~Flashback- Three Days Ago~

Volkarin stood up straight and dusted his hands after just changing a part of the endless plains into a rocky region, thereby forming the birth of the third region in Uehara’s mindscape. The first two are the plains region which forms the majority of Uehara’s mindscape while the second was the mountain region that was created to test how Uehara fared in fighting on uneven surfaces.

It had been just a few hours after Volkarin had thoroughly beat into his son about how he had wrought such stress on his infantile body.

[Sometimes I wonder if my old man felt like this when he trained me.]

Standing up straight, Volkarin cut off the chakra that was used in terraforming the landscape. Resisting the urge to smirk at his son’s slightly widened eyes, Volkarin explained the current training regimen.

“As much as I would’ve liked to make you completely master fire and lightning, its more important for you to master the earth element if what you’ve told me is true. In terms of fighting multiple enemies, especially armies, earth is your best choice out of the four basic elements. I would’ve wanted to teach you how to use the deviant element of sound but you’re barely passable in wind manipulation. You can barely manipulate the air circulating inside a person.”

Uehara ignored the jab at his lack of ability to manipulate the element of air. He had paid less attention to it after having the ability to create miniature tornadoes, opting to focus more on combining the aforementioned element with his element of fire.

Volkarin took in the sweaty, impassive face of his son before continuing.

“Despite that, I aim to get you to master your earth-sage transformation within a month if I have anything to say about it.”

Uehara’s eyes widened.

“Is a week not enough, father?”

“Pfft”

Bringing a hand to his face, Volkarin’s expression was one of pure amusement, much to the displeasure of Uehara.

“Unfortunately not, my son. Even if you could learn the earth-sage transformation in a day, your body will take a month to recover.”

~Flashback- End~

1020 AD, 2nd Month of 12, Uehara’s Mindscape

[Sometimes I ask myself.]

BOOOM

[What if I had chosen to be a human?]

Quickly ducking one of his father’s ice-blades, Uehara didn’t need to look back to know that the rock-hill behind him was cleaved through.

Although his face appeared neutral, there were still traces of sweat trickling down his cheeks.

“GODDAMNIT!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Uehara could see one of his clones lose their arm against a clone of his father, with said clone-father giving off a loving smile before finger-flicking his clone through a rock-hill.

Getting his skinny right arm out of the way of another ice-blade, he was subjected to the memory intake of another ten clones meeting their demise.

Originally, there were a hundred of his and his father’s clones spread throughout the rocky region of his mindscape. Of a hundred, he only had seventy-

POOF

[Only sixty-nine left? Damnit dad.]

This was a part of Volkarin’s training. He would attack Uehara while his son would have to endure the memory intake of his clones getting dispelled after receiving debilitating or outright fatal blows. This sort of training would allow him to build up his mental resistance and his ability to maintain his focus in unforgiving situations, such as this one. It would also greatly help him in future battles, especially since he’s set his sights on the Minamoto clan.

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Just having a clone pop nearly every second with their gruesome deaths filling his head was more than enough to disorient him.

Dodging another strike that would’ve no doubt circumsised him, Uehara was really contemplating on just erasing his father from his mindscape, if he could.

His father wasn’t a balance-breaker-level god for nothing. Controlling the mindscape of his rugrat who hadn’t even opened their first-gate was as easy as blinking. As much as Uehara wanted to make himself a god in his mindscape, it was impossible to assume the title of administrator in front of his father.

Backflipping away from his father, multiple earth walls that were twenty-metres wide and high rose from the ground with each flip he executed. Feeling his father jump on them like skipping stones, he sunk under ground to dodge the moment when his father threw the ice-sword.

As much as he wanted to use fire, he was explicitly told to focus on his earth element. Currently, Uehara couldn’t make use of the deviant element of gravity and that was something Volkarin was trying to beat into him.

He was forced into getting his earth element up to snuff. Although Uehara would consider himself pretty good, it was horribly average in front of his father.

