Chapter 18: Dragon Canyon And The Church's Attack

Right now we are in the Dragon Canyon standing in front of an Earth Dragon, all four of us, with me, Shin, and Seth directly in front of the Earth Dragon and Loti is 50m behind us.

The Earth Dragon is a 5m high T-Rex looking reptile but the difference is that the arms of the Earth Dragon are long and big unlike the T-Rex's arms and the Earth Dragon has very big claws, its claws look like very sharp curved swords, and more than that, the Earth Dragons are able to use magic, it's the so-called Dragon's Breath, but each Earth Dragon is able to use at least two attribute breaths and that's not the only way the Earth Dragons are able to use magic through, they are able to clad their whole bodies with magic power as well, their species is the source of the Ryuken after all, but they are able to add an attribute to the magic power covering their bodies, that's why I want to learn how to do the same.

"Shin in this fight all you have to do is to block the dragon's attacks and don't forget to clad your armor, shield, and sword with magic power if you don't do that their attacks will just pass through them and assault your body directly, Loti! Your role is to fire healing arrows at Shin from time to time and to distract the dragon by firing high charged arrows at it, I and Seth will attack it directly!"(Ryo)

"Yes!"(Loti)

"Got It!"(Shin)

Shin used {Taunt} to attract the attention of the Earth Dragon towards himself and used his shield to block its first claw attack causing the dragon to be stunned, but Shin didn't get away unscathed as blood is flowing from the inside of his gloves, but he did not stay injured for long as Loti's healing arrow healed him in no time, in the meantime I attacked the dragon by punching it and some of its scales where I punched it broke but the same could be said about my fingers, even though I used Ryuken when I attacked it just now but my control over magic power lost to the dragon's control over its magic power.

Seth looked at me surprised that I attacked it with bare hands and was looking at my broken fingers worryingly, I simply showed my hand to him as the effect of {Auto Heal} kicked in healing my broken fingers in an instant, the Earth Dragon moved again and attacked Shin and blocked the claw attack with his shield after using his sword to reduce the force of the claw attack by attacking the claw as it was coming towards him which resulted in him injuring both his hands, for both me and Shin, we must learn how to negate the effects of the dragon's magic power on our bodies, for me by improving my control of magic power and for Shin by learning how to sense the amount of magic the dragon is using and to channel more magic power through his shield, armor, and sword than the dragon's to reflect the effects at the dragon.

After healing Shin, Loti attacked the Earth Dragon with a Water-Lightning arrow to the face causing the Dragon to blackout for a moment giving enough time to Shin to retreat slightly, so she can heal him again, the Earth Dragon came attacking me this time and I dodged its attack and countered by punching the Dragon in the stomach and this time there was more effective to my attack than just breaking some scales, but my hand got messed up again, right then Seth attacked the Dragon by punching it on its left arm breaking its bones.

Looking at the way Seth attacked the Earth Dragon, he added rotation to his magic power causing the Dragon's magic power to be diffused in all directions before reaching his body enabling him to attack the Earth Dragon without damaging his own body, the Earth Dragon started rampaging and attacking us randomly and then Shin jumped in front of it and blocked its rampage with a shield bash stunning the Dragon and this time no blood came out from his hands but nevertheless, he was hurting and so Loti fired a healing arrow at him, this time Shin's injury was lighter compared to the first one.

The Erath Dragon was about to get up when Loti fired another Water-Lightning arrow at its face causing it to blackout again, I used that opening and tried attacking the Dragon on the head but this time by adding rotation to my Ryuken magic power, the power of my attack was greater than before and I successfully killed the Earth Dragon but this time not only my fingers got broken but every bone in my arm was broken.

"That's it for today! We will spend the rest of today training on the new ways of fighting we could grasp in our fight against the Earth Dragon just now, as you saw just now from Loti's attacks, magic is super effective against Earth Dragons, and so Shin you spend the rest of today training by blocking Loti's attacks and Loti you train by firing arrows made out of pure magic power but change the amount of mana you pour in every arrow you shoot at Shin, and Seth I want you to help me train by attacking me with Ryuken all the while changing the way you use it like you did to attack the Earth Dragon before"(Ryo)

I erected a huge barrier around us, and we each proceeded to set our tents, and after that, we started our training, Seth kept attacking me and I would block his attacks by using Ryuken and my bones would break every time I would block Seth's attacks, after 4 hours of the same training I could grasp the way to use Ryuken to block Seth's attacks and I could block 40% of his attacks, we kept going till it became night, and then we stopped to eat dinner and to sleep for the day.

