Chapter 9: The Last & First Howl

Menti slowly pulls down his hood and reveals his face to the wolf. His silver hair are fluttering in the air and his gray eyes are locked on its chest area. "Wolf, I said that we're both fighter and normally a battle between us is fight and square, but sadly this time it won't be".

Menti slowly rises his weapon and then cuts himself with it. Blood flows out from his body, but it's not a normal type of blood, it's purified and at a high level too at that. "as you can see little wolf, my blood is purified. That means that I am a vitality period human, to be exact I'm at the peak of the Vitality Period and close in breaking through the major bottleneck between the energy and Vitality period.

He continues to smile and shows to the wolf his injured hand, but it wasn't injured for long, after only a few seconds the wound closed itself. "The second thing that won't make this fight fair is the technique that I cultivate. I will not say its name in front of you because your little beast brain wouldn't even be able to handle the grand name of my technique".

He says in a mocking tone and when the wolf heard it, it couldn't resist its urges any longer and attacks Menti with its claws. Menti just continues to smile and raises his spear. he spins it towards the left where the claw is coming from, while jumping backwards to evade the attack.

One side of the spear's blade cuts deeply into the upper area of the wolf's paw and leaves a deep wound behind. The wolf howls and opens its jaw while moving towards Menti. The moment it opened its jaw, you could see its mouth filled with razor sharp teeth dirtied with old blood stains and some marks left behind from weapons that were devoured with their owner, while it ate them.

But that wasn't the most intimidating part. the most shocking part was the darkness that filled its throat. It was as if the light of the sun was cut off there and couldn't lighten it up.

Menti sees it and a cold smile slowly forms into his face, like a smile that belongs to a mad person longing for death. "Little wolf, is your throat so dirty that even the sun doesn't want to illuminate it" he begins to laugh madly and jumps up swiftly on top of the wolf's head.

"And didn't your mother taught you to not interrupt the adults while they talk?" he looks down on it from its head making even Azure, who is in Nie's body, astonished.

//Nie, this friend of yours has a great talent in cultivation. Even compared to young talents of low level planes that went through the Body Forging Period, he still would be close to the top// As Nie hears that he wanted to faint. He already was shocked by Menti's words and how swiftly he attacks and dodges the wolf, but this information was even more shocking!

//Even compared to low level plane talents?... That sounds great, but Azure what is a low level plane, would you explain it to me?// //Sure, I will. But now you should focus on your friend, even when his path will be different than yours it can still give you some inspiration, and don't forget that the only difference between the two of you is that he spent more time than you in this world//

Nie casually nods and then shifts his attention to the fight between the ruler and Menti. While Nie was in his mental conversation with Azure, the wolf tried to take down Menti with his head, but failed miserably making Menti able to mock it even more. "Little wolf, this is so ridiculous" he says while laughing. "You can't throw me down while I'm restricting my only ability to feel the surrounding" he laughs and jumps from its head on its nose and kicks it.

When the wolf received the kick on the nose it gave out a howl and then moved its head upwards to push Menti from its nose into the air. Afterwards it opened its jaw slowly and sucked in a great amount of air, so much that you could even see the air moving its mouth.

As Nie saw it he wanted to help Menti to evade the incoming attack, but since Menti was in mid air Nie wouldn't be able to reach him in time even if he jumped. "MENTIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" he cries out.

The wolf closes its jaw and forms something that is akin to a smile and releases an air blast out of his mouth while howling deeply. "AAAAAAAAWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOO"

The Air blast moves quickly towards Menti, who's still in air but at the same time slowly falling towards it. "Weak" he says while moving his spear slowly downward, pointing it towards the middle of the air blast. "Demon piercing the heaven" he says in a monotone tone with cold eyes.

The air blast draws closer and collides with the tip of the spear for a few moments. As Nie looks at it he can see how an half circle of air pressure is creating itself around the spear tip and a second is forming around the air blast. It looks epic and that creates smaller air blasts that fly down towards the surroundings and turn them into a battlefield.

Those blasts know no friend or foes, some of them ended up attacking Nie and the cub. The cub sees the air blasts and runs away back into the cave to save itself, but Nie had no hiding place so he needed to evade them but because of the fight with the Ruler he exhausted his stamina and had great problems into evading them.

"AHA... Menti, can't you use something that doesn't attack me too?!" He says in an angered voice, almost all his clothes were destroyed and only his underpants were somewhat remaining.

"HAHAHA do I look like I care Nie? but ok since it's you" He says in a playful tone and makes a strange slash with his spear, moving it from the middle to the left and stops it there for a few moments and then quickly moves it to the right.

He creates a wave made of air that causes an explosion between the air pressure walls, using it too to create distance between him and the wolf. He lands gracefully close to the end of the hole and smiles "No little wolf, it doesn't have any fun this, you are too weak" he

stabs himself 5 times and immediately the intimidating aura that he gave off reduced by a great amount. "Now I sealed my cultivation to the same level as you. I hope you can give me a good fight" a mocking smile appears on Menti's face and then he begins to attack again.

The wolf looks at him with an angered face and begins to howl again, but this time it was not an attack and neither a normal howl.

A strange energy begins to rise from the wolf and its wounds begins to quickly heal while his fur slowly turns into a dark red stone and its chest,hip and the aura around his eyes remains black. "Let's see…. little human, if you can even cause a scratch on my skin" Says a deep and dark voice coming out of the mouth of the wolf.

