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In the Gerrett’s family­ study, Sebastian was hurriedly browsing­ through the contents­ of a book. His compo­sure and current look­ seemed a distant mem­ory of what it used t­o be. Book after book­ Sebastian was pillag­ing its contents. A y­oung maid slowly walk­ed into the study, Se­bastian who was compl­etely immersed in his­ own world, did not n­otice her presence.

“Young Master.” The m­aid said, bringing hi­m back to reality.

“Why are you here?” S­ebastian angrily resp­onded as he turned to­ look at the maid who­ was in a bowing post­ure. “I said no one s­hould disturb me for ­the rest of the night­. Get away.” Sebastia­n continued before tu­rning back to the boo­ks.

“Master it’s just tha­t your friend,” The m­aid was saying as Seb­astian turned to give­ her a vicious scowl.­ “Master Willard has ­returned.” She hurrie­dly said to conclude ­her statement. Sebast­ian who was thoroughl­y infuriated had a sl­ight change in his fa­cial expression.

“Why did you not say ­that earlier? Lead th­e way.” Sebastian qui­ckly responded as he ­dropped the book in h­is hand. The news of ­Willard’s return was ­truly a big one to Se­bastian. ‘He has fina­lly returned. At leas­t, i have one more all­y right now.’ Sebasti­an silently thought t­o himself as he follo­wed the maid into the hall. ­

When getting to the hal­l, Sebastian noticed ­people standing besid­e each other. One was­ a young lady who had­ dark locks of long hair and ­she was standing close to Willar­d. The other one was a fa­miliar looking man wh­o had to be Willard.

Willard had obviously­ grown in height and ­stature, his hair being much longer and his ­skin was tanner than ­it had been in the pa­st. The difference in­ his appearance was v­ery apparent, as Willa­rd had a more mature ­look and feel to him.­ Sebastian waved his ­hand instructing the ­maids out of the hall­.

“Brother, you made it­ back alive,” Sebasti­an said with a smile ­as he approached Will­ard.

“That day you left, I­ had thought the wors­t had happened. Only ­through the intervent­ion of Ade was I able­ to find out that you­ were taken away by s­ome expert.” Sebastia­n said recounting mem­ories of the past.

“Trivial matters of t­he past,” Willard res­ponded with a smile.

Sebastian called in A­rilis, who was instru­cted to quickly prepa­re a nice banquet for­ Willard and to arrange ­a comfortable place for him to st­ay. Willard introduce­d Nana to Sebastian a­s an acquaintance.

Wi­llard passively recou­nted what had happene­d to him during the t­wo years he was missi­ng. Willard purposefu­lly avoided giving Se­bastian detailed info­rmation about Aorah a­nd Nana. From Willard­’s point of view, the­re was no point in Se­bastian knowing and i­t was better for Will­ard since he truly di­d not understand the ­depth of Aorah’s past­.

After the meals were ­made, Willard, Sebast­ian, and Nana ate and­ conversed some more.­ They mostly talked a­bout small matters wi­th regards to what ha­d happened with Willa­rd. From their conver­sations, Willard coul­d tell there was some­thing greatly botheri­ng Sebastian, who pur­posefully was avoidin­g talking about it be­cause of Nana. He kne­w Sebastian was waiti­ng to have a one on o­ne conversation with ­him. Willard also fou­nd it weird that Baya­ wasn’t present or th­at Sebastian hadn’t m­entioned anything abo­ut him.

“Brother, it’s been a­ long journey here. C­an someone take my fr­iend to her quarters ­to rest up?” Willard ­asked after they fini­shed their meals. Nan­a got the hint that t­hey needed some priva­cy to converse, so sh­e bowed slightly to h­er host Sebastian.

“Oh yes, where are my­ manners? Arilis take­ young miss Nana to h­er quarters.” Arilis ­called some maids to ­clear out the place a­nd personally lead Na­na away. Sebastian le­ad Willard to his stu­dy, where he made sur­e the doors were firm­ly shut before turning around to face Willard.

“Brother go ahead and­ speak. What is going ­on?” Willard immediat­ely asked.

“A lot has happened s­ince you went missing­. Let me start from t­hat point to tell you­ what had happened.” ­Sebastian said in an ­obviously rattled man­ner.

“You killing Asyut br­ought about a huge st­orm in this city. The­ Helden family poured­ in all their resourc­es to find you. After­ a year of searching ­with no results, the ­head of Helden househ­old personally tried ­to get the Marquis to­ help in their search­ for you and your abd­uctor, of which the h­ead of the Marquis ho­usehold turned down h­is request. After the­ Heldens had spent ov­er a year searching, ­the head of the Marqu­is family did not wan­t to waste their reso­urces. This was the s­park that set everyth­ing into motion.”

“You might not know t­his, but the Minya fa­mily had always covet­ed the Marquis househ­olds prestige and con­trol. Seeing the appa­rent dissatisfaction ­the Heldens had, the ­Minya reached out to ­them. Of course, all ­of this had happened ­without anyone’s noti­ce of their secret meetings.­ The following months­ were slow and stale,­ with one exception being that t­he Minya and Heldens families ­had started heavily r­ecruiting warriors. A­t first, no one thoug­ht anything of it bec­ause there was no rul­e against recruiting ­warriors.”

“But less than a month ag­o the Minya family ha­d sent a message to a­ll the founding and m­ajor families within ­Marquis city. They st­ated that they had joined ­with the Helden house­hold and were going t­o take the city over ­from the Marquis and ­that they already had­ the support of more ­than half the forces ­within the city. They­ said they were openi­ng their doors to any­one who wanted to joi­n them. They also war­ned that anyone who s­upports the Marquis w­ill be killed off as ­well.”

With Sebastian’s word­s, Willard finally un­derstood what was goi­ng on. Things started­ falling in place for­ Willard, as he thoug­ht about the strange ­atmosphere of the cit­y in contrast to the ­usually busy and live­ly place Willard reme­mbered. “So what deci­sion have you made?” ­Willard asked.

“What decision is the­re to make? My Gerret­ family has always be­en on the side of the­ Marquis. I only sent­ word to my father in­forming him of all th­at had happened. I gu­ess the Minya found a­ better party to join­ them than my Gerret ­family.”

Willard nodd­ed listening to Sebas­tian’s response. He w­as secretly glad that­ Sebastian hadn’t act­ed out of cowardice. ­He also couldn’t help­ thinking of one person,­ the person that most­ intrigued him during­ his stay at Marquis ­city, the head of the­ Gerret family, Lord ­Jayesh.

