Time.

Once again, some time has passed by.

I am now, by my estimation, around thirteen years old, possibly a little bit younger than that.

It has been around one year since our group was joined by Heon. With just the three of us, we passed through countless scenery, different areas in the forest that seemed to have no end. Each unique place was as unique as the one we previously went through.

We met and fought monsters stronger than any we had ever met in the past, and of course, we slew them.

This time, I had to admit that I couldn't deny it anymore: I, we grew stronger.Not enough to make me stronger than anyone, but enough to prove to me that this journey was not in vain and that it was yielding results.

The pace and the ambiance of our journey itself have greatly changed, especially with the arrival of Heon in the group. Before her presence, our journey mostly consisted of needless fights with monsters, which most of the time didn’t even consider the possibility of a discrepancy of strength between them and us, but with Heon around, monsters, at least those we consider not worth our time, avoid us like the plague. At first, I thought it was her presence that allowed the monster in the area where we met her to be this docile, or at the very least, not straight up hostile.

Her presence allowed us to continue our journey very smoothly, with at least a decent monster fight every two weeks.

We recently arrived at a large treeless area of the forest. At first, I thought that we had reached the end of the Iharana Great Forest, but I soon realized that that area, as immense as it was, was in fact just a glade in the forest.

It was only for an instant, but that made me think about what would happen to us at the end of this journey, we had taken. I kept moving forward without ever looking back, but also turned blind to what could be awaiting me ahead. When I started questioning myself about all this, I came to realize how clueless I was, and frankly, I was reassured when I realized that the forest still had many wonders and monstruosities to unravel, still, so much this forest had to offer to improve myself.

"Oi, Hon, sorry to interrupt your monologue, but it’s coming."

"Yeah, I noticed."

We were, as I said, in the middle of a treeless area of the forest, a grassland. That is to say, it was faint at first but gradually became more and more perceptible.

The ground was shaking rhythmically from two distinct sources: the first was a footstep that I immediately recognized as Heon's, and the second sounded like the ripple from a wing flapping in our direction, along with Heon's.

My previous statement was immediately confirmed by a loud and monstrous growl.

Roaring and charging while flapping its giant bat-like wings at an alarming pace toward us, he left beneath him a gigantic smoke of dust. It was a giant black limbless winged lizard-like creature.

The creature in question was a dragon, a winged limbed dragon, but a dragon nonetheless.

The usual method for classifying Draconoid is generally as follows:

If it does resemble a giant lizard but has no wings, it’s a drake.

If it does resemble a giant lizard but has wings instead of the front limbs, it’s a wyvern.

If it does resemble a snake, a lizard, or a salamander but has gills or fins, or even wings but two or more missing limbs, then it’s a wyrm.

But beyond a certain level of strength, the appearance doesn’t matter anymore. Every Draconid is referred to as a dragon the moment it enters the realm of what would be classified by the encyclopedia as a mythical beast.

It took us some time to figure it out, but the moment we saw Heon taking by herself a monster I identified and was labeled by the church as a mythical beast, I realized, that she and us who fought against her at equal strength should be somewhere around that threshold.

"Heon retreated out of reach, It is now or whenever you want."

He was right. I noted that Heon's footfall retreated away from the monster, but the thing kept charging at us nonetheless.

"Understood."

I guess there is no need to hold myself back anymore, and I'll give it my all.

I took a deep breath, readied my sword,

Then began the thing I’ve been training myself for a whole year.

With both hands on my sword, the pressure of the surrounding environment increased by at least a hundred folds, and something strange and chaotic began to take place along the length of the blade, and even beyond it, it was a tornado: a powerful vortex of wind, with lightning accompanying it.

The whole thing was so powerful that I felt the field around me was breaking apart, the soil getting thrown away, the local wind being abruptly disrupted by its sudden appearance.

Having held my sword high all this time, I slowly descended its stance so as to stand horizontally and parallel to the ground.

