Reaper of the Martial World 24 A Brewing Storm

Dyon sat up, shivering as he watched death qi escape in a wisp from his body, 'it seems like I underestimated this death qi… thank you…'

Dyon held Little Black in his arms as he licked his face. Looking into his adorable big black eyes, he patted his head.

"From today on, you are my little brother. Your mother is now my one and only master in this life. A master for one day, a mother for life. Once we get strong enough, we'll raise hell at your old man's clan. Then, we'll revive the Celestial Deer Clan," Dyon said gently.

Little Black snuggled into Dyon's dress shirt.

Dyon felt all of the memories swimming in his mind. Some had array locks on them, while some weren't paths in cultivation he wanted to take, but, a lot of it was useful. He felt that his aurora had entered the peak of the third stage, only one more push and he'd enter the fourth stage. He was happy to find quite a bit of soul cultivation methods, which was of course important for a clan that specialized in array alchemy.

Coming past a memory, Dyon smiled bitterly, "it seems like the massive array I passed through was actually a concealment array. I wouldn't have even seen it had master not wanted me to."

'You're the only master I'll bow to in this life,' Dyon bowed deeply, clasping his hands in respect towards the dead body of the Celestial Deer, 'The 25th White Mother of the Celestial Deer Clan… I will always remember you. Your disciple won't fail you.'

It seemed like the 25th White Mother was the last of her clan… the war of the Celestial Deer Clan ended in mass genocide. Dyon had a feeling that a part of the sealed memories in his mind were actually the details of what happened all those years ago.

After bowing towards his martial father, Dyon walked out of the tomb, closing the heavy doors to let them rest in peace.

'alright, according to these memories, much of the good things of the sect were looted in the war. However, the things a sect powerful enough to destroy the Celestial Deer Clan would find useless enough to leave behind, or maybe less important to pick up during a raging war, would be incomprehensible to the lower realms of the martial world. So, I think I'll check out the vaults too. There are a few arrays that the invaders couldn't break through too… maybe there's a method in master's memory.'

After walking for about an hour and stroking Little Black's fur, Dyon finally came to the weapons vault. As he expected, much of the higher floors were looted. But, the lower levels were filled with weapons.

"my wrist bands aren't enough to take all of it, there isn't enough space. I guess I'll only take a few then. Maybe a lyre as a gift to Madeleine? I'm not sure about Eli's martial cultivation, but I'm sure if I take a few, he'll find one he likes. I should thank Delia with a sword too… I owe Ava as well…"

Dyon walked along the shelves looking through the weapons, 'these are all master level weapons… These are what they left behind? How powerful were the weapons they actually took?'

The blacksmithing, and by proxy the weapons ranking system, worked much the same way the array alchemy system worked. Although auroras were split into stages, those stages corresponded to the level of pill and arrays you could form. The beginning was the common level, then the practitioner level, then the master level followed by the grandmaster level. So, a master level weapon was most useful to someone who had crossed over the Meridian Formation Stage and entered the Essence Gathering stage. That wasn't to say those of lower cultivations couldn't use them, but, just that the power wouldn't be maximized unless you reached that level.

Dyon found a sparkling lyre for Madeleine as well as a defensive protection hair pin. He found a short sword that had a white handle with lilies chained to the end for Delia. Since Dyon wasn't sure what Eli would want, he filled his wrist bands with anything he found interesting.

As Dyon was about to leave, a side room caught his eye, 'oh? What's in there?'

Dyon walked up to what looked like a door, but there was no handle. When he focused his gaze, he realized that it wasn't possible to see this door without his aurora. From his master's memories, he realized that this door was sealed by a special array and could only be opened by filtering in innate aurora flames.

Dyon's hands gently pressed against the door. It heated under his touch, before the door pushed in and disappeared upwards.

"This…"

If the invaders knew they had left this behind, they'd cough up blood with regret. This was a room the Celestial Deer Clan created specifically looking for proper successors once they knew their end was inevitable. There was one weapon of the transcendent grade for each specialty.