On the next morning, we searched for another Earth Dragon and once we encountered one we started fighting it the same way we did yesterday, Shin used {Taunt} to attract its attention and blocked its claw attack with his shield stunning the Dragon, this time he only felt some pain and was not injured, I used that opening to attack the Earth Dragon by punching it on the stomach sending it crashing on the wall of the canyon, and this time my hand only went numb and wasn't injured, the Earth Dragon stood up and opened its mouth and attacked us with an Ice breath, at that moment Loti fired a supercharged fire arrow at the breath attack weakening it and then Shin jumped in front of us and blocked the weakened breath attack, and after the breath attack stopped Shin was left in his place stunned and the Earth Dragon was coming towards Shin at a very fast speed while swinging its claw clad in Lightning at him but Seth came from the side and blocked the Dragons Lightning claw with his fist clad in stone diffusing the Dragon's attack by giving his Ryuken clad fist Earth attribute magic power rendering the dragons Lightning ineffective.

After that, I attacked the Earth Dragon by punching it on the head the same as yesterday and killed it and this time I was injured but my bones didn't break, after that, we hunted two more Earth Dragons before going back to our camp.

In the camp, we trained the same way we did yesterday for three hours and night came, and so we stopped and watched Seth as he cooked dinner for us, during that time I took out ten Magic Stones from {Storage} and used {Create} to turn them into one big sphere and then I started inscribing magic circles on the sphere and after that, I used {Enchant} to enchant the sphere with Dark Magic, Fire Magic, Holy Magic, {Absorb}, {Efficiency}, {Mana Manipulation}, {Presence Detection}, and {Scan}. It's the artifact that Madi asked me to make, after that, I created more spheres from Magic Stones and used {Copy} to make more of the artifact, during that time Shin asked me…

"Sensei, why do you keep training your Ryuken without using your skills? I'm sure if you used your skills you could learn everything you are trying to learn now in less than a second"(Shin)

"The better I'm at doing something normally the bigger the effect of my skills becomes when I use them, for example, let's say that I'm 1 out of 10 at using Ryuken, and so when I use my skills then it will be (1xSkills), but if I'm 10 out of 10 at using Ryuken then when I use my Skills it will be (10xSkills), what I want to say is that the better I am at using anything the better it will be when I use my skills with it"(Ryo)

"I see"(Shin)

"Seth, tomorrow morning I want you to go back to the town and deliver these artifacts to them along with a letter to the guild master it seems that they are going to need them in three days"(Ryo)

"Is the Church going to attack them by any chance?"(Seth)

"Yeah"(Ryo)

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In Arnos, inside the Lord's mansion.

"You said it's emergency, Did something happen?"(Madi)

"Yes, Ryo, The Divine Blacksmith sent these to us"(Manda)

"These orbs… could they be..?"(Madi)

"Yes, they are the artifact you asked him to make"(Manda)

"Didn't he say he would give us the artifacts after he comes back from the Dragon Canyon? Why send them now?... could it be because of the emergency you spook of?"(Madi)

"Yes, from the letter that came with the orbs, it seems that the Church is coming to attack us for some reason, and they are going to arrive here in two days"(Manda)

"…the Church….well, I can guess the reason"(Madi)

"Yeah…. They must think that we are hiding Ryo in the town or something like that, or more like they are trying to get rid of this town since you refused to have a Church built in here, and using 'hiding a heretic' as an excuse to attack us"(Manda)

"They must have sent some spies to our town in advance and the spies somehow sent the information that The Divine Blacksmith is in this town back to the main Church"(Madi)

"Ryo had the same opinion regarding the spies and according to the letter, once the Holy Knights attack the town with {Divine Rain} the orbs will activate and destroy their attack and will kill all the casters along with the spies in the town"(Manda)

