A/n: Hey guys! As they always say, "A chapter a day keeps the cliffhangers away!" ... Yes? No? Is that how it works? Eh, I don't know. Whatever. Alright, so there's finally action in this chapter! I know you guys have been waiting for it for quite a while so who am I to say no? As usual, blah blah, thank you for reading, blah blah, hope you enjoy, blah comments blah mistake, w/e. Also, it seems I have a habit of breaking my 1.5k to 3k word limit that I set back in chapter 1. Breaking it in the good way, I mean, since I'm consistently going over. Ehhhhhhhhhh. Here's your chapter! Author out!
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2 Years ago:
A large gale of wind could be felt all across the surrounding area as it accelerated through the sky. Riding atop this massive torrent of air, a woman could be seen standing upright as she carefully observed the forests below her. This woman had greyish white hair that was tied in a bun behind her so as to not get in the way during flight. Her face was still rather young and if one looked at her, they would assume she would be in her mid to late twenties in age. Of course, that’s not her true age at all. Even her eyes itself glowed a greyish color as one could see a numerous waves of whispery wind churning within her pupils as though there was a storm whirling within them.
This woman’s name was Wynfa, one of the seven elemental gods who ruled the world of Aerethin. She was currently in a rush as she sped from her home on the mountainous continent of Astheon located to the West. She quickly arrived in the human territory that was on the West side of the Incacia Continent, the main, central continent where the four main races, elves, beastman, human, and demons, resided.
She had one and only goal in mind when she came here. That is, she came to investigate the extreme tremor that she felt earlier coming from the Incacia continent, a tremor large enough to be felt even on the neighboring continent of Astheon. That and also to investigate how exactly the tremor was related to the incredible surge of mana that she felt following the earthquake.
Never in her long life had she ever experienced such a massive surge of primal mana before. It was an amount that even made her tremble as she was anxious to find out the cause. Whatever the cause was, it couldn’t be natural. If the cause proved too much to handle, she would immediately flee and alert the others. Whatever caused such a thing, there was no doubt that it would be dangerous.
Due to her excellent recon skills as a wind elemental, whose skill in the area are only eclipsed by dark elementals, she decided on her own that she would be best suited for the job as the Elemental God of Darkness was currently sealed away.
Scanning the forest where she was sure the tremor originated from, she could only look in dismay as she could not feel even an ounce of the massive mana surge remaining. As she circled around the forest, looking for clues on the subject and yet not finding any, she decided to stop for a bit near a lake she had visited once before a long time ago. The lake gave off a pure, serene feeling as its viridian covered surface reflected the sunlight from above, making it almost seem to glow.
‘Damn, I can’t seem to find anything. There’s no way something that caused that large of a disruption would just disappear, especially not from my radar. Maybe I should go and do a re-search of the places I looked through before; I may have missed something.’ She thought to herself as she watched the surface of the lake.
‘Now that I think about it, was this lake always this wide?’ She thought before shaking her head. ‘No, that doesn’t matter. In any case, I should continue looking.’
She then used the wind and lifted off again into the sky to once again to continue her search efforts. As the days passed, each and every time she searched the forest, she could simply find nothing, much to her frustration. Soon, she simply gave up as she deduced that she must have made a mistake in the location and decided to search elsewhere.
Little did she know, a man with long silvery hair could be seen grinning in a cave nearby as she left the area for the last time. The man then simply lowered his finger as the dark light that it was emitting dispersed into the surroundings.
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“Heeeeeeey, Seffy, you done yet? I thought you were excited to leave. If you don’t hurry up, I’m dumping your ass here and leaving on my own.” Cyrus called out from outside the cave entrance.
“Just wait for a bit longer! Unlike you, I don’t have that convenient spatial ring of yours.” Seffy shouted back from inside the cave.
“Hey, even my spatial ring has its limits! It’s not like it has room to store anything I want, otherwise we wouldn’t be packing in the first place!” Cyrus retorted.
“But your pack is still so much smaller than mine!” Seffy pouted as she finally came out of the cave with a large backpack on her back. She was currently in her usual fur pelt outfit that she had worn since the beginning.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s simply a matter of privilege. Now that I look at you, I’ve noticed that you’ve been wearing the same outfit I made for you in the beginning until now. Once we get to town, let’s buy you some more clothes.” Cyrus noted as he replied back to Seffy.
Nodding her head in in agreement, she skipped up to Cyrus’s side and faced him.
