Demon Potential

I spent a few more days training with Faith. She mainly made me do simple yet exhausting tasks to level up my stats. As it turns out, she also has Power Ranking, which was interesting since I've never met anyone else with Power Ranking. She only used it once on me, after the first day of our training. Here's what my stats looked like during day 2:

VANGUARD

[Strength] 291

[Speed] 352

[Defense] 259

[Intelligence] 751

[Perseverance/Morale] 25

[Luck] 50

[Total] 1728

When I first heard of this... I was fairly proud. Heheh, triumph! I mean, my total power used to only be 413. In such a short amount of time I managed to increase by over a thousand. Faith didn't think this was worthwhile, though. She yelled at me and continued to berate me, saying that I was still too low and nowhere near to the other Monsters. I had to be at least twice the level of an Elite Vrusta soldier before I could stand even the slightest chance.

It certainly did feel like I was getting stronger, though.

"Pick up your sword... I order you to keep fighting!" Faith commanded as she had managed to knock my broadsword out of my hand in a single parry, flinging my blade off to the side as it landed on the grassy field.

I see what she did, now... she was purposely waiting for me to attack, and once I thrusted my blade too far and lost the slightest amount of control, she was able to utilize that to knock the sword out of my hand. Interesting technique... that could be seen as a weakness on my part.

My hands grabbed my sword again and Faith immediately struck at me with murderous intent. I had barely managed to block the attack, but she wasn't giving me a break. She kept swinging her blade at me, each swing bringing me closer to being cut up.

Faith didn't care if she had actually killed me. Though it hasn't happened yet, she could easily revive me and heal me up in a couple of seconds. That being said...

I'd rather not go through the pain of being cut and slashed apart! Hahhhh...!

Slash! Instinctively, I ducked down as Faith horizontally struck at my head, missing. I sidestepped to the right and turned my body towards her, batting my sword back at her small torso. She dodged by backstepping out of my range and followed up with a risky-high speed thrust and lunged at me with the tip of her sword. I turned to the side, her blade skimming right by my ribs, and I swung downward at the hilt of her sword. It hit, knocking the handle off of Faith's hand as the blade plopped to the ground.

Pointing my blade at Faith's neck, I grinned. "Th-that wasn't too bad, was it, Instructor Faith?!"

I expected Faith to follow up by commenting on how poor my form was, or that I had just gotten lucky. Instead, she had smiled back, and her eyes beamed of sweet happiness.

"E-ehehe... You- that caught me off guard. I haven't felt like this since I was human!"

...I've never seen Instructor Faith like that. Her smile... she looked like a human. I mean, her body usually has a slight glow, but... Her eerie and strict aura had disappeared, and for a split second, I thought I heard Faith giggle. In that way... she looked cute. Ridiculously, sweetly, endearingly cute.

Faith's pale skin seemed to turn red under the sunlight. I called out to her. "I-instructor! A-are you alright? You seem a little red..."

"Y-yeah, I'm just tired... Let's go back home, now. I'll take care of your injuries and check out your level again." I didn't know Phantasm spirits could get tired. Hell, there's a lot I don't know about Phantasm spirits.

This was arguably my favorite part of the day. Not only did Faith train me in physical activities, but she'd also teach me about spells and magic. She said intelligence was my strong suit, despite being easy to anger and impulsive. Hoorah, I guess.

We headed back to her cabin in the misty woods. I had been sleeping here for the past couple of days, so I had gotten used to the place. It smelled of timber bookshelves and the scent of freshly pages. As soon as we entered, I plopped face first onto Faith's bed and let out a heartfelt sigh. Home, sweet... Not exactly home, but better than anything else.

It was a small cabin. The entire wooden cabin was composed of a singular room that had a kitchen, bookshelves, a desk, and a bed.

Faith came up beside me, sitting on the ledge of the bed. "Take off your shirt for me."

"H-huh...?!" She scoffed at me and rolled her eyes, muttering about how immature I was, "Oh right..." It was to check for injuries. Still, I couldn't get used to hearing any girl say that to me.

I began to unbutton the Vrusta uniform. It was surprisingly durable, after all this time of getting tossed around on the ground. I tossed it to the side, and she began to look at my body, examining all the cuts and bruises and scars.

She placed her small fingers on a cut on my ribcage. I flinched, groaning out in pain.

"D-does it hurt there... Vanguard?"

"Hahhh, you think?"

I closed my eyes as Faith gently rubbed her fingertips on my wounds, mumbling a healing spell. Soon enough, they were all healed.

"That cut on your ribs... Was that because of me?"

"Uh-yeah. When we were swordfighting."

"...Sorry. I was a bit too rough. I just absolutely can't STAND weak humans."

"Hey... I'm not as weak as I was before!"

"That's certainly true. Speaking about that... let me check your level."

I sat upright and faced Faith, glancing at her eyes as she pressed her fingers on my forehead to activate Power Ranking. She wasn't born with Power Ranking, but she had managed to learn it. The only difference was that she had to touch the target to activate it. I didn't, since I was naturally born with it.

I thought about how weird this situation felt. Oddly enough, this part of Aphorus realm was similar to Earth. Although Faith regarded this place as a simple training field for me, she said the real Aphorus realm was MUCH different. Much worse. As far as I knew... Aphorus realm seemed to reflect Earth.