As I heard the monster’s footsteps getting closer, but was also a little hesitant and felt that the attack had enough destructive power behind it, I sent out my attack.

Slashing the midair with my sword sent out an equivalent of a giant, powerful, fully-fledged lightning tornado compressed into a thin wind blade in the direction of the charging monster.

The noise it produced was something compared to the explosion that took place in the frozen hell: silent at first, but then the true noise reverberated. Then another loud boom reverberated. It wasn’t an explosion but the sound of a giant and heavy thing crashish heavily against the ground.

Only after two long minutes, the whole thing calmed down, giving place to a heavy silence, I was still panting while holding the same position I held while throwing away that attack

There was no longer any sign of the said dragon.

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I began to walk toward where the dragon should’ve been, and felt that the whole area that my attack had been passing through had been replaced by an immense, straight, incandescent trail.

I kept walking till I arrived at a certain area.

"Flexing on one’s ability, aren’t we? That being said, you really didn’t miss this poor guy. This is everything left of that "magnificent" dragon."

In front of me, was what I believe was a giant chunk of roasted charcoal dragon’s meat.

"Is this even edible anymore?"

My attack instantly killed that dragon.

I glanced at my hand holding my sword and still felt it was still trembling out of numbness.

My entire body felt sore, exhausted, but I couldn’t help but smirk. Everything in the blade path and its vicinity was reduced to ash.

I started this journey to train myself to be ready for the day I would... but never would’ve assumed I would be able to pull off something like this with Aina.

What I did earlier wasn’t magic; it was the result of my training on Aina.

After that defeat, I realized that my fighting strategy of hitting and hitting harder wouldn't last forever.I came to fully realize it during our fight against the couple inside that underground area. After the fight, I thought long and hard about a way for me to use a long-ranged attack, for that was my greatest shortcoming, and then, on a stormy day, I came up with something.

There was no hiding from it that the attack was heavily inspired by our confrontation with the couple, especially the woman and her swift control of the wind and her lightning.

But, once again, it was not magic; that attack was made through aina manipulation. The idea came to me one day during the rainy season, when a tornado teeming with lightning came swooping through the entire area of the forest we were in. The idea was a condensced of pure madness, but I figured it was worth seeing through.

During our fight against the sibling, I realized that I was able to go beyond the simple level of mastering and controlling things I had physical contact with and that I was also able to go as far as influencing things out of thin air.

The whole concept behind that attack was as follows:

Through Aina, producing a hurricane around the blade of my sword,

Once again, through aina, using the little I knew from books and from my own observation about naturally produced lightning, I created a situation in the middle of the said whirlwind to replicate something similar to the natural lightning tornado, but unlike the natural one, my method processes the whirlwind in such a way that it would keep all its lightning confined within the vortex.

The first part of training this technique was to create a whirlwind. Thanks to that woman, I got a nice preview of what it feels like from within,

The second part of my training consisted of finding a way to produce lightning. Thanks to the brother’s sword, I was able to use lightning, but the fact that it was processed through some foreign magic somehow pissed me off, so I kept training to a point of being able to replicate lightning myself without magic intervention.

What I've done with aina thus far has been to enhance my senses and increase my power through aina. If you look at it through a more introspective lens, why would Aina's wielding would stop at that? By using aina to increase my strength, I literally produce some sort of hue that allows me to increase the damage I deal and the strength I exert. It doesn't make my muscles or bones stronger, it's on the outside that the aina interferes.

My current technique consists of creating, no- producing, and creating wind and lightning are within the realm of magic. What I do is put forward through all the chaotic particles in the environment that are needed to create lightning and a windwhirl, and then confine them to a space that is around my blade, while keeping it in a complete state of chaotic harmony.

That last part of the attack is the most important and crucial one. With a swift motion and control of aina and the entire thing made through it, I compress the whirlwind to create something with the sharp edge of a razor blade in a split second. And by releasing it during that very narrow timeframe, I'm able to project and free the highly compressed lightning tornado forward, as I did previously.

