One-week later

The week went by rather uneventfully. Uehara never awoke during that time period but he also never unstuck himself from Shikibu, who found it very endearing. As a demon, she didn’t really require much for food. Just absorbing the nature energy in the air was enough for her.

It was now morning and Shikibu was sitting outside on a wooden bench near the tea garden. She had Uehara on her lap and was gently running her fingers on his skin. As Uehara grows, scales will gradually form on his skin.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Shikibu felt the rate of nature energy absorption around Uehara decrease.

[Is he waking up?]

As she waited, all that she got was Uehara twisting around and laying his head against her stomach, going into an even deeper sleep.

Shikibu felt her heart skip a beat at that moment.

[Cute~]

Meanwhile, in Uehara’s mindcape…

Uehara and Volkarin were having a fast-paced combat session. Three days ago marked the beginning of the second month, making it safe for Uehara to meet with his father for his monthly visits.

Uehara had told him everything that had happened, from how he had fallen unconscious due to Shikibu overwhelming him with her emotions, to draining himself of his internal nature energy while creating the scroll.

The result was a thorough beating from his father. Volkarin had laughed at his son’s misfortune caused by Shikibu but he got angry when he heard how he used too much internal nature energy.

Halfway through the beating, his exact words were.

‘I told you that you must soak the scroll-parchment with your energy little by little over the course of the week! NOT IN A DAY! One mistake and you could’ve died, AGAIN!’

Suffice to say, he was not happy with his son’s impulsiveness and recklessness and there was a valid reason for that. If Volkarin’s main body doesn’t manage to wake up, then Uehara may possibly be the last surin in existence. Volkarin is a god. If his main body doesn’t recover and ends up dying, then there is no possibility of reincarnating or reforming for him. That’s why he doesn’t want Uehara to die at all costs and why he gets so worried and angry when he’s reckless.

This all happened on the first day. It was the first day and the sparring between Uehara and Volkarin was getting more and more intense. Uehara was already in his flame-sage transformation, his hair having spiked a bit and turned golden while his clothes and even skin were gold as well due to how dense the nature energy around his body was.

Two shadow clones were right next to him. Both were in their water-sage transformation. Their skin was a pale blue and their hair was cyan. A mist-like blue aura was surrounding their bodies while their eyes were cyan in colour.

There were also another two shadow clones who were standing afar with their sage mode activated. The clones had bone tri-bladed chains as their weapons. While Uehara and his two clones in their sage transformations would fight with him, the other two clones in their sage mode would assist from afar.

The reason why the two shadow clones in sage mode were not using a sage transformation, it was because it, according to Volkarin, would be much easier to sense them. So as a compromise, Uehara and his two clones that were in close-combat with Volkarin would act as beacons with their sage- transformations. With the three of them radiating so much energy, it would be harder for Volkarin to sense the clones in sage mode with their weaker energy output.

Of course, harder doesn’t mean impossible as Volkarin basically manhandled all of them like the children they were. Without using any sort of energy, he managed to block the onslaught of Uehara and his clones. He especially made sure to use Uehara as a meat shield against the sage mode clones hanging at the back.

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The surroundings didn’t suffer much due to Volkarin making the current sparring session all about Uehara getting used to the power-boost his sage transformation gives him. Uehara could only use his ocular abilities from his dragon eyes.

But still, his ocular abilities didn’t work since even if he could see his father’s chakra, Volkarin isn’t using any chakra or any other sort of energy within his attacks. So all the energy within his body would be still, not flowing to a particular limb or anything.

Another thing that irked Uehara the most was that any of his attacks didn’t work on Volkarin. Despite the increase in power and having more limbs to assist him than his father, none of his attacks landed.

…

“Don’t tell me you’re already giving up son?”

Uehara stood before his father with a determined expression.

“Not yet!”