“One thing at a time.­ Let’s see how the Ma­rquis family reacts t­o all this.” Willard ­gently laughed. “One ­thing is certain, no ­harm could possibly c­ome to your Garret fa­mily.” Sebastian was ­surprised that Willar­d had spoken with so ­much surety, he co­uldn’t quite understa­nd where his confiden­ce was coming from.

“At least one of us i­s hopeful,” Sebastian­ said as he sighed.

“Don’t think too much­ about it. Tell me, d­o you know where i mi­ght find a Saint?” Wi­llard asked Sebastian­, who had a shocked e­xpression. Who were s­aints?

That Willard w­as casually asking to­ find one. These were­ existence on the lev­el of deities. They l­ived secluded lives a­way from mortal being­s. How was it that hi­m Sebastian would kno­w where to find one? ­Sebastian stared at W­illard for a bit, not­icing the conviction ­in his eyes.

“You would have to go­ to the Blue Dragon acad­emy to even find some­one knowledgeable on ­that. As for this cit­y, I can assure you t­hat no one would have­ even met one.” Sebas­tian responded. They ­both conversed some m­ore before Willard le­ft Sebastian to himse­lf at the study.

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Seeing Nana cover up Aorah in a protective manner, made Willard a little reminiscent of the past two years they had lived in the cave. Her innocence and unfettered devotion to her teacher was something he really couldn’t quite understand. “Nana quick go back into the cave.” Aorah said with a little difficulty.

“No, I refuse.” Nana said as her tears kept pouring. “No more deaths please. No more.”

Willard had a contemplative gesture in his face, giving the impression he was seriously thinking of something. His mind was already made up on what he was going to do, but the only thing he could think of at the moment was Nana. Willard had grown to actually care for this girl with the time they spent together. He was never particularly nice to Nana, but she had persevered and insisted on staying by his side. Slowly he had started to care for her like a senior would care for his junior. Willard dropped the dagger in his hands and walked closer to Nana.

“Nana get up.” Willard said as he reached down to help her up.

“I beg of you, please don’t kill teacher. Show mercy”

Willard thought about the phrase “show mercy.” When had he ever contemplated such a thing as mercy? In his world that word never existed. All his enemies must meet one fate, and one fate only, his total retribution. But for some strange reason, when Nana cried for mercy, he couldn’t help but be moved by her actions. He certainly did not like the sight of Nana crying for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out.

“I will show mercy.” Willard said as he walked Nana towards the cave. His words had created a relative sense of optimism in Nana who seemed mentally exhausted.

When suddenly, dark clouds once more gathered around Aorah. Heavy torrential fall of lightning poured down on Aorah. Each strike increasing in magnitude as it continuously harassed her entire being. “No!” Nana screamed trying to get away from Willards grip as the lightning mercilessly attacked Aorah. Willard held her place as the lightning continued to attack every inch of Aorah’s body. When suddenly, the lightning destroyed a pendant on Aorah’s neck, releasing a gray mist that quickly surrounded Aorah’s body. Willard was shocked when he noticed that gray mist suddenly appear. Before he could even react, a seemingly benign old man holding a large staff appeared within the gray mist. The old man raised his staff, and left it floating in the air, blocking the descending lightning. The old man carried Aorah’s unconscious body and then completely disappeared with his staff without saying a single word.

This completely shocked Willard who was dumbfounded at what had just happened. He couldn’t quite figure out how and why this old man had suddenly appeared. Nana who had also witnessed the entire ordeal was briefly shocked before her cries stopped.

“Who was that?” Willard asked Nana noticing the changes in her actions.

Nana purposefully looked away trying to avoid Willard’s gaze as he questioned her. “Nana, who was that?” Willard asked again in an obviously agitated manner.

“That was teachers senior.” She simply responded avoiding prolonged conversation with WIllard.

“How did he know to rescue her?” Willard asked Nana, who tried walking away from him again.

“Nana!” Willard yelled again.

“I don’t know.” Nana responded as she fell to the floor and resumed her cries.

Willard was at a lost for his current situation, he knew he couldn’t blame Nana for anything, but he had really wanted to kill Aorah. All he could do right now was blame himself for his own curiosity and also thank his curiosity. It was exactly because of his curiosity that he decided to use the lightning to kill Aorah. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be able to tell what the old man would have done if he had met an already dead Aorah, especially since he wasn’t in a condition to fight a new opponent.

As the opacus clouds all dissipated, shimmers of brilliant sun rays dazzled the entire floating mountain range. Willard looked to the very heavily destroyed mountain sights. In its splendor, most of the mountains had greenery surrounding them, little micro communities for birds and specially winged creatures, which gave a tranquil and serene feel to them. But now, most of the mountains paths had been destroyed in the fight between Willard and Aorah. Broken up pieces of earth from the mountains were falling nonstop.

“Nana, what do you want to do now?” Nana turned to Willard wiping her tears off and stared at him speechlessly.

Willard looked to Nana deciding what to do with her. Since he really had no idea if or when Aorah will return, he couldn’t really live her to stay on the floating mountains by herself or bring her on his trips. After a couple of minutes deciding what to do with her, he finally reached a conclusion. “Do you want to take a trip with me back to the Amber Kingdom?” Nana nodded her head agreeing to Willard’s suggestion.

********************

Within a dark room, an old man stood watching over a young unconscious lady. “Little Aorah, why did you not call for my help earlier?” The man asked in a sad manner.

“I told you to never use two of those orbs. Now the damage to your core will be severe. It will take you a long while to repair if at all possible.”

“I told you to either kill that child or let him go, and now you have suffered the consequences.”

“Etimoah, I have failed in my promise to protect the little princess. Please forgive me.” The old man sorrowfully said as he watched the unconscious Aorah struggle for life. The damages from the lightning wasn’t the most dangerous thing to Aorah’s life at the moment, it was the rebound effect of the green orbs. The adverse effects of the orbs were its ability to fracture one’s core and internally workings of natural energy when taken in excess. The natural energy within one’s body were the basic entities for life. The heart, lungs and other organs were connected to the one’s core and were all supported by natural energy. Although Aorah’s body had been transformed to that of a saint, it still bore an internally similar marking to that of the average person, with the differences of being a thousand times more durable and connected to natural energy.

********************

It had been a whole month since the fight between Willard and Aorah. Within the gates of Marquis City, the guards stood looking frantic as the gates and city walls were vibrating. They couldn’t quite understand what was causing the vibrations, until suddenly from afar a silhouette of what seemed like a carriage was moving rapidly towards them.

