In the morning, we tied the captain with a binding spell and placed him on his horse considering that he was still unconscious and couldn't walk on his own. As we walked through the road, and before reaching the palace, a group of around three dozen soldiers surrounded us. Exactly as I expected.

"Guys, we really don't have to do this," I said in their language while showing the face of their bound leader. "One more step and his head falls."

They hesitated for some minutes but then, ultimately, decided to attack. I pulled out my wand and willed it to become a sword. Without any difficulty, I decapitated the captain, his head falling to the ground. Tulip looked at me in disbelief.

"Come on, then," I said, ignoring her expression. The army charged at us as I dismounted my horse. It is time to test all the things that I have learned over the past year.

Large groups attacked me and Tulip, who decided to use her wand as her weapon. She cast the shielding charm and sent tons of spells toward the enemy.

My sword slashed one attacker after the other without any break. To make things easier for me, I used the wind to root the enemies in place and even caused some ice sickles to form to pierce some of the enemies in the back. After becoming the Lord of Ice, making some ice out of nothing became a lot easier than before.

While swinging my sword, it felt like I was entering a trance. I let myself fall into it and my movements became more precise, but also different than before. Weirdly enough, every time that blood came out of the enemies, the sword would slowly absorb them, even my body absorbed some.

After approximately half an hour, every single one of the enemies was killed, leaving a river of blood behind. I immediately closed my eyes and concentrated. I sensed the blood flowing towards me and the sword. Whatever I seemed to have grasped was connected to the laws of Water as well as the sword arts.

Blood was a form of water, in a sense. So with this, my first technique was created: Bloodbath- Blood Absorb!

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The first part of this technique is to absorb the blood of the enemies through my sword and let it transfer to my body as I temporarily fuse with it. The other part is that the absorbed blood would also heal any injury that I may get, although that seemed unlikely to be of much use to me considering the toughness of my now-dragon body.

The speed at which my body was becoming stronger actually surprised me every time I think about it. Richard has mentioned that after some time passes and with some training, my skin, or scales I should say, would prevent anything from piercing through.

I opened my eyes and saw that the corpses had dried and crumbled apart. The sun had already fallen and the moon had risen in the night sky. Tulip had apparently chosen to stay quiet all this time, but now, her look varied from shock to confusion to frowning.

She approached me and said, "What was that? Did you have any insights?"

I nodded and explained to her my new technique, "I honestly didn't expect to think about this in the middle of the fight."

"Just be glad that it did, I guess," she shrugged and continued, "They weren't too powerful for a group of thugs"

"Oh, they were. Every one of them was at least at the first deity level. The fact that we slaughtered them all shows that our training is paying off."

She nodded and remembered something, "You were right about the attack.""I did sense that something was going to happen after we left the camp, though I didn't know exactly what."

"How?"

"I am a seer. Knowing the future is what a seer is, after all."

"Oh, mighty seer, will we be granted permission?" she teased. I just shook my head with a smile. "Now that the captain and his thugs are dead, what will you use as proof for the Buddha?"

"Ah, right. I forgot about that," I closed my eyes again. Instantly, the captain's head, which was still on the ground, disappeared. The head was back in its place, and the captain, who's awake now, appeared healthy, though struggling to get free from his magical bonds.

"What? He's not dead?" she exclaimed.

"No, I have cast a non-verbal spell that created an illusion around him. I have only made the group see that he was dead, but he wasn't truly."

"Where did you learn these things?"

"The book is in row C, shelf 3, the tenth book."

"I should definitely learn this."

We rode for some time and decided to camp for the night. The next morning, we would meet the Buddha.