"I see, so where do we place the orbs���(Madi)

"One on top of the Lord's mansion and one on top of the guild and the rest on top of the watchtowers all around the town's wall"(Manda)

"Let's get to it then!..."(Madi)

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On the next morning me, Shin, and Loti went together to look for more Earth Dragons and before long we encountered one, Shin immediately used {Taunt} and attracted the Earth Dragon's attention towards himself and the Dragon attacked Shin with its claws clad in fire and before they clashed a Water arrow fired by Loti collided with the fire claw erasing the fire, and then the claw collided with Shin's shield and at that moment Shin did a shield bash to send the Dragon back and then another arrow from Loti struck the Earth Dragon on the leg caused it to fall down on its face, and then Shin used that chance and attacked the Dragon with his Greatsword and killed it.

"This time you two were able to kill one by yourselves, let's keep going like this for the rest of today and starting tomorrow I'll leave you two alone to hunt for more Earth Dragons as a team till you are able to easily do it and after that, I'll have you each kill Earth Dragons alone till it becomes easy for you and that will conclude our stay here, by the way, you can keep the Earth Dragons you kill for yourself"(Ryo)

"Yes!"x2

We went to look for more Earth Dragons to hunt, and when we found one I'll let Shin and Loti kill it by themselves, and in meantime, I was using {Analyze} to figure out how does those Earth Dragons add an attribute magic power to their attacks, and I could understand how. it's similar to drawing a magic circle of {fireball} and when you pour mana into it a fireball will come out of it regardless of you having fire attribute or not, but the Earth Dragons do it by having their magic power move in a certain pattern causing it to have the effect of drawing magic circles.

Each attribute has its own unique pattern and sometimes they would mix and match patterns to get an attack of more than one attribute, but the most fascinating thing is their breath attacks, the breath attacks are done by drawing patterns not only on the inside of their mouths but on the whole space around their heads and inside their mouths, whenever Earth Dragons use breath attacks they draw a 3-dimensional pattern on that whole space to collect their mana inside their mouths and to add attributes to it and to control the breath direction, and from time to time I could see the same Earth Dragon use different patterns even though the attack is exactly the same as before.

I spent that whole day on just analyzing and memorizing the patterns the Earth Dragons use when using their normal attacks or their breath attacks, but I also noticed that the Earth Dragons have their magic power circulating around their bodies all the time, they don't stop circulating their magic power even when they are sleeping and thus I decided to try doing the same, I started using Ryuken the whole time, I started by circulating just a little amount of magic power around my body by moving the stacked mana around my body in a certain pattern and will try to increase the amount of mana I can control by adding more stacks of mana and by increasing the space between the stacks.

I was successful the first time I did it while sleeping but the amount of mana I was controlling by the time I woke up was less than what I started with before going to sleep, and so to increase my control over my magic power I figured out that I'll need to tame the strongest Earth Dragon here and would have it fight with me for extended periods of time so I can improve my control and observe how that Earth Dragon while it controls its magic power.

I started by using {Presence Detection} and {Scan} at the same time to look for the strongest Earth Dragon and how many Earth Dragons are living in here, I found out that the Strongest Earth Dragon is living in the deepest part of the Dragon Canyon and found out that the number of Earth Dragons living in here exceeds one thousand Earth Dragon, I went ahead towards the deepest part of the Dragon Canyon while killing every Earth Dragon I encounter on my way and by the time I reached my goal the number of Earth Dragons I had inside {Storage} exceeded 40.

I found the Earth Dragon I'm looking for, it's a pure white Earth Dragon with red eyes, teeth, and claws, it was eating an Earth Dragon that it just killed and when it noticed me threw away the corpse of the Earth Dragon it was eating and roared in my direction, this white Earth Dragon is nearly 10m high and according to {Analyze}, this Earth Dragon is a mutant that is able to use all magic attributes including lost ones like gravity magic and space-time magic.

This time I unsheathed Scarlet and readied myself, the white Earth Dragon raised its claw and suddenly disappeared from in front of me and appeared behind me but I knew beforehand that it's able to use space-time magic and thus I used {Teleport} and appeared on top of its head and the moment I did, my weight was increased because of its gravity magic but I did the same to it and increased its weight with gravity magic as well and it fell to the ground under its own weight, suddenly a barrier appeared behind me and bushed me of the White Earth Dragon.