From afar, Willard stood in front of a carriage that wasn’t connected to a single horse. Both Willard and the carriage seemed to be standing on an earthen slab that elevated them both from the ground. The interesting thing about the slab was that it was moving both the carriage and Willard whilst creating large dust trails to the side. Willard through his enlightenment, while he fought Aorah, had gotten a better understanding of the earth surfing law. As Willard and the carriage both arrived at the gate of Marquis city, the vibrations that had increased greatly in magnitude all stopped. Willard opened the door to the carriage and helped Nana of the carriage. They both proceeded to walk towards the guards and gave them the usual toll. The guards stared at each other before they gave way for Willard and Nana to walk pass them. The entire thing had happened without any of the guards even saying a word. The shock front what they had just witnessed was just too unprecedented to them.

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It wasn’t enough that Aorah had used one of those strange green orbs, but now she had used another. Who was to say just how many she might have on her. Willard had a bad premonition of what was to inevitably happen, if things continued the same exact way. He never could had have imagined that Aorah had such an object on her. At this point, Willard knew he had to think of something else to escape this fight alive.

Willard had an idea, but wasn’t entirely sure of it’s success given his current situation. His idea was to control the flow of the battle guiding it back towards the mountain where Nana was, and possibly using her as a hostage. Although he wasn’t sure if using Nana as a hostage would work against Aorah or if he was going to survive the fight all the way there, but for the moment, that was the only Idea he could think of.

********************

At the closest town to the floating mountains, people stood staring at the sky as the heard sounds of an ongoing battle. This was the first time most of them had ever seen any activity coming from those floating mountains, and today they were witnessing something they could not comprehend. “Father what is going on?” A young boy asked his father as he tugged the fathers clothing.

“Seiyu. Run to the house and stay with your mother.” The father coldly responded.

All around the village, scenes similar to this were happening in some form or fashion. Some people took to praying to their various gods, while some others just stayed in doors with their families. Either way the day would remain a historic one within that village.

“Elder. What is going on?” One of the men asked the asked the elder that had just walked out of his home in an obviously panicked tone. The elder’s facial expression did not change as he watched everyone gathered around him awaiting his response.

“You all might not know this, but their are legendary existence that transcend mortal life. These existence are called saints. When I was a boy, I was told that only those saints were capable of flying and reaching those floating mountains.” The chief said as he noticed the looks on everyone’s face.

“I am certain that what is happening now has something to do with those saints.”

“Elder, what should we do now?” Another man asked.

“There is nothing we can do. We are mere ants in the eyes of these saints. If they plan to kill us, we will definitely be killed. Everyone go back to your families and stay with them, if we are all lucky nothing bad shall happen to us.” The elder said before walking back to his house.

********************

As Aorah’s energy was swelling back up, the look in her eyes seemed to get a little more deranged. Her eyes increasingly got inflamed until her energy level had stabilized. With that sinister look, Aorah dashed towards Willard. Her attacks were unrelenting as it flooded Willard with nonstop dagger barrages. She attacked while simultaneously reducing Willard’s full fighting capacity with her sound domain. It did not take too long, before she cut off Willard’s path sending soaring back up in the skies. Aorah’s plan remained the same, she was aiming to cut off his mobility by fighting him on the air, where she had the overwhelming advantage of a saint.

The fight persisted for a couple more bouts. By this point in time, Willard’s body had cut and stab wounds all around. His outfit was completely covered in his blood as fatigue was slowly kicking in. At this point, Willard had give up on the idea of heading back to where Nana was. He was just giving it his best to survive the next attack. ‘Is this it for me?’ Willard thought to himself. Willard slowly started getting light headed with his vision increasingly getting blurry. ‘I refuse. I will not die here. My enemies must burn before me.’ He said to himself as he watched Aorah walk towards him. An all too familiar sensation seemed to grip Willard at that moment. He couldn’t quite put his fingers on what was happening but knew something must have happened within him. His vision increasingly got blurry as he was about to lose his balance and pass out, when he suddenly noticed the ring around his neck start glowing. Willard grabbed the ring that was tied to his neck with his right hand before he put all his concentration to his core. He noticed that red energy moving erratically within his core. ‘What is this energy? Why is my ring reacting to it?’ He thought to himself.

Suddenly, the clouds started getting thicker as it gradually covered the sun light. Aorah look somewhat surprised at the gathering clouds before a strange thought came to her head. She moved her gaze from the clouds to Willard who was currently finding it hard to stay upright. Willard opened up his eyes noticing the strange event that was currently happening before he caught a glimpse of Aorah’s strange stare. At that moment both Willard and Aorah both reacted simultaneously. Aorah dashed towards Willard with the greatest speed she could muster while Willard tried directing that red energy to the ring he held. As Aorah got within three feets of Willard’s position, massive lightning descended from the clouds bathing Willard and his surrounding. A minute portion of the lightning struck Aorah, who quickly managed to escape the onslaught of the lightning. She moved a couple of feet’s away from Willard watching the scene as it unfolded.

Within the lightning, Willard stood as he was trying to understand what was happening. “The lightning doesn’t harm me.” Willard said somewhat surprised. “This must be the power of that red energy.” A determined look appeared on Willard’s face, as the lightning died down. Aorah had a shocked expression as she saw Willard, who stood there just fine. ‘This is trouble.’ She thought to herself before she turned hill to run away. WIllard noticing Aorah run, stood in place watching her leave. When suddenly, he noticed Aorah’s energy drastically fall. Aorah who was mid flight suddenly descended from the air landing on a different floating mountain.

This was the opportunity Willard needed. He did not go after Aorah while she was fleeing because he did not really know how to control the lightning. All he wanted at that moment was to survive, but now Aorah had presented him with a gift. She was out of energy, out of breath as she slumped to ground lifelessly. “This must be the cost of using that strange pill” Willard said with a smile. Using the last bit of earth elemental energy within his body, Willard controlled the earth beneath his feet pushing him soaring into the skies. As Willard landed on that floating mountain, he noticed several things familiar with it. This was the mountain where he had lived and trained in for the past two years. That was his prison and was also his home all that while. Willard walked towards Aorah who was breathing heavily on the floor.

“Hahaha” Aorah laughed before she coughed up some blood.

“Isn’t it funny? You warned me that the moment you grow strong enough to face me, will be my last in this world.”

“To think it would only take two years. Go ahead, I have no regrets.” Aorah said with a strange smile on her face.

Willard had an indifferent look to him. He did not respond to a single remark Aorah had made, but instead picked up one of Aorah’s daggers laying on the floor. Before he could get close to Aorah, Nana had rushed out of the cave. “Please don’t kill my teacher.” She said as she dived in front of Aorah, covering Aorah with her body.

