I Own A Brothel In Another World (Ch. 1-196)

Chapter 28 - A Wolf Amongst the Sheep

I walk down to the training area to begin familiarizing myself more with all the new offensive skills and the Formless Blade Arts.

Sirgia complies with my request and decides to spend some time resting in her room. And by resting, I mean most likely drawing countless designs and schematics, and coming up with possible solutions for difficulties that will certainly arise during that time. At least she's not going to overwork herself this time.

Cornelia leaves the mansion to check the completion of maid uniforms, curtains and other materials' orders which we placed on previously. Safi and Emi again accompany me to the underground arena. This time, I might actually accept their offer to help.

Before I start my practice, I remove the placeholder collars from their necks and present them with the beautiful, black, new ones. Safi gets the blue gem and Emi gets the green one. And Safi finally got her favourite maid clothes back after I brought them in recently. They look completely stunning in this full getup with the graceful collars. With their contrasting personalities, they would be perfect for our lovely poster girls. Just imagine the cheerful Emi joyfully dashing around the customers or trying to draw more of them by the front gate, while the kind and caring Safi just emanates an aura of politeness and observes her from the side with a motherly smile. But unfortunately, this won't happen in this cruel world for yet some time. Who knows, maybe one day.

The slime duo gets delighted with this small gift and Emi locks me down with her wobbling hugs for a good ten minutes while Safi rains down sensual kisses on my lips. I peel them off me as soon as possible, to not earn myself a repeat of our last training session before I even begin today's one. Satisfied by lots of mana-pats, they move aside and play with their dangling badges.

I start my practice with the whip. When activating the artifact, I notice that the purplish helix thinned down a bit. My mana reserves must have risen a little with the tier-up. The ethereal smoke and material whip both form a lot quicker now and I feel that I have much more control over them. I begin repeating the whip moves I used before and they are visibly easier to pull off. Spending a few hours on the training, I raise my efficiency with the state-changing relic and manage to complete the desired set of repeats much faster than the last time.

After recovering myself with Rejuvenate, I begin focusing my mind on creating different shapes with the mist coming out of the hilt. Looks like most of the conventional weapons are still too hard to imitate even with my vivid imagination. I must be too weak, or my Tier or Mana Control is too low. An hour later, I finally get to a satisfying point with modelling a shortsword. The amount of smoke and its outline somehow resonate within me, so I guess I hit the sweet spot.

I direct a clear and strong intent into the draconic handle and the purple energy starts swirling, forming a dark violet blade of a straight double-edged shortsword. As I expected, it's slightly wider than the dragon's maw which now bites into the metal, or whatever material it actually is. The weapon looks incredible. When held at different angles, it shines with a handful of shades of purple and violet, like magenta, fuchsia, slate blue or indigo. It's unimaginably mesmerizing when swung around. The weight distribution, length, width and grip on the handle feels excellent.

For the next few hours, I familiarize myself with this new form and recall all the moves linked to this type of weapon which I can still remember. Whip shape still feels better to use but having an alternative is great. Near the end of my planned set of revisions, I begin feeling like I understand the artifact better, so I check the Status and it shows me that I've raised the Formless Blade Arts to the second level.

Something tingly persists in the back of my head, but I can't get a hint on what it is. I decide to practice sword moves a bit more. At one point, my body starts moving by itself when switching stances and I feel my mana storming into the hilt. Seconds later, the blade dematerializes and I shove it deep into the floor. Tens of similar yet much larger violet swords burst out from the ground with a loud shiiiiing, crossing each other in a narrow, few meter long path of death. I pull the hilt up and they retract into the ground too, disappearing within purplish smoke.