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Hothead came to hunt with us today. He tried killing a roach like the one I hunted yesterday but failed to hit it in a weak spot like me. Using [Jet Stream], he was able to catch up to it easily but still didn’t damage it.
“You need any help, brother?” I asked.
He broke out of his focus on the roach “Huh, no, brother, I got this” he confidently said with a smirk.
I wasn’t going to press the matter any further but I tried advising him, so that he would kill it faster, since he looked rather stupid in his offensive methods.
“Hit its legs, it’s a weak spot”
Hearing me he flew up into the air, activated [Jet Stream] and descended on the running roach like a mini-hawk. Instead of aiming for the legs like I told him, he went straight for the middle of its body. With his speed I doubt he could have aimed for its small legs anyways but I didn’t have to be a genius to know that this was going to end badly.
He went full-force into the roach, piercing its body completely. This just showed the strength of the [Jet Stream]’s piercing ability, especially when it was aided by our beaks. However, my brother’s head appeared to be stuck. Flapping his wings he tried to fly, to get rid of the body. But it went up with him because of how light the two of them were. His head was lower than his chest at this point and I couldn’t help but laugh at his predicament.
I laughed for only a couple of seconds before flying to help him. Grabbing him by the neck, I proceeded to shake it a few times until the roach’s corpse flew off.
“Puah… That hurt, big brother” he complained, agonized. His face was also covered in blood like I was.
“That’s what you get for charging it like that” for or some reason, I feel like a wise old man now.
Seeing as my brother had already hunted a big prey, I decided to try my luck with small insects again, since the both of us will probably have to carry together. I chose one that looked like a small beetle, strangely, all those different insects were close to each other here. But I paid it no heed.
The beetle-like insect’s shell contained different strips of color, I chose it mainly for its round back. Seeing its shell, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to pierce and its weak spots were too small for me to aim at before it flew away. It was adequately smaller than me so I could lose it easily when flying.
Getting an idea from hothead’s earlier action, I coated my beak and face with wind like I did with [Jet Stream] and quickly struck down at the beetle. Its shell crumbled from my strike and I hit it again with a normal peck to kill it. The wind aided my piercing ability as I expected. Thankfully, it wasn’t powerful enough to make the beetle’s innards explode in my face like the worm did before.
[Wind Magic] sub-skill gained [Wind pierce]
It even registered as a skill, that’s nice. It wasn’t as powerful as [Body Hardening] and [Body Strengthening] combined but it was still useful on its own. If I use the three skills together with [Jet Stream] midflight to strike at someone, I would probably have more piercing power than an iron rapier. Just imagining it makes my blood boil with excitement. I’m awesome, I think to myself.
Mother had finished gathering the ‘food’ after I had hunted a couple more of the beetles with my brother, he didn’t seem to be bothered by the blood on his face at all. She always filled her mouth and talons with worms to bring for us to eat. Even though today’s catch was the biggest so far we still ate it all because of our growing bodies. My siblings were now ranging from 7 to 9 centimeters in length without counting their wingspan and I was 12 centimeters, almost adult size for earth’s canaries. Mother was close to 30 centimeters with her wings spread. I doubt they grew this big on earth. But this was extent of her growth.
After we ate we went to that small pond again for hothead. We played a little bit before mother interrupted us.
“Alright, children, all of you try imbuing your mana in water. Don’t be discouraged if you fail, you still don’t have any knowledge regarding water or any natural affinity from your race” she continued “that doesn’t mean you have no affinity to it at all, it just means that your chances are lower”
We were all excited at the prospect of learning water magic. After exchanging brief glances with one another, we dove into the lake and tried it immediately.
With mother watching us, I closed my eyes and focused on my mana. Pouring it out of my body and into the water, imagining the water droplets get covered in my mana and going deeper to imagine its pure (H2O) form. Though, I didn’t do well in chemistry, the internet was enough for me to know that water was comprised of 2 hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom.
Mother was keeping a watchful gaze on our focused expressions without uttering a word. After close to 3 minutes, I opened my eyes.
[Water Magic lv1] skill gained
“I did it, mother” I said, smiling. Seeing my success a faint look of surprise appeared on her face before changing into a warm smile.
“good job” she said.
In the following two minutes coolhead, worryhead and cheerhead gained the skill with coolhead being first then worryhead and so on… all that was left was hothead. Another two minutes passed, his face was scrunched up from concentration.
After five more minutes, mother walked towards him and told him to stop.
“But I can do it, mother, please give me just a little longer” he pleaded.
“It’s alright, my dear, you can’t succeed at everything” she tried to reassure him “There will always be another chance when you study water for a bit, then you will definitely gain the skill”
Seeing us all out of the water, he understood that we all gained the skill. “But all my siblings got it” he complained.
“Yes, they have an affinity for water” she said as a matter of fact “just because you don’t have an affinity for water doesn’t mean you have no affinity for other elements but if you want to learn the skill so much, I will give you some knowledge about water with your siblings. How about it?” she said with a smile.
“Okay” he cheerfully said. I doubt the skill meant much to him but it looked like he just didn’t want to be behind us.
For the next hour or so, mother taught us about water, things like the water structure, viscosity, its effects on the environment like corrosion of the earth over thousands of years and how to apply it to magic. She also taught us about compressing water and its offensive abilities.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
After we were done, she told hothead to go try again. This time he got the skill in five minutes. He was very happy and kept shouting ‘Yeah!’ loudly several times.