In the middle of my recollection process, Faith suddenly gasped as her pale lips opened into an O and she stopped touching me. Her eyes became dull and hazy, as if she were confused.

"...Quit looking at me like that. What, is there something on my face?" Her expression made me uncomfortable. Faith was... disturbed. Agitated.

"No... this can't be. I must've done something wrong," Faith looked as if she had seen a ghost... Haha, but seriously, what the hell was going on?"

"Dammit... are you gonna tell me what's up!?!" I angrily yelled out as Faith activated Power Ranking again. Her expression remained in utter surprise and awe upon rechecking my stats.

"How is this... possible? In such a short amount of time... you shouldn't even be able to level that up fast!"

I pushed away Faith's hand and activated Power Ranking to see what she was talking about.

VANGUARD

[Strength] 2022

Woah, that got WAY higher.

[Speed] 2074

Ah, so did speed... amazing!

[Defense] 1802

It's still high up, but relatively low compared to the other stats.

[Intelligence] 4759

Aha! My strongpoint...!

[Perseverance/Morale] 30

You can't exactly level this up, to be fair. Same with Luck.

[Luck] 101010101

What the fuck.

[Total] 101020758

What... the fuck!?!?!

[Demon Potential] 9999999999

HUAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?!?! I choked after accidentally swallowing my spit the wrong way, falling out of the bed and landing on my ass.

Cough cough, ahem ahem...

How was this supposed to be possible!?! My luck skyrocketed... You can't even train luck! You simply have to be lucky!

And after getting tossed around on my damned ass all the time, forced to train with some supernatural ghost after getting left in charge of an army that abandoned me... Well, that doesn't sound luckyy!!!

Not only that, but what the hell was Demon Potential? It filled up an additional slot and I've never heard about it before. This... This was another error! Right? It has to be.

"...Incredible. It must be a side effect from being in Aphorus Realm," Faith tried to reason and brainstorm a couple of reasonable solutions, but I didn't listen.

"Faith! What's all this about... Do something! Take me back to the outskirts of Khurid Kingdom!"

"Very well... we'll figure it out soon." Faith did her best not to look disturbed. For a ghost who's been around for a while now, she definitely didn't see something like this. Ever. I was... special?

Faith pressed her fingers on my forehead, and in an instant, I was transported back to that forest that Faith had taken me on the night that the monster showed and up destroyed my army. She was right. Time didn't exist in Aphorus Realm.

Faith rechecked my stats. I also rechecked, making sure it wasn't just a simple side effect from Aphorus Realm that had messed up the accuracy of our powers.

It remained the same. I frowned.

"You're the first... to be like this," Faith had whispered out while rechecking my stats in disbelief.

"There's... no wa-" I was cut off by Faith as she had begun speaking again.

"Look. According to Power Ranking, you're meant to be strong. If that's true, then let's have a quick test," Faith explained, "I'll make you fight a strong Monster. If you win, then it's because you've became truly powerful."

With that, Faith grabbed my hand and hovered up into the air. Flying. It was plenty windy out in the morning. Flying with Faith was ridiculously fast. We zoomed in the air of the morning sun as Faith searched for a monster.

Suddenly, we both spotted the sight of a familiar monster walking across the fields of Khurid's grassy plains. It was... the same giant demon that had killed my units. That same dark energy, maliciously menacing monster was supposed to be my test.

"Y-you can't be serious... I'm gonna fight that!?"

"Look... I'll be right by you if you need help. I'll make sure you don't die. But I don't expect you to," Faith flew in closer to the giant dark humanoid monster. As we got closer, she dropped onto the ground in front of the beast. The monster hadn't spotted us at all. Fortunately.

"How am I... supposed to take down this thing?!?!"

"You figure that out." Faith hovered out and into the sky, observing me from afar and leaving me all alone to battle this monster.

I was right beside the foot of the monster. Upon closer inspection, it had sharp scales and claws. It was inactive and didn't step forward one bit. I poked its foot with my flaming broadsword. It didn't go through. Its defense was too strong... crazy strong!

I waved at Faith. I caught her attention and showed her that my sword wasn't doing anything, and that she was mistaken. Hahaha! Phew, it was just a simple error on both our parts. Weirdly, though, Power Ranking had failed for the both of us.

Just as she was about to come down... the dark energy from the monster was attracted by my hand. Actually, no. It was attracted to... my ring!

The dark energy was being sucked away from the Demon Monster, uncovering its veil of darkness as it's true form was some type of purple Dragon monster covered with scales. All of the energy was absorbed into my ring. Hesitantly, I stuck out my palm and the gemstone of the ring glimmered.

'Gemstone release: Dark Energy blast!" An unknown voice screamed into my head as the ring suddenly poured out a dark energy stream, exploding the Dragon monster and vaporizing it in an instant. What followed was what I could only assume could be the sound of the dark energy explosion.

VRFOOOOOOOOOOSH! I was suddenly flung into the sky by the sudden air pressure the energetic explosion had released, causing a high-pitched ringing into my ears.

JEEZ... Faith had managed to swoop me out of the air and fly me towards another patch of land. We both dropped down on the grass, the atmosphere was as windy as ever. The monster was completely gone... vaporized.

"Vanguard..." Faith had a worried look on her face.

"Wh-what happened..."

"You used a Demon spell."

"Hm? A Demon spell!?"

"By any chance... are you a demon?"