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Aorah was surprised when she realized that Willard had broken her initial domain. “Incredible. This must be the power of that devine energy.” Aorah chugged it up to that mystifying energy she sorted. Her gaze immediately turned serious as she disappeared from her original spot and appeared right behind Willard. This move of hers was done a few seconds after Willard had broken the domain. She wanted to strike as fast as possible to not give him any opportunity to react.

As her hand extended in a grabbing motion aiming for the back of Willard’s neck, Aorah felt the weight of her body increase exponentially. Her originally fast motion had decreased over fifty percent giving Willard the time to adequately react. Willard moved away from the reach of her hands and stood firmly with a smile. ‘Impossible. How can his domain be at such a level?’ Aorah silently thought to herself. Willard breaking her domain could be overlooked because that was the most basic of domains she could cast. The fact that he could react in time and create a domain of his own, capable of affecting a saint, meant that he was at the threshold of a saints power level. This especially surprised Aorah, who was a saint herself, because in her lifetime she had never seen or heard of anyone who had the combat ability of a saint at the age of twenty.

“It seems I really cant hold back against you,” Aorah said as the focus in her eyes changes. Suddenly, the air around the cliff started moving in an irregular manner, which easily broke the gravitational domain Willard had created.

“Teacher!” Nana called in a panicked voice as she noticed what was about to happen.

“Nana go back to the cave.”

Dust slowly started swirling around Willard followed closely by cracks to the ground. Willard had already activated the earth energy to strengthen his body. The entire floating mountain was vibrating as all this was happening. Standing in the same position, the broken up rocks and dust started from the cracks all flew towards willard, forming a complete protective earth armor around his body. The earth armor covered every inch of his body including his face, which had two openings for his eyes. Without a moment to waste, Aorah charged towards Willard, with the greatest speed she could muster, holding her short dagger. Her speed, this time around, was much faster than when she had tried to subdue Willard, who in turn was adequately prepared for her attack. Aorah attacked with her dagger aiming to score a fatal hit to the neck but was met with an equally powerful punch of the earth armored Willard. Both their attacks canceled each other’s with Aorah having a slight advantage. Her dagger had broken through most of the earth armor surrounding Willard’s fist and also pushed him back a couple of steps.

Willard had been pushed closer to the end of the cliff from that attack. Aorah continued her offense as she rushed to engage him once again in close quarters exchange. This time, as Aorah got close to Willard, she willed the wind element to form a torrential flow of wind pressure, pushing Willard entirely off the floating mountain they had been fighting on. As Willard was floating on the air, the crumbled up pieces of earth from that mountain formed a trail in pursuit of Willard. Each earth peice kept adding itself to a different position along Willard’s body. While soaring the air, Willard caught a glimpse of a closeby floating mountain. By controlling the weight of the earth armor, Willard was able to change his trajectory and land on that floating mountain. Following closely in his path was Aorah who was coming in great speed as she was descending. Willard controlled the earth on the mountain to form long conical protrusions with a sharply pointed ends in anticipation of her landing. As Aorah was descending she also willed the wind to form wind blades that smoothly cut those spikes that littered the surface of thee mountain. Just like always, the broken up pieces of earth all flew towards Willard reinforcing his earth armor.

Nana who was at the distant mountain could only watch as they both fought. All she could see were dust particle surrounding the both of them as their exchange continued. For one of the first times, since she had started living with Aorah, she was truly conflicted internally. Although she had a love interest in Willard she couldn’t possibly hope he was the victor ahead of Aorah who was her teacher and had been with her since she was an orphan. She was truly grief stricken as she watched them fight. “Please stop.” She yelled as tears began pouring from her eyes. She knew nothing she said or did was going to change anything, but all she could do at this point was hope.

“To think you would be this strong. I truly must admit, you are a peerless genius. Unfortunately for you, I have had years to prepare for this battle.” Aorah said to Willard as she swallowed a green pill in the form of an orb. Within seconds of ingesting the pill, a wild burst of wind energy emanated from Aorah’s body. “Get ready Willard. Things will get very difficult from now on.”

Aorah charged towards Willard again. Although Willard had activated a gravitational domain around Aorah, it did not do much in mitigating the speed at which she had gotten to him. Aorah stabbed aiming for Willard’s heart. Willard was able to move his left hand just in time to defend against the attack, but to his complete surprise, that attack had blown off the entire earth armor surrounding his entire arm. Droplets of blood splattered across the floor as the dust settled. “Interesting,” Willard said as his entire being seemed to enter a trance. Unlike what Aorah had expected, a look of panic, Willard had a smile on his face. Aorah was shocked to see Willard’s reaction, but quickly decided it was false bravado. Willard immediately blew away the earth armor that had been covering his entire body. This also greatly surprised Aorah as it further served to solidify her original thought of Willard’s false bravery.

Aorah continued her attack as she rushed in with a methodological dagger play that was both flawless and extreme. The entire scenario was like a play from Willard’s past. Willard was like an animal as his instincts for battle took over. As he could no longer match Aorah in pure speed, his instinct automatically switch his fighting pattern from raw strength and speed to mainly focus on his only possible strength, his agility aided by the earth element, within the situation. Willard’s control of the earth element for his movement seemed to have had an instant breakthrough. He no longer wasted any energy moving his legs, as all his leg movements were controlled by the earth beneath his foot. When ever he needed to move, the earth simply just dragged him along the path he wanted. It was as if the earth had just taken control over Willard’s movement. The earth sunked downwards and raised him upwards when ever he needed it. This simple breakthrough had a significant impact on the fight. Although Willard was still at a disadvantage, he was faring much better than earlier.

Aorah quickly realized that her original advantage had been greatly nullified. She was astonished at what she was currently experiencing. ‘How can he keep improving this fast. This child is a true monster.’ Aorah thought to herself as she furiously attacked Willard. At this point, Willard’s mind was blank as all he could think off was surviving the next attack. Aorah noticed the exchange was taking her nowhere, so she quickly change tactics. She willed the wind element to forcefully try and eject Willard from and the floating mountain, but to her surprise found out that he was firmly in place. She continued attacking Willard, but this time she was control the fight and forcing Willard backwards towards one end of the mountain. At the edge, she willed a wind blade to slice off the portion of the earth Willard stood at from the mountain, and quickly used her wind pressure to push him soaring away that floating mountain. Aorah immediately took to the air in pursuit of Willard. On the air, she had greatly reduced Willards mobility. She fiercely attacked with an unrelenting assault from her daggers embedded with the wind element. After a couple of exchanges with Aorah in the air, Willard was finally able to borrow the pressure from one of her attacks to send himself flying towards another floating mountain. As he landed, Aorah followed suite. Willard already had some stab wounds and slashes all over his body, but he was happy with his results, because Aorah’s rampaging energy quickly began to drop drastically.

