Life Hunter 65 ''Soul Contract''

"The general and common way to strengthen your body is with neutral magic" Arima said "You make mana flow through your body, it's also easier to do it while thinking about it like it was your blood going through your veins" He declared and at the same time, a blue glow spread across the veins of the figure projected, like to ill.u.s.trate Arima's words. Already at that point, a big part of the students learned something, they didn't know that making the mana flow through their veins was a better way. They never thought of it before.

"Then, after you spread that mana, you know that it isn't over, look at the projection" Arima told them "The blue glow represents mana, that's a matter of fact, and as you can see, that same glow is fluctuating and is not stable at all, it's sometimes bigger and sometimes smaller. In this state, the body is not reinforced at all" He said

"Then, do you know what comes after this?" Arima then asked "It's not a trick question" He added.

"We need to interact with the mana, usually by chanting something, to stabilize and control it" Irian said almost instantly, with a loud voice.

Arima smiled "As expected of the expert in the domain" He praised "And, yes, of course, it's similar to magic at this point. Then, depending on how you imagined it or how efficient your chant is, the strengthening will be either stronger or weaker" He said and looked at the projection "Let's go with something like this, [Diamond Body]" Arima gave an example of a chant.

Then, the blue glow in the veins of the figure started expanding and became extremely big, shrouding the figure itself. But although it became bigger and thicker, it also became extremely stable and every fluctuation disappeared.

"There you go, the strengthening occurred. But there is a particularity with this one, what do you think it is?" Arima questioned.

"The density and quant.i.ty of mana used" Of course, Irian said first "When you fill your body with that much mana during a strengthening, that means it will be more concentrated on defense, as the mana will exert a pressure on the flesh from the inside, repelling what comes from the outside" He explained.

"Yep" Arima replied "Now, let's try the opposite, [Bursting Force]" He chanted, the glow became a lot smaller but also glowed with a stronger light. Additionally, it started converging toward the muscles area and surround the organs "That's for explosive strength. It will help the muscles and organs to exert more strength than usually" He explained "Well, that's the base and you all know about it, you can also concentrate your mana in a single point of your body to make it stronger" He then said, the figure returned in mana less state

"Next, besides this one, there's also the elemental bodies. This one has more familiarities with magic, but I still will talk about it here" Arima changed the projection one more time "Of course, first you make your mana flow in your body" He said and the projection accordingly moved.

"Then the first thing that changes is just after. Before you chant anything, you need to integrate an element to the mana. It can be any of the affinities actually, elemental and non-elemental. So, strengthening your body with s.p.a.ce magic is something possible" He explained.

What he just said, he used it with Time magic, for example. When he strengthens his body with Time, he can move in a different time flow than the opponent.

"Then let's begin with fire" Arima said and the blue glow transformed into a red glow "You need to be cautious at this point. If you fail to integrate the fire element like it is supposed to be, your body will burn from the inside" He warned and the students instantly remembered to never try this casually.

"After that, you chant with something that resonates with the fire, something like [Salamander's body]" Arima gave an example. The red glow expanded to perfectly cover the figure. It wasn't like the glow was shrouding it, but more like it was fusing with the figure.

"Well, that thing is not enough to show you that clearly" Arima said and the light returned into the room, the projection also disappeared.

Arima stood up and the students were a bit surprised. The former's sigil revolved and then he snapped his fingers. Him, along with all the people in the room, disappeared.

**************************************

Every student, before they could realize what was happening, found themselves on a barren land, with nothing at the horizon. They fell in daze and the sudden change of sight.

"Well" They were awakened by Arima's nonchalant voice "Don't mind too much, I just teleported you here" He said explain them the situation. Although they mind were in a mess because they weren't at a level where they could even imagine doing that, they stabilized quickly.

"I just brought you here to give you an example" Arima said to them. He cracked his body a bit then circulated his mana in his whole body. And since he talked about fire earlier, he added the fire element. The temperature in the surroundings raised, and although it was supposed to happen in Arima's body, his students felt it clearly.

"[Hephaestus]" Arima chanted the name of a fire divinity. His body started making some cracking noises. His skin slowly turned red like magma rocks. His pupils, iris and sclera also turned red, with just some contrast between each.

A black fire started burning at his feet and his skin seemed to be on fire. The students around took a step back because of the heat.