"Sorry, but unlike yours, my gravity magic's effect will not go away if I am not in contact with my target... {Control}!"(Ryo)

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The Holy Knights arrived at Arnos only to find the gate closed in front of their eyes, the Captain leading the Holy Knights only laughed at that and looking back at the Holy Knights behind him, some of them were mad at the Lord of the town because he dared to close the gate in front of them the Holy Knights of the Glorious Holy Church, and some were seething with bloodlust and desire to purge those heretics who dared to oppose the Holy Church and welcomed that hateful brat calling himself The Divine Blacksmith.

"Heh… Oi! What do you think you are doing?! Open this gate this instant and submit to us, and we might allow you to live as our slaves! And don't blame us! Blame yourselves for welcoming the enemy of the Glorious Holy Church into your town! By the decree Althalos Carac the Holy Cardinal of the Kazar Kingdom, all towns and villages that welcome that brat Calling himself The Divine Blacksmith are to be purged! But if you are willing to submit then you might be given a chance to live as our slaves! Now Open the damn gate!!"(Captain)

"Hahahahahahahaha!! What a stupid decree that is! You fools clearly have no idea with whom you are playing! That Cardinal of yours is as stupid as I always he would be! No, he is more of a fool than I expected! Why don't you learn? Why don't you understand? Why don't you see that you stand no chance? Even after being defeated multiple times by him why do you keep going after him? Do you want to die out by his hands that much? And as for us, did you think that we would submit to that trash of church of yours? This the town of adventurers! As long as we are not causing harm to others we are free to live our lives however we want! We are free to believe in anything as long as it's not harming others! If you understand that and wish to leave here alive then do that right now! And if it's a fight what you want then come at us with everything you have!"(Madi)

"You dare insult Our Glorious Holy Church!! You dare insult our great Cardinal!! Even your death is not enough to pay for that!! You heard him, men! These bastards don't deserve our mercy! They are the enemy of our Glorious Holy Church! Kill them! Leave no one alive! Be it old or young purge all of them! We must cut the roots of evil right here and now!"(Captain)

The Holy Knights attacking Arnos are 1000 in number, they were all collected from the neighboring territories over the past few days.

Even after watching Ryo counter their praised {Divine Rain} at Wolfia, they came to the conclusion that he was able to counter it at that time because the number of casters that time was small, this time they intend to have 800 of the Holy Knights cast the spell and the other 200 Holy Knights will use magic to attack the town from over the wall.

The 800 Holy Knights started chanting the spell and at the same time the 200 other Holy Knights started using attack magic and aimed at above the town's wall, their goal is for their attacks to land on the town behind the wall while ignoring the soldiers and adventurers positioned on top of the wall, but their attacks were stopped by an invisible wall made out of mana, a barrier was erected to protect the town from normal attack magic.

"Tsk… those bastards have erected a barrier!... you leave me no choice…(Oi, try to look for the barrier post on your side and destroy it!)…. Keep attacking! No barrier is able to stand on our way!"(Captain)

The Captain of the Holy Knights sent to the spy they had inside the town instructions to destroy the barrier post using the communication artifact on his wrist not knowing that the barrier post is protected by a group of S rank golems, and not knowing that the barrier is not just blocking their attack magic but the signals of the communication artifact as well and that means that the spy inside the town didn't receive the message just now.

The barrier was erected by the adventurer who came from Donatis on a quest, his quest was to deliver a Storage Box to the adventurers guild in Arnos, and through that Storage Box the guild master Manda bought the barrier post from The Divine Blacksmith's Gear Shop in Elven, and after that, he asked the adventurer from Donatis to demonstrate to the people of Arnos how the barrier post could be activated and the barrier has been up since then.

The soldiers and adventurers on top of the wall started counter-attacking the 200 Holy Knights with attack magic and arrows leaving the 800 casters alone, the Captain noticed that no attacks are reaching the 800 casters but rather than feeling suspicious about that he thought that no attacks are reaching the 800 casters was because he and the 200 in the front were doing a good job at protecting them.