“I can’t believe this child is forcing me to this extent.” Aorah thought to herself in disbelief before she popped another green orb and swallowed it. A look of dread appeared on Willard’s face as he noticed Aorah previously depleting energy soar back up.

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“By this point in time, our population had started to grow slowly. The surviving men had brought in wives from other wandering people and even my father had done the same. I told the tribesmen, I was going to spy on on the Kochet tribe and if the opportunity presented itself, I would stage an instant attack. I was strictly warned by my father to abandon revenge and live on, but I wasn’t willing to do that. At the fifth stage of wind elemental energy, I had reached the same level of power my father had attained. There was no one within the tribe who could stop me. So I continued with my defiance in pursuit of revenge.” Aorah said before taking a slight pause.

“Who would have thought that by the time I got to the fringes of what used to be the Kochet tribe, I would see the complete destruction and massacre of the Kochet tribe. I did not feel a sense of joy, but rather the exact opposite feeling. It was my dreams of revenge that kept me going all those years, but now the scene before me made that impossible. In my anger, I decided not to return back to the mountain and instead continue on my path to finding the other tribes that assisted the Kochet tribe. It took me three years in my journey to find a remnant of that battle.”

“During my search, I found out that both the Kochet tribe and the weaker of the two tribes that had joined the Kochet in massacring my tribe were betrayed by the Maidu tribe who worked hand in hand with both tribes. It turned out the Maidu tribe had used them both to easily eliminate most of the smaller tribes within their region, before betraying and eliminating the leaders and warriors of both tribes while assimilating their population. The Maidu tribe were in the process of growing to become a mid-sized tribe, so they used their enemies to kill themselves.”

“I watched the Maidu tribe for over six months before I infiltrated the tribe as an ordinary tribeswoman. It did not take long before what seemed like an opportunity to kill some senior warrior presented itself. At the first opportunity, I took the chance I got only to find out halfway it was a deliberate ploy used by the Maidu tribe to fish out traitors. There quite a few others who had the same idea as I did. In the midst of all the commotion, I managed to get escape while some unlucky others were caught, or at least that was what I thought at the time. I stupidly decided to head back to the mountain where the remaining surviving members of my tribe were situated. Unbeknown to me, a squad of the Maidu warriors was tailing me. As I rushed back to the mountain side, I had brought with me the complete destruction of my people. The moment I made contact with my tribesmen, the Maidu warrior squad descended on us all. They completely killed every single person within the mountain only sparing me to be brought back to the Maidu tribe.”

“In the end, I had brought the true end to my people. In search of revenge, I had killed everyone I loved and to top it off, I was now a slave of the Maidu tribe. From that point, I would remain a slave in the Maidu tribe for twenty-three more years before I had my breakthrough and became a saint.” Aorah said before she stopped speaking. There was a long moment of silence before Willard decided to ask a question.

“I am guessing with the power of a saint, you should have had enough power to wipe out the Maidu tribe or cause serious damage to them. So what did you end up doing?” Aorah only stared at Willard for a second before she completely ignored him and walked back into the cave. Willard, on the other hand, sat where he was and continued stargazing.

The next morning, Willard resumed his normal training. The only difference this time around was that Aorah watched as he trained. “Interesting. His usage of the earth element is very profound. This child is truly talented. It is just a pity.” Aorah lamented as she watched Willard train. Willard who in his previous life had trained for millions of years felt right at home with his current schedule. He would train for most of the day, only take breaks to eat, clean himself and sleep. Aorah, just like before would go missing for some days before coming back to the cave. One thing remained constant, which was Nana’s presence in the cave. All she had to look forward to was cooking and watching Willard train.

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Within a blink of an eye, time flew by and two years had passed. Willard was already twenty years, while Nana was sixteen years of age. She had grown a little, increasing just a couple of inches in height. She was no longer the little antisocial girl who sat off in the corner. She had grown to a young teen of sixteen. She had also started pursuing the path of a mage like her teacher. She was currently at the sixth level of natural energy, which was a stage higher than Willard was in for his village’s annual graduation ceremony.

As Willard trained, Nana watched every motion he took. Over time, her disposition to Willard had naturally changed. She had grown very accustomed to his presence and started developing a little bit of an interest in him. Although in the beginning Aorah sometimes took Nana to a nearby town to alleviate Nana’s boredom, but as the months passed, Nana opted not to leave the cave more and more, before she finally decided to just permanently stay in the floating mountain.

Willard’s training had been progressing at tremendous speed. In two years, he had reached the eighth level of earth elemental energy. His growth was nothing short of astonishing, one has to remember the higher one went in the elemental energy level, the longer it took to advance and also the earth element wasn’t Willards strongest attribute in his former life, it was the only element he currently had some knowledge of. But Willard’s speed had been utterly world shattering. Aorah, who had previously thought Willard was a genius had to look for other words to describe the level of his growth.

As Willard finished his training for the day, he proceeded to descend the mountain to wash up. Before he got back to the cave, Nana dished out their meal in anticipation of him. Willard ate with a gratified smile. Spending two years on the mountain with Nana had caused him to see the girl in a different light. Although he hated her teacher, Willard found no fault in the innocent girl that always watched him train. Willard wasn’t a fool, he had a semblance of an idea as to what was going on in Nana’s mind. For someone who had lived much longer than any mortal, Willard was clueless on how to deal with her interest. He had grown to like her, but his feelings couldn’t be categorized as anything more than kinship.

After his meal, Willard started cultivating for the night. He sat with his legs crossed as he meditated. Willard’s core was like endless abyss as it sucked in earth elemental energy in great proportions. The flow of the earth elemental energy within the cave gave the entire place a slight chilling effect. Time flowed as usual as night slowly turned to day. Early the next morning, a huge earth elemental pulse emanated from Willard. Willard broke into a huge smile as he knew he had just broken through to the ninth level of elemental energy.

Within a nearby village, Aorah who had been sitting and drinking wine turned and looked towards the floating mountain. “How can he advance this fast? This is a little troubling.” Aorah said to herself with a frown on her face as she immediately disappeared from the village. Willard noticed a change in the surrounding natural energy and turned to look at the location. “So you came? I am guessing you can no longer take your chances in waiting.” Willard said as he slowly walked out of the cave.

“You are truly gifted. I am afraid you are correct, I can no longer watch you grow. Tell me how you cultivate that devine energy and I promise to let you live.”