Arima looked back at them with his red eyes "That's basically what happens" He said "The main point of having an elemental body it to immune you to the same element and also to be able to control that same element more easily" Arima crouched and placed his hand on the ground "Like this"

He said and the ground started burning strongly and became lava almost instantly. After that, he kept standing in the heat and lava like it was nothing "You can also use the strengthening technique we talked about earlier at the same time, it's bit harder to do so, but it's easy once you train" He said then released his 'volcanic' form while freezing the lave at the same time with ice.

"Let's go back" Arima said and snapped his fingers once again. They disappeared one more time and reappeared in their seats at the FDA. They felt like what happened was a dream.

Arima one more time plunged the room into darkness and the familiar figure reappeared "Now, next, shape shift" He said and his students were shocked.

"Humanoid species have great advantage. They can transform onto something else to gain a stronger body. But like you know, it's actually rarely used. Because it has too many down sides, it doesn't last long, it's dangerous for the body and can give serious sequels" Arima revealed the inconvenient of that technique "But, actually, I found a way to resolve that problem" He smirked and said.

"…" Silence, a silence generated by the shock Arima had just given to his students.

Arima smiled at them "Let me talk to you about something else really quick, and that's resonance. When one resonates with a soul beast, he can gain a body really stronger than his own. It's more or less the same principle as shape shift" He explained and everyone listened to him.

"For example, at the Republic, I fought with someone who completely transformed with his soul beast" Arima spoke about his fight with Raal. The projection he had made welcomed another figure, one of a bull. Then, the human and bull figures fused together and became a minotaur.

Ofia reacted strongly at that projection, because she knew that the person ill.u.s.trated was Raal, one of the strongest persons she knew about.

"Well, let's start from that point. If we can fuse with our soul beast, why can't we change our body in the same way?" Arima declared "Well, that's because resonance rely on the soul, it's not really the bodies that fuse together, but the souls that come back together and work together" He explained.

"While when you try to shape shift into another species or race, because you don't know about how the change should happen or the different details you have to take into consideration, it fails" He paused.

"Basically, you can't change into a beast or a monster because you don't have enough understanding of their biology, and you will never understand it because it would need an understanding up the molecular level and further" He declared.

Although the ones listening to him didn't know about something like molecules they still understood that it was impossible to accomplish with just themselves alone.

"Then, you can understand why resonance works. That's because the soul contains information capable of harmonizing the two bodies" Arima said and grinned "Now, all of you, open your note books, you don't need to be able to see it for that" He instructed and his students did as they were told.

Arima's sigil glowed and a purple magic circle was engraved on each note book in the cla.s.s. It glowed with a purple light that pa.s.sed through the darkness, allowing the students to look at it. The runes were In Latin, they couldn't understand it at all, there were forms like pentagrams and hexagons. But a thing that attracted the eye was the famous Yin Yang symbol in the middle.

"That's a circle I created myself, I call it the Soul Contract" Arima said and everyone looked back at him "Its use is simple, when you kill a beast or a monster, you draw that circle on the corpse, for it to work you need to do it in the five minutes ensuing death. When you do that, the soul of the creature you killed will directly fuse with yours, then you will be able to change your body and make it gain the characteristics of the said creature" Arima explained the use of that circle.

All of his students were already itching to try it. They couldn't believe something like that actually existed "But remember, it's really important, you can only do that once in a life time, it's like the soul summoning. So; you should choose carefully what kind of characteristics you want, to determine what kind of creature you need to hunt" Arima added with a serious tone, impossible to ignored.

"If you try to do it a second time, you will either lose control of your body or die, don't make that mistake" He said then interacted with the projection "There's also another use for that circle. Actually, you don't need to kill the target, if you can reason with it, then use this circle to fuse your souls. But in that case, you two need to have the same will, fight together. Then at that moment, you gain a pseudo beast soul"

On the projection Arima created, the figure was beside a beast and above their head, there was a blue sphere that represented their soul. The first thing that happened, was that the figure killed the beast, then collected the soul before fusing it with his own. After that, the figure's appearance changed and he gained a beast looking form.

After that, the image made a reset, and in the second scenario, the two figures reasoned together before fusing their souls together.

"Well, you got it. You can try that later when you want. Ah, right, Lanya, you don't need to. You already have an inheritance, it wouldn't work on you" He said and Lanya nodded, every student looked at her in awe, an inheritance is said be better than a soul beast, the people who have one are extremely rare.

"Also, remember that this technique only works if you don't have already a soul beast" Arima added "This technique is very useful and powerful, but I admit that it's a lot less strong than a real soul beast" He said and one more time cleared the image projected.

"Now, let's talk about the last method you can do to strengthen yourself" Arima then continued "This one is very special and dangerous, but equally strong" Arima grinned "Listen well"