'and here I was about to give my Madeleine a subpar lyre when there's this here.'

There were 10s of pedestals, filled with short swords, long swords, flexible and rigid spears, musical instruments for those who cultivated the will of music, whips, clubs, hammers. The sect really covered all their bases. Although Dyon wasn't familiar enough with weapons to make an accurate ranking of them within the transcendent grade, he concluded that they were at least high level ranging from the 7th to 9th transcendent level.

At the end of room, Dyon caught sight of a ring. It swirled with vivid colors like it was the night sky and northern lights shrunk to the size of a finger band. Dyon picked it up and threw his senses into it and almost staggered from shock.

Inside, there was an incomparably vast world, 'since when could storage rings store life…'

The space inside the ring was at least 100s of kilometers. It was filled with fields of high level plants. Off to the side, Dyon noticed a pile of millions of stones. They were so high grade he had no idea what level of stone it was. He was only familiar with profound stones, but these were clearly more potent.

He was aware that common stones, profound stones and so on were actually used to help cultivation. As such, they were the perfect currency for the cultivation world. But, he was absolutely sure that if he tried to absorb the energy within the stones he was looking at, he'd implode.

'According to master's memories, these are Doa stones… I won't have a strong enough body to use these until I reach the peak of the Celestial realm… a step away from Doa formation huh… That's 5 full realms away from me. I can't even use these as currency, even if I disregard the danger, who would be able to give me proper change?'

Dyon shook his head bitterly, "if you were going to leave me wealth, you could have left something I could use you know…"

'I can still use them though… if I ever need to power a formation in the future, I could just use one. In fact, I could probably use 1 to power multiple strong formations. Also, these plants might be useful in my creating cultivation pills for myself in the future.'

Dyon slipped the ring onto his finger. His eyes flashed with gold as he diligently worked on a concealment array his master had left him. After failing a few times, and after hours of painstaking work, he finally succeeded in creating a 5th practitioner level concealment array. As long as it wasn't someone with an innate aurora, or as long as they weren't at the Saint stage which proceeded the Essence Gathering stage who had the intent to see through him, they wouldn't be able to see the rarity of his ring. In every way, it would look like a low-level storage ring.

Dyon was actually planning on doing this with the weapons as well. If he lowered them to peak practitioner level weapons, then, although they'd be coveted, it wouldn't be to the point of causing large scale wars. As his cultivation increased, he'd slowly reduce the concealment.

Dyon turned and was about to continue to place all the weapons in his new ring when he suddenly had a wild thought, 'Why don't I place the whole building into the ring? There's more than enough space… Actually, I should be able to fit the whole of the Celestial Deer Sect in it… Maybe that was the other purpose of the array master set up. It made the whole sect one entity. It should be recognizable by the ring.

Alright! That's what I'll do after I'm finished training. According to master's memories, there are a whole bunch of training arrays I can use the Doa Stones to power. It would be inconvenient if I had to come back here just to train. It's much better if I take it with me.'

"But first, I want to master the pill condensation technique so I can cure Madeleine."

Dyon was about to walk out of the room when his eyes fell on a long pitch-black sword. He hadn't really taken any weapons he saw before to heart… But this seemed to resonate with him.

The sword much have been pushing 7 feet long. It had a slight curve to it, and its guard was continuous with the blade, its only distinguishing feature being the blazing black suns rotating around it. Everything about the sword was domineering. It seemed that just by looking at it, Dyon would be sliced in half.

Dyon walked up with steady steps, a sharp light in his eyes, "You'll be my weapon."

ROAR!

The sword vibrated in protest, almost as if to say "a mere boy like you wants to control me? You haven't even understood sword will let alone sword intent. What about sword domain? Sword king's aura? How dare you!?"

Dyon looked on unperturbed, "I've said it, so I mean it. You either submit now, or you can rot here until I decide I'm strong enough to come back and force you. At that time, you won't be my partner. You'll be my slave. I'll snap you in half. I'll use you to plunge toilets. If you're lucky, I might even use you to scratch my back. Make your choice now and hurry. I'll give you 5 seconds," Dyon's voice was domineering. His eyes had turned jet black and black scales covered in shining crystals started to appear on him. His shirt burst open causing Little Black to scurry to his head as he looked on in excitement.

