Taking an airship through a secure and safe passage through Eshen’s dangerous mountain range, Logan watched as the final mountain in the range passed by. It was very easy to know which mountains are those as they are easily 3 times bigger than any other around it.
The airship quickly started to descend after clearing the very high mountains but standing outside on the deck, he felt a strangeness to the air.
It should be said that airships looked very much like giant sea ships but with magic technology lightening its weight and powerful propellers giving lift and forward impulse.
“The air feels so strange.” he said.
Around him were many other adventurers and some older ones chuckled.
“This your first time here kid?”
“No, I was born in western Eshen. However I never felt anything like this before. It is like the air is… piercing.” he replied.
“You have a good magical talent kid. That isn’t the air, that is the result of magical weapons being used so heavily. You should see the territory we took from Odriacia and beyond it. They attacked first and brought the war to our territory but once we stabilized our situation, the push was intense. The place is covered in magical anomaly and it has become the newest series of problems the mages have been trying to deal with.” he said.
“The biggest problem we face is the overabundance of chaotic mana.” A wizard said, looking out from the deck. “The biggest magical weapons either nation have were the air force’s magic pulse. Whether it hits or not, an immense amount of mana will disperse at once into the surroundings. If you fire it in the wrong places, it will cause immensely dangerous consequences.” the wizard said.
“That is what happened, a lot actually. Odriacia wanted to ruin Eshen’s fertile land with magical anomalies so that we would be set back centuries while trying to deal with it.” the old man said and took out a pipe. “They were fucking bastards when they sent twenty battalions of air force around thunder mountain and began to fill the surroundings with mana before closing the area they affected and the mountain with mana pulse. Now the electric storms are rampant over half the south western edge of the nation.” He said before spouting a huge number of profanities.
“Has anyone asked for international help? I doubt the empire would want to see such a large food production nation decline like this.” Logan asked.
“Well they have offered help but war of this intensity in brutality and cold envy are rare. After the war ended two years ago, Eshen and the empire started working together to deal with many magical problems. The rifts for one are an unknown danger that we can’t ignore. Some ideas they had to decrease such a huge amount of mana is to fabricate mana crystal veins. It is under testing in less affected areas already to use about a ton of mana crystals as the base in a mine and add a magic formation for mana gathering. If it works, the nation will get a new income method with about 40% going to the empire. We will also get a new industry in producing mana crystals for who knows how long.” the elder said.
“The most promising is dungeons.” the wizard said. “It is a slow start but a single dungeon can benefit the entire nation as it draws mana and forces it into the land. Once it gets deeper then 30 floors, the affected area of the dungeon will span over 50 kilometers. Beyond 50 floors it might cover 100 kilometers. If mana can be channeled from heavily affected areas artificially then it could effectively deal with the mana problems within the next 10 to 15 years.” The wizard said.
Logan sighed, “All these plans are made for decades in the future. We will be set back by however long it takes to clear it.” he said.
“Not really, the archipelagos have flourished and our navy has expanded two fold. Despite the loss of population in the first years of the war, a census from last year said that the nation grew by 20% in the last 10 years.” the wizard said.
The talk continued until the ship landed at a military base that was the acting location for adventurers in the southern area.
Getting off they each separated. The base didn’t even look like a base and looked more like a city surrounded by high walls, powerful towers with very strong magic cannons and a magic barrier that was in passive mode until danger appeared.
He went around and purchased an updated map from the military and saw the changes. There were many new regions affected by the magic and even many new species of monsters born from mutations.
He sat down on a bench and looked through different sections of the book he purchased at the capitol and saw some new species born from evolution to survive.
The thunder range, as was called the expanded range affected by freak magic thunderstorms, was the most heavily affected. The place was filled with lightning affinity monsters and most distressing is the large number of dragon type creatures.
A total of 20 adult A rank Thunder dragons were seen with many more at B rank like his grandfather had killed. This goes down the ranks to drakes and wyrm, or serpent dragons, wreaked havoc as they carved territories. The harshness of thunder type dragon monsters was the worst as they were some of the hardest to kill draconic beasts.
