A Demon's Journey

Nearly a week had passed since Azaroth's retainers had undergone their training in those elemental training arrays constructed by him.

Many things had changed in this one week. Firstly, many laborers had come to Kloras Town from different towns and cities.

This was all due to Tronte spreading the news about Kloras Town. Azaroth asked him to spread the news that he was willing to hire laborers and will provide them with food and shelter.

Just this promise was enough for many laborers to turn up at Kloras Town. Even the Lords or Mayors of those towns or cities were more than happy to see these people leaving.

Once they arrived in Kloras Town, Azaroth immediately got them to work. He had already prepared the designs for the building.

There were also some architects and engineers sent by Tronte and they assisted these laborers in creating the houses.

There was no shortage of wood in the vicinity of Kloras Town, thanks to the vast forest.

In terms of administrating Kloras Town, the first step and that was the settlement of workers had gone perfectly.

Now, he had to wait for these individuals to finish building lodgings for themselves before beginning to create more houses for the general public.

With this, he could pull over parts general public to live in Kloras Town as well. After that, it would be a standard way of increasing the population slowly and steadily.

As for his retainers, Noah and Tiana were the ones who displayed the greatest improvements. Their improvements were related to the fact that they held no knowledge on how to use their elements and were now proficient in controlling them.

Noah controlled his wind element and thought of different ways to complement it with his sword qi. He found out that he could make his Sword Qi even faster and sharper using the Wind.

He had begun working on mastering this skill. Currently, this skill required quite a bit of his Ardor. If he used it all the time then he would be out of Ardor after 10 or so moves.

However, the power generated by the combination of these two was amazing. Noah had even felt as if there was nothing he couldn't cut in the same realm.

Meanwhile, Tiana had just begun to use her Ice Element. Azaroth was proficient in many Ice Techniques because he possessed this element in his previous life. Even though he no longer possessed the techniques now, teaching some of his techniques to Tiana didn't take too much time.

At the very least, Tiana and Noah could hold a normal battle against each other while using their elements.

Tiana's combat experience and risen by a lot as she fought against Noah. She never won against him but in every fight, she felt as if she learned something new.

She'd be reminded of her errors at times, and she'd get a sense of how she should have handled her aspects at other times.

As she fought against Noah, she painfully became aware of just how weak she was. She couldn't even defeat a little kid.

And deep inside her mind, a strong desire was born. She wanted to defeat Noah. Even if it was only once, she wanted to defeat him by her own power.

Every time Noah fought Tiana, he would feel as if she was prepared to deal with all his previous attacks hence he would choose new ways to fight her.

Azaroth asked Noah to work on the soft part of his wind after mastering the sharp wind edges.

Noah didn't understand what Azaroth meant clearly so Azaroth gave him a demonstration.

He controlled the Wind Ardor around them in such a way that it carried their bodies in the air.

Noah felt Azaroth's Wind around his body but it didn't feel sharp at all. This was unlike his own wind energy that always felt as if it was a sharp blade, ready to cut the opponent.

"Your skill should be so good that you can control your element according to your whims."

This was something Azaroth told both of them.

The two were quite motivated and planned to get even better.

Azaroth mainly focused on Noah and Tiana but he didn't neglect others as well.

He observed others' training as well.

Yrellea had an idea what Azaroth was talking about. While training with Sargan, she had once blocked Sargan's lightning attack with water. And surprisingly, the water had effortlessly blocked that attack.

However, Yrellea recognized it was a fluke, and when she tried it again, she was struck by Lightning.

Azaroth had seen that Yrellea managed to use Pure Water by fluke and he halted any thoughts of helping her.

He thought it would be better if she displayed the properties of the pure water to her but it no longer appeared necessary.

Now that Yrellea had used Pure Water, whether it was by her skill or fluke, she would want to master his skill at all costs.

In a sense, she had already taken a bite of the target and this had just made her hungrier. Her desire and focus to master this skill had increased greatly.

But even though her desire and concentration were at their peak, she didn't have enough time to experiment more with her Water Element.

Sargan's training had gone quite well. As he fought against Yrellea, he found that he had to constantly be on the move to attack her.

