The Desert

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The only task of the Guardians was to protect the tomb, for which each member of this group ate dangerous monsters and trained constantly.

Next to the pyramid, a couple of dozen kilometres to the east, there was an ordinary city, which could be visited by Guardians with a high rank. And the rank here was determined by strength, and was clearly demonstrated by the number of skulls a Guardian could wear on his body. The strongest, apart from Veneg, was a rather old grandfather who wore a necklace of seven skulls, he looked rather ridiculous with this necklace, until he took his half-beast form, turning into an eight-metre tall humanoid bear, then the necklaces of skulls looked normal on such a huge body. If you had three skulls you could visit the city, but if you didn't, you could sit in a tomb and get stronger. There were three people hunting here, hunting both wild monsters to eat and invaders who wanted to steal the treasures of the tomb.

I was defeated by three Guardians, the strongest one had three skulls and the others had two each. The total number of Guardians was only a few hundred, and that's not much. At the same time, additions to the group were infrequent and mostly natural, there were many men and women among the Guardians... strong captured girls who came to the tomb to maraud were also used for reproduction, mostly strong women were taken as slaves by strong warriors. The Guardians didn't touch the peaceful people living in the nearest town, no one kidnapped people there, because they already had a lot of visitors. I was accepted into the group because I was young, strong enough, and could be reeducated.

So, if you look objectively, the Guardians in principle did not differ from my native tribe Bana, both there and there, the main thing was strength, except that one lived in the middle of a rainforest full of monsters, and the second live in an underground tomb, in the middle of a dangerous desert full of monsters. I'm not going to live here forever, I'm just going to stay here for a few years, get stronger, and maybe steal the treasures of the tomb. Weneg thinks I'm just a kid, a strong kid, but a kid, and after living with the Guardians I'll get the idea of protecting the riches of a long-dead emperor at the cost of my own life... no, I don't really like that idea.

They had a group of kids who were taught the ins and outs of being a Guardian, that is, they taught them how to fight and how to eat animals properly in order to learn their power. First and foremost you should always eat the heart of the beast, then drink the blood, and then you can eat the meat, the main thing is not to eat the brain, it has no less beastly ki than the heart, but eating the brain, you get the instincts and mind of the beast, it also makes you stronger, to some extent, but you become noticeably dumber.

Among the kids there were those who had already started to master the technique of transformation into a beast, there was a dark-haired girl with a bob who could turn into a half snake, there was a grasshopper guy, eating locusts, he could turn his legs into grasshopper legs and jump very far and high. The funniest one in my opinion was the squid guy, his skin was covered in slime, his muscles were like rubber, which gave him a good defence against cutting weapons, the blade would just slide off his skin, plus he could grow tentacles from his body.

≪We should definitely become like this guy. ≫

Well, by the looks of it, this Jamo definitely chose squid not to be a strong warrior, but to use those tentacles on slave girls.

≪A very creative guy, and thinking in the right direction.≫

Being a tentacle monster is not a bad thing, but not to the detriment of combat capabilities, and Jamo's not much of a fighter, I kicked him without any transformations, but Umbra's snakebite was unpleasant, I walked around all day as if drunk. I'll have to work on gaining immunity to the venom. I'll inject poison into my bloodstream before I go to bed, and when I'm in a fever at night, I'll adapt to it.

The main animals that the Guardians turned into lived not far from the tomb, I would like to turn into a tiger, but their habitat is quite far to the south, but northeast of the tomb began the savannah, which was inhabited by saber-toothed tigers, this savannah was in the Western Empire, which was neighbouring the Thousand Year Empire. If to move strictly to the north, the savannah passed to the tundra, and then to the cold northern mountains, swarming with all sorts of dragons, beyond the mountains began the land of ice and snow.

It was sabre-toothed tigers that I began to eat, these monsters have heightened senses, reflexes, and also they have a very fast regeneration, if you do not kill them, they recover quite quickly. You could also become a dragon, but dragons live quite far away in the mountains, right in the lands of the Empire there are earth dragons, they are a local version of mole pests. They come in a variety of sizes, depending on their strength and age, the youngest are only about the size of a palm, they are the most damaging to crops, at this stage they are called bears. Earth dragons are quite weak, but their defence is very strong, however, I can create armour for defence, but I can't make regeneration as easily as armour.

I wouldn't mind becoming a half-Nubis, but I'd rather be eaten by him than eaten by him, and Nubis are considered the beast of Emperor Putra and his descendants.

I was one of a small group that went hunting a couple of times a week, replenishing my meat supply and eating my totem animals. I also collected materials to make weapons, and venom from snakes and insects to boost my immunity.

