บท 20: Cypress Citizen
The Santuari continent was home to twelve human kingdoms and six mid-blood kingdoms. The Cypress Kingdom was on the edges of the Vad forest to the east. With only a wall separating the two. Since they refused to join a side and stay neutral, they couldn't expand their borders by taking land from over Kingdoms.
So, in its earlier years, Cypress decided to adopt a military tradition where everyone who could cultivate would be drafted into the army for five years and help clear parts of the forest to collect resources and expand its borders. It was one of only three kingdoms who dared to expand into the Vad forest. The other kingdoms were to busy fighting each other and didn't have the manpower and resources to expand their borders into the Vad forest.
Cypress Academy was built to further Cypress's military tradition by teaching and training the next generation to work in the army or the government of Cypress. They allowed foreigners to join the academy to help supplement their forces. But you wouldn't be allowed to move up the ranks or see valuable information about the Cypress Kingdom unless you became a citizen of Cypress and swore a blood oath to never go against the interests of Cypress. If you didn't then you would only be at the lowest levels of the military, and during the mandatory years of service hunting in the Vad forest, you would be used as a meat shield. But in exchange, you would be given basic education, magic spells, and weapons skills, and given a basic cultivation manual if you needed it.
But if you accepted to be part of the Cypress Kingdom you would be given the best of everything. Your class would be changed for superior ones and you would also take officer classes. So that after graduation you could be in a leading position where you could accumulate merits. With enough merits, you would be given part of the land that was conquered and given a noble title.
This was important because yesterday, the day before class started, after much thought Damien told Luca that he should be a Cypress Citizen but he didn't like the fact that Luca would have to do a blood oat. A blood oath would bind you and if you broke your promise, depending on how severe the consequences where you could even die or become crippled. Luckily Damien had a way to solve this problem. Since Azure Demon Foxes are deceptive by nature towards outsiders, they learned many ways to break contracts and even get around them. They passed down these methods, making it common knowledge to Damien. Damien told him that he knew a way to make the blood oath useless and the Cypress Kingdom would be unaware of it.
Since Luca wasn't a citizen of any of the other kingdoms, he wasn't against the idea of being a Cypress Citizen. But he was worried about Sergio's reaction, so he asked Griffin and Eve. They surprised him by saying that Sergio could care less about such things, since he was friends with people from rival kingdoms. Since Sergio gave him that badge then that meant that Sergio accepted him as a friend and since Cypress was a neutral kingdom it wouldn't affect much
With a clear conscience, Luca decided that after his classes he would go to the city hall where he could become a citizen. After that, he would go to the academy's registration office where his schedule would change. After the history class was over, Luca went to his next class, weapons training, with some expectations. But to his disappointment, the instructor was average at best and after he demonstrated a few moves Luca lost interest. In the next class, spell training, the instructor was also average, and he didn't learn anything. Also, he noticed that most of the students that he met in history class weren't in any of these classes.
During his third class, spell training, Damien told him why most of these classes would be useless.
"The spells that I've been teaching you has been passed down for generations, ever since the first azure demon fox was born. The spells that worked were kept and refined and those that didn't were discarded. The spells that I taught you are designed specifically for us, so learning any other spell will only be a waste of time, especially those mediocre spells being taught. It might even hinder you if you learn a spell that interferes with your other spells. The fact that your a high-blood also means you can only learn lighting and shadow element spells. As for weapon skills, you don't need to learn any new ones since you have range (dagger), mid-range (spear), and short range (saber) covered. Learning any more will only hinder your progress and distract your mind." said Damien with a tone full of pride when he mentioned Azure Demon Fox.
After his third class, Luca ditched the rest of his classes, seeing how useless they currently are. He headed to the city hall, not telling his bodyguards about it. With a map of the city, he walked until he saw an enormous white two-story building that had gold letters that said, city hall, on it. After walking inside, he got lost and had to ask for directions. He found where he needed to go and saw a big line, after waiting in line he went inside a room. It was a small rectangular room where a middle-aged woman, with a white dress, was sitting in the back middle of the room. She was sitting in a chair next to a podium. On that podium was a contract made from the skin of a powerful spirit beast.
The lady stood up and motioned Luca to come near the podium. When he was only a few feet away, She told him to put his palms on the contract and pour his primordial energy into the contract. Then he would have to chant the words that she told him to say they weren't Salvon, probably Shorus or something.
