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Deep in the unsettling mountains, Kagami Lily who dressed in red held the blade of the Crescent Moon. The blade diffused a freezing aura that alternated between gold and silver, but that didn’t seem to petrify the group of demonic wolves with half their faces masked.

The pack¹ seemed to be the mutation of the specter wolves, yet they were giving out the scent of inferior mid ranked monsters!

Lily showed no fear towards these inferior mid ranked demon wolves, but she didn’t get careless either. The specter wolves could demolish a house with a smack of their paws in a split second. Lily would lose a tremendous amount of spirit energy if she got hit, possibly severely injured as well. In the previous fight against Hojo, she wasted almost all of her energy to block a slash. However, the impact still reached inside, which made her unable to stand normally. If that were to happen again, this skirmish could be dangerous.

“ARH—WOOOOO!” The wolves initiated their moves. The three-metered long monsters deftly jumped at Lily.

Lily managed to dodge the attacks with her slim physique and agile movement while waving her blade at the creatures.

Every dodge comes with the red afterglow of the blade.

The specter wolves began collapsing one after another. The Crescent sword in her hand had already been painted red.

“Plop, poof, pfff……”

Drowned in their own blood, their massive bodies toppled over in two opposite directions.

Lily swung her sword in an attempt to get rid of the blood. After a twirl of the blade, she returned it to the scabbard with speed and precision. It wasn’t easy to insert the blade this quickly, even samurai who were just slightly unskilled could end up slicing their hands accidentally. But Lily had perfect coordination and control of her postures. The fancy technique was a piece of cake for Lily.

Walking close to the deceased wolves, Lily let the blade absorb their animas.

Although these inferior mid ranked animas were quite valuable, Lily’s Cursed Katana could assimilate the soul force by means of Spirit Tempering. If she could secure the anima of powerful monsters such as the Demon Hound in the Cursed Katana and turn them into soul force without consuming it, she could save them for the future. She should be able to draw them out by using the Soul Patterns in accordance with the “Record of the Sword Sprite”. Lily had been practicing this for quite some time with the common anima.

Naturally, Lily would be refining these inferior mid ranked animas directly. A part of them would be stored in the mysterious space in her lower belly. The scarlet magatama in that space would then convert them into Blade Maiden Spirit Power and stockpile the spirit energy. As the energy level increased, her body would also become stronger as a result.

And the other half of the anima would be allotted to the Cursed Katana. They would undergo slow but steady refinement. According to Master Ehiro and the Record of the Sword Sprite, as the sword consumed more animas over time, not only would it become sharper and stronger, it could even perform a certain degree of self-repair too². Lastly, after reaching a fixed threshold, the sword might even level up!

And for the Crescent Moon, Lily had no clue how many animas it needed to level up, just like how she didn’t know how many animas she needed to level herself up. However, at the very least, she had a vague idea of the limits.

Low-rank animas could only empower the blade to a small extent. They would never be enough to rank up the weapon.

And so, mid ranked animas were needed.

Lily estimated that she needed at least a hundred more mid ranked animas to upgrade the sword to Grade 6. And that was worth five thousand strings of coins!

A Grade 6 katana would cost around ten thousand kan. And there was no chance to find one in the marketplace. Plus, what Lily needed was a Cursed Katana, and therefore she must forge by herself. Even if a Grade 6 katana really appeared in the market, it might not be as good as Lily’s Crescent Moon, which was further enhanced by a superior demon’s metal-attributes anima. And once this Cursed Katana ranked up to six, no katana of the same grade could ever come close to it in terms of quality!

Lily would have purchased the animas directly from the dojo if she had the money. But it would cost her an arm and a leg.

The acquisition price of inferior mid ranked animas were 50 to 100 kan each, yet the dojo was selling them at 80 to 150 kan! If this was not dishonest business, Lily didn’t know what it was.

Therefore, slaying demons in the mountains to farm anima seemed to be the only way out. Furthermore, this was also a good opportunity for her to cultivate her skills, that were only pros with no cons! There was no doubt that Lily would rather choose to hunt down the demons to sharpen her blade.

Lily could not find Sakiko after she returned to Takeshita. So she rested for some days and traveled south to Mount Izu to continue her training. She wasn’t at all worried due to the wide expanse of Kamakura and this area was beyond the Hojo clan’s influence.

Lily also sent Shiu to monitor the movement of the Hojo clan before she set out.³ The message sent back was that Hojo Dijon had returned to his territory with his remaining underlings. It was easy to track down those buffed up samurais who carried around the corpse of the giant Demon Hound. Plus, after the battle with Rei, they were in a pretty bad condition. Obviously, fighting was the last thing they were looking for now.

Even so, her safety was not guaranteed. Lily slaughtered many in the Hojo clan, and even raided their treasures, the Hojo would never forgive her! But Lily couldn’t just hide in Takeshita forever.

Moreover, with Sakiko out of the picture, not even Takeshita was completely safe.

The safest measure Lily could take was to keep pursuing perfection!

Blade Maiden had an astounding improvement rate. Lily wouldn’t need to fear Dijon anymore if she could match him in strength.

The remains of these inferior mid ranked monsters, such as the furs, claws, and teeth could be sold for a few kan. But Lily couldn’t really carry these things away. Although it was unfortunate, these heavy items would slow her down significantly, and possibly put her in danger. They were worth some money, but not the amount she could die for. As a swift female samurai, fast movement was her core ability.

Lily had been training in the deep mountains of Izu for 4 days. Although killing a normal mid ranked monster with her power and weapon now was as easy as pie, the rarity of this kind of monster was high. Lily had been searching day and night, but she only managed to execute eight.
It was sheer luck that she managed to find a group of lower-rank monsters today.

Come nighttime, she was washing herself beside the mountain spring. She bent down to wash her hair and in order to prevent the long hair from soaking the clothing she had to take her kimono off halfway to her waist. Her arms and shoulders were completely exposed whilst the kimono was held in between her breasts, leaving her beautiful back to glow white under the moonlight.⁴

If a bandit or ronin who passed by and saw such ‘scenery’, they might not be able to hold back their sexual aggression. But the consequence of that would be lethal.⁵

1. Silva: you don’t really use “pride” for wolves, do you?
   Robinxen: And here we see the rare instance of Silva learning from the time he used “herd of wolves”
2. Robinxen: Self repairing is such a cheat skill for a sword, which have ludicrous maintenance demands.
3. Robinxen: Shiu…..so your life of errands continues.
4. Robinxen: I DEMAND ART!
5. Robinxen: But she’s a guy…