“Ugh… shut up” coolhead looked annoyed at all the noise he was making.
Immediately he replied crestfallenly “Yes, sister”
He was very quiet and fearful of her for some reason, I guess their personalities were just incompatible. Mother paid it no mind while cheerhead laughed lightly.
“uhh… Congratulations, brother” worryhead said trying to cheer him up a little.
“Thank you, sister” hothead enthusiastically replied, his ability to change his mood should be a skill of its own.
Ignoring all of that I asked “are going to teach us a skill, mother?” I would be lying if I said that I didn’t anticipate it.
“If you wish” mother pondered for a bit “let’s see… Since we were just talking about water compression, I’ll tell you about [Water Spear]”
Apparently, [Water Spear] is concentrated water gathered into a line. With increased [Water Magic] proficiency, piercing power and throwing speed would increase.
It was a rather basic skill but it would increase our offensive capabilities greatly, near a water source. It took us about half an hour for all of us to learn it. Every day, mother appeared more and more amazing in my eye. By now I was almost definitely sure that she wasn’t a canary bird, even if this was the most magical world in the universe, it still wouldn’t explain her unusually huge scientific knowledge.
After we learned the skill, we returned to the nest. It was still day time, so mother decided to teach us more about wind magic. She taught us two new skills called [Wind Orb] and [Wind Slash].
[Wind Orb] was a defensive skill that encased our bodies in a revolving orb of wind. This would be great to repel arrows and unbalance melee attackers in the middle of combat.
[Wind Slash] on the other hand was pretty self-explanatory. By compressing wind to a certain degree, thinner than we did in [Jet Stream], and hurling it at an opponent it would bring devastating slashing damage.
We acquired the skills quickly and tried them on a nearby tree [Wind Orb] would pluck a branch of leaves dry and [Wind Slash] left a slight diagonal dent on the trunk of the tree.
Mother told us to train our three wind-related skills till the end of the day. So after a bit of a discussion, we arranged a small competition between us. Using our skills, the first one to pluck all the leaves off a tree and slice its trunk in half wins.
“What are the bets?” cheerhead asked. We all looked at him strangely. “If it’s a competition, we need to win something in the end or else it would be too boring” he said. though, I liked his idea, I didn’t know what would be considered a satisfying reward.
“What do you suggest?” I asked him.
“Whoever wins gets to ask one request from each one of us and we can’t deny him” he mischievously said.
It was rather cliché in my opinion but there wasn’t much here to bet on currently.
“What do you say?” he said.
“I agree” I said.
“Me, too” hothead said.
“A-alright” worryhead worriedly said.
Coolhead didn’t say anything, so we all looked at her anticipating her reply. Seeing our eyes on her, she turned her head away from us and said
“Fine”
“Alright everyone, let’s go a little further away from the nest first” I said. I didn’t want a tree to fall on our nest that would be devastating.
After going far enough away from the nest, I said “Ok, guys. Pick a tree and begin after the countdown”
We all stood on tree branch of our own. The trees we picked were near each other, so each one of us could see what the other was doing.
“3… 2… 1… GO!” I said.
Immediately, I formed a [Wind Orb] and tried to widen it as far as I could, however, since my level at [Wind Magic] was still only one. I could only stretch it to form a circle of radius of a quarter of a meter around my body. Then I flew to the nearest batch of leaves to pluck them out.
The trees here were very much like earth’s, their trunks were one and a half meters thick and their average height was 22 meters. It was definitely going to take us a while to finish up.
Before I reached the first batch of leaves, I saw as cheerhead went to hothead’s tree instead of trying to finish his own tree. He mumbled something to him, hothead looked reluctant at him for a bit then cheerhead hurriedly mumbled some more words to him. Hothead suddenly had a determined expression and nodded to him.
Cheerhead then proceeded to help hothead pluck the leaves of his tree.
“Hey, that’s not fair” I shouted at them.
“The deal was to pluck the leaves and cut the tree. Nobody said anything about doing it alone” cheerhead said with a mischievous smile.
Damn! That guy had a surprisingly devious side to him. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to win if I didn’t use my [Body Magic]. So, I used [Body Strengthening] to increase my speed and [Body Hardening] to ram into the tree branches so that I could save some time.
My sisters were trying to hurry themselves, too. But, no matter how much I or my sisters tried. We couldn’t be as fast as both cheerhead and hothead. If this played out normally, worryhead would have definitely won with her amazing wind affinity. However, now that I used [Body Magic] I was even faster than her.
Five minutes passed and the brothers plucked the tree dry while I was only a little over halfway done, worryhead was slightly behind me and coolhead was losing her cool because she wasn’t even halfway done.
With a reluctant expression, coolhead went to worryhead and talked to her for a bit. It appears she might be asking to help her. Worryhead nodded and coolhead started helping her right away.
I guess she didn’t like losing at all. But now that everyone is teaming up, I knew it would be useless to try on my own. So, I flew to the boys to ask them why they teamed up in the first place.
I approached cheerhead and asked “why did you help brother like that in the first place?”
To which hothead answered for him “Brother said that we can order sis to do something embarrassing if we won”. He spoke in a low voice to not let the girls hear.
Devious, too devious. Thinking about it for a while, it would be nice to get coolhead off of her high horse. Cheerhead appeared to follow my train of thought and smiled mischievously to which I also smiled back to him. Maybe he didn’t like seeing us being bullied by her all the time even though he would always laugh in the background.
Without uttering a word, I helped them in cutting down their tree.
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