***

Nia

When I was still a child, back when I still lived within the tower with Papa, I never had the opportunity to openly see the sky. In fact, it is also the case that I never understood what attracted me so much about it, but now that I’m this close, as I thought, the sky is beautiful, even more than I expected.

I was currently floating and rising in one of my magically created bubbles into the sky, with white and fluffy clouds below me. I was so high in the sky that the sky was no longer sky-blue but dark blue instead.

"Wooooo!"

I took a deep breath. Feeling that I was high enough, I discarded my bubble, which caused me to almost immediately free fall toward the ground.

"Oooooooooooooh!"

Like a meteor falling from the sky, I fell, passing through the clouds as if they were something uncorporeal.

Soon, after having passed through the cloud, my sight shifted from the foggy cloud to the verdant ground. I was getting closer and closer to the ground

In normal circumstances, it would’ve been a frightening experience, but I had no fear, for not so far away, despite the stifling wind, I heard the sharp cry of Ezra.

To slow down my descent, I spread my limbs, I did so for several seconds, and once I felt that I had decelerated enough, and reached a reasonable height, I changed position. This time I prepared myself for a landing. And almost instantly, I landed on something back in midair.

"Wooooooooooooooo!" I could not help but scream in excitement. A sharp cry instantly resonated along with my scream.

That something’ back I landed upon was Ezra’s. She was the beautiful dragon we saved one year ago, and in only one year she had reached an impressive size of almost seven meters through and through, now standing on her back as she glided at an incredible speed toward the ground.

We passed above the place where we had lived for the past year, but Ezra didn’t stop there. Instead, she continued her flight above the lake, and headed east to our place’s location on a vast grassland. In fact, it would be unfair to refer to what I saw as a grassland; it was a melange of craters, incandescent and turned upside down. It was as if some sort of catastrophic event had passed through the place not so long ago.

Soon, not so far away, I caught sight of a familiar silhouette.

"Ezra, accelerate and propel me." I requested, to which, she answered with a growl. She immediately charged at the faraway figure at breakneck speed while performing a barrel roll move that, instead of decelerating her speed, accelerated it. At a distance of maybe fifty meters, she propelled me forward straight onto the silhouette. In a similar way to Ezra’s but different, in midair, I also performed a barrel roll, and unlike Ezra, using her wing, I instead used my legs as a helix that went swinging ominously at the silhouette.

It made contact, and immediately an explosion occurred.

If the target was a tree, a rock, or anything else, my kick would’ve blasted through it without much resistance, yet upon contact, my swinging leg was stopped short.

***

Ronandt

"Yoshaaaa! Say! Say! Hon, how was it? "

Slightly euphoric, and out of breath, I said, "It was... it."

"With that, I’m sure we can pull it off. Don’t you think so? "

We were here trying some techniques. It has been one year since we fought and defeated Nia’s father. Since then, I’ve been relentlessly training myself for the past year to compensate for Han’s loss and prepare myself for the battle I will have to wage for Han’s next vessel.

"Yes, it should be more than enough," I said confidently.

"Aaaaaaah, finally, this is worth celebrating. Tonight we shall feast upon that Beng- well, there is nothing left of it, so I guess we’ll have to hunt for something else. "

We were practicing on a mythical beast known as Benghy, a mammoth-like creature but without the trumk. It was easily bigger than an adult dragon, which is the size of a small castle, yet there was nothing left of the creature.

From afar, I heard Nia’s lizard's sharp cry and its wings flapping, followed immediately by something hurling at high speed toward me.

I knew exactly what was coming at me. I was holding Solomon's sword in my hand, but discarded it instead, welcoming it with a counter kick.

The shock upon contact was such that small debris around us was sent flying by the impact ripple.

What came to me was Nia. For a very short time frame, we remained completely still.