Thus, Sargan began to focus on the accuracy and power of his long-ranged attacks. One such attack was Lightning Bullet.

If he succeeded in mastering it, he could kill his enemies from far. It would be extremely useful against those gnomes.

By nature, those gnomes wouldn't move much from their position. They could control the Earth around them so it wasn't necessary for them to move.

However, Sargan could take advantage of this fact now.

Because Yrellea had tried her best to dodge his attacks, Sargan had to focus more and increase his accuracy.

However, the accuracy of long-ranged attacks wasn't something that could be significantly improved in just one week.

The only thing Sargan could feel was that he was on the right track.

Azaroth observed their training from a distance and was satisfied with them. Sargan was the one who was planning their training and until now, it was going quite well.

And lastly were Laura and Ralph.

From a specific standpoint, their duo was the one with the best pairing among the three. Their spars would result in a draw nearly every time before one of them would grab victory.

According to their scores, Laura was the one with a slight edge over Ralph right now.

Laura and Ralph's duo had made the second greatest progress. And if the overall skill was looked at, they were the ones with the greatest progress.

Laura fought from a distance and used her vines to attack her enemy. She also used some tricks to win.

Meanwhile, Ralph favored Close-Combat. With his physical fitness, he could dodge Laura's vines or even burn them before getting near her body.

Laura had to be constantly on the run and create more obstacles as Ralph attacked her. After every spar, Laura would like she was about to die because of low stamina while Ralph would get up for another one.

Ralph had noticed something while fighting Laura. His close-combat skill wasn't as strong as he had originally believed.

In a certain sense, he had completely overpowered Laura within close-combat. However, if Laura somehow managed to get out of his close-combat range, he had no option but to resist all her attacks.

For him, this was not an optimum way of fighting. He had to learn how to be dangerous from long range as well. If he could do so, he would have eliminated his main weakness.

Moreover, there was something else he learned to do. He could now burst the flames out from any part of his body.

He first utilized it when Laura had used her vines to trap his feet. To free himself, Ralph just did what his instincts screamed at him and burst out a strong Ardor in his feet.

And surprisingly, flames burst out of his feet.

He was shocked but happy. He now felt that he had another weapon to fight against those Ice Trolls. If he could master this skill and constantly release the heat from his body then he could boost his attacks and make it atleast nullify the elemental suppression from the surroundings.

Ralph wasn't just the one who had improved. Laura had undergone massive improvements as well.

The first was that she had realized that her capacity to fight from a distance was limited and that it would not be effective against genuinely swift opponents.

Thus, she had now begun to think of ways to attack in close range as well.

Laura could now cover her punches with wood and attack her enemies. Although her close combat techniques were rather low-class, this was still better than nothing.

Next, she was getting faster in conjuring up her wood. She guessed that if she was fast enough, she would be able to fight in close combat without even moving her body.

The wood created from the ground would strike the opponent.

However, increasing her conjuring speed was harder than she thought. It seemed that she would have to practice it until she could do it by instinct.

This meant she would require some months of training rather than weeks to master this skill.

Azaroth was also satisfied with their training.

He had observed all his retainers and according to him, the one who would first deal with defeat the Elemental Array was either Sargan or Laura. The two were very skillful and tricky. They also knew how to use their element quite well.

It would be difficult for Noah to complete his trial because he had to defeat thrice the number of enemies as compared to his peers.

Moreover, these enemies were incredibly skilled and would assist their comrades.

If Noah's elemental trial consisted of dealing with only one kind of elemental minions, he would have probably beaten it on his first try.

However, this was because Noah possessed the Enlightened Sword Heart.

Also, this time, Noah would be using Wind Element as well. And instead of helping him, his own element was going to be his greatest adversary. Because his ardor would be exhausted more quickly if he used the Wind Element.

Noah had to think and understand just how and when he should use the Wind Element. If he used it recklessly, he wouldn't be able to fight at his full power for long.

But after today's elemental training results, Azaroth realized that he was worried for nothing.

Sargan and Laura had even managed to beat the training array!