After a full hour of exchanging attacks between both sides, the casters were done chanting the spell {Divine Rain}, because there is a large number of casters the casting time was extended greatly and it took them one full hour to cast the spell but that was worth it because right now they were done with the chant and are ready to unleash that grand magic on the town and its people.

"Now! Rain the Divine banishment of our glorious God on those heretics!"(Captain)

Countless light swords formed high in the sky during the past hour started raining towards the town, and at the same time swords made out of black flames shoot towards the light sword raining towards the town, the black swords numbered more than the light swords, and they all struck the light swords and destroyed them, and then they rushed towards the 800 casters, all of the Holy Knights were caught by surprise when they saw all of their light swords being destroyed by the black swords and were looking at the black swords with astonished faces and the next thing they noticed was the voices of the 800 screaming in pain as they were burned to death by the black flames.

"W-W-What?.....W-What is g-going on?!...."(Captain)

"I told you to leave but you insisted on attacking us and this will be the end of all of you!"(Madi)

The Captain of the Holy Knights couldn't believe what happened in front of him just now and started talking to himself but Madi responded from behind him, when he looked towards the town him he saw Madi with 5000 soldiers and adventurers standing behind him, Madi raised his hand and the Soldiers and adventurers moved quickly and surrounded the 200 Holy Knights and at the same time, a crystal orb landed on Madi's hand.

"This whole battle was recorded with this recording artifact and will be sent to all adventurers guilds all over the world, we are going to show the whole world what happened in here just now! And for your information, The Divine Blacksmith is not here at the moment he went to the Deadly Swamp, and he intends to clear that uncleared Dungeon, and the black sword just now was the effect of an artifact he made for me when I asked him to and by the time this recording reach all the Adventurers guilds the artifact that countered your attack will be installed on all towns that have adventurers guild in them"(Madi)

"W-What a-are you talking about? Our g-grand m-m-magic was countered b-b-by a mere artifact?! Don't fuck with me!! There is no way that a mere artifact could do that!!"(Captain)

"Believe it or not I don't care, and all of you are going to die here and now, and the spy you sent to our town was killed by the black swords just now, and the same is going to happen to all of your spies in this kingdom!"(Madi)

"… D-D-Daaaaamn Yoooooouuu!!-…"(Captain)

With that, all of the Holy Knights that came to attack Arnos were annihilated without being able to hurt anyone at all.

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Short Story: Seriously Who Are You?...

"Pearl-sama, it's time for us to head to the party held by the Prime Minister-!"(Paul)

"I am not going!"(Pearl)

"B-But…"(Paul)

"I am leaving this place right now!! I can't bear to stay in this country anymore!!"(Pearl)

"…W-Where are going then?"(Paul)

"I am going to the domain of The Divine Blacksmith! From what I have seen thus far he is far better than those Royals and nobles in here!"(Pearl)

..

.

"Marrd-sama, I am sorry to say but Pearl-sama refused to cook in your party and decided to leave the Kazar Kingdom and went to the domain of The Divine Blacksmith"(Paul)

"What?! That bitch has done it now!! Oi! Follow her and bring me her head! I want you to go and kill her in the most brutal way!!"(Marrd)

"Yes sir!"(Knight)

"…I think that y-you shouldn't do that…"(Paul)

"Who do you think I am?! I am the Prime Minister of the Kazar Kingdom! Do you think I would let a woman defy me and get away with it?!"(Marrd)

"…"(Paul)

After some time the Knight sent by Marrd after Pearl was discovered naked and hanged from a tree with a hole under him and the hole had burning charcoal at the bottom sending hot air up towards the hanged Knight, if the poor Knight was not found quickly he would have been slow-cooked there and then.

Pearl did that to him and left him there and left towards Donatis looking for The Divine Blacksmith.

She was able to defeat the Knight who came to kill her easily because she was stronger than him, in fact, she is an S rank Adventurer, one of the strongest S rank adventurers at that, and that is what Paul tried to tell Marrd about.

*Author Note: Thank you DestroyerMon for proofreading this chapter*