“Alright, all ready to go!” Seffy announced.
“Okay then. Our first destination would be a town called Angrel located directly to the north of this forest. As much as I would like to go to the capital city of Sangin that’s west of here, I feel like it wouldn’t be a good idea. After all, we barely know anything about the current standards of the world as well as its customs and culture. With you being a slave for two years and then in this forest for two more, and with me never having contact with other people for who knows how long, I feel we would draw in more suspicion than we would want since we’re essentially clueless on the ways of the world.” Cyrus concluded as he took out the map he received from the bandits a couple years ago.
“In any case, we’ll draw less attention in a town than in a city. From there we’ll gather every piece of information we can find on this world. Got it?” Cyrus asked to which Seffy simply nodded.
“Alright, let’s go then. No point waiting any longer.” Cyrus said as he started walking in the northern direction. Seffy followed closely immediately after.
The forest itself was quite expansive although not really difficult to trek. The most problematic part of this forest was that it had magical beasts in abundance, but those were easily dispatched by the duo. Although they could’ve just flown to town from the forest, they didn’t as they would prefer not to be attacked if mistaken for monsters. As for their wings when they get into town, they’ll simply talk it off as them being part harpy as Seffy had mistakenly thought before. Not only to avoid getting attacked, they walked simply because they wanted to enjoy the journey, after all they were in no rush.
Along the way Cyrus mentioned something he forgot to ask the day before. “Oh yeah, now that I think about it, you never did mention who it was that you wanted me not to kill. Care to elaborate?”
At this question, Seffy’s expression visibly darkened as her eyes grew sharp and cold. Gritting her teeth at having to remember that hateful person, she replied, “The person I want you to refrain from killing goes by the name of Levine Samsin. He is a tall man with a handlebar mustache and always wears a monocle on his left eye. He has shoulder-length dark brown hair and sharp facial features like a hawk’s. His most defining feature however, is a large vertical scar across the left side of his face that intersects with his eye that wears the monocle.” Seffy finished, clenching her shaking, angry fists.
“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll let you know if I do find anyone that looks similar.” Cyrus replied as he looked ahead.
“Thank you.” Seffy simply said as she let go of her clenched fists and her expression lightened.
They continued on for a bit longer before both of them noticed something was wrong. The presence magical beasts that constantly attacked them before soon dwindled. Soon they disappeared altogether as Seffy and Cyrus continued forward.
“Hey Cyrus, have you noticed it?” Seffy asked growing a little concerned.
“Notice, what?” Cyrus smirked as he walked forward, knowing full well what she was talking about.
“You know, the fact that the magical beasts haven’t attacked us recently. It’s like they’re avoiding this area.” Seffy continued.
Cyrus simply shrugged and said, “Well not much we can do about it. Since it’s in the direction of our destination, we’ll have to pass through here, unless we want to take a detour which I’m too lazy take.”
“In any case, don’t you want to find out what’s here that’s keeping the beasts away?” Cyrus replied smirking. Although, he already had a general idea as he expanded his mana sense outward the moment he noticed something wrong.”
“Well, I suppose I’m also quite curious as well.” Seffy admittedly replied.
The two continued their nice stroll through the forest free of magical beasts for a bit longer before they came upon a large clearing. At the center of this large clearing was a cave. The cave was much like their own, only… it was about four times as wide and three times as high.
As they came out into the clearing and stood in front of the cave, a large, deafening roar could be heard from within.
“Looks like we found our cause.” Cyrus said grinning a bit wider. “Hey Seffy?”
“Yeah?”
“Ready to go dragon hunting?” Cyrus spoke, now with an extremely wide smile.
“Huh? What are you tal-.”
Before Seffy could finish, a gigantic creature soon came strutting out the cave entrance, its size almost as large as the cave opening itself. It had large, slit, greenish yellow eyes that stared sharply at the two in front of it. Sporting a huge, heavily armored, scaled body, the ground shook upon each step from the creature as it struggled to hold up the colossal weight. Large, plated spikes ran down along its spine to the end of its long tail that looked like it could crush anything that touched it as it swung side to side. With the exception of its yellow tinted eyes, the beast was almost completely green and its face reared into a viscous snarl as hot air blasted from its snout. It had no wings but that doesn’t matter.
“WHO DARES TO ENTER MY DOMAIN? I HOPE YOU ARE PREPARED TO OFFER UP YOUR LIVES FOR THIS TRANSGRESSION.” The dragon angrily roared out once more.