The military higher ranked commanders and more are forced to take huge numbers to take down encroaching beasts coming from thunder mountain now. As for the mentioned mountain, it was now covered in perpetual thunderstorms which is the perfect home for thunder dragons.
Checking the map again he filtered through the system, this is naturally not a physical map but an electronic one, and found habits of Crystalback Lightning Lizards. He then checked other creatures around it and was inwardly happy that they were far from the main bulk of the intense thunderstorm zone and most of the creatures were a mix of other types. However, the lizards had increased intensely in number as they got much more food, aka lightning.
With sufficient food they naturally reproduce faster and healthier.
There are even rumors of E rank Crystalback Lightning lizards, something that is extremely rare and such a creature is said to handle lightning bolts alone compared to common ones.
Getting his destination and finding his current location he stored everything and putting the armor his father gave him he finally headed out to the location they could be found.
Taking the newly opened roads that were still only dirt roads packed by military transports, he got to the closest area he could, that wasn’t enclosed with woods, and looked at his two swords before taking out the new one and just lightly coating it with mana.
This part of the techniques his adopted father had taught him. With a light but skillful swing, the surrounding flora quickly fell to the sides as he opened the way in for himself clearing partially the dense underbrush.
Because it was still close to roads, there was no danger but he raised his attention to the max so that he wouldn’t be caught with his guard down.
He soon reduced his cutting to a minimum just to clear the path instead of opening an entire trail behind him.
BOOM!
A sudden eruption suddenly drew his attention and, going quietly over, he soon spotted dispersing Crystalback Lightning Lizards.
He jumped onto a tree as he saw them move around actively and searching for bugs and other things to eat.
The lizards had bluish green scales and a part of their back scales have crystallized with the mana and energy from lightning forming the crystal on their back, purple in color. Their age is easy to determine by their size and the size of the crystal.
Young lizards have something akin to crystal cover but adults have a proper crystal growing out their backs that range from as low as 5 cm to over 30 cm ending at a point like crystals mined in caves.
He felt his lightning sword faintly vibrate and he knew that it was reacting to the lizards.
He silently sheath Weifang and drew his thunder sword. A thin layer of mana covered it but hidden within this thin coat was a constantly running current of electricity like a taser except it made no sound.
When a lizard got near, he leaned in and the lizard instantly reacted as it felt danger but he kicked off the tree and dropped down on the lizard, the sword penetrated right into the neck.
The lizard didn’t have time to make noise except some shaking from the drop.
He pulled out the sword and was shocked at how hard it was and when he did get it out, the lizard's blood was actually floating out into the sword and entering the cracks made by the lightning strike.
HISS!
Suddenly an alarming hiss came and Logan turned as he saw a creature blur a third the size of the lizards strike the heads of a nearby lizard and rip it off and stop.
A yellow furred creature with black lightning shaped stripes on its body stood there and turned to him.
Logan turned pale upon seeing the creature he most wanted to avoid while the creature in question, a Lightning Weasel, sneered and began to snarl. It jumped at the crystal of its prey and bit huge chunks and swallowed before suddenly being coated in lightning.
“Shit! Stop sucking!” he roared and swung the katana out of instinct.
DING!
The claws of the weasel struck the sword and Logan with huge force. He had swung poorly and didn’t have form in the moment for survival but thankfully threw off the attack which diverted off him.
His hands stung from the recoil since he wasn’t in a proper form to receive the attack.
However with danger around he instantly positioned himself just as he turned swinging.
Ding!
This time he was able to strike the blur deflecting it much less danger to himself.
“Speed, it isn’t likely to be any stronger than a lizard but its speed is too harsh.” he instantly noticed.
While in thought, sadly, he wasn’t fast enough the next attack and barely glanced at it and suddenly the force of the attack transmitted to his body as the sound of claws on riveted leather came from his side.
“AH!” he exclaimed as the force was no joke, “Focus!” he said.
Like that he focused his entire attention and kept deflecting and learning the patterns of the weasel but it also learned about him. Half way through he figured out the timing to attack and finally injured his enemy but it quickly grew wise and more vicious.
After an hour, Logan was bloodied while the weasel had only three or four cuts which did hurt it but compared to Logan, it would heal and be able to hunt quickly.
