(May 15)

The festival has been confirmed.

It's going to happen on August 23! It's beeeeeeeeeen confirrrrrmmmmed!

I heard stories about the past festival from this granny I sometimes speak to at the sandwich store. She told me that she once saw a glimpse of The Flame Witch and that the previous festival was amazing; it was raining ashes from the sky, but the ashes disappeared when you touched it like snow.

The sky was bright despite it being night, the wind was cool while the air was warm, a perfect blend of temperature making it feel amazing to be outside.

The falling ashes would glow softly as it lights up like tiny flares.

The entire country would rejoice, and fighting would cease for the day.

But then everything vanished the next day including the Flame Witch as if the festival never happened and things resumed back to normal instantly...

According to the old granny's stories that is.

Well, that makes me hyped. I’m really excited, its a bit sad I couldn't be with my family but apparently they could experience it as well because the festival and the phenomenon happened across the entire country of The Flame Witch's territory.

And then there's William, when I spoke to him, he got really excited because he would be able to study the energy of an SS ranked. He explained how incredible she was to be able to affect the climate temporarily over an entire continent and country so easily.

Its like me, being able to create a tiny fireball, but for her it's a fireball the size of an entire country hyper condensed and perfectly controlled. She could probably recreate the sun, or so William claims.

(May 19)

Everyone seems quite excited, and people are working and training hard.

I hear from people around me that the city might hold a battle tournament and the winner might get something amazing, so this motivated people like crazy to train more! Or this might just be a scheme to trick us into training more... I can totally imagine Cornelia coming up with such a plan.

I've also been getting better! I can last longer against Briggs and Cornelia in a match, and I can summon stronger fireballs with William's teachings.

I can also wiggly around my dragon essence to boost the strength of certain parts of my body. My control is slightly growing and I can sense it easier.

Yesterday I tried using dragon essence against Cornelia in a sparring match.

When our matches started, I told her I was going to use it because I didn't want her or me to feel like I cheated by using dragon essence.

I was using a longsword as usual, and Cornelia used dual rapiers. She shot at me like a bullet, but I focused on my eyes and time briefly slowed down and I was able to barely block her attacks with my weapon.

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Cornelia seemed momentarily surprised that I was able to block her and smiled in response.

Then she vanished and appeared right beside me. Before I could react, she had shoved the rapier into my side which caused me to jump back.

She had grazed and cut my shirt I was wearing. Damn! That shirt was comfy! She just had to go and ruin it.

She got into a weird stance with her two rapiers pointing at me and I once again focused on our battle, strengthening my senses with dragon essence. I was so focused on our battle that even if an explosion happened I probably wouldn't have notice.

It felt as if the world blurred in exchange for this battle becoming clearer.

She shot towards me again, but this time I ducked and dropped down as low as possible onto my knees and when she got close enough, I streamed all my dragon essence into my legs and released it like an explosion. I shot up towards her at the same speed she was shooting towards me.

This caused her to flinch, but she was a veteran so she quickly reacted to me by slightly turning her body causing me to fly past her, and as I couldn't control my speed, I crashed right into a wall.

I felt a bit dizzy from the impact and was very weak, but Cornelia must've thought she should get serious and didn't care that I was weakened, then proceeded to beat me up.

Merciless... God damn. It still hurts.

(May 30)

It was Brigg's birthday today! Yea, we celebrated by getting him a massive cake.

Briggs was smiling and even more cheerful then usual.

And Cornelia seemed to use his birthday as an excuse to try and get even closer to Briggs.

Just go for it already, get married already.

Stop stalling, we all know you like him, just confess.

(June 4)

The hype for the festival was growing everyday, it's also been announced there actually will be a fighting tournament and the winner will get a secret prize, which no one knows but Briggs promised it would be a good prize.

The tournament was going to be held by the King himself and he will appear to watch his kingdom's solders fight. Briggs and Cornelia and many other strong fighters will participate as well, so I'm basically screwed.

You don't have to join the tournament but not participating if you’re a knight/ solder is like announcing to the king that you're not confident in your strength.

The tournament is going to be on the 22nd of August, a day before the festival.

Now most of us are training even harder, and Briggs's training is getting harsher by the day...

I feel like I'm going to die, and the thing is it seems like Briggs is training me specifically harder than the others.

And since using magic is allowed in the tournament, William is trying to cram even more knowledge into my head and make me spend more time training with my dragon essence.

William seemed very disappointed in me and kept sighing when he looked at me as if I was a failure. Hey! I'm doing my best okay, give me some slack.

(June 18)

I was sent on a mission, my first mission since I came to the new city (I don't think I mentioned it yet, but the city is called Maniholm)

The mission was for me to go to a nearby village (not the one my wife was in sadly) and resolve some of the issues that they had there.

I'm now riding a carriage by myself to the village, according to the report the village is experiencing attacks from monsters frequently and the mission difficulty was D rank.

I was suggested by Briggs for this mission to solo it and he said I should be able to complete it based on what he's seen of me. I was nervous but I was up for it.

.

The village was quite small, not too small but not that big either.

The village chief explained to me how every night they would hear monster sounds and would get attacked by different monsters every so often.

Most villages have magic barriers or walls to protect and keep monster away from them, but occasionally poorer villages didn't have barriers, walls or anything to keep monster away.

This village did have a magic barrier planted by a city wizard many years ago, however the barrier must've worn out or weakened. Even so, the amount of monster attack is quite unusual.

Just earlier they were attacked by goblins, and we were lucky there were only a few. If there were a lot of them, they could become dangerous despite their low ranking.

I easily burned them to ashes and went back inside a hotel I was staying in the village.

I'm supposed to find out the cause of these monsters attack, and report back on the situation so they can send a new wizard to fix the barrier.

It might be a new monster nest... or maybe a stronger monster is scaring these monster... like with the dragon...

Wait…

Why do I suddenly see a large flying creature in the sky...?