“Hahahaha.” Willard laughed loudly. His laughter echoed within the cave, waking Nana from her slumber. Aorah gave Willard a side glance before she released her sound domain. This time around, as Willard noticed the descending energy on his body, he willed his elemental energy from his core, releasing in short pulses. For the first time since he encountered Aorah, he was able to break the domain she tried placing on him. Willard thought back to how many times this domain had caused him to immediately pass out without his control. Now the situation was different, he finally had enough strength to retain his consciousness.

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1. N/a

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Within a blink of an eye, three days had passed. At the edges of a cliff, Willard stood practicing his martial techniques. Now that his natural energy bases had been solidified, he could maintain and use greater proportions of earth elemental energy. Willard found out that now that he had scaled the natural energy level, his sensitivity to natural energy had been highly attuned. This was the first time he had noticed the natural energy around him acted like waves and not stationary particles. With that, he quickly figured there were time intervals with higher surges of natural energy and came up with ways to better take advantage of that. Within the three short days, Willard had completely solidified his understanding of his new power level.

While practicing on the third day, Willard felt a subtle tremor in the natural energy within his surrounding. Turning to take a look at the cause of the tremor, Willard saw Aorah mystical appear on the mountain. ‘Interesting. I can slightly feel her presence now.’ Willard thought to himself.

Aorah had a surprised look on her face as she saw Willard training. She had previously thought he would be unconscious by the time she returned, but not only was he up, he was also strong enough to train. Aorah gently walked into the cave ignoring Willard. When she got in, she startled Nana, who was joyful with her presence. “When did he regain consciousness?”

“Two days ago?” Nana responded before she continued what she was doing earlier.

‘His recovery time increases at a much higher pace than anything I have ever seen. Is it because of that thing? Also, his control of the natural energy is at a perfect level.’ Aorah thought to herself for some time before she eventually preoccupied her thought with something else.

When Willard finished his training, he descended to the bottom of the mountain, which had condensed water from the water vapor in the atmosphere. Willard cleaned himself up before heading back to the cave. As he got back, Nana had started preparing food for the night. Willard sat in a meditative posture and started cultivating earth natural energy. After a couple of hours, Nana finished preparing the meal. The dynamics between everyone at the cave was exactly as it used to be. It did not take long for Nana to fall asleep after she finished eating. Aorah continued staring at the stars with some sort of melancholic look. Time slowly progressed as they all separated to their corners.

“Willard, come with me,” Aorah said to Willard after a couple of hours had passed. Willard opened his previously shut eyes and got up to follow Aorah out of the cave.

“Do you know why I have been insistent on bringing you along my journey?” Hearing Aorah’s question, Willard continued to stare at her. Of course, he had no idea, this has been one of his biggest pains. He had essentially been kidnapped with no information as to why.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know. Let me explain from the beginning.”

“When a saint is born, a devine (not divine) energy from the heaven descends on the individual changing their body, soul, and core and forming a saint body. I believe that this devine energy is the key to breaking the veil of this mortal world and transcending to the nine heavens.” She said as she stared at the stars one more time.

“The only time this energy descends is when there is a birth of a saint. At least that was what I thought until I met you. For some reason during your exhibition match at the Minya household, you were able to use elemental energy without solidifying your natural element base and more importantly, I was able to feel this energy during your match.”

“With this, you should be able to tell why I had brought you along my journey.”

Willard stood in place contemplating what Aorah had said to him. Although Willard knew Aorah’s thought process was severely flawed, because of his experience as the God Thanus, there was also something that stood out to him. This was the first time someone other than himself had noticed this energy. Willard still knew Aorah’s thinking was wrong, but this was his first clue in figuring out what to do with this energy. In a series of wrong ideology, Aorah’s first mistake was her assumption that the energy which transforms mortals to saints came from the nine heavens. As a God that had lived an almost infinite life in the nine heavens, he knew that no such energy freely existed within the nine heavens. He also knew that traversing the mortal existence into godhood did not require this so called devine energy.

“I see. Is that supposed to justify your actions? Let me ask you this, what do you plan on doing if you cannot learn to use this energy you are speaking of?” Willard asked in response to Aorah’s statement. In his head, all that Aorah had said were complete trash. He could care less about what she thought or theorized, all he cared about at this point were her intentions.

“Hahaha. Don’t let your thoughts stray that far. If I wanted to forcefully extract what bit of that devine energy you have, I would have done that awhile back. Do tell though, how is it that you are able to use that energy?”

“I am not sure what energy you are referring to. You have monitored the way I train, which should be no different from the way any other practitioner trains.”

“Hmm. that’s true, maybe someday I’ll figure something out.”

“Be careful, the moment I grow strong enough to face you, will be your last in this world.”

Aorah broke into a gentle smile, one that was both condescending and approving. “When that moment comes, I will eagerly await you.” She said turning her gaze back to the stars. Willard sat resting his back against a small boulder.

“If you are up for it, why don’t you tell me about the chaotic warring times and the Ferry tribe.” Aorah was surprised to hear what Willard had just said. It took her a little time to arrange her thoughts before she responded.

“What has Nana told you already?”

“Only that you were born a princess of the Ferry tribe in the northern kingdoms. You grew up during the chaotic warring times of the north and that a great calamity fell on her tribe, which lead to the total annihilation of your tribe.”

“That was a long time ago,” Aorah said with a gentle smile. “I guess I should at least tell you this much.”

“During those times, the northern states were unlike the neighboring southern states, that were divided into bigger kingdoms, it was a cluster of thousands of smaller tribes warring against themselves. My Ferry tribe was in a deadly war against the neighboring Kochet tribe. Although the times were perilous, it was also the best times of my life. The warriors and mages within my tribe were primarily trained in the wind element from a young age till adulthood.” Aorah said as she started narrating the story of her childhood for Willard.

“The next morning, the tribe was awakened to a huge assault from the Kochet tribe. It started like the usual raids that had been happening, but this day was actually different. Somehow, the Kochet tribe had gotten two other tribes to work together with them in battle. This was unprecedented because, until that moment, no tribe had ever joined forces with another to battle. It was an unspoken rule, that everyone obeyed or at least that was what I had previously thought.”

“It did not take long for the Ferry tribesmen to be overpowered. Within minutes of our defense collapsing, a wide-scale genocide of our tribe began. During that battle, I was stabbed but luckily survived within the piles of corpses. When I woke up, I was told that four other tribesmen including my father had taken my injured body and managed to escape to a nearby mountain. I stayed within the confines of the mountain with the remaining survivors for thirty years and trained every single day. At that point, I had reached the fifth level of elemental energy and was confident in my ability to protect my life. I had survived and persisted all those thirty years with the dream of avenging my tribes people.”

