Snake 10, Year 8693 of The Grand Wulin Era, Hou Mingzhou

Mingzhou here, I’m not much for this kinda thing but Alex said we ”Should leave a record of the truth of how we got to where we are now.”, and since he’s been doing most of the work so far I thought I’d take over for a while. I’ll bug that brainy lizard to take over later, and i’ll probably talk about stuff like blacksmithing or the first time that pretty-boy Alex and I made a Mortal Tier weapon together later, but right now I wanna tell whoever will see this about the first time we went on a training trip together. It was when we felt like we were adventurers, able to live like we wanted with no concerns other than keeping the people we cared about safe and sticking to our own morals. It was a good time for us, before we felt like we had to carry huge responsibilities on shoulders that were totally not ready to do that.

But yeah, anyways, first adventure. All three of us had reached the peak of Mist Sea in both Mana and Body Refinement. I didn't know pure Mages could do body refinement, but it turned out they could, it just wouldn't be ones suited for physical fighting, just stuff that made them hard to kill. Boring, right? Apparently, I had pretty strong affinities to fire and metal, to the point i had a dual element body that the old coot in charge of the Sect's Blacksmiths called the "Heavenly Royal Artisan Body" or something. I just called it the "Smith's Body" because I hated stupid flowery names that meant nothing. I wasn't very talented in the other elements, though I had enough affinity to smith metals and stuff that were elementally aligned with them, so about average I guess?I kicked ass with pretty much every weapon I could get my hands on, but my favorite was a quarterstaff. I could also kick ass using my body as a weapon, but that didn't have the nice meaty thwack of staff on unfortunate idiot standing in my way that I liked.

Alex had gotten pretty good at what he did, and he had some pretty sick spear arts that he would combine with his spells and his martial arts to the point where even though I was equally good with the staff as he was with the spear and much physically stronger, he could generally fight me to a standstill. My favorite was a technique that surrounded his spear in a mini tornado and used the wind from the tornado-let to spin the spearhead like a drill. He hadn't used it at full force during sparring, but I was sure that when he did, it would be so cool that i'd have to lay off calling him a nerd for at least a week.

That scale-headed nerd Avarius wasn't that great in a physical fight, though he didn't have to be. He relied on spells, the fact that dragons are damn tough, and some other stuff he wasn't willing to use outside of real combat.Dragons were often born with innate Omni-Element bodies, ,which meant they were, despite their incredible physical defenses, usually pretty squishy when it came to elemental attacks, and would focus on that when it came to defense. The dude had like, a different shield spell for every freaking element. I thought that was a bit weird, but apparently the Gods who created this place were really big fans of dragons. I didn't blame them though, dragons were pretty awesome, even if that doofy scale-head Avarius didn't really live up to the image I had of dragons.

We'd accepted a special mission from the sect. A group of lame-ass bandits called the the Black Iron Gang had taken over a town on the fringes of the sect's territory, and their leader was at the peak of Mist Sea. His top officers were similarly strong, and the only reason the group had been able to get a foothold in the first place was that the Mana Sea Warrior that'd been stationed there had died of old age recently.This was bad for the people living there, and was obviously provoking the Myriad Existences Sect, but these bandits didn't seem like a big enough threat to send out really experienced cultivators,so they sent us, well-trained kids who needed to gain some experience. We were to head to the town, arrest or wipe out the bandits, and return to the sect. When we were done, the sect would station another warrior at the Mana Sea there. What? Why would a bunch of 12 year olds be sent to take out bandits, without older, tougher bodyguards? Well,we were tough, and there were bodyguards tailing us, they'd just not help us unless it looked like we were gonna be crippled or die or something. I figured they'd sent some of our older friends in the Sect who'd reached Mana Sea or something like that, so I felt pretty safe.

It'd take about a week for us to reach the village, as the dragon flies.(Hey, scale-head, if you see this, thanks for letting us ride you on that trip, it woulda taken like a month on foot.) About the second day,we got attacked by Demonic Beasts. If you're reading this, I'm sure you probably know this, but Demonic Beasts are a subtype of Magic Beasts. Their bodies and pure strength are stronger than normal Magic Beasts, but they are unable to reach sapience and are even worse off than normal animals, who have a chance to gain a high degree of sapience through cultivation and become Magic Beasts. Species who are born as Magic Beasts are born sapient and have to learn stuff the way human babies do,though we're usually tougher. It's commonly believed that humans are a type of Magic Beast whose evolution made their bodies and instincts weaker in exchange for their sheer variability in terms of stuff like appearance, talent, and so on, as well as forcing them to be creative, variable, and ingenuitive to not get absolutely annihilated by other species. Demonic Beasts were a weird case, both envied and pitied, as they were very strong, but would never be seen as equals by sapient beings. Some of them even got domesticated to be like, mounts or food or whatever.Since Demonic Beasts diverged from normal beasts and Magic Beasts, there were often Magic Beasts who were incredibly similar, but not quite the same, as a given type of Demonic Beast, and there would usuallly be some awkwardness if these two types met.

There were about 5 Demonic Beasts surrounding our campsite. It was a pack of Iron Claw Wolves, named for well, the fact that their claws were tough and sharp, and contained a certain amount of metallic iron that had somehow become part of the structure of the claw. I'd forged with them before, they were pretty good for carving things like knives or spearheads. The leader gave off the aura of peak 9th layer Mist Sea, while the other four were all about the middle of the seventh layer. This... was going to be a slaughter. Sorry, doggies, Mama's gonna kick your ass. I shook Alex awake.

