Chapter 161: Morning Training
It didn’t burn her skin as the Spirit Embodiment contract bound its elemental energy directly to her soul, turning the destructive plasma into a soothing gentle heat against her face.
Klaus looked down at the blinking blue sphere, then back at Tasha’s flushed, tired face.
"Not bad, Tasha," Klaus murmured with his voice softening just a fraction. "You both did good."
They reached the side of Lord Varhem’s restored oak carriage.
Klaus reached out with one hand, unlatching the heavy wooden door, and stepped up the iron runner into the main cabin.
The interior was warm and quiet, illuminated by the soft amber glow of the hanging alchemical lantern.
Mirela and Anya were still fast asleep on the large, fur-lined mattress in the corner, breathing softly under their blankets.
Klaus walked over to the cot, carefully lowering Tasha onto the soft furs.
He pulled a heavy winter blanket over her shoulders, tucking her in.
The infant lightning spirit immediately floated down, settling comfortably right on top of her cheek like a warm glowing pillow, humming its cheerful little bzzt sounds into her ear.
Tasha looked up at Klaus, her dark blue eyes welling with unbidden hot tears of overwhelming gratitude.
"Klaus..." Tasha whispered, her voice trembling with raw emotion. "Thank you. For everything. For saving me in the blizzard... for feeding me... for giving me this spirit... for giving me a reason to keep living."
She swallowed hard, her small hands tightly gripping the edge of the heavy fur blanket.
"I know I have nothing to offer you right now," she continued softly, her gaze locked onto his glowing eyes with unconditional devotion. "My family is gone, my status is gone... but I promise you. My life belongs to you now. I will dedicate my entire existence to serving you, whatever you ask of me."
Klaus stared down at the tearful grieving noble girl who had just offered her loyalty to the exact man who had butchered her father.
The familiar deeply bitter pang of irony touched his chest, but his handsome face remained a mask of deadpan indifference.
He casually raised his large hand, waving her vow off with a dismissive flick of his wrist.
"Save the dramatic speeches for later," Klaus drawled smoothly. "Right now, you need to sleep. Your core is bone-dry..."
He turned around, taking a step toward the iron door leading into the front control room.
But just as his hand touched the latch, Klaus paused. He looked back over his shoulder, his silver eyes meeting her wide, attentive gaze.
"Oh, and Tasha?" Klaus added. "Don’t worry about your father. I’m going to teach you... I’m going to make you strong enough to kill the bastards who murdered him."
Tasha’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. Her breath caught hard in her throat with a surge of fierce burning determination exploding through her chest.
"I... I will!" Tasha choked out, bowing her head deeply against the pillow. "Thank you, Master Klaus!"
"Don’t call me Master," Klaus grumbled, opening the iron door.
He stepped into the control room, closing the heavy door firmly behind him.
The carriage immediately hummed to life with the bone-plated mountain bear surging forward into the night, dragging the heavy oak vehicle across the snowpack once more.
Inside the quiet cabin, Tasha lay in the warm furs. She reached up, gently stroking the side of the blinking blue spirit resting on her cheek.
"You heard him..." Tasha whispered softly to the infant spirit, a small, radiant smile breaking across her face. "We’re going to get strong..."
Bzzt!
The spirit hummed happily in response, and within two minutes, Tasha fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
The next morning, the northern continent offered no mercy.
The pale gray light of a Winterlands dawn filtered through the carriage windows but the wind outside had violently kicked up into a howling, sub-zero blizzard.
The atmospheric pressure had plummeted to dangerous levels, turning the air into a freezing razor-sharp frost that coated the heavy oak exterior of the vehicle in thick white ice sheets.
Outside in the snow, Tasha was standing beside the stopped carriage with her entire body trembling violently.
Despite wearing her heavy fur cloak and leather boots, the invasive chill of the morning blizzard was cutting straight to her bones.
Beside her, hovering near her shoulder, the infant lightning spirit was also flickering erratically, emitting tiny, shivering bzzt-bzzt sparks.
Neither the noble girl nor the newborn spirit were remotely accustomed to such extreme unnatural cold.
"S-So... c-cold..." Tasha stammered with her teeth chattering so hard her jaw ached.
She turned her head to look at Klaus, and her mind instantly short-circuited.
Klaus was standing a few feet away in the knee-deep snow, completely shirtless.