The sword was having none of it.

ROAR!

The sword charged, trying to pierce Dyon's forehead. An incomparably strong wind blasted Dyon, but he remained expressionless as the sword charged towards in head.

BOOM!

A trickle of blood fell from Dyon's forehead as he looked on at the sword. His eyes were cold as he felt the sword slice through his head. But, his eyes remained unmoved.

"you think your illusion will fool me?" he said faintly, "NOW COME!"

The sword fell into Dyon's hands, vibrating with happiness. A fearless and domineering owner is exactly what it wanted.

After spending time concealing its transcendent aura to that of a 1st master level weapon, Dyon finally headed to the pill room after changing into black sweats and a white T. It wasn't that he didn't want to conceal the aura anymore, it was just that his sword couldn't stand to be seen as so weak. So, Dyon could only shake his head bitterly after strapping the sword using a black master level weapons belt he found in the other room.

**

A wave of medicinal fragrance as Dyon walked into a pill room that was at least ten thousand square meters large.

'They really left all these high-level pills? Such a waste.'

Scanning the room, Dyon finally found the area where the constitution awakening pills were, smiling bitterly.

'no wonder they left them. These pills can only awaken 20% of a constitution at most. And that was at their peak. After so many years, they might be able to reach 5%. How would that be useful to a god level clan?'

But Dyon found the silver lining. There were thousands here, maybe hundreds of thousands. That was more than enough for him to practice his technique. He knew that a single 100% pill would require the combination of hundreds if not thousands of pills. But, luckily, he had a lot of chances. He'd start with 2 and increase one by one. Then he'd do the same with the cleansing pill, so Madeleine could cultivate like the genius she was.

Dyon sat down cross legged and began to meditate on the pill condensation technique. It seemed simple enough, but, doing it with just a 3rd stage aurora was near impossible. Although his master had said it was possible, the truth was that that was only true if it was a pill within the range of a 3rd stage aurora. If he wanted to do it for such a high level pill, he'd need a clear understanding of the pill and the technique. The only reason the 25th White Mother had even suggested this to be possible was because of Dyon's talent and his innate aurora, which made him capable of things a regular array alchemist wasn't.

Dyon took a deep breath, focusing his determination, "it'll be easy," he said sarcastically.

**

"Um, Baal, I know you're Tammy's cousin and everything, but haven't you heard of personal space?" Ava said quite annoyed.

They had been in the Elvin forest for quite a while, but with each passing day Baal got more and more handsy, and his eyes had a sinister light that was making Ava more and more uncomfortable.

"hmm," Baal looked over to Tammy, "there's less than a day left, right? Don't you think the others would have found the 'items' by now?"

'What is he talking about?' Thought Ava.

Tammy remained silent, trembling as she couldn't look her friend in the eye.

Her voice shook, but through gritted teeth, "I'll kill you with my own hands for this. Just you wait."

Tammy erupted with her cultivation and vanished before their eyes.

Baal's light laugh filled the dark forest.

Ava trembled… 'what's going on… Tammy's in the meridian formation realm? I thought she was in the 8th formation stage layer…'

"AH!"

Ava screamed out in pain as Baal grabbed her chest from behind, slowly stroking her leg, "I've been waiting to savor you for a long time."

She thrashed and fought, but the difference in their cultivation was too much.

BOOM!

Ava felt the air get knocked out of her as Baal slammed her against a tree, ripping apart her leather top and leering disgustingly. Ava wanted to cover her chest, but she felt sparks of electricity running through her, paralyzing her.

She wanted to scream, but the lightning coursing through her veins wasn't allowing her to.

Baal leaned into Ava's ear as she shivered, stroking her breasts with his hands, "how does it feel? Getting abandoned by your friend I mean? I wonder how you'd react if you knew she left your brother like this too? She's quite a cold bitch, don't you think?"