Unlike a few hours ago, the landscape now was completely ruined. Where there were fields filled with lush grass was now filled with deep craters. There was even a crater that had water in it due to having formed near the stream. Aside from the newly formed lake, all of Uehara’s clones were dispersed due to running out of chakra and Uehara himself couldn’t afford to make more since he was already struggling to maintain his sage mode after regressing from his sage transformation.

Gathering up his chakra, he had one last trick in the book.

[As much as I’m not fond of how it limits me, I have to try it.]

Quickly dodging his father’s kick, he jumped away from what was now a crater. Since he was currently too tired mentally to properly focus, he weaved half the hand-sign for ox (earth). While absorbing nature energy, he fused it with his earth chakra.

As he continued to move around, his skin started turning a brownish-red. His hair spiked up slightly and the colour turned into a rusty-red. His eyes lost their pupils, becoming pale white while an orange-brown aura came into life around him.

Having assumed his earth-sage transformation, visible mist came out of his mouth as he breathed. Although Uehara had entered this form, he could feel that he was slowly losing his rationality. The only thoughts that clouded his mind was too smash apart everything.

Trying to reign in his thoughts, he frowned.

[This is why I hate this form! I hate losing my mind, not having control!]

Volkarin watched with some displeasure as his son struggled to control his rationality.

[He’s still as hard-headed as ever. Hasn’t he realised that control is overrated?]

He sighed.

[With how he is, he’ll realise it by the time I grow white hair.]

Not waiting for Uehara to properly regain his thoughts, Volkarin vanished from his spot and landed a swift kick towards Uehara’s head, sending him flying across the landscape before skidding on the grass like a stone flung across the river.

Before Uehara could get up, another kick from his father sent him shooting high into the sky. Before he could even right himself, Uehara felt a hand grabbing him by his shirt.

Volkarin watched his son struggling to maintain a semblance of control.

“Stop forcing yourself to maintain control. Let it happen. Let your instincts run wild!”

But Uehara didn’t want to. He tightly held on to his rationality like his life depended on it. Unfortunately, his earth sage transformation kept receding due to Uehara holding back.

“Tch!”

Volkarin forcefully threw Uehara to the ground in indignation.

BOOM

He looked at his son lying in the crater, nearly rendered unconscious from the impact. His sage-transformation was lost due to the impact.

[Just what makes him so hard-headed? He’s using nature energy like the humans do, always limiting it.]

Unlike humans, demons don’t have to limit or control the nature energy that enters their bodies. While humans would turn to stone, demons would experience a higher increase in power. Along with that increase in power, comes with a decrease in rationality. What will be left will be instincts.

But that’s the beauty of it. When someone fights with their instincts, they’re at their strongest. That’s what Volkarin has been trying to teach Uehara. He hoped his son would realise over time but it was a shame as Uehara only held himself back trying to fight against his instincts.

Gently touching down, Volkarin cracked his neck with a simple tilt of the head.

[I should point him in the right direction and-oh?]

He could feel Uehara secretly gathering his chakra within the crater.

[This should be the last of his chakra. I want to see what he can do with it.]

Down below, Uehara had finally formulated an attack plan that he was sure should atleast allow him to clinch in a hit on his father. Getting up from the crater, he made a last ditch effort to appear behind his father. Using the remainder of his chakra to form a shadow clone, it hastily entered the flame sage-transformation.

He then quickly concealed his chakra and appeared behind his father while his clone took the front to land a punch laced with blazing hot flames. Uehara was hoping that his meagre chakra signature would be overshadowed by his clone’s vibrant chakra signature.

Appearing behind his father he had a metre long bone needle with a tip no bigger than a normal needle, he struck towards the area where the kidneys would be with all his strength.

Ding!

“...”

All that planning. All that compromising. All that determination, was stopped by a finger. Both his clone’s attack and his bone needle were stopped by one of Volkarin’s fingers.

Crack

That was the sound of his confidence breaking. It was already fractured from before when Volkarin erased his elemental fusion technique from existence. Now, it was just one good breeze away from completely breaking.