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‘Hmm, an earth dragon. Although I can’t exactly say it’s the biggest I’ve seen before, it certainly is a good size. Looks to have lived for quite a while; by my estimate at least 10000 years.’ Cyrus thought while nonchalantly rubbing his chin.
Dragons, as a species, generally have a lifespan of around 20000 years. Of course, the most powerful ones, similar to Seraphim, can live nearly indefinitely. However, this dragon was not one of them.
The dragon seemed to become more irritated by the second as he saw Cyrus’s frivolous behavior. Cyrus simply gave a smug, amused smirk like he always does.
Seffy, on the other hand, held a completely different attitude towards the dragon as she took a battle stance. She brought out her scythe that Cyrus had gifted her before. It was one of the only two weapons left in Cyrus’s possession and he used it personally before switching to his current weapon, the ‘Wings of Dusk’, after it was made. It was quite a convenient weapon as it could take on a miniature form in the shape of a necklace, but that doesn’t matter right now. The weapon itself was completely black with the exception of the blade of the scythe which was blood red. It held many intricate designs on it, leading all the way up to the head of the weapon where its sharp edge was inlaid in the shape of a wing. She was given it a little bit after she learned how to use magic so as to be able to utilize one of its special abilities, though she never felt the need to even take it out before. That special ability was that it could drain a person’s blood through the use of magic and convert that power to the wielder’s power. Though it doesn’t matter much against weaker enemies, against stronger opponents such as this earth dragon, this ability is literally god-send as it allows a person to whittle his opponent down all the while replenishing their own strength. Because of this ability, this weapon was aptly named ‘Blood Reaver’.
Holding the weapon in hand, Seffy became extremely cautious as she gazed at the beast though she still held no fear towards it. Since she had never seen a dragon before in real life, obviously she would be a little bit startled by it. However, over these two years, she had honed her battle senses to the extreme, so she wasn’t startled by it for long.
Cyrus, seeing her in ready position, simply asked her, “Do you want to take it on or should I take care of it?”
“I’ll fight it myself.” She replied back.
Noticing the conversation between the two, the dragon got extremely upset at being ignored and immediately charged. Despite its body structure, it was surprisingly quick.
“Alright then, I’ll move to the side. Don’t go too overboard though. I’ll step in if I feel it becomes too much for you.” Cyrus replied as he casually bounced off the dragon’s charge with a wall of darkness effectively stunning the dragon from a shift in the momentum. After that, he just jumped up onto a nearby tree and remained hidden to enjoy the show.
The dragon soon escaped from its daze as a look of shock appeared on its face before once again becoming enraged.
Learning from earlier, Seffy immediately appeared at its side and initiated a wide swing from her scythe before the dragon had the chance to charge again. However, Seffy vastly underestimated the defensive power of its scales as her scythe simply bounced off its side with a loud ‘Clink’, barely scratching the scales.
As she lost her balance a little due to the fact that her strike was deflected, the dragon immediately capitalized on that and turned its body a whole 180 degrees before smashing its tail into Seffy’s side. Luckily for her, at the last second she used her scythe, which was pretty durable in fact, to take the brunt of the force from the tail swing. Even so, she could feel a couple of her rib cage bones breaking as a little bit of blood trickled down her mouth.
The dragon did not simply stop at that one tail swing, though, as it continuously rotated its body in circles like a whirlwind. Each and every time, it aimed its tail at Seffy’s small body as she barely avoided each strike. The dragon stopped its twirling as Seffy jumped back to gain a bit of distance from it. However, it immediately charged at her again, not giving her any breathing room to think and devise a strategy.
Dodging to the left of the dragon as it crunched a few trees that were behind the place she dodged from, she immediately went to madly slashing at the dragon’s side, hoping to find some sort weakness in its brutally hard armor. The majority of the slashes were deflected, like the first however, one strike met some resistance as it did indeed cut into the dragon’s flesh. The place where the strike connected was right above the underside of the dragon as it was able to crack some scales and reveal the soft flesh underneath. Seffy now sported a wide grin as she realized what this meant. The fact was, the scales on the belly of the dragon were extremely weak compared to the others.
The dragon, feeling a bit of pain, also seemed to realize that the girl had found its weakness as it immediately back away from Seffy while glaring at her.
