Becoming Merth

The mask was like water, melting into Minos's face, fusing completely. At this point, even if someone ran their fingers along Minos's face, they wouldn't be able to tell anything.

His appearance wasn't the only thing that changed, Minos could also feel the mask's powers slowly morphing his own body, causing his bones and flesh to slowly shift, taking on Merth's appearance.

After another ten minutes, the entire change was complete. Minos couldn't help but look down at his hands that had changed completely with shock and amazement.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Venix asked from the side with a laugh. Of course, at this point his appearance had also completely changed, looking like Ikki.

"Amazing!" Minos said as he pinched Venix's face in an attempt to find a weakness.

But even after twisting Venix's face like putty, nothing changed, and his appearance as Ikki seemed 100% natural.

"You don't have to test these things, they're pretty much fool-proof." Venix said with an arrogant laugh.

"Alright, let's not waste anymore time, we have to devour these two's souls before they dissipate." Venix said, reminding Minos.

Minos nodded, and sat cross-legged beside Merth as he began running the Soul-Devouring Art he had already mastered during his free time in the last week.

Opening his mouth, a strange suction started coming out from his body, causing a white mist to slowly drift from Merth's body, flowing down Minos's throat.

Soon enough, the white mist was completely devoured from Merth's corpse, and Minos closed his mouth, as he began running the second part of the Soul-Devouring Art.

The first part of the Soul-Devouring Art was naturally devouring the soul, whereas the second part was 'digesting' it.

After running it for a moment, Minos began slowly absorbing the slow, memories erratically appearing in his mind as he absorbed more and more of it.

From being an innocent child, to a reckless teenager, and finally a blood-thirsty adult, Minos ran through Merth's entire life, as if he had lived it himself.

As Minos became more and more consumed by this onslaught of foreign memories, the Embryonic Rune that was usually hidden, reappeared. Three runes appeared alongside it, slowly rotating.

A soft power traveled out from the runes, entering Minos's soul and purifying it. Merth's soul, that had been absorbed along with his memories was being slowly refined by this power, like ice under the sun.

The process was slow, and would likely require months if not years to finish, but this was already incredible.

One has to know that the biggest weakness of the Soul Devouring Art was the foreign souls that would slowly pollute and destroy the users original soul, but with this ability, Minos essentially negated the Soul Devouring Art's biggest weakness.

Of course, given the speed of this purification, he still couldn't abuse the Soul Devouring Art, but at the very least, he no longer had to be worried about its side effects.

Minos couldn't help but further appreciate the magic behind the Soul Rune Ascension technique, realizing that he still had yet to fully understand its depths.

After spending a moment inspecting the soft power purifying his soul, Minos refocused on Merth's memories, which he had completely absorbed by this point.

The Soul Devouring Art wasn't perfect, becoming more flawed as it absorbed older memories, which caused the memories Minos had absorbed to become more broken the further back he went.

Fortunately, all of Merth's recent memories were still in perfect condition, which was the most important.

After summarizing all the memories, Minos got a good understanding of Merth, feeling like he could now properly play this role.

Based on his memories, Merth came from a small clan that wasn't too powerful, but was far better off then regular civilians.

Merth was the youngest son, hence he was constantly spoiled by his family, nurturing a nasty character that cared little for the well-being of others.

These flawed character traits were further emboldened when Merth's talent was discovered, and he successfully entered the Thousand Split Sword Sect.

A once malicious and greedy brat quickly turned into a blood-thirsty narcissistic adult, who had long since learned that he could get away with anything as long as he was strong enough.

Unfortunately for Merth, his arrogance would become his ultimate weakness, and without even having a chance to fight back, he died in silence, paying the ultimate price for his conceit.

In simple terms, Merth was the complete opposite of Minos, which would make playing him a much harder challenge than initially expected.

Beyond the memories of Merth as a person, however, were his memories of training, most specifically his memory of training a Two-Moon sword technique called Flashing Spark Sword.

