(Oct 16)

“I need you to be our team’s trump card.”

Alisha stared at me seriously as she said that dramatically.

But I just bluntly ask her, “What the hell is a trump card?”

“You don’t know what a trump card is?”

I shake my head and Alisha just sighed.

“Okay, ignore that then. The point is, I want to win this. And I hate to say it, but I need your help to do so.”

“Sure... I wanna win too, what do you want me to do? What do you have in mind?”

“Alright, Team 10’s group leader is another A ranker like me, named Mona.”

Alisha was about to explain who Mona is, but I interrupted her.

“I already know who Mona is, we’ve spoken before and fought together once.”

“Eh? What the hell? You’ve spoken to her and even worked with her before? She’s royalty you know, right? Mona’s the king’s daughter and you’re talking about her casually???”

I just smiled awkwardly and nodded.

Alisha paused for a brief moment before she continued speaking.

“We’re getting off topic again, let me make this quick. I need you to fight against Mona. Mona is very strong, and she could easily defeat me in one-on-one close ranged combat. However, on a battlefield where I have free roam, I have the advantage as a long ranged archer.

One slight problem, everyone on our team is useless. I was being pretty confident during my speech earlier, but that was all talk, our team is useless without me. I can’t rely on them and you’re the only half decent person here.

So here’s the plan, you’re going to run straight forward searching for Mona and I will watch you from afar. When you engage in combat with Mona, I will support you with my bow. You’ve seen my powers before so you should know a bit of my skills and what I can do.

Of course, even with my help, you won’t be able to beat Mona nor will you be able to steal her badge, so don’t bother. However, knowing her, she’ll probably get irritated by the fact she can’t beat you, and will try to locate me. When she does try to go find me, I want you to go on the offensive and stop her from finding me, Understood?”

I nodded, seemed like a solid plan. However, there was a major flaw.

“So we stall Mona, but what next? Even if we stall Mona, we can’t win anyways unless we steal their flag or steal all of their badges.”

Alisha looked around, as if she was checking if someone was spying on us and whispered to me.

“I can’t tell you now, just trust me and do what I say. We will win this.”

Honestly, I don’t trust her.

I don’t hate her or anything, but I’m not exactly fond of her either considering what happened during the tournament with her.

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Regardless of how I feel, Alisha was my team leader and I decided to follow her lead. There was no real risk in this, as this was simply a capture the flag game and so there was no reason not to trust her for now.

“We should hurry though, the game’s already begun and we’re still stalling.”

I nodded and then dashed off deeper into the forest searching for people and more specifically, searching for Mona.

I wasn’t sure what Alisha’s plan was, but she seemed very determined to win so she must have some sort of plan.

Speaking of which, I wonder why she’s so determined to win?

She went out of her way to ask me to help her take down Mona and even riled up all the soldiers to beat Mona’s team.

Is she that competitive or does she have a reason to want to win so badly? Hm, oh well. None of my business.

I continued running through the forest and the trees started getting bigger and thicker as I ran on.

The roots of the trees were bigger deep into the forest and made it harder for me to run, and I would occasionally stumble.

It was annoying, the girthy trees obscured my view, the branches were in my way and would hit me as I run, the roots blended in with the grass below and caused me to stumble and slow down.

Overall, the environment was rough and difficult to traverse.

This… was quite annoying.

I could’ve brute force my way through and smash apart trees in a straight line, but instead I decided to adapt.

I focused on my footwork, nimbly moving while weaving around trees and branches.

Using the concept that Cornelia taught me with magic controlling, I ran through the forest like the wind.

This was fun, I was able to jump from tree to tree, or run along the ground quickly and efficiently like a squirrel.

Then I noticed movement up ahead.

There were two people wandering through the forest and they were both wearing a badge on their shirt with the number 10 on it, which meant they were on the opposing team.

Using my dragon eyes and my ability to see magic, I was able to appraise them and see that they were at around D rank.

No problem at all.

I quickly snuck up on them within a second and swiped their badges off of them before they could even realize I was there.

“H-huh?”

By the time they looked down and saw their badges were gone, I had already disappeared…

The difference in power between me and them was great enough for me to be able to do that. I had gotten stronger.

Even now though, I still haven’t fully registered how much stronger I’ve become, not too long ago I used to be a simple soldier just like the two guys I stole the badges from.

I jumped 2 whole ranks in less than a single year. That is absurd. My growth is astronomical compared to a normal person.

Despite this, I can’t say that I’m lucky to gain my dragon powers… too much stuff has happened… the dragon attack… the grinch… dragonification… the assassins… conflict between kingdoms and a potential war… my family being at risk… there’s just too many drawbacks to gaining this power that I still feel as if maybe, just maybe, it’d have been better if I hadn’t gotten this power.

But it’s no use thinking about ‘ifs.’

What happened has happened, let’s focus on the present and the future and not dwindle what could’ve happened in the past.

I continued running through the forest at a fast pace, searching for Mona and stealing any badges from anyone from the opposite team I could find.

Alisha told me to find Mona and fight her but locating her was more difficult then expected. I had originally thought that finding her would be easy because she has such a big magic aura, but the forest was big, and she must’ve been concealing her presence.

Tsk. This was annoying. At this rate, we could’ve lost the game before I could even find Mona, I thought to myself.

I closed my eyes and focused.

The world around turned black as I closed my eyes but slowly, I could feel the magic around me.

The trees, the ground, the plants, even other people, I could sense it all.

It was blurry at first, but the longer my eyes stayed closed, the clearer the magic around me become. My ability to sense magic became more and more sensitive.

Like in a similar case where a blind man cannot see, their hearing usually becomes more sensitive.

When you lose one of your senses, you rely on your other senses even more and causes it to become heightened to a new level.

This is usually why people close their eyes to sense magic or to hear better.

My range of magic perception expanded, and I could ‘feel’ the magic around me.

Despite not opening my eyes, I continued running through the forest with ease by sensing all the objects around me.

After several minutes, I felt a slight disturbance in the magic far to my right side.

I knew instantly what it was.

It was Mona.

I had located my target.