Rise of The Demon General

After returning with Madam Lin to their housing complex, Amon returned to his routine. Practicing martial arts, cultivating, and studying poison. For the engraving, the basic was all that he could learn at the time. He would need to find a better book or have a teacher to teach him if he was to continue with that subject. Blindly experimenting would not yield him much result, not to mention he had no time for such a random experiment.

As for his negotiation with Lin Fong. The guy didn't give him any definite answer, but he said he would think about it. Amon warned him that if he tried to harm him again in any way, then the deal was off. He would cling to Madam Lin forever and Lin Fong could forget about getting rid of him.

Of course, Amon did not think that his warning would be enough to deter Lin Fong if the guy truly wanted to harm him. Amon was more careful now of his surroundings. He almost never went out from Madam Lin's housing complex except to do the missions for the minimum required points.

When he was doing the missions, at least Lin Fong didn't use any trick to force him into taking a particular mission anymore. He was free to choose his mission. He always took the second floor D difficulty mission, as he did not have the time to carry out numerous E difficulty missions that granted fewer points.

For the mission he took, he mainly chose a mission that could do solo. Firstly, because this mission was usually easier. Secondly, he didn't trust anyone to work together on the mission.

This solo mission didn't grant as many points as the last Greasy Horned Weasel mission, so he usually needed to do two or three missions to complete the required quota of his three-month minimum points. It usually took him one to two weeks to complete the missions before he went back to focus on his training and cultivation.

The missions mostly consisted of hunting spirit beasts, but there were also other more variated types such as delivering a dangerous package and collecting intel. There was also one assassination mission he had taken. He had no problem completing all that. The missions not only gave him practical exp but also helped him know more about this world.

The points that he amassed, he had no interest to exchange as there were no worthy items that were available to him. Even after successfully completing one mission after another, there was no indication from the Lin clan to accept him as a proper member of the clan. He did not know if it was Lin Fong's doing or another. From what he remembered, the big brother of Madam Lin was also not too fond of himself. But unlike Lin Fong, that big shot probably considered dealing with a kid like Amon to be beneath him, so he never took any action against him.

Madam Lin, who knew about Amon's collection of unused points, had brought him with her to the clan mission center for a personal visit with its manager. Although she couldn't force the manager to open up more item lists that can be exchanged for Amon's mission points, she demanded that Amon be allowed to sell these points for Aer stones.

The manager conceded. He was only prohibited to give out valuable items to Amon, but exchanging for Aer stones was not a problem. The clan had more than enough of it.

Amon was also happy with it. Rather than having useless points, might as well exchange them for Aer stones. These stones were considered the common currency of this world, so he could buy something valuable outside since the clan was not willing to part their valuables for him.

He must say this pretend mother of his was indeed useful, which made him slightly regretful to throw her away once her usefulness was done in the future. Just slightly.

Three years passed quickly. The mission points that he exchanged had given him 350 Aer stones, which he had not yet spent all this time. Lin Fong seemed to also plan to go with Amon's plan since there was no attack anymore all this while, but that didn't mean Amon let down his guard. Amon remained vigilant all the time. There were still another five years till their promised time.

The reason why Amon had proposed an eight years timeline was that the academy only accepted candidates of age fifteen to twenty. Amon was actually only seven years when he negotiated with Lin Fong, hence eight years was the earliest he was eligible to enter the academy.

He could not lie to the royal academy about his age as he did to the Lin people, because he had read that during the entrance trial, the academy would use a tool to measure the candidate's age. If he was found out to be too young, he would be sent back.

Within these three years, Amon cultivation had also improved greatly. He had broken through to the Strength stage of the Human realm a year after his first mission. At this time, he was already at the intermediate Strength stage of the Human realm. With his increased cultivation, he could take a riskier mission for more points. But he remained taking missions from the second floor, the third floor with C-level missions was meant for the Transformation stage cultivator. They were not something he could take on yet.

His martial arts also underwent improvement. Both his Hardened Bronze Body and Silent Swift Stab had reached Master level. His bronze state could now be maintained for a full minute and the defense it provided was also much stronger. As for Silent Swift Stab, his Master level allowed him to turn invisible during execution. It was now his perfect ambushing move.

With that, all his martial arts were already at the Master level. Sadly, none was able to be upgraded to Grandmaster level yet. It was indeed as Hei Gong had said, Grandmaster level was not something that could be achieved with just hard work alone.

He had looked over the other martial arts from Hei Gong. None of them caught his interest since they used other types of weapons. So he did not learn them. He did not plan to use too many types of weapons.

There were, however, the three arcane art books. He understood that arcane art was the type of art that utilized the world's elements. Just like those exhibited by Madam Lin's entourage when they fought against the Crimson Grimalkin. This art was much harder to learn than a martial art.

Of the three books he possessed, two of them required him to be at least Transformative stage of the Human realm. Only the last one allowed him to learn with his current Strength stage. He had started learning it when he broke through to this stage.

Amon found learning it to be very confusing at first since it contained the theory about the utilization of elemental energy which he was unfamiliar with. This arcane art was unlike martial arts that utilized the understanding of his body and its movement which he was more familiar with. He also had no one to teach him so he was at a loss at first. He did not ask Madam Lin for guidance as he knew she was not a teacher type. Asking her might instead cause her to view him unfavorably, which was not something Amon could afford at this time.

With persistence, Amon slowly understood the teachings described in the book. Arcane arts required mental control over the aether, which was actually not a single entity. It was composed of different elemental energy. One needed to isolate a specific element within the aether before they extracted it and used it as a fuel for the arcane arts.

The process of understanding and extracting this inner elemental energy took Amon one whole year. When he finally grasped the method, he could then start to properly train the arcane arts.

The arcane art that he trained was named Water Slicing Ring. It was an art that used the water element of aether to form a ring made of water. The water element had the characteristic of being highly adaptive. It could form any shape. In this case, the art was forcing the water to be as thin as possible into a ring shape and making it rotate at extreme speed. Any object that came into contact with the ring would be sliced apart.

This art reminded Amon of the spinning sword art executed by Lin Sora during their fight.

When Amon started to be able to perform this art, it took him around five seconds to form the ring from nothingness to the state in which it could cut a wooden tree apart. He was very disappointed by it. In a combat situation, he was most likely killed already if he took so long to get this art ready. To make matter worse, the water ring only lasted a few seconds.