Merth had trained his move to perfection, which by no means was an easy feat. One has to know that most people can never reach the perfection realm in their entire lifetime, regardless of how hard they train.

Doing so is proof of one's talent, and it was with this talent that Merth managed to just barely earn his title as the Ninth Son of the Sword.

In the middle of the field, Minos pulled his sword out from his scabbard as he went through Merth's memory of training this technique.

Swinging the sword through the air, he began training the Flashing Spark Sword. With Merth's memories, it was as if Minos was strapped directly to a rocket, propelling his mastery at a tremendous speed.

By slashing the sword fast enough and vibrating it at a specific frequency, one can cause the blade to ignite mid-cut, causing extra flame damage to the target.

It was this special nature of the Flashing Spark Sword that earned it its name, and made it incredibly popular among Two-Moon sword techniques.

Merth was even known as the Spark Swordsman because of his mastery of this technique, something he was quite prideful of.

As Minos kept slashing, his movements became faster and faster, the sword beginning to vibrate as he further refined his skill.

With Merths memories to act as sustenance, Minos took no time at all to reach Initiation in the technique, quickly pushing it to Small Mastery.

After a couple minutes, Minos successfully broke through to Small Mastery, but he had no plans of stopping, traveling deeper into Merth's memory of the technique.

Small Mastery soon evolved into Great Mastery as Minos devoured more of Merth's memory, getting a better understanding of the technique.

At this point, Minos's sword was already like a phantom as it flashed through the air, completely untraceable to a mortal's eye.

If one was to touch the sword at this moment, they would notice that it was scalding hot, and while it had yet to ignite, it was clear that it was only one step away.

As Minos was training, Venix was sat cross-legged on the leaf riddled forest floor, slowly consuming Ikki's memories.

An hour quickly passed like this, and Venix was still mastering Ikki's memories. Unlike Minos who had an incredibly powerful soul, Venix's soul was only slightly stronger than a normal persons, so it was much harder for him to absorb Ikki's memories.

Minos made use of this time to slowly push his Great Mastery towards perfection, and after another hour or so, he finally managed to do it.

Taking a deep breath, Minos again swung out his sword as he attempted this technique for the thousandth's time.

As the sword propelled through the air at a tremendous speed, vibrating like crazy, it finally ignited, causing a flame to quickly travel spread across the entire blade.

Having finally mastered the move, Minos was naturally happy, once again swinging out his sword, but using a tree to test his damage.

The sword easily cut through the tree, leaving behind a deep charred cut. If this landed on flesh, it went without saying what would happen.

Nodding as he inspected the damage, Minos reseathed his sword, sitting on the floor to catch his breath.

If someone was to know that Minos managed to train a Two-Moon technique to perfection in the span of two hours, their eyes would have exploded out of their head.

Naturally, Minos wouldn't become arrogant over this fact, he knew the only reason he managed to master the technique so quickly was only because of Merth's memories.

Rather than saying he mastered it, it was better to say he stole Merth's mastery, turning it into his own.

Of course had a regular person consumed Merth's memory, it would have still taken them years to reach perfection, but Minos wasn't regular.

Noticing that Venix was still busy consuming Ikki's memory, Minos decided to make use of this time to clean up the scene.

Merth and Ikki's corpses were still lying lifelessly on the floor, so it was about time to clean up.

Lifting the corpses up and tossing one on top of each shoulder, Minos made his way deeper into the forest, looking for an Amber Beast.

After finding one nearby, Minos dropped the corpses, stabbing them a few more times so the smell of blood filled the area.

After doing all that, Minos quickly made his way up into the tree tops, waiting patiently for an Amber Beast to come.

The wait didn't last long, and soon enough a fully grown Amber Beast stumbled upon the two corpses.

While Amber Beasts mostly survived off Amber Tree Sap, it didn't mean they wouldn't eat meat, and after sniffing the corpses for a moment, it began feasting.