That said, it felt the danger of being so heavily injured and knew it needed more than a little rest. The two lizards in the proximity were not enough. It needed a lot of mana to be able to heal itself so it needed to kill the human before it so that it could restore itself.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
As such, even if it exhausted itself, it needed to kill so it decided to use its desperate measure for when it fought dangerous enemies. It felt humiliated that it needed to result in its greatest skill but it did not feel safe here anymore.
It suddenly backed off before it’s body burst with lightning.
“Huh!” Logan instantly noticed and saw when it burst towards the side. He turned but saw it move again and the speed constantly rising. What made his heart drop to his stomach was when, at one point, the blurs split and he no longer knew which was real.
The speed also kept rising rapidly but it had a secondary effect. The air all around was getting heavily charged. If the skies had been filled with active thunderclouds, it would have surely brought down a barrage of lightning.
Neither of them were capable of surviving that. The lizards survived because their nature depended on it but Lightning Weasels gained their lightning abilities through eating the crystals and not direct lightning. Their biology was not built to absorb all that energy.
The lizards also didn’t absorb everything, in a pack of 20, the energy was distributed 20 ways but even then they each only absorbed at most 5% of the 5% each of them got. The rest they had to pump into the ground so that they survived.
Logan was trying to follow with his eyes but it was beyond his capabilities. This was a move meant to fight other more dangerous E rank and use it to hurt and escape from D rank predators.
Finally, after the move was fully charged and it reached full speed, a speed that barely left blurs in Logan’s eyes, it finally attacked and when it did, all three blurs appeared in his vision and peripheral vision.
Two flanked and one in front.
That said, for Logan, that is where his world flipped.
Time seemed to stop and he saw that the blurs on his sides were only lightning bolts meant to confuse him while the weasel was in full detail in front of him.
That same nano second, he felt all the charged energy around him invade from his hands. The nerves felt like they burned but from the hands, up the arm, into the torso, it reached his heart and in moments, his heart went from the 110+ heartbeats a minute to over 600+.
He felt immense pain in his chest with that but the heat spread all over his body after another short nano second, all the while the weasel got closer.
Finally when it all gathered at his neck, going up his spine and into his brain, the most intense pain in his life exploded as all that energy instantly fed back to his brain and lit it up like fireworks.
His brain began to work at the speed he was looking at and forcing his F rank body to that speed that it could not handle.
It didn’t want to spend another second like that and just looking at the weasel, he took a step to the left and raised both hands holding the thunderstruck katana cleanly cut through its neck before collapsing.
When he did, the world returned to normal and he instantly felt pain.
“AHHH!”
A mournful shout came as his ears, eyes and nose began to bleed out as the veins burst but even more, his nails and skin broke and parted and began to bleed out. Finally he couldn’t handle it and began to vomit blood. All the while he held his chest that felt like his heart would beat out.
Only after 30 seconds his heart returned to a speed that was more natural but he had suffered immense damage.
When he could finally move and whip the blood from his eyes, he turned and saw the decapitated weasel.
He didn’t know what he did but he had survived, even with major injuries. His muscles were working for a good 2 minutes until he finally got up to his knees and weakly took out the wooden sheath to use as a crutch.
He picked up the sword in his right hand and supported the rest with his left on the sheath.
When he touched the sword, he could feel the sword was very excited. Much to his dismay, the blood coating him flowed down the sword and was getting absorbed by it but he wasn’t being sucked dry.
It was a kind of price because as the blood fed back, a warm energy flowed back and closed the wounds throughout his body. The best part was that the stressed heart muscles that were constantly hurting were relaxed by this energy and felt like each muscle strand of his heart was being tightened as if the immense flexing it went through was being undone.
After the heart came the brain but all it did was calm down the chaotic energy surge putting it back to normal. When it finally calmed down, Logan noticed a strange fact as the energy fed every cell in his body. Less of a fact but more like an instinct, he knew that with just a small thought and flex of his body, he could achieve something like that state again.
He didn’t dare do it though. He weakly walked to the corpse and stuck the sword in the bloodied ground between the head and body.