Ava trembled, she had promised herself that no matter what this sick bastard did, she wouldn't cry. But, what he had said had impacted her too much.

Baal gripped her breast tightly. Ava bit her lip till they bled as pain coursed through her body.

RIP!

Ava felt a cold breeze as her shorts were pulled away, but her eyes were dull, spilling out tears endlessly.

BOOM!

Ava's face slammed into the bark.

"How about we start with a little backdoor action? Hmm? Some physical pain? Then make it more emotional. How about it? I don't like the look on your face, not enough emotion."

A shiver passed through her as she felt something penetrate.

Ava made not a single sound. The dark forest emanated with sounds of cricket and leaves swaying in the wind.

SLAP!

Tammy watched on from high in the trees, tears streaming down her face.

SLAP!

SLAP!

'I couldn't save Arios, and I couldn't save you…'

SLAP!

SLAP!

SLAP!

Tammy turned around, unable to watch anymore, 'once I complete my mission, I promise I'll avenge you.'

SLAP!

THUD!

Baal stared at the dull eyed Ava in satisfaction, "aww, did you kill yourself part of the way through? That's no fun… I've never taken a dead girl's virginity though," Baal leered disgustingly.

A rustling sound came from a distance away, "oh? Looks like there are people who want to add to the fun… hmm, Ava?"

Baal's body flashed and appeared in front the new comers.

"who?!" Venus' voice boomed through the forest as she immediately jumped back with Eli's arm in her hand.

Baal licked his lips, "another beauty? Two in a day? Lucky me…"

A look of disgust appeared on Venus' face as she noticed something crude and unsightly hanging out of Baal's pants.

Eli shivered, but held onto his sister tightly. He refused to run away and leave his sister to defend him alone. Eli frantically scanned the area to find a way they might escape, but what he saw shook him to the core.

"Ava!" Eli trembled as he noticed Ava's naked and lifeless body lying limply against a tree.

Venus' face steeled as she noticed what Eli noticed, "Eli… He's too strong for me. I need you to run when I make an opening… We'll be automatically teleported out soon," Venus whispered in a hurry.

Baal slowly walked towards the siblings, "you're quite cute too little boy, I haven't had boy meat in a long time. How about I taste you too?"

Venus and Eli were going to react, but it was already too late…

BOOM!

Venus was sent flying, her clothes charred by an arc of lightning, blowing away in ashes under the night sky.

"SISTER!" Tears streamed down Eli's face as he looked at Baal in hatred.

"THERE'S THE EMOTION I WAS LOOKING FOR! YOU'VE WOKEN ME UP!" Baal's member stood disgustingly at full mast as he licked his lips.

"AARRGHHH"

Baal grabbed a fist full of Eli's hair, licking the tears off of his face, "how thoughtful of you, salting yourself up for me"

Eli sent a kick flying at Baal's knee, but could only despair as he noticed Baal's lack of a reaction.

"kicking me? That's not so nice you know… Maybe as punishment I should make you watch me take your sister first? Hmm?"

Baal dragged Eli over to where his sister was lying unconscious, pressing Eli's face firmly against her exposed chest. Eli's tears wouldn't stop. He couldn't understand how sick and demented a person had to be to do this.

"your sister has quite an ample bosom, don't you think?" Baal grabbed a fist full, making Eli watch as he grinded into it.

Baal's horrid laughter boomed as he slapped Eli across the face with his dick.

BOOM!

Eli landed limply on the ground. He could only watch as Baal rolled his sister over.

Baal slowly licked his finger, playfully sticking it up in the air to check the wind before sliding it into Venus.

"a virgin, hmm?" Baal slapped Venus awake, "hey you, no sleeping."

Venus groaned, jumping back in horror as she noticed where Baal's hands were.

"YOU!" Venus had not a care for her exposed body as she immediately sent vines towards Baal.

"ELI! CRUSH FIRE EMBLEM, ICE CORE, AND FERTILIZING STEED TOGETHER NOW!"

Eli could barely move, he wanted to do exactly what his sister asked, but his tears could only grace the soil as he struggled.