He was for the lack of better words, bummed out at his father’s dismissal. But all of that was thrown out when he had watched his father create this vast rocky region in just under a minute three days ago.

RUMBLE…(Surface Break)

Resurfacing behind his father, Uehara attempted to engage him with taijutsu but that thought was nullified immediately since he had to dodge the body of his clone being thrown at him by his father’s clone.

He was about to re-engage his father again when his clone suddenly exploded to his left.

“?!”

Taken by surprise, he barely managed to guard his vitals before he was sent skidding across the hard earth.

Digging his fingers into the earth, he managed to right himself but the first thing he felt was another thirty-six of his clones being dispelled, leaving twenty-three left.

He couldn’t help but wince in pain at the sudden influx of memories.

“Argh…”

With them dispelling at the same time, it took him a couple of split-seconds to come out of the disorientation caused by the sudden rush of memories.

Luckily, previous experience made his instincts take over, allowing him to dodge one of his father’s fists.

BOOOM

A long ravine spawned in the direction where his father punched. This wasn’t the first time that he had seen his father’s impressive strength. He still hadn’t forgotten about the other ravine at the mountain region that was created by his father’s stomp.

But what had Uehara contemplating life right now was how this three-kilometre long, forty-metres wide by forty-metres deep ravine was created by his father punching the air, not the ground.

[The shockwave from his fist caused this…?!]

Mentally berating himself for standing still like a fool, he gathered the dust in the air and sent shrapnel bullets towards his father who was still in his punching position.

Seeing the shrapnel hit his father, his eyes widened.

[Damnit!]

He immediately buried himself deep underground and compressed as much earth as he could in front of him to act as an impenetrable wall. He wasn’t satisfied and formed two more walls.

It didn’t even take a second before Volkarin’s body lit up with seals and…

BOOOOM

A massive explosion engulfed everything within a kilometre radius. With this simple action, twenty of Uehara’s clones were destroyed, leaving three left that were just beyond the perimeter of the explosion.

“Argh! My head!”

Clutching his scalp tightly, the horrifying burning sensation felt by his clones were suddenly transferred into his mind. Although he had managed to re-orient himself from the previous influx of memories, he still hadn’t sorted through them. Now adding this batch of memories, it caused his brain to overload.

This resulted in him slowly bleeding from his ears.

[This hurts! This REALLY hurts!]

He immediately made space behind him and created another shadow clone to bear the brunt of the memories. To stop the clone from disrupting under the mental damage, Uehara constantly channeled large amounts of chakra into it.

Even though he knew such large amounts of chakra being channeled would usually act as a beacon, that currently wasn’t the case. Even though there was a wall in front of him, he had to close his eyes from the sheer amount of energy that threatened to blind him. The explosion was so powerful that the rock Uehara was using as cover was heated to the extent that it became something akin to magma.

Luckily, he didn’t have any of his ocular abilities active for he we would dread the repercussions. The last thing he needed was being blinded while having a splitting headache.

While scratching his eyes, he suddenly felt a shift within the earth around him.

[I need to leave.]

Acting on that thought, Uehara resurfaced with a slab of earth under him while his clone dispersed, having completed its job. Bending the stone slab to his will, he used it to fly high into the sky. It was just in time too since the earth below him suddenly compressed…heavily. It was to the point that there was visible diamond ore on the surface.

“...”

It was at that moment, that he decided to run away.

(AN: Sorry for not updating the past week. Things were a bit chaotic during that time. For one, my Internet Service Provider was down so I was without internet connection. Second, the transformer in my area malfunctioned a few days ago so we were without power for two days. Third, I was swamped with assignments where I had to program several Console Applications. It didn’t help that there was no power in my area at all.

Besides that, I did manage to stockpile some chapters so instead of one, I’ll be releasing two chapters daily. I’d release more but that is currently the amount I can edit in a day. I still have to allocate time into practicing how to code.

As I’ve said before, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that this book will ever get dropped. I’ve planned this book for far too long to go on a permanent hiatus.

Thank you)