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"Hey, dork, get up, there's Demonic Beasts here." I yelled, not really feeling patient at the moment

"Just five more minutes, I stayed up late making pills. Wait, you said Demonic Beasts? I'll go after the leader, you wake Avarius!"II nodded, and he seemed assured.The pretty boy rubbed the sleep from his eyes, flooding mana into his anklets, bracelets, and necklace, which quickly expanded into a full suit of plate armor.It was a bit of a shame to cover that pretty face of his,but it was so cool to watch the armor expand, despite the fact we made the damn things together. He grabbed his spear from next to his bedroll and rushed out of the tent, ready to kick wolf ass.

I wanted to get to the fight quickly, so I stood in front of Avarius' house-sized dragon tent and yelled. "Hey, silver-face, we got freakin' demonic wolves out here!" There was a loud sound of screeching metal, and then Avarius ran out of the tent so fast it seemed like he teleported. This was a silver-scaled dragon about twice the size of a full grown horse, and a bit longer than two horses, and if I didn't know him, i'd be pretty intimidated. This was still an immature dragon, meaning that he'd probably be fuckin huge like Uncle Theo and Aunt Terra were in their true forms eventually. There was a flash of light,that seemed to collapse in on itself, and when it faded, there was a dragon-type beastman about my own age, who despite having scales and a goddamn snout, seemed to have a prettier face than my own. I liked how pretty Alex was, but the dragon being a damned pretty boy was almost insulting to my pride, for some reason. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, and I didn't usually care about that kind of thing, but Avarius seemed to have a talent for annoying me.

I turned and rushed at the wolves, going for the one that looked the strongest after their leader. Alex was currently fighting the leader, making small stab wounds all over its front legs and head. He'd avoided serious injury so far by using that weird teleporting Movement Technique of his to dodge at crucial moments, though he'd taken some grazing bites on his arms.As I engaged my opponent, I heard Avarius run over. The ground under one of the wolves rippled, and a ball of rock hit in the stomach, knocking it over. I stared at my opponent. It stared at me. I raised my staff. It snarled, looking at me with the eyes of a hungry predator. I raised my eyebrows and charged, swinging my staff at its waist, which I was pretty sure was one of a wolf's weak points. The wolf stepped back, my blow glancing off its shoulder instead. I heard a thwack, but the wolf was still standing. It seemed mad. It lunged for my throat,snarling like the angry dog it was.

"Not today, puppy." I said, swinging my staff again, smacking it in the neck with all my strength (and a bit of fire mana, hehe.) I heard a loud crunch and it lay still. I probably broke its neck. I turned to see that Avarius had the wolf he'd hit in the stomah with a rock trapped in what looked like a bramble bush, if a bramble bush had foot-long dagger like thorns and branches as thick as my leg.It was constricting the wolf, piercing it with the thorns. I could see deep, bloody gashes in its fur, and the wolf yelped in pain, long and loud.

I saw Alex, getting annoyed at the alpha, surround his spear in a little tornado. The spearhead began to spin so fast it blurred, and his target, seeing the danger, tried to lunge at him. His spear stabbed its open mouth, drilling into its skull and breaking out on through the back of its head . The wolf, in its death throes, forced itself up the spear and left deep gashes on his chest. He grimaced in pain, and I felt a red mist cover my vision.I was pissed, and I would kill every last one of these stupid, rabid dogs that hurt my friends.

I don't rememeber what happened next, but when I came to, I was lying on a bedroll in Alex's tent,covered in blood, injuries, and wolf guts, my head hurt,and I could see through the flap that the 5 wolves were in various states of dismemberment. One had its snout crushed so hard it destroyed its skull, one had its front legs torn off and shoved down its throat, the one Alex killed had been left alone, my first kill was a bloody pile of fur, bones and meat, intestines burst and leaking everywhere, and Avarius'es wolf had died when I had apparently broken off a thorn and driven it into its heart.The first thing I noticed was that my whole body hurt. Through the pain I noticed Alex was cleaning the blood and guts off and tending to my wounds with a paste version of that purple potion he always carried. He bandaged the wounds afterword. With the number or wounds and the way he wrapped them, I probably looked like a mummy! Hehe, monkey mummy. I'm very funny. Don't look at me like that, I can feel you judging me as I transcribe this.

"You should be fit to fight in two days,and you can take the bandages off tommorow. If you weren't as resilient as you are, you could have died of blood loss or all those freaking wounds if I hadn't done this quickly. What were you thinking, risking your life like that? Ugh, it's a good thing I practiced basic medical skills when I learned my Alchemy. Today, you rest on dragonback and eat lots of stew to help you get back all that blood.Doctor's orders." He said, his brow furrowed with worry and the look in his eyes coming across as concern, despite his angry tone.

"Yeah, yeah. I just. The Wolf hurt you and I got mad and then everything went red.Now they're dead. Oh gods,Alex. We killed them,and I know it was them or us, but I don't have to like it. I know we might have to go kill those bandits too. If I feel like this over wild beasts who wanted to freaking eat us, how will I deal with killing people, even bad people? Should children even be doing this?" I said, staring into his eyes as the guilt sank in.

"I don't know, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there." His expression became gentler, though he still seemed worried. He handed me a bowl full of what I assumed was the stew. "Eat up and take a nap, I'll look after you while Avarius handles the corpses." I agreed, and held the bowl to my lips. Yep, beef and vegetable, my favorite stew. I finished the stew, and quickly sank into sleep, tired out by my fight, my full belly, and the heavy thoughts in my head.