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1. N/a

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On this day, the god of destruction and chaos was in an especially good mood. He had triumphantly returned from the eighth to the ninth heaven. He had completely established his prominence and might, gaining himself a well-deserved reputation. He sat on a blazing throne basking in his flames and glory. All of a sudden a queer thought flew across his mind, an image of a woman with big blue eyes. The woman had had what could be described as an everlasting brightness surrounding her. She smiled at Thanus and said, “Be good my son.” Thanus was a little confused with the vision in his head. As he slowly thought about, his facial expression started changing from a joyous one to that of sorrow. He finally remembered who that lady was, his earlier surrounding that blazing with fire quickly withered to that of complete darkness.

“Mother,” Willard said as he suddenly jolted up from his sleep. To his surprise, Willard noticed he was in a dark cave. He stared at the bandages around his body and noticed his clothing had been changed. As he took a deep breath, Willard had a strange look on his face. He noticed something odd with his natural energy. Willard immediately attuned his senses to observe his current cultivation level. He was surprised to notice he had finally stabilized his natural energy basis. He couldn’t figure out or explain what had happened, but he currently at the tenth and final level of natural energy. The entire situation seemed extremely strange to him, but he couldn’t deny this was to his advantage. ‘What happened to me?’ Willard questioned in his surprise. Suddenly, another thought sprung into Willard’s mind. He concentrated again and this time at his elemental energy core. “The fourth level,” Willard exclaimed in complete astonishment. “How did this happen?”

Although Willard couldn’t explain the sudden growth of his natural energy level, it was something he could somewhat accept without much thought. His amazing increase in elemental energy was a complete surprise to him. Even with all his knowledge, he couldn’t explain how his sudden increase in elemental energy had happened. Willard got up from his laying position and proceeded to walk out of the cave. The bright sun blurred his vision for a couple of seconds, but he quickly regained his eyesight. In front of the cave sat Nana who was gleefully dangling her legs off the edge of a cliff. “Where are we?” Willard asked in a croaky voice.

“Ah. You are awake. That’s strange, teacher said you were going to be out for much longer.”

“Nana, where are we? And where is your teacher.”

“She said she had a few errands to run and that she will be back in three days.”

“You still haven’t answered where we are?” Willard responded in an irritated manner.

Nana waved her hand in a calling motion to Willard signaling he should come towards her at the edge of the cliff. Willard slowly walked towards the edge of the cliff, and as he approached the edge, he was stunned by his immediate view. “We are at the legendary floating Havanas of the Maley kingdom,” Nana said with a smile. Willard was still in shock as he looked around. There were several floating mountains all floating high up in the sky above the clouds. Willard could occasionally see fragmented clouds drift close by. Willard had to admit that the scene before him was quite a lot more mystifying than anything he had ever imagined in the mortal world. ‘My previous knowledge of the mortal worlds were seriously lacking.’ Willard silently thought to himself.

Regaining his original composition, the look on Willard’s face changed. Willard thought back to the scenes of his mother’s death and what happened afterward with Aorah. “You should think of your leaving your teacher if you want to leave longer in this world. Someone like her will certainly lead you to your death.” Willard said with a little disdain.

Nana’s facial expression quickly changed from one of absolute joy to an utterly cold one. She glared at Willard as she approached him. In a swinging motion, she tried slap his face, but was met with a terrifying pressure from Willard that halted all of her movements. As the pressure persisted, Nana fell on her two knees. Seeing the dejected and complete discomfort on Nana’s face, Willard withdrew the pressure. Nana slowly got up and walked towards the cave. “You know nothing about the life teacher has lived. Stop talking as if you are better.” Nana said before she entered the cave.

Willard ignored her comments and continued to stare at his surroundings before finding a place to sit. He calmly took off all the bandages and started descending the mountain. After a couple of hours, Willard returned back to the cave. Nana had started a fire and was making something to eat. Willard sat down with his legs crossed and closed his eyes. Since there was nothing for him to do at the moment, he decided to cultivate. A couple of minutes into his cultivation, Nana called out to him as she brought a bowl of stew to him.

“I made rabbit stew.” She said as she was handing him the bowl.

“Teacher said you are quite the cultivating genius. She doesn’t usually praise people like that.”

“What level have you reached,” Nana asked trying to get a conversation started with Willard.

Willard looked at Nana with a confused expression. It wasn’t that long ago that this same girl had been vexed and tried to hit him. Did she already forget about all that? He couldn’t quite understand Nana’s behavior, but ultimately he gave up trying to figure it out as her constant banter continued. “Are you listening?” Nana questioned as she constantly pried for a response.

“Tell me about your teacher.” Willard finally said in response to all her questions and remarks.

Nana paused for a second as she thought of something. Nodding her head, Nana responded; “Teacher was born a princess of one of the warring northern tribes known as the Ferry tribe. She grew up during the chaotic warring times of the north. A great calamity fell on her tribe, which lead to the total annihilation of everyone she knew and loved. Ever since then teacher has been wandering the world.” Willard was surprised with Nana’s response. He wasn’t expecting her to even divulge a single thing, but she had given him a quick overview of the entire situation.

“What calamity fell on her tribe? When and what exactly was the chaotic warring times of the north?” Willard asked in confusion.

“I don’t know what calamity exactly, you would have to ask teacher about that. How come you had never heard of the warring times of the north that happened over a hundred years ago?” Nana responded.

Willard was surprised to hear that the chaotic warring times had occurred over a century ago. That meant that Aorah had to be at least a hundred years of age. That was shocking to him not because of the age itself, but because of Aorah’s childish tendencies. ‘How can she be this old and still play to those dirty tricks? How can her view on this be this simplistic?’ Willard questioned inwardly. Willard thought back to some of the actions Aorah had taken during their trip together. He particularly remembered how Aorah had deceived a group of travelers out of their possessions. It was clear that Aorah took those actions as some sort of past time or hobby. For someone of her status and age to constantly play those tricks on people made Willard feel she was a little childish. He also remembered Aorah’s intervention with the bandits, which made him particular curious with Aorah’s objective.

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1. N/a

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There was a saying that true despair doesn’t come from death, but rather the inability to prevent an inevitable death. This was exactly the situation with Willard, he had watched his mother suffer and die without being able to help. He was furious but had no one to pour the anger on. He sat there in that enclosure silent as a piece of wood. Not a single tear dropped from his eyes, he just continued to stare at the blood in a deep state of thought.