Damien told him that a blood oath is a popular contract used when making deals. It's essentially a curse that is put on the person who accepts the contract. The curse would seep into the person's palms and into the person's blood and if someone broke the contract the curse would activate. The curse would release a poison into the blood, which carried the poison everywhere in the body. Depending on how long the poison is in your system and how high your cultivation is. You would die if you were lucky and if not, ended up crippled. To signify that the contract worked, a tattoo of two intersecting circles would appear on the person's palms for a minute then disappear.
To avoid this, Damien knew a method where they would use the drain ability to suck the curse and trap it in a corner of his nexus core where he could keep it contained and compressed. This will stop it from entering his blood. He then could later expel the curse out of his body. But since the poison was still in his body, the tattoo would still appear. Nervous Luca put his right sweaty palm onto the contract.
While speaking the words he activated the drain ability and could feel a stream enter his body. Filled with the aura of death he compressed the stream on all sides and guided it into his nexus core. He tried to keep his concentration while keeping his face normal in front of the woman who was watching him. The blood oath spell lasted for a minute, and Luca was starting to get worried, but thankfully the spell was finished. He kept a normal expression, but he was leaping in joy inside his mind satisfied that nothing went wrong.
He lifted his right palm and saw the tattoo. The woman looked at his palm and saw that it was there. She nodded her head and said that she would give him an identification crystal that once activated would disappear into his nexus core, where he would give off a wavelength that would make it easy to identify him as a citizen of Cypress. Luca activated it and could feel it in his nexus core.
She congratulated him and told him that he was now a citizen of Cypress. Luca walked out of city hall. Once he was out of the building he speed walked towards a dark alley. He pointed his right hand to the ground near some flowers and released the curse. He avoided turning into his partial demon fox form just in case, which slowed down the process. Small holes formed at the end of his fingers where a purple liquid was pushed out. It fell to the ground and some of it got onto the flowers which caused them to wilt immediately and die in less than five seconds. The liquid made a small fist-sized puddle on the dirt floor. He covered it up with some dirt and walked off.
Finally, Luca was able to relax, wiping the sweat on his forehead and went to the academy's registration office. After that was over, he got a new schedule and all his classes changed but one. His history class was the same, same teacher and time. A lot of the classes had the word officer in them.
Luca went to the library of the Academy. Since he was now a citizen of Cypress, he had full access to the library and hoped to find some of the answers that he was looking for. He walked into the library that is five stories tall. The walls are made of white brick, with bookshelves made of the finest wood, and floors decorated with elaborate geometric designs. The first four floors had a total of 1 million books, and the last floor had 200,000 memory shards. Cypress Academy had the 5th largest library in the Santuari continent.
Walking up to the female librarian on the first floor, Luca asked her where he could find books about the Holy Alas Empire. The librarian looked at him.
"This must be your first time here. You see those small square tablets that are floating near every bookshelf. You type the book that you want to find, and it will list every book that has information about that topic. It will also tell you where to find the book. You can take it and bring it with you to find the books you need, just don't take the tablet out of the library." She responded with a smile.
Luca thanked her and went to the tablet, which is made from a clear crystal. It took him four minutes to figure out how to use it. It was clear, but on the left corner, there is a white search bar. When he clicked on it a keyboard would appear at the bottom of the search bar. He typed in the words Holy Alas Empire. When he was done he pressed "ok" at the bottom left of the keyboard. It then searched for the books and displayed the title of the book and where it was located.
After searching for an hour, he found only 5 books on the Holy Alas Empire. Which was disappointing, but it was better than nothing. The first book was labeled the geography of the Holy Alas Empire. The first page had a map of the Holy Alas Empire. The sheer size of the empire made Luca want to curse out loud. How was he going to fight against such a big empire? Since Damien could hear Lucas thinking he spoke.
"Luca your think about it in the wrong way. Who said you had to fight the empire alone? There are many ways to go about this, but to do any of them you need power and influence. That's why I recommend you become a citizen in the Cypress Kingdom. With this, you have the chance to become a noble and build an army. Even creating a kingdom is possible, I know that you seek vengeance, and because now you're an Azure Demon Fox you will never forget about any wrongs done to you. After all, we demon foxes love to hold grudges and never forget them. But there's no time limit for your revenge, remember you live longer now. So you can slowly plan this out, baby steps. The stronger you get, the faster I can get out of this prison."
Damien's words echoed in Luca's mind, and it cleared his doubts. Damien was right there was no time limit to his revenge. He would take it slow and make sure that the Holy Alas Empire would crumble under his might. He would first get stronger and build up a force that could strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. Luca grinned, and his eyes slowly narrowed when he thought of his revenge. His pupils elongated, and his eyes turned orange for a few seconds before Luca snapped out of it and went back to reading the book.
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