Like before the blood began to rise but it did things differently, it connected to the sword, true, but it began to move throughout the body differently. Crunching sounds could be heard as the body strangely deformed and the normally red blood turned a strange pinkish color like something had mixed in.
The sword drank it up all the same but it was clear that it had gained something more.
When it fully finished, he touched the weasel’s body and found out what. Both blood and bone were completely gone. Only the meat, organs and hide were left.
“It really does absorb blood but bone? Is it preparing materials for it’s reforging?” he asked himself.
Sadly he had no time to think about it.
He went to the lizard and let it finish absorbing but he found the bones of the lizards were not appealing to the sword. He retrieved the two lizards crystal but then a thought came to mind. “It bled them…”
That thought seemed kind of obvious but it had another meaning. Monster meat suffered a few major problems for consumption. Blood of monsters was toxic to humans, well most of them at least. Harvested meat could only be sold to licenced monster butchers. The reason is because of a previously taboo magic used purely by supernatural monsters known as blood magic. Yep the monster in question were vampires, magical monsters evolved primarily from bats.
The magic helped drain every last drop of blood making the meat edible as cooking would remove anything dangerous left in the meat.
That said, he now had the chance to sell bloodless monster meat. Anyone with a brain knew this was a great market but he knew it might not last. Who knew if the sword would always want to absorb lizard blood.
Still after skinning and putting it inside the adventurers guild’s commissioned inventory bag, a magic bag with a large internal space but an outward appearance of a pouch, he chopped the tails at the base.
Still, he had no plans of continuing. Although he had his energy slightly restored, he took major damage from the burst he did. He needed a checkup quick to make sure he didn’t have lasting damage.
With the sword in hand and the sheath as a walking stick, he retreated to the military base.
His bloodied appearance was all it took for military guards to take him to the hospital. He gave a recount to the doctors, asked him the events and then he underwent a battery of tests.
At the end of the day the doctor arrived with the results as he laid down with an IV attached feeding him fluids.
“You, young man, are one lucky man. If you didn’t have such amazing lightning magic resistance and affinity, you would be a vegetable in the forest by now.” He said.
“W-what happened?” Logan asked fearfully upon hearing the result.
“What you did is something many people wish they could do. You seem to have unlocked an Innate skill based on lightning. Based on a very detailed recount of the activation process. Your body, specifically, your heart, brain and nerves, are supercharged with lightning and electricity to work at a totally different level to allow your mind and body to reach speeds it normally wouldn’t be able to reach.” the doctor said.
“Innate skill… aren’t those things only monsters have?” Logan asked, shocked at the revelation.
“No, anything with mortal origins, be they sentient or monsters, are capable of having innate skills. It is just that monsters use their instincts more often compared to sentients so they usually activate such skills compared to sentients, especially humans who are only second to dwarves in lowest magical talent, though we do have the most creativity.” he said, the last part being just an offhand comment.
“S-so is it dangerous to use this?” Logan asked.
“If you were anyone else I would say yes but all innate skills stem from your core affinities so no innate skill is truly dangerous. However, you are still an F rank in every sense of the word. That skill messes directly with your central nervous system and cardiac system. It is best to train with the skill to learn the current limits of your body so that you do not find yourself bleeding out of your entire body again.” the doctor explained.
Logan sighed in immense relief and finally felt tired when his anxiety relaxed.
“Thank you doctor.” he said, simply feeling very sleepy now.
“No problem, you will likely have to stick around for about 2 to 4 days as we administer safe healing solutions to restore your body.” he said.
Logan smiled weakly knowing that likely by the next morning he will be up.
“Alright… doctor, do you mind giving me my swords. I don’t feel very comfortable without them.” he said. “Be careful of the wooden sheath one, the sword shocks anyone touching it besides me.” he said
The wood on the thunder sword helped to reduce the shock others received. The doctor seemed used to such strange magical weaponry as he simply waved his hand and wind magic brought the swords to his hands.
Touching them, his stressed mind reached full relaxation and he could feel the warmth from the sword slowly seep out into his body. Little injuries, hard to pick up, were attacked and healed. Although some stung him, it ultimately helped heal his injuries alongside the medicine being injected.