"Wait… the wolf can talk!?! And what happened to its appearance" Nie asks right away when he noticed the change, but Menti only smiled and jumped towards it.

//Young Nie, it's normal for rulers to have the ability to talk, so don't be so surprised, and what changed his outer appearance and the rest is that he ignited his bloodline. It's just that… it's something used to try to take down the enemy with itself, the only thing this gave him is a higher defense with the price that he will die shortly after the activation.

//What… why would he do that?// Nie asks shocked, because he couldn't understand why someone would even use such a move when it would only cause its death shortly after.// Just.. look Nie// Azure says in a monotone tone.Nie looks towards the fight and sees how Menti is finally struggling against the wolf. But that should be normal because Menti reduced his own overall power, while the wolf boosted its own defence.

The wolf looks down on Menti, who crashed into its tail a few moments before. "Oho, you see little ant… you are the weaker one" it says in a mocking tone, making Menti visibly pissed off."Oh you're feeling strong after you got a few moments of upper hand; No, stupid wolf? I think I have to teach you" He stands slowly up while coughing blood: he looks down onto his own blood and his face slowly changes from a happy face to a pissed one, with even some veins popping up on Menti's face.

"You damn wolf, finally you can injure me, but… it's too late" his face slowly changes into a monotone expression "Tree upon the mountain who devours it alive, I call upon your burned soul and let me show the lowly being before me your true power" he begins to laugh madly and move quickly, only 1 second after he began to move he was already in mid air, in front of the chest of the wolf.

The wolf was shocked because he couldn't even see Menti's movements on how he got so close to him. "And now die" he says madly and thrust his spear into the chest of the wolf and penetrates it.

"AWWWWWUUUUU" the wolf howls loudly in pain and tries to shake Menti off him, but the only thing that happens is that the spear gets deeper and deeper, and after only a few moments it fully pierced through the wolf's heart.

The ruler falls down in its last moments and looks towards the cub. its eyes slowly close eternally but it says in its last moments. "Thank you… human" Menti just smiles and slowly pulls out his spear and then walks towards the cave the cub is at "Now little one, I killed your dad and now you need to get revenge, understood or" he says while still smiling madly "You become my little pet and we'll rule over everything here" he extends his hand towards it, but the little wolf backs off "Mhm, then I just have to kill you" he pulls out a small dagger with the intention to kill it with that, but before he can even move he gets restricted by some kind of strange energy.

"Menti, right?" an elderly voice says behind him "You may be a friend of the person that I chose, but I won't tolerate that you walk down this path. Doing this will only lead you to being someone like Xerxes and I don't want a second one to appear.

Menti turns around and sees an elderly man in blue robes, on his robes there are two dragons with red eyes. These dragons are the origin of the energy that's restricting him. "And you, old man, are? And you think I care if you tolerate me or not? I will walk down my path".

He looks upward to the sky "And that will be the path of the primordial demon that looks down to everyone, old man, not destroying everything. I want to be a demon and have fun, not be a destroyer" he looks again towards him. Azure looks at him with a meaningful glance "I'm Azure, you don't need to know more. The path of the primordial demon is dark and twisted, you can easily fail it or turn into a brainless destroyer without a person you can lean on, without having inner balance and lacking a strong will. You will only fall without these and I don't want to see such a promising seed fall into the darkness and become like Xerxes".

Menti laughs "Fall into darkness… Old man Azure, I already fell into the darkness the moment this damn spineless ant named Xerxes destroyed my home because he could. So don't compare myself with that spineless ant, I may destroy sometimes when I'm strong, but I want to face enemies on my level most of the time and not destroy a potential enemy before they can become strong" he begins to laugh even harder "okay… hehe there he already failed"

Azure nods when he hears that and releases the restriction on Menti, shortly after he returns into Nie's body. Menti walks up to Nie "Geez Nie, you have an old man living in your body, how does that feel?" he says while smiling and taking out some healing pills to heal the injures he suffered. "To be honest, it's kind of strange, but he saved my life and gave me my cultivation techniques so I think it's some sort of repayment" Menti just nods.

A few moments later they hear a quiet whimpering and when they looks towards the direction of the sound they see the little cub, slowly coming towards Menti "Oh, so you changed your decision, good" Menti smiles and extends his hands towards the little cub, the cub sees that but this time it doesn't walk backwards, but walks towards it and begins to lick it. "Hey stop… that tickles" Menti says while laughing and the cub stops shortly after, but rubs itself against Menti's hand "Haha Menti, seems like you're not the hard demon that you want to show others" says Nie while smiling.

"Nie… I'm a demon but that doesn't mean I can't laugh and to be honest, this little one somewhat makes me remember about the spirit wolf in the game. I mean, it was epic and super strong… I'm still a bit sad about the reset that deleted it. I had the strength to beat you all" he smiles sadly."Yeah I can understand Menti, and it somewhat truly resembles your spirit wolf, just weaker and smaller… wait Menti" Nie says while pointing on the forehead of the little pup where now there was a little mark. A burned leaf that is reddish in color.

Menti wants to answer but before he opens his mouth Azure loudly says "A EQUAL CONTRACT?!? HOW"