He had shed his heavy winter furs and dark combat tunic, wearing nothing on his upper body.
The biting sub-zero wind that was currently threatening to freeze Tasha solid didn’t affect him in the slightest.
The snowflakes actively melted into steam the exact second they drifted within an inch of his skin, flushed away by the thudding nuclear reactor of his divine core.
Tasha’s light-blue eyes completely locked onto his exposed torso, her breathing hitching in her throat.
He was godlike perfection.
His broad, heavily muscled chest was sculpted like marble, his defined dense abdominal muscles shifting smoothly with every breath he took.
Long scars traced across his broad shoulders, adding a rugged, dangerous edge to his impossibly handsome appearance.
His waist-length, luminescent silver hair blew wildly in the winter wind, framing his sharp defined jawline and piercing silver eyes.
Tasha felt a sudden intense wave of heat flush through her entire body, making her trembling legs go completely weak at the knees.
’Holy light...’ Tasha thought with her mind racing in a chaotic inappropriate spiral as her gaze drifted down his chest. ’He’s... he’s built like a ancient god of war... How can a human look like that?!’
Her eyes lingered on his broad defined chest, staring directly at his dark, tight nipples hardened by the biting air.
A sudden wildly thirsty fantasy flashed through her mind, making her throat go entirely dry.
’I... I just want to step forward... bury my face in his chest... pop those nipples straight into my mouth and suck on them until he—’
She violently slapped both of her hands over her burning face, letting out a muffled, desperate squeak of sheer mortification.
’WHAT AM I THINKING?!’ Tasha screamed mentally at herself with her face turning so red it rivaled a ripe tomato. ’HE IS MY SAVIOR! MY TEACHER! I AM A NOBLE LADY! WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT EATING HIS NIPPLES?!’
"Are you okay, highness?" Klaus’s deep voice drawled, snapping her out of her internal panic. "You’re turning red. Did your core freeze?"
"N-No!" Tasha squeaked hurriedly, spinning around to face the carriage with her hands still clutched over her burning cheeks. "I am... I am perfectly functional! Just... adjusting to the climate!"
From inside the open carriage door, a mouthwatering savory aroma wafted out into the freezing air.
Mirela was inside the main cabin, humming a sweet tune as she fried thick slabs of salted pork and flatbread over the alchemical stove for breakfast.
Klaus rolled his broad shoulders, cracking his neck as he looked around the frozen clearing.
"Alright," Klaus announced, turning his attention to her. "Time for your training. I promised we’d start today..."
Tasha quickly composed herself, taking a deep freezing breath to force her heart rate down.
She stepped forward with her light-blue eyes hardening with focus. "I’m ready! Where are the wooden sticks we’re using?"
"There are no sticks in this wasteland," Klaus noted lazily, looking at the barren ice-covered landscape. "And I’m not wasting time cutting down pine trees."
He held out both of his large calloused hands with her palms facing upward toward the gray sky.
"We improvise," Klaus said.
VWOOM.
Klaus tapped into a secondary branch of his core, circulating his mana.
It had been a long time since he had used standard elemental magic back before his divine ascension, but the spells were permanently logged into his mind.
"Forge," Klaus commanded softly.
[Metal Magic: [Forge (Tier 3)] Activated]
’I really need to spin the wheel some more.’
A bright metallic silver glow erupted from his palms.
To Tasha’s speechless astonishment, Klaus didn’t pull metal from the earth.
He used his raw dense mana to forcefully materialize physical steel out of thin air.
SHHHHK! SHHHHK!
Two solid and perfectly balanced standard iron longswords rapidly coalesced between his hands.
The metal gleamed with a fresh sharp sheen, complete with leather-wrapped hilts and solid steel crossguards.
They weren’t divine artifacts like his Soul Broadsword, but they were flawless high-grade combat weapons...
Klaus casually tossed one of the forged longswords through the air.
SWOOSH!
Tasha’s knightly instincts fired as she reached out with both hands, catching the hilt cleanly mid-air.
The weight was perfect... roughly three pounds and perfectly balanced at the crossguard.
The leather grip felt firm in her calloused palms.
Beside her shoulder, the infant lightning spirit let out an excited high-pitched bzzt!, hovering close as its blue aura flared in response to her weapon.