Venus looked over in despair as she realized the problem. She could only slowly back away as Baal approached her.

"you know you shouldn't hide such wonderful breasts from the world… after you die, maybe I'll mount them for everyone to see," a sinister glare flashed in Baal's eye.

Just as Baal was about to reach Venus, flickering lights started to surround them, "FUCK!"

Baal looked on in disgust as he disappeared.

Venus sighed in relief, but then looked on his panic as she realized that the formation wasn't taking Ava's body since she was dead.

Venus quickly pulled Ava into her ring before rushing to her brother and covering them in a blanket. Tears rushed down her face as she thought about what transpired.

"I'm sorry Eli… sister's too weak to protect you," Eli could only watch his big sister cry as they disappeared.

What they didn't know was that they weren't part of the only tragedy in the Elvin forest… Everywhere, hundreds of students died as sacrifices. Their pride was trampled, their wills ignored… their dignity taken away…

However, what the Pillar families and big sect leaders didn't know was that as soon as they decided to harm Dyon's friends… their fates were sealed.

**

Thousands of miles away, in the hall of a dark palace, a crack resounded through the hall.

"huh? Ava?"

An elder ran up to a line of soul crystals. He knew they connected to the lives of the clan members. If one cracked, it could only mean that one was either severely injured, or dead.

"She shattered part of her soul?... She's pretending to be dead, she must be in real danger to use such a forbidden danger."

It was as the elder thought, Ava had suspended herself in a death-like state to escape the situation and hopefully protect her virginity. But, she had underestimated how disgusting Baal was. He was planning on continuing even with her dead body. If it wasn't for Venus and Eli, who know when it would have ended.

To Ava, her virginity was secondary. The anger she felt in her heart was something that would never subside. Now she finally had a target: The Storm family.

The elder rushed to the throne room.

"Leader, the young mistress is in trouble. We can't afford to lose her and the young master. It's clear something is going on at Focus Academy. For two peak geniuses to be killed like this? It isn't a coincidence."

"Killed?!" A booming voice radiated from the thrown. A man with fiery red hair raged as the floor cracked under his pressure.

"She isn't dead yet, Sect leader. But, she's shattered her soul. If we don't hurry, it'll become exponentially more difficult to repair. And, if the one who wants to kill her finds out she's alive, her life could be in danger. She's counting on us."

"Mobilise the assassin guilds. It seems this Focus Academy thinks I'm magnanimous because I let the death of my son go. No, I only think that a man should live under his own power. But, my daughter is different. I WILL NOT LOSE ALL OF MY CHILDREN. IF I HAVE TO DESTROY EVERYONE IN THAT ACADEMY, I WILL!"

"Yes, sect leader," the elder bowed respectfully.

The Sicarius clan was bustling. As an assassin clan, they normally worked in the shadows. In fact, no one knew that the Sicarius clan were the leaders of the assassin guilds. To most of the world, The Sicarius clan was a backwater clan near the edge of the continent. To the center of the continent, the Sicarius clan was the protector of the Royal God Clan. To the Royal God Clan, the Sicarius Clan was the underground network of the continent.

The might of the Sicarius clan wasn't something Focus Academy could face, unless the true Storm family revealed themselves… something they didn't want to do.

But, it was looking like the Storm clan would have no choice but to fight. With all of their geniuses, their future, being concentrated at Focus Academy, and the fact Ava was actually alive and not dead and would be able to tell her truths after she awakened, how could the Storm clan stand by and watch their juniors be killed?

It was looking more and more like the perfect storm. The ambitions of the Kami God clan, the sinister Daiyu clan, the oblivious pillar families, the helpless Sapientia family and Madeleine, the big sects, the angered Sicarius clan, the evil Storm clan… little did they know, in this clash of clans, a young 14-year-old boy sitting quietly in a pill room would have the biggest impact.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

alright. Coming war? lit. Dyon's anger? lit. Baal's perverse piece of shit nature? not so lit.

Follow me @Awespec on twitter if you'd like to interact

Chapter end