The whole thing results in a powerful attack, reducing everything in its passage to ash thanks to its highly compressed heat and which strength tops any monster attack I’ve met so far.

The only two drawbacks to this attack are how exhausting it is and how long it took. The whole thing brought multi-tasking to a whole new level. Between the whirling pace I had to keep the whirlwind, the seclusion I had to keep the lightning in, the compressing, and finally the final projection of the attack; I was very much overwhelmed. This leads to the second disadvantage: I had to keep myself focused in order to use this attack; if I don't, it can easily, and by easily, I mean go south, especially with the last step of the attack, rendering this attack completely unusable in close-range combat or in a situation where I am unable to fully focus on the task of launching this attack.

But still, despite these two inconveniences, it doesn’t change the fact that this new attack is a true game-changer for me.

I could hear the approaching footsteps of Heon getting closer.

"Say, Hon, we really need to find a name for that attack, it just lacks edginess to fire it like that."

"Eh! "

"What do you think of "Lightning Beam of Friendship", or even maybe "Whirlwind friendship force"."

"I don’t see myself screaming any of these names, since every time I would it would definitely cringe me. Besides, what the hell with these names? Why "friendship"? As far as I’m aware, this is my attack, not ours. "

"Getting cocky, aren’t we? You, little man, should give us the credit we deserve, right Heon?"

"..."

He was right. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to train this attack to this point, Heon with her weird way of healing me, and Han with his … well, his presence.

"Yeah, understood, but let me think of a better name." Touching the still embered corpse of the dragon. I asked, "So how was it? Did it yield any results on your side? "

"Sadly, nothing yet. Maybe three or four like this one. "

During the fight, while I got impaled, Han himself also lost two of his vessels, the second one, and the Khrackt queen, leaving him with only three vessels after the fight: the DeathSeeker, the Cryptid Snake, and lastly, the bear-like monster. In one year, he was able to acquire only one vessel, and that was three months ago.

The new vessel in question was one of a medium-sized yet quite strong, wingless lightning dragon.

He was down to four vessels now, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to find one that fit him.

"Hey, Han do-"

Suddenly, I heard a sharp cry, or to be exact, several of them from above. Along with these cries were the sounds of several dozen pairs of wings flapping. It was quite similar to the one from the monster earlier, but also quite different.

These creatures were dragons once more, but only on the surface...

… they fall more on the wyvern side than on the wyrm side, like this roasted boy over there.

The group of dragons casually passed above our heads, completely ignoring us to peacefully pursue their flight.

This is one of the most notable things about this place. Though the variety of monsters around here is still quite varied, a huge majority of them are dragons and dragonoîds.

Though I didn’t have any pleasant memories regarding anything closely related to dragons, this place had a charm that the rest of the forest didn’t have.

I felt free. Having your face slapped by the sunlight without having it filtered by trees has never felt so pleasant.

"Sorry, once again to interrupt you, but what do we do now? There is no longer any use for that thing, I doubt anyone can eat something being that roasted."

Putting my sword back to its self-made sheat, I announced, "I suppose we’ll just find something else to eat. It’s not like it’s not like that's what we’ll run out of in this place. " I then proceeded to leave the area along with Heon and Han.

This was yet another asset to this place. Fruits, nuts, and a wide variety of more or less edible plants are growing in abundance in this place, making the place, in my opinion, very welcoming.

"I guess you’re right. … Anyway, you earlier had something you wanted to ask me, right?

"I did?... Ah yeah, I think I forgot what I wanted to ask. "

"So young and already losing the screw in his mind. I really pity you, my friend. "

I took a deep breath in.

"In a way, I think you might be right."

Then I loudly breathed it out.

I might have gone crazy, but I grew to like this place.

It was quite bitter at first, but this journey...Since I met Han, then Heon… it has been and is still fun.