Just for the sake of experimentation, I decided to try making weapons from the blood of monsters, first choosing the blood of a snake, which I vaporised in the sun. Nearby, for the sake of interest, I vaporised both snake venom and scorpion venom. Whatever was left at the bottom of the basin I scraped off until I had enough material to attempt to make a dagger. Under the influence of Ki, the materials changed their properties, so I could experiment with forging materials that would be considered slag in the normal world.

I mixed the powder from the snake's blood with small crystals from poisons and melted the dry mixture over a fire. Any impurities would eventually burn out and float to the top, and I removed them until I was left with a pure melt of... something supposedly magical, metallic, and poisonous... I guess. After it cooled, I had a poisonous green metal, as strong as regular iron, I could make a dagger out of it, and tempered it in a concentrated mixture of snake and scorpion venom.

I cut myself with the dagger and in a second I was almost dead. The dagger contained not only the physical component of the venom, but also the energetic component, which made it work on the soul. I was unconscious for almost a week before I recovered, my immunity to the poison had improved quite a bit since then. Veneg scolded me for my stupidity, for using a dagger on myself was downright stupid, but praised me for creating such a dagger, calling it Shingu.

In the Empire four hundred years ago, there was an emperor who decided to create his own analogue of Teigu, but the created tools were much weaker than Teigu, so they were nicknamed 'Shingu' - 'Servants', while 'Teigu' - means 'Emperor'.

The Empire has quite a few Shingu, made from weaker monsters, so they have much lower power requirements than Teigu, which can simply kill a weak owner in a second, absorbing all the energy from him.

Putra's tomb had been attacked several times by Imperials wielding the Shingu, and Veneg himself used a staff that could change its configuration into a spear, and into a hilt. This was the full power of this Shingu, during battle you could catch your enemy by changing your weapon right during an attack.

Some Shingu were very good, but they were still inferior to the weakest Teigu. The strength of the wielder was also important, and there were fighters who could defeat a Teigu wielder with their bare hands. There is a temple in the Empire, Kouken Temple, where they train such fighters. Veneg fought one such warrior and was able to defeat him with his secret technique. These Kouken Temple fighters take Kraken Extract, made from a super class monster, which allows them to manipulate their bodies quite freely, strengthening them, or lengthening their limbs. So, from a super class monster, you can somehow extract the concentrate of its power, and get its abilities, the technology is similar to normal monster eating, only the result from the Extract is faster.

Now my dagger could be called Shingu, it was poisoning the enemy with a single cut, it wasn't the strongest poison in the world, but if a person had no immunity at all, a single scratch with this dagger could kill him. The Guardians already smeared their weapons with poison, but my dagger was much better. In exchange for making weapons for the Guardians, Veneg promised me a proper forge and workshop where I could make whatever I wanted... I agreed to this offer, after making this dagger, I just wanted to make artefact weapons. Usually, when I played online games, I spent more time not questing, but crafting magical weapons.

If from the blood and other liquid components of the monster, I roughly understood how to get a piece of his power and transfer it to the weapon, but with the rest of the monster carcass is more complicated. The bone could be used to directly make swords or armour, but I came up with the idea of burning the bones in a sealed furnace and then adding the ashes to ordinary iron. This made the steel a couple of times stronger than the normal method of making steel with ordinary carbon. If you mixed bone ashes and iron from blood, the steel was several times stronger than ordinary steel. Plus, weapons made from such steel made the user a bit stronger, here the extra strength depended on the original monster whose blood and bones were used for the steel.

Eventually, I came across a centipede that had acid instead of blood, which dissolved flesh perfectly, but it couldn't dissolve bones. But the slurry that came out after dissolving the flesh was full of animal ki, and if you boil it to a solid state, and then add it to the molten steel, the ki will turn into an alloy, and everything that is not necessary will burn out after a while and slag off at the top of the crucible.

Some monsters had various other metals in their blood, flesh or bones or skin that were saturated with animal ki, such as mercury in the chitin of the acid centipede. After burning the chitin, and after the furnace had cooled, I found balls of liquid silver metal among the ashes. In the scales of the golden snake, there were particles of gold, and filled with snake ki. There were enough monsters in the desert, and I made weapons out of each one. I can also make armour, but it's more difficult with them, as they need to be adjusted to the owner. However, when I remembered Veneg's staff that could change its shape and Jamo that could change his body, I realised that I needed to get a squid and try to make a weapon out of it.

My forge was always full of smells, most of the time unpleasant, but sometimes it smelled like a kitchen. From the squid by incineration I managed to get a burnt squid... nothing else. I guess you have to work with marine animals a little differently. Remembering the Kouken Temple, where they once obtained Kraken Extract, I decided to grind the squid, and pouring water over it, boiled it... it turned out to be a tasty soup. Apparently, some monsters require a more professional lab to process. However, the broth from this soup I evaporated as much as possible, to the state of a thick kissel, which after cooling turned into rubber. This rubber stretched just fine and returned back to its original shape. Tried to add it when cooking steel, nothing good came out, maybe just squid too weak to create a weapon from them, but the Kraken is another matter, but Kraken so here ships sink. In general, I made a normal shoe from squid rubber, and then mostly used it to make clothes.

