valeria and Sparky were watching the entire scene through the trees.
Sparky had her tiny arms crossed over her woven tunic, her spiky yellow hair bristling with annoyed static.
She looked down at Tasha lying face-down in the snow, letting out a loud dramatic huff.
"Tsk!" Sparky muttered, rolling her glowing blue eyes. "I really don’t like her... She’s so loud and dramatic."
"She successfully bonded with the infant, spark-bug," Valeria noted smoothly, hovering beside her with a smug quiet smile. "The King’s plan was executed flawlessly."
Sparky didn’t answer. She slowly turned her tiny head, looking over at Klaus.
Klaus was still sitting on the roof railing. He was leaning back against the wood, looking down at the two chibis.
On his handsome, tired face, a genuine appreciative smile was breaking.
He raised his right hand, giving Sparky and Valeria a quiet, proud thumbs-up for their part in helping him pull off the elaborate trick.
Thump!
Sparky’s tiny heart violently throbbed inside her elemental chest.
She froze mid-air.
Her face instantly turned so red it looked like a ripe tomato as a blinding surge of chaotic blue static exploding from her hair.
Why was he looking at her like that...? Why was his smile so warm...?
A sudden, overwhelming wave of intense affection washed through her entire being, completely erasing her tsundere irritation.
Sparky clutched her tiny hands over her beating chest, looking at his handsome face under the silver moonlight, a soft, helpless smile pulling at her tiny lips.
’I love my Master.’
...
Tasha’s heavy eyelids fluttered open, her consciousness slowly drifting back from the deep dark abyss of mana exhaustion.
She wasn’t lying face-down in the freezing forest snowpack anymore.
The biting sub-zero wind wasn’t whipping across her cheeks, and the agonizing ache in her limbs had faded into a soft dull pulse.
Instead, she felt herself suspended in the air, enveloped in an overwhelming blanket of radiant heat.
She blinked groggily, her blurry light-blue eyes adjusting to the pale silver moonlight.
She was being carried.
Klaus was holding her effortlessly against his broad chest in a bridal carry, his massive, calloused arms supporting her weight as his heavy combat boots crunched rhythmically through the deep snow, heading straight back toward the parked carriage.
His long, luminescent silver hair fell over his broad shoulders, catching the moonlight, while his sharp defined jawline remained locked in a mask of total composure.
Tasha’s breath caught in her throat. Up close, the unnatural perfection of his handsome face was almost overwhelming.
"You’re awake," Klaus’s deep voice rumbled against his ribs, the low vibration vibrating pleasantly right through her back.
"K-Klaus...?" Tasha rasped,
her voice still rough from the cold. She tried to shift her weight, but her muscles felt like wet lead. "What... what happened?"
"I found you passed out face-down on the ice three hundred yards out," Klaus drawled, not even breaking his stride. "Surrounded by a pile of slaughtered Frost-Stalker corpses and charred pine trees. You looked like a frozen ragdoll."
A proud blush bloomed across Tasha’s pale cheeks despite her exhaustion.
She forced her chin up slightly, looking into his glowing silver eyes. "I... I killed them. All five of them."
Klaus raised a single silver eyebrow. He let out a low, heavy sigh through his nose, a plume of white steam drifting into the night air.
"Well," Klaus grunted, a subtle, dry smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "That’s nice."
Tasha’s heart fluttered at the mild praise. She quickly lifted her right hand, her fingers trembling slightly as she pulled back the edge of her torn sleeve.
There, etched deeply into the pale skin of her wrist and forearm, was the dark-blue, glowing tattoo... an intricate swirling crest of electric lightning.
"Look..." Tasha whispered softly, her light-blue eyes shining with genuine joy. "It worked. I... I forged the contract."
She focused her remaining, tiny sliver of internal mana, tapping into the mark.
Bzzt! CRACKLE!
A sharp cheerful spark of high-voltage blue plasma erupted from her wrist.
The infant lightning spirit materialized in the cold air, hovering right above her open palm.
The tiny, blinking blue sphere was pulsing with energetic, hyperactive life, buzzing in rapid circles around her fingers before floating up to nuzzle its warm glowing form against her cheek.