Chapter 47: The First Hero — Saint Knight Uther (Part 2)

As soon as this guy appeared, he immediately used his charm abilities on the creatures around him. But he didn’t expect that, aside from Donald, all these creatures were his summoned beings and wouldn’t be affected by mental spells.
Even when targeting Donald, he chose the wrong person. Not only was Donald protected by a high-tier artifact, rendering him immune to any harmful mental spells, but this demon also failed to consider basic factors like sexual orientation.
If it had been a beautiful female succubus, Donald might have shown mercy and spared her. But a guy in a handsome man’s guise trying to flirt in front of him only made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Though he knew such behavior was just part of a succubus’s nature.
“Stop!”
Enduring the discomfort, Donald waved his hand. The succubus, with a terrified expression, was instantly turned into a target. Until the end of her life, she never understood why he, despite the backlash from the contract, killed her as soon as he summoned her.
A demon of bronze strength might seem powerful in the eyes of ordinary professionals, but it wasn’t worth Donald using his Hunter abilities to absorb its power.
After all, the Fire Demon was a silver-tier being, its strength far greater than Donald had imagined. Aside from what was lost before absorption, only two-thirds of its power had been fully absorbed over these days, enough to raise Donald’s soul level by one tier and grant him the condition to cast third-level spells.
Some of its power remained in its demonic avatar. Before fully digesting it, Donald wasn’t planning to absorb any more. After all, since it was the same kind of demonic power, conflicts were inevitable.
Stealing demonic power might make one stronger, but relying on forced acquisition of external power inevitably led to various side effects. Fortunately, the Book of Truth regulated this, making the Hunter’s abilities more in line with the world’s rules, leaving few hidden dangers. Even if some remained, solutions could be found later.
However, if too much unabsorbable demonic power was absorbed in a short time, his own strength might not be enough to suppress it, leading to the demonic power rebelling. This could cause minor problems like magical surges or partial demonization of the body, or even serious issues like the soul being affected by evil and chaotic wills.

Another important reason why Donald didn’t continue to draw on demonic power was his own most powerful ability—demonic transformation—which harnessed strength from the evil Abyssal Demons, beings hostile to most human factions. Thus, it was not advisable to reveal this ability to outsiders unless in life-or-death situations. Therefore, it was necessary to gain more strength to achieve his goals, and killing demons to extract their core souls for soul power was undoubtedly the best option.

“Anyway, there’s plenty of time. Even if I can only summon a demon every ten days or half a month, it will still allow my strength to grow at more than ten times the speed of an ordinary mage. And with enough soul power, using my current energy reserves, it’s no problem to summon a hero as an ally.”

The only regret was that demons with strong spellcasting talents like succubi were extremely rare. Donald was particularly interested in their ability to absorb energy. If combined with his own talent for absorbing life force through spells, they could not only draw on the target’s vitality but also other energies like magic, and might even increase his own vitality limit—something that simple life force absorption couldn’t achieve.

Having missed this chance, it was uncertain when he would summon another succubus. Female succubi were usually powerful spellcasters at the silver level, while male succubi were even rarer than earth goblins in the goblin tribes. He, on the other hand, only had a bronze-level demon badge, which had level restrictions and prevented him from summoning demons above bronze.

“It seems I need to find time to create an artifact that allows for higher-level summoning!”

With that, Donald extracted the soul power from the succubus’s core as well. Compared to the nearly thousand units of soul power provided by winged demons, the soul of a succubus, with its strong spellcasting talent, was even more powerful—1,600 units, almost twice that of an ordinary bronze demon. Adding this to his previous gains, the soul reserve in the Book of Truth had now exceeded 5,000 units, allowing him to permanently summon a hero.

“Human infantry, musketeers, and other warriors may be absolutely loyal and capable of handling many combat-related tasks, but their starting strength is too low. Even if they have some potential for growth, it still can’t keep up with my own progression as their master.”

“A hero, on the other hand, starts at soul level LV5, possessing basic strength at the mid-bronze level, along with greater wisdom and reasoning skills—more than enough to serve as my right-hand man.”

As for who to choose, Donald had already made up his mind: a human hero, a holy knight.

Regardless of the abilities of heroes from other races, they are excluded from consideration just by virtue of their race, leaving only two heroes of human origin: the Archmage and the Paladin. However, the identity of a mage is difficult to explain. Even if a mage prefers seclusion, they will still be somewhat well-known within the mage community, unless they are an evil mage who avoids public attention. Summoning a powerful Bronze Mage like an Archmage will inevitably draw attention and scrutiny from all sides. Moreover, since one is already a mage with area-of-effect spells capable of causing massive damage, summoning another Archmage would lead to redundancy in power. Thus, a Paladin who can protect oneself in close combat and also possesses strong healing abilities is the best choice. Since all conditions were met, Donald decided to summon his first hero on the spot, under the protection of a summoned warrior. Creating a permanent summoned unit is different from summoning ordinary creatures or manifesting objects. The radiant projection of the Sacred Book of Truth before him caused the free elements within a ten-mile radius to gather in that direction, creating fluctuations that could be sensed by any caster within a hundred miles. The disturbance was no less significant than the one caused when Donald first became a Demon Hunter. Fortunately, the process of creating a character was much faster than undergoing a class transformation. In less than a minute, a tall human male clad in silver-white armor, wielding a long battle hammer, with a stern appearance, brown hair, and brown eyes, appeared before Donald. “By the light of holy light, to my most revered master!” Seeing the Paladin kneeling before him, Donald couldn’t hide his smile and immediately ordered him to stand up. “From today onward, your name shall be Uther—my first guardian knight, Donald Merlinar!” The newly created Paladin knelt down again, speaking solemnly, “I obey your will, my master!”