"I strongly advise against attacking with such an important limb as a leg; I had a sword in my hand, and you know very well that I am tougher than you, so this whole attempt was akin to suicide for me." Still locked in our position, I reached out for her hand and collar, and slammed her body on the ground.Instead, I would recommend using magic. You are stubborn about it, but I’m sure there are other, if not better, offensive uses for your magic, besides just being used as some sort of barrier. Why are you so butt off on only using aina for offensive purposes? "

"Because I prefer it that way." She mumbled as she struggled to break free of my lock.

After a year, there are still some blind stops, but I mostly understand what she's saying and so she understands what I am saying. This goes either way for both our languages.

"You prefer it that way, huh? I guess I have no say in that. " I let go of her, and offered a hand to stand up, which she simply accepted.

The thing is that, maybe, most likely because of what her father did to her, she was now gifted with both magic and aina.

By "gifted with magic", I mean that she has an immense mana pool and quite a unique magic. She was also good at using aina. The problem is that both are untrained. Her magic, just like her father's, is to produce barriers, but the way she uses her magic so far is limited to producing barriers or bubbles. I couldn't deny the defensive wonder of such magic, but I couldn't deny that her magic wasn't particularly great when used for offensive use, especially with the way she's using it, and the pacific mindset she's living with.

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Her magic consists of casting bubble-like barriers. At least for the time being, space manipulation such as teleportation appears to be impossible for her. The potential uses of that ability in combat aren't particularly numerous, but some shine brightly, such as envolloping one within the barrier then squishing him into pulp by compressing the size of the barrier. It sounded pretty deadly to me.

But sadly, she seems to abhor the idea of using her magic for violence.

And this is the crux of the matter. She appears to prefer close combat fighting, using Aina as her main weapon and magic as some sort of second-geared ability, I can’t deny that close combat fighting and a defensive barrier have a high affinity together, but not so much when you can’t use both simultaneously. As a result, she tended to rely on Aina to attack, which wasn't nearly enough to make me sweat. Why am I bringing myself up as an example? Simply because I am the only one she is fighting against, though I wouldn't call it fighting at all, but rather training.

To get back to her magical matter, her father was capable of using his bubble in a rather unique way, adapting his attack by combining both a unique way of using aina and mana. But that might’ve been something honed throughout the years, from what Nia told us, Her first interactions with Aina and Mana were after her awakening from the egg-shaped thing she was sleeping in, so I couldn’t really be all bossy about that matter.

"Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with liking to use aina; I just meant that your attack would've been more efficient if you were to use magic more… you know… aggressively, or at least combine both aina and magic, if you don’t want to use only magic to attack."

"Yes, I know, but I still haven’t found a way to do that."

"-Yet." I took back Mon’s sword, which was pensive for several moments at first, then I said, "We still haven’t figured out the most effective way to adapt your magic to your fighting style or your fighting style to your magic, but for the time being, with you insisting on only using aina for attack, I think what you really need is a weapon."

I felt her gaze upon her father's sword.

"You mean-"

"No, this might be your father's, but I’m not giving you this."

After all, I had to sacrifice my other sword to stab him back then.

"And I mean, just look at this sword size. There is no way this would fit you. " I said, putting the sword side to side next to her.

The sword in question was about a meter long, which was slightly oversized even for someone like me, let alone someone with Nia's frame.

"Besides, this would hardly fit your "fighting style," right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Weapons are used to enhance a particular strength we already possess or to fill a gap. Let's say you want to beat me, I doubt you can do that with a sword since it would most likely force you to only use aina. You need something else, something more fitting to you. "

Nia was good at using both aina and mana, but sadly, independently, when she uses magic, she instinctively, or maybe I should say unconsciously, turns off all her aina enhancement. She was the living embodiment of that old theory of mine, concerning aina and mana manipulation.

Though having inherited her father’s magic, she didn’t inherit his ability to use both aina and mana as deftly together as her father did.

"Then what weapon?"

"What weapon do you think will fit both your magic and your way of using aina?"

"I don't know... bow."

"Huh... I don't think you will ever hurt anything with a bow and an arrow in this hellish place. "

"Then what?"