Klaus gripped the second forged longsword in his right hand, resting the flat of the blade lazily against his bare shoulder.
"Now then," Klaus drawled, his glowing silver eyes locking onto her with a dangerous predatory glint. "Come at me with full force. Don’t hold back, because I won’t."
Tasha took a deep breath. The playful flustered atmosphere vanished instantly, replaced by the deadly focus of a high-born knight.
"Understood!" Tasha shouted.
KRA-ZAP!
Tasha didn’t just step forward as she detonated forward instead.
Tapping directly into her new contract, dark-blue lightning tattoos flared to life across her right arm.
The infant spirit merged seamlessly with her right shoulder, flooding her legs with high-voltage plasma.
Tasha shot across the snowpack in a blinding blue streak of lightning with her boots kicking up a massive spray of white powder.
She closed the ten-yard distance in seconds, bringing the forged longsword down in a blinding, high-speed diagonal slash aimed directly for Klaus’s chest.
SWOOSH!
It was a textbook flawless strike from the House of Morningstar’s high-grade swordsmanship but Klaus didn’t even shift his footing.
CLANG!
Moving with casual effortless grace, Klaus simply flicked his right wrist.
The flat of his forged longsword met her incoming blade with a sharp echoing metallic ringing sound.
He didn’t just block it... he used a microscopic tilt of his wrist to completely redirect her momentum, sliding her blade harmlessly off to the right.
Tasha’s eyes widened in shock as her guard was instantly thrown wide open by the simple parry.
Before she could pull her weapon back, Klaus shifted his weight, stepping into her guard, and casually brought the heavy pommel of his hilt down squarely onto the top of her head.
PAH!
"OW!" Tasha groaning loudly with her eyes watering as the dull impact rattled her skull. She stumbled backward three paces, clutching her head with her left hand.
"That was a flawed entry," Klaus criticized deadpan, resting his blade back on his shoulder. "You’re relying on the speed boost from your spirit so you’re charging in a straight line. Any experienced swordsman is going to parry you and take your head off before you finish the swing. Again..."
Tasha gritted her teeth, her noble pride flaring. "Again!"
She lunged forward a second time.
This time, she didn’t charge straight.
She used her lightning speed to execute a rapid zigzag footwork, appearing on Klaus’s left flank, driving a sharp thrusting strike toward his exposed ribs.
CLANG!
Klaus didn’t even turn his body. He brought his blade behind his back, blocking the thrust with the flat of his steel without looking.
"That was too predictable and you know it," Klaus grunted.
He spun on his heel, using the flat of his blade to slap her hard across her left thigh.
SMACK!
"Eek!" Tasha squeaked with her leg buckling as she stumbled into the snowpack.
"Your balance on ice is terrible," Klaus lectured, stepping over her. "You’re putting all your weight on your heels. Keep your center of gravity low. Bend your knees, and let your spirit’s lightning flow through your ankles, not just your arms. Again..."
Tasha scrambled back to her feet, panting heavily, her blue eyes burning with an intense fierce determination. "Again!"
For the next twenty minutes, the snowy clearing was filled with the continuous CLANG-CLANG-CLANG of clashing steel and the sharp crackle of blue lightning.
Tasha threw everything she had at him.
She executed rapid high-slashes, low-sweeps, thrusts, and lightning-infused feints.
She pushed her body to its limits with her Spirit Mana surging as she tried desperately to land a single, solid hit on his exposed skin.
Yet, no matter how fast she moved, no matter what angle she attacked from, Klaus remained an impenetrable godlike wall.
He didn’t use his overwhelming Soul King stats to crush her as he matched her speed precisely, using pure god-tier sword technique to parry, deflect, and counter every single one of her moves.
Every time she made a mistake like leaning too far, overextending her wrist, losing her footwork on the slick ice... Klaus instantly punished her with a light tap of his pommel to her forehead or a slap of his blade against her hip.
PAH! SMACK! CLANG!
"Ow! Hey!" Tasha groaning, shaking her head.
"Drop your right shoulder," Klaus commanded. "You’re telegraphing the thrust."
"Aaaah!" Tasha yelled, adjusting her stance and lunging again.
CLANG!
This time, as their blades met, Tasha didn’t pull back.
She remembered his instruction. She lowered her center of gravity, bent her knees, and allowed her infant lightning spirit to flow directly into her ankles.
Bzzt!