Through the afternoon and night, he slept peacefully and when morning came, he felt like a new man, as he had expected he would. No one knew better than him, how abnormal his healing rate is. Well his father did and that is why he also made full use of it to do slightly more inhuman levels of training to make up for not being able to fully inherit his legacy since he didn’t train the proper weapon for it.
The doctor came to check up and was utterly shocked by the good health of the boy.
“Ahaha, sorry I didn’t mention it but ever since I was 7 when the war started, I have been a little abnormal. My healing rate is about 3 times faster than normal people.” he said.
"I will have a battery of tests done to make sure of this fact. If you really are healthy then we will release you immediately.” the doctor said.
For the next two hours they did tests and found that he was almost fully healed.
“Hmm… your condition is almost good but do rest one more day before going out. The smallest injuries may change the situation and your injuries are internal and cause more problems than simple cuts and bruises.” the doctor said.
“Alright.” Logan agreed with his ideas.
After being discharged, he found a place to sleep but he didn't rest at all. Instead he began to figure out his new innate skill.
From activating it at first to controlling it, he spent a full week to figure out the abilities and his physical limit. He also ended up giving it a name and called it Lightning Accelerator.
As mentioned, his ability is meant to enhance his brain and speed up his heart to supply blood to his body so that it can effectively speed himself up. His speed at the time when he killed the weasel was his current body's extreme limit and forced his F rank body to move at the peak speed of a speed based E rank for 1 second with immense drawback.
During his training, however, he had pretty good control. The skill was based solely on lightning magic and depended heavily on a person’s own resistance. If they had none then they could forget trying to learn how to use this skill from him.
As for the speed he could achieve, he spoke with an E rank adventurer training at the time and sparring with him revealed that at his controlled limit before it surpassed his resistance levels, he would be as fast as a normal E rank for a short time.
Basically his speed matched a hunting lightning weasel if he hunted using bursts.
This was an immense boost to his confidence. He would not have to outright fear Lightning weasels anymore. If he had speeds near their own and if he was willing to take minor damage, he could surpass it for a killing blow.
After the week he finally returned to hunting with a lot more confidence, as well as cleaned and repaired armor, and began to properly hunt the lizards.
He took about a month to get the 100 crystals because weasels often appeared half way through the hunts and packs only gathered when lightning storms were brewing so it wasn’t possible to kill 5 packs and be done with it.
Naturally he also sold the lizard tails and weasel pelts for extra money. When he finally finished, he reported to a branch in the outpost and turned in the mission and obtained 30,000 tip, which is a pretty good sum for an F rank considering the mission's danger.
He also obtained about 5,000 in weasel pelt and over 10,000 in lizard tail meat. So the sum total of his entire mission was 45 thousands which is an impressive first adventure but it came at rather large costs. Armor repairs were by far the largest costs because both lizards and weasels fought back and by no means did his armor come out unscatched in this. Even if it was E rank hide armor with steel rivets, armor isn’t immortal and it takes most of the damage. He basically had to repair it after every hunt and fight against weasels because their claws did lots of damage on the hide and the rivets just barely protected it from suffering larger scale damage.
That said, the scars on his armor did show he had some level of exploring experience and it showed as more veteran adventurers started to come talk to him when he was in the tavern and learn about him.
He had great respect for veteran adventurers, something easily cultivated during the pioneering. From land adventurers to seafarer, even the most unassuming fishermen were beyond common men. He learned an easy fact, the older an adventurer is, the more respect this man should have. Even a simple C rank adventurer is not someone you can easily brush off. From magic skills and spells to physical prowess, C rank were already very powerful people that could fight one on one against draconic beings such as drakes. That is why, unlike many young adventurers, he spent time with the older veterans and listened to their amazing adventurers and even learned many things about many creatures.
When his mission was over however, he checked the lightning brand and saw that it was almost white but yellow still flashed.
“Still a ways away… I need to hunt a few more creatures to fill the sword's needs.” He muttered in his room before the bandage covered it.
He spent another two weeks until the brand was almost pure white and only flashes of yellow through it could be seen.