Demon Lord's Reincarnation

After that brief exchange with Frieda, Erste went back to training his swordsmanship. Now that he had superhuman abilities, and the enemies he needed to face were beyond any mortal martial art, Erste needed to create an entirely different form of martial art one that could deal with the Gods themselves. 

Erste thought back to the fight he had with the Old God Veseus, the move he made which he named God Slayer. It wasn't any fancy technique all he did was concentrate a lot of power into the tip of his sword and swing downward. 

'Right now it's an incomplete immature technique, I need to refine it into something more, but for now, let's think of other moves.' 

Erste imagined a New God was standing in front of him, a being with incredible speed, strength, and endurance, there was also the ability of mana in the mix. Normal sword techniques could possibly damage a New God or even an Old God, but it was not enough to kill them except if you added mana into the moves. 

Without the unknown energy he used last time, he was unsure if he could even harm the skin of an Old God. As for the New Gods the sword he had in hand was extremely deadly to them, but if he used any other weapon it might take some time to kill a New God. 

'I need a set of techniques that could penetrate their defense with a speed that they can not dodge to kill them with one strike. The Iaijutusu is fast enough but the attack is too linear, making it easy to predict. I need to do something so that the enemy will not be able to follow my movement.' 

'Circulating mana in my entire body increases my physical abilities, and the thing I took from the New God I killed made me able to control and use fire. I can also manifest my mana into something solid I can also unleash it like an energy attack which isn't as strong as just using the fire control skill. Hmm, there's also the mana emission and mana coating technique. Mana emission basically makes the mana within my body burst outward which makes it easier for me to use the mana coating technique. The only other good usage of mana emission is a sort of suppression to those who have weaker mana than yourself. Then there's mana coating, which is just coating your body or possibly weapon with your own mana.' 

Erste recalled the way he and the others used mana coating which is basically pouring mana into the part he wanted to be coated. Erste using the sword in his hand used mana coating and cut down a nearby tree. 

As he expected the tree was cut down with ease as even without using mana coating he could perform a similar feat. Still, he had a feeling that the mana coating could be improved. So Erste asked Gratz if he could bring some objects that were hard to cut down. 

While he was waiting for Gratz's reply, Erste started trying to create a new kind of footwork with the use of mana. Erste noticed that he could use his mana to stabilize his footing so no matter what angle he was in he would never stumble, it was as if his feet were glued to the ground. Erste continued to explore what he could do with his mana alongside his footwork. 

...

As Erste was training Gratz came and brought him to a private training room provided to him by Frieda herself. Inside the training room were several dummies that had varying degrees of toughness. At first, Erste could cut down the dummies without mana later he needed to use mana until finally the toughness of the dummies became so hard that his sword with mana coating was not able to cut it. 

"As I expected it's not sharp enough." 

Erste needed to make his weapon sharper and simply pouring mana into his weapon was not enough. Erste closed his eyes and sensed the mana he poured into his sword. The mana he was pouring was scattering in all directions. It was like the water from the ocean trying to head into land without any direction, he needed to control the flow and concentrate it into an area. 

Erste controlled his mana and shaped it to surround the sword he was holding he concentrated and made the mana as thin as possible as if it was one with the sword itself. Controlling his mana in such a way was harder than he expected, but despite that, he was still able to do it. 

The overflowing mana was now concentrated into the shape of the sword at hand, there was no excess leaking out. Erste casually made a slashing motion at the dummy he could not scratch and easily cut it in half. 

"Better, but I can make it sharper." 

...

While Erste was immersed in his training Gratz was just outside the training room standing in front of the door. Gratz closed his eyes and whispered to himself. 

"I must uphold elegance." 

Gratz opened his eyes and knocked on the door, he then waited for Erste to let him in. After waiting a while there was no response so he knocked again, but no one responded. Normally Gratz would have left already and waited for another time to meet with Erste, but not this time. The thing he needed to tell Erste was very important to the other party, so after knocking one more time and hearing no response Gratz entered the room. 

Upon entering the first thing Gratz noticed were the broken training dummies, each one sliced cleanly in half. Even those training dummies that he needed to hit multiple times to destroy were also sliced cleanly in half, meaning Erste only needed one attack.

In the middle of the training room stood a half-naked Erste sweating profusely as he held his sword in his hand. 

"Excuse me Erste, apologies for disturbing your training but I have something important to tell you." 

Erste turned around and in Gratz's eyes, Erste's figure suddenly became blurry and without any warning appeared right in front of him. 

"What is it?" 

Gratz who was surprised by Erste's movement wanted to ask how he did that but restrained himself as what he was going to say was important. 

"I have some unfortunate news to share. Your friend who recently gained mana went out on a mission... Nikki and her team were ambushed by several New Gods, she stayed behind to cover her teammates' retreat. Before her two teammates were able to escape they saw the New Gods torturing her with smiles on their faces. Yet I was told that even at the end she continued to uphold honor and elegance a human must have." 

Erste who heard the news of Nikki's death turned his back on Gratz, so Gratz could not tell what kind of expression Erste was making at the moment. After several seconds Erste turned around and spoke. 

"Honor and Elegance? Are those things important? What she needed was neither of those things, what she needed was power, overwhelming power that could destroy all those Gods!..." Erste paused for a bit before continuing to speak. "Gratz care to join me?"

"Join you where?"

A vicious smile appeared on Erste's face as he replied. 

"I'm going out to hunt. Let's hunt down those f*cking Gods!"