Creating weapons and armour was very interesting to me, but I didn't forget about combat training. As I grew older and larger, I naturally became stronger, I also continued to fight monsters on the hunt, but even with the ability to cook their meat, I preferred to eat them raw. Any heat treatment, deprived the meat of internal energy, the fact that I had to subject the materials from the beasts to high temperatures to make weapons, was a necessity, which lost almost ninety-five per cent of the original beast Ki contained in the body of the beast. Therefore, it was necessary to take the initially strongest monster possible, so that when making Shingu or Teigu, even after losing almost ninety percent of the monster's original strength, one would end up with a strong weapon or armour.

For almost seven years, which I stayed in Putra's tomb, I used almost all the animals I could reach for weapon materials, only Nubis was not touched, the fact that I was lucky to see him once was a huge luck, he was a rare beast, in the desert simply could not live at once a lot of such monsters.

Anyway, because I had already tried the nearest monsters in artefacting, I decided to go on a quest for new monsters, first I would go to the south to collect material from the dangerous beasts there, then I would return to Putra to use the collected material, and then I would go to the northern mountains, and there I would look for monsters for weapons.

I've certainly grown in seven years, and frankly, I look about eighteen years old, even though I was fourteen, but the healthy food, training, and constant work at the forge have made me quite strong. The numbers say I've become four and a half times stronger than I was in my last life, a couple of times faster, and nine times more survivable.

≪Status≫

Life 6085/6085/305 per hour

Ki 1556/1556/259 per hour.

Characteristics:

Strength 444

Dexterity 210

Endurance 890

Intelligence 140

Soul 300

Wounding me is a bit of a problem, but I recover very quickly. Also during this time I have in the system appeared 'Inventory', that is 'Spatial pocket tied to the soul', I can cram almost anything there, provided that the entire weight of objects distributed on my body, if I throw things there for two tonnes, I will become heavier by two tonnes. This spatial pocket can then turn into a pocket dimension, and there the weight of things will not affect me. I took only one sword on the hike, as well as blacksmithing tools, including my blacksmith's hammer, blacksmith's tongs, anvil, and a special magic furnace that works on my Ki and on burning monster bones.

All these tools were made of monster steel, or to put it simply, I extracted iron from the blood of monsters and carbon from their bones, and fused these two components to make steel, from which I made the hammer, anvil, tongs and sword. The furnace was the most difficult to make, I built it more on intuition, or rather on the experience of my past life, which I did not remember at all. These blacksmithing implements did a great job of conducting my Ki, right into the piece. In doing so, my Ki became twenty per cent tiger ki, so the steel was mostly made from saber-toothed tigers. Because of this change in energy, my regeneration increased by five times, and all my senses were also sharpened by five times, becoming beastly.

I also had a spatial pocket sewn into my system, where I could make artefacts, but with my energy it wouldn't be possible to use it, it needed more pure and neutral magical energy, but I managed to get some enchantments from there, which I managed to adapt to Ki. These were mostly strengthening the material by structuring the energy flows in the object, or increasing the sharpness of the sword by concentrating the vibrating flows of Ki on the edge of the blade.

Also from there I managed to get enchantments for processing materials, some enchantments I put on a huge vat, in which any liquid quickly loses moisture, turning into a powder, with which you can continue to work. I also created a vat for processing meat and extracting beast extract from it. There was also a furnace to process the bones, and a small loom to process the wool and create thread that could be used to make cloth. All in all, I had a small portable craft shop with me, and it weighed over a tonne, but I can carry over two tonnes without much effort.

In terms of strength, if you consider the ranks of the Guardians, I had four skulls, so I was a strong enough warrior that Veneg could let me go out into the world without fear. I was already regarded by everyone in Putra as one of their own, for almost every Guardian had a weapon made by me. During this time I got used to the Guardians too, even wanted to get a girl here.... but I was rejected, so after this unpleasant incident, I decided to have some fun hunting.

In general, as it turned out, the treasury of the tomb was filled with about twenty tonnes of gold. Putra used to be a huge empire a couple of thousand years ago, so its first Emperor was buried richly. Gold is certainly not bad at keeping Ki inside, but it clearly loses out to materials extracted from strong monsters. And for me, that's more important than a nice yellow sheen... especially with my silver hair, it's silver that suits me better. For an Empire that uses gold as its currency, a pile of gold like this is a real bargain, and as I walked through the town to the east of the tomb, I saw some suspicious pale-skinned people there, so I guess the Imperials had come to try and loot the tomb again.