"What? Well, I don’t know, so I can’t answer, yet. I think that is something you and you alone have to find. "

I don’t perceive Aina’s mastery as something esoteric but inherently different, varying from person to person.

The two of us were a good example of that. She was good at aina, but it seems that she does belong to the type that naturally uses aina. To put it simply, controlling Aina is something embedded in her as part of her body system. It’s like breathing. You can stop breathing, or breathe like a mad beast, but controlling the input and output of air entering your lungs is something that requires your full attention. In my case, I think what made me somehow special was that using aina was never something done naturally, so doing it manually was the norm for me, which is most likely why I was able to pull off those weird alterations I’m capable of.

I'm not sure if Solomon was capable of what I’m capable of, but he was certainly one-of-a-kind among aina users given how he was capable of pulling off what he did.

Maybe, exasperated by what I just said, she sighed out loud, while also kicking the ground like a child wanting but holding back from throwing a tantrum.

"Well, as I said, we don’t know, yet, but I’m sure with time we will find out. For the time being, let’s get back to that place, I’m done with what I was here for. " I declared as I retrieved my sword.

"Finally, I was done with this place."

For a few moments, you didn’t look like that nor did you sound like that. In fact, I’m sure I even heard you screaming for joy like a crazy woman from up above.

"No,... that wasn’t that."

Above us, was the same parasitic wyvern from one year ago, shrieking and vulturing as she always does.

Heading back to our encampment, I said, "Yeah, yeah, I believe you. In either case, I’m going back, I’m tired, and I’m hungry. Humm... why aren’t you reading yourself? What are you waiting for? "

"Where is Heon?"

"She was there but then went on with her own business."

"Oh, I see."

As if only waiting to hear these words, she summoned a human-sized sky-blue bubble, upon which she sat as it started to move as if it was some sort of mount.

"This was a pretty ingenious way of us using your magic. I wish you could have dedicated a bit more of these to combat-efficient-" I couldn’t help but mutter.

"-did you say something? "

It has been one year since she was at our side. She possessed a talent for aina and magic, but her monster kills were still limited to 0, and it is not because I had never given her the opportunity to kill one, it is just that she categorically refused to take part in the monster’s killing.

And yet, she doesn’t even budge when it comes to eating monsters’ meat.

Talk about being a hypocrite.

"It’s nothing. More importantly, what about a race? "

"A race? What’s that? "

"...You know, the first one to reach the island wins."

"Ah, that! Yes, it sounds fun. Let’s do it. "

She said this in a voice that suggested that she believed she even had the slightest chance of winning this race.

***

The outcome of the race came out pretty much as expected.

After all, speed is one of the many things I’ve made a lot of effort to improve upon this past year.

With a loud boom, I landed on the border of the peninsula-like land we settled upon. From there on, I just had to walk toward the place, it wasn’t too far away. Besides, I had to wait for the other, never knowing what could’ve happened to the other.

Soon, after a few minutes of waiting, she arrived, still on top of her weird magical device.

"That was cheating. That wasn’t a race. You were literally flying, not running. "

"I never said I would be using my feet to run. Besides, this is extremely rich coming from someone who’s literally a magical bubble to move around in. "

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Next time, I will win. "

"You are welcome to try it."

We continued our march toward the center of the peninsula.

Soon a clear place within the woods could be seen, in the middle of which stood a tall yellow-leaved giant tree.

"Aaaaah, finally back!" Nia sighed, running immediately toward the giant tree. "Heon, you were already here." She said, noticing Heon was not so far away.

That tree was unique for several reasons: one, no other tree was nearby; two, its leaves, which spread into the sky like an enormous cloud; and three, its size, and by size I don't just mean tall; there were trees taller than it, of course, but in terms of girth, its trunk was absolutely enormous, so yes, it stood out.

On that giant tree’s trunk, two holes could be found. They weren’t originally there, so I made them. In appearance, they most likely resembled giant squirrel holes, but they are in fact where, from time to time, Nia and I sleep.

Yes, this is the place we have chosen as our headquarters for the past 11, almost 12, months.