A few days had passed since we had boarded a boat back to Roa. We hadn’t planned on departing so soon, but in hindsight it was the correct decision to make, even without the barrier falling. The further we got from Alterian, the more Emeri and I were able to relax, finally free from the burden we had chosen to carry.

Until now, Emeri and I hadn’t been part of conflicts with such broad consequences, which made the idea of it a little intimidating. I, at least, had gotten a taste of something similar when the war of the between lands broke out, but to Emeri this was entirely new.

Only now that the situation had been mostly resolved did she realise how close we had come to dying. After that initial realisation, the pressure had washed off of her, which she had described as feeling lighter than before.

Now that we were no longer pursuing some holy quest, there was much more room to actually get to know each other, too. Over the past few days, Emeri and I had spent nearly all of our time talking about the most mundane things, yet I felt like I was actually conversing with a friend now, rather than a colleague. That brought us to where we were now, sitting near the back of the boat and leaning against the railing as the stars brightened up the night.

“So, you really call him ‘dad’?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do. Is that so strange? He raised me, remember?”

“I remember. I just… can’t really bring myself to imagine it, I suppose? He came across pretty distant and calculated when I talked to him.”

“You only talked to him the one time, Arthur. If I strutted into your parents’ bakery and asked to buy a loaf of bread, wouldn’t I get a similar reaction? It’s just business at that point, the same way your interaction with dad was ‘just business’.”

“You call him offering you to me like a blushing bride ‘just business’? Wow, I didn’t know you were so tradi-”

My joke was stopped halfway as Emeri slammed her elbow into my gut, making me cough.

“You know that’s not what happened! Stop trying to make it sound weird!”

I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, though. I could’ve sworn that Emeri was going red, but it was hard to tell at night. After I recovered, she was still refusing to talk to me, so we shared a comfortable moment of silence instead.

From this angle, Emeri’s face was being lit only by the quiet glow of the stars, reflected in her eyes. It was hard to look away.

“…You know, I like looking at you.” I blurted out without thinking.

“…What?!” Emeri replied, almost recoiling.

“I don’t know why, though,” I mused. “I mean, I don’t really like looking at other people, but I do like looking at you. Is that weird?”

Oddly, she turned away and refused to look at me. I could barely make out what she said as she whispered something. “…not weird…idiot…”

“What was that?”

She whirled around, her face contorting in anger.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I said that you’re a fucking idiot!” she said, before walking off in a huff.

Not knowing how to respond or why she reacted so strongly, I just sat there for a while.

A few weeks later, we were a few hours away from pulling into port. We were landing in a small town that was a bit closer to Reito, where we were planning to go next in preparation for the continental meet.

It took a few more days for Emeri to look me in the eyes again, but thankfully, she treated me as if nothing had happened from then on. A part of me still wondered why she had reacted that way, but I knew that bringing it up again wouldn’t help matters much. Maybe dad would know?

“You’ve been staring at the horizon all day, Arthur. Can’t wait to be back home?”

“Can you?” I shot back, knowing that she loved Roa just as much as me.

“What are you looking forward to the most?” Emeri asked me, after grunting in reply to my question.

“Definitely seeing my family and my little sister. I can’t even begin to guess how much she’s grown in the time we’ve been gone. I’d like to reconnect with my friends as well. Doran, Cerion and a few others. Apart from that, I also want to start sparring with Revan again, now that he’s tiered up. Not much room to do that on a boat, unfortunately. What about you?”

She hummed. “Same thing, I suppose. Seeing dad again would be nice… I’d like to see your family again, too, to be honest. They’re really nice people.”

I nodded. “Knowing them, they’d like to see you, too. Are your friends going to be in Reito, too?”

She pursed her lips, looking a bit downcast. “I… never had much time to make friends, Art.” She said quickly, “But I can make more soon! You’ll see!” she added.

I nodded, seeing her point. “I know you will. I’ll introduce you to mine, as well. Knowing them, they’ll fall over backwards to get to know you. Especially Cerion he’s what he calls a ‘social butterfly’.”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “No clue. You’ll have to ask him, I suppose.”

Not long after that, we finally arrived and made port. After paying the captain his due, Emeri and I began to make the trek back to Reito. More accurately, Revan carried us there.

It would still take him a week to travel from southern Roa to northern Roa, but that was already a large improvement over his previous speed. From sitting on his back, I noticed a detail that I hadn’t paid attention to before. Atop Revan’s spine, two small, bony wings had sprouted. Skin similar to a bat’s covered the small appendages, making me wonder whether these would eventually grow large enough to carry Revan into the sky. After inspecting Revan’s summoning item, I realised that this was a likely future.

[Undead Drake talisman]

Tier 4 talisman.

(Growth item)

This talisman allows the holder to summon an [Undead Drake] using dark-aligned mana.

This is a growth item and that will tier up each time the holder bound to it tiers up. The tier of the holder and the item must be the same for this to function.

[Soulbound]

Revan was no longer described as a ‘pseudo drake’. No, now he was a full-blown drake, which was seen as a weaker, landbound cousin of the dragons. Nonetheless, that still made him frighteningly powerful. Being weaker than a dragon wasn’t exactly an insult, after all. Besides, in a few tiers Revan might grow to be an actual undead dragon, as long as we advanced far enough.

What was left unsaid by the talisman, however, was that Revan behaved like a dog. Now that I was able to keep him summoned as we travelled, he was determined to absorb all of the attention he had missed out on during our journey through Alterian.

This was a bit of a burden at first, but became much more bearable when Emeri helped out and distracted him with games that she made up. She, too, had figured out that Revan was just the reincarnation of someone’s pet dog, because he took remarkably well to playing fetch and burying bones for later.

When she taught him to zigzag around trees as fast as he could, I knew that Revan’s loyalty was being bought. With me being as competitive as I am, it didn’t take long for Revan’s attention to become something of contention between Emeri and I, much to the lizard’s satisfaction.

At this point, our contest had become a battle of attrition. Whoever tired out first, would lose.