As she was about to once again commence her attack, the dragon did something completely different. Instead of charging her, the dragon simply took a big breath of air as its belly expanded a little. After finally realizing what it was, Seffy frantically ran to the side in hopes of evading the crossfire. However, she was a bit too slow at this as the dragon immediately released its kind’s signature attack, the dragon’s breath. A gigantic blast emanated out of the dragon’s mouth, completely erasing everything that stood in front of it. The aftermath was readily visible after the dust settled as an entire patch of forest disappeared from existence, leaving not even the stumps. All that was left was the charred surface of the ground as all life in that immediate area disappeared.
The dragon’s reptilian mouth formed a smirk, satisfied that it had rid itself of one of the pests, before turning around to look for the other one.
However, before it had the chance to look around, it felt an intense pain at the side of its body near its stomach. As it roared out in agony before turning its face to look at the attacker, its eyes visibly widened as it saw the girl it had assumed was dead.
Seffy herself had her entire left arm, all the way up to the shoulder blades, missing. She had burn wounds all over the left side of her body as her blood splashed everywhere.
She simply gave a strained smirk at the shocked expression of the dragon before immediately pulling the scythe lodged in its belly upwards with the entirety of her strength.
An extremely loud shriek escaped from the dragon as it was split from bottom up as the scythe traveled through its body. It made a large squelching noise as its innards were completely cut up like vegetables. Giving one last blood-curdling screech, it collapsed on its side, dead before it even hit the ground.
“Never lower your guard until you make sure your enemy is dead.” Seffy exhaustively told the body of the dead dragon, not that it’ll make any difference.
“Hah… Hah… Hah…” Seffy panted before she also dropped to her knees, letting go of the scythe while holding the stub of her missing arm. The adrenaline soon left her as she experienced the full brunt of the pain as she winced.
Cyrus soon came up to her while clapping. “That was magnificent, Seffy. Couldn’t have done it better myself.” He said with a wide smile.
“Heh, that’s obviously a lie. You could have easily killed it.” Seffy tiredly smirked back at Cyrus.
Cyrus, seeing her mutilated state, took out from his spatial ring another vial of his blood.
“Here. Though you will regenerate on your own when given enough time, this is to speed up the process.” Cyrus said as he handed her the vial to which she gladly gulped down.
As her body started to rapidly regenerate, Seffy couldn’t help but stare at it happening in wonder.
“No matter how many times I see this happen, it never ceases to amaze me. Just what the hell is with that blood of yours.” Seffy spoke out, still fatigued over her fight.
“It’s just how I was made.” Cyrus just shrugged at her question while smiling.
“In any case, I’m curious. Why didn’t you use any of your magic that fight?” Cyrus questioned as he stared at the regenerating Seffy.
“Well, it wouldn’t have made any difference even if I used it. My magic isn’t on your level; it can’t penetrate its scale hide. You’ve seen how the scythe bounced off right? If even that can’t cut into its scales then there’s no way my magic would. Maybe it’ll damage the surface, but that would be the extent of it.” Seffy replied.
Cyrus just shook his head. “No, it’s not that. Why didn’t you use any body strengthening magic? I’m sure if you funneled mana throughout your body, you physical abilities would be able to easily keep up with that dragon’s.” Cyrus said still confused.
At this Seffy just widened her eyes as she looked at him. “You can do that!?”
Hearing this, Cyrus just rubbed his temples. “You’ve been using magic all this time and you’ve never realized that!? It’s literally the exact same concept as all other magic except you hold the mana in your body instead!”
Hearing this, Seffy just put her working hand on her face as she gave out a loud frustrated sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me this beforehand? This fight would’ve been so much easier if you had!”
Cyrus just shrugged at this and said, “I just assumed you already knew how to use it. No wonder you felt so weak whenever we sparred.”
“Well, whatever. Killing a dragon without the use of body strengthening is quite the impressive feat in itself. Now I’m a bit excited to see what you’re like when you fight with body strengthening on.” Cyrus continued on grinning.
“In any case, let’s wait for you to recover a bit more before we move on alright? In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and harvest the resources from that dragon.” Cyrus spoke as he proceeded towards the dragon corpse.
After an hour of waiting, Seffy had completely recovered and was up and moving again while Cyrus had just finished harvesting the dragon parts. They soon left the scene of the battle behind and proceeded on towards Angrel. Nothing else of note happened on the way there besides the occasional magic beast or bandit attack. After a whole day of walking had passed and nightfall descended, the dynamic duo finally saw the town walls in the distance that was lit up by the lights from the townscape within.