“That’s right, it is her fault,” Willard said to himself. “If I had come a little sooner, I might have been able to save her.” After saying that, Willard finally got up and walked out of the enclosure. When he saw Aorah standing there his face dramatically changed with a huge frown. Seeing Willard’s sudden change, Aorah somewhat understood Willard’s current thought process.

“That’s right, I am the one to blame.” She said to him with an indifferent tone.

“What are you going to do? Stand there and watch me.” Willard stood silently as his state of anger kept increasing with Aorah’s angering words.

“Now who hides in cowardice? It is your mother that died.” She said and turned to walk away. As the words, “It is your mother that died” played in Willard’s head, he couldn’t hold back his anger any longer. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Willard charged towards Aorah with his greatest speed. He had activated his earth elemental energy as he approached in a punching manner. Aorah used her sound domain aided by vibrations to constrict Willard’s movement. Although she could completely seal his movement, she only slowed them down to the point his speed was no match to hers. With every punch Willard threw, she avoided and retaliated with two. The scene couldn’t even be considered a fight, It was clear bullying. With her actions, she was clearly showing Willard how much stronger than him she was.

Willard took some steps backward and gave Aorah a vicious stare. It was clear he was beyond livid, but Willard also had the fortitude to calm himself this time around. With his current level of power, there was no way he could be a match for Aorah, even though she was somewhat exhausted from a prior fight.

“It seems you have calmed yourself a little bit,” Aorah said indifferently.

“Your mother and fellow villagers died because of your actions. You were so blinded by a lust to kill, you forgot the most important thing I had instructed you to do.”

“If you had lowered yourself down to be captured and then secured the villagers like I told you, I would have been able to prevent the calamity.”

When Willard had heard from Ayola that the Yellow Hew village was raided, he had felt anxious not for himself, but for his parents, especially his mother whom he developed a strong bond with. And now he felt guilt for letting his pride and battle hunger to get the best of him. He had been previously instructed by Aorah, to make sure he first knew about the whereabouts of the villagers and taken them to safety. But instead, he decided to directly slaughter everyone in his path. This had subsequently lead to the death of everyone that had been captured including his mother. This shock was so strong Willard fell to his knees. He had never been in a situation where he lost someone he truly cared about. At this moment within his core, the dirty brown elemental core Willard had formed started vibrating with some hint of the strange red energy, this time around, the vibrations were even more erratic than the time he was almost crippled at the hands of Allada. Aorah noticing the strange reaction of the natural energy within the surroundings started calling to Willard. She had a faint idea of what was about to transpire, and wanted to snap Willard out of it.

Willard was in a completely zoned out state. “It is all my fault. I did this to her.” Willard mumbled to himself. “I course this damn mortal existence. If I had been stronger, I would have prevented this.”

Immediately after he uttered those words, the erratic nature of the natural energy within their surrounding increased to a much greater level. Willard’s body released a massive wave of natural energy followed by an inexplicable red substance. “Impossible,” Aorah said as she quickly left the area. The red substance reduced Willard’s entire surroundings to nothingness. This was exactly the same thing that had happened while Willard fought Allada, but this time around, Aorah had a front seat in monitoring the entire event. “How can this be?” Aorah said as she watched Willard’s body slump to the floor.

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In the nine heavens, a goddess was meditating within a dirty green lake. She was submerged at the bottom of this lake, with her eyes firmly shut. The goddess suddenly opened her eyes and started to float upwards. Her speed was neither fast nor slow, as she was contemplating something that seemed to bother her. “Those eyes, I have seen them before.” She said as she reached the top of the lake. At the top of the lake, the goddess slowly floated up in the air. The lake shrank in size and followed underneath this goddess. When the reduced lake came in contact with the goddess, They both disappeared from that region.

Within the void of a certain space, darkness ruled in its absolute command. A god sat on a floating throne adorned with skeletal parts. To the right-hand side of the god, was a dark spear that would momentarily release a dark energy and later retract the energy. “Why have you come here Akhlys?” The god who sat on the throne asked.

“My lord Zinus, there is something strange I would like to show you.” The female goddess from the lake, Akhlys said as she bowed.

Akhlys touched her forehead with her right index finger. A white light sparkled be a droplet of water flew out from her forehead. “My lord Zinus, one of my recently deceased will came with this memory that I think you should see,” Akhlys responded as the water droplet flew towards Zinus. As the droplet approached Zinus, he waved his hand which sent dark clouds to intercept the droplet. The dark clouds sparkled then flew right in front of Zinus. Suddenly, the scene of Aorah’s fight the bald headed waterfiend started playing out. A frown appeared on Zinus face as he watched for a couple of seconds. “What exactly am I supposed to be watching here?” Zinus asked in an irritated voice?

“My lord, if I may,” Akhlys asked in a suggestive manner. Zinus nodded in acknowledgment. Akhlys waved her hand changing the scenes on the cloud towards the time Willard made his appearance in the fight. Zinus had a focused look as he watched Willard’s mannerism. “A million years and he has finally been reborn. Did he show any signs of regaining his memory?”

“Not to my knowledge, this was the first contact my will had made with him.”

“Good Akhlys, good. You shall be greatly rewarded for this. What world was that?”

“The fifth world of the Okal blue realm,” Akhlys responded.

Zinus grabbed his spare and got up. A dark cloudy substance flew from the top of Zinus’s spare and flew straight towards Akhlys. “Thank you my lord,” she responded with a smile. Zinus immediately disappeared from his throne leaving behind Akhlys who in turn disappeared out of that region.

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1. N/a

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“As expected of a saint.” The water fiend said turning to look at Aorah.

Willard who watched in hiding knew that this was going to be a tough match. Although Aorah had mastered a universal law, her opponent had control over the true element of water, which was fundamentally different from the level of elements mortals could control. According to the classifications, Willard had known through his experience as a chief god, the elements were divided into seven known core elements and the laws were divided into three major stages. The elements were namely: Water, Fire, Earth, Thunder, Iron, Darkness and Light while the stages of the laws were divided into the primary, true and grand laws. The primary laws of the elements, which was the prevalent knowledge in the mortal world, were the most basic of the laws. Above that were the true laws of the elements, of which lesser gods trained and wielded. And above both of them, were the grand laws which only chief gods had a mastery off. Thanus became a chief god only after he mastered the law of incineration in the fire element.

The universal laws were of the elements, but fundamentally different from the elements itself. Take for instance Aorah, who trained in the wind element, but had mastered the law of sound within the wind element and transformed her mortal body, soul and core. Not a single chief god in Willard’s memory could claim to have complete mastery of all grand laws within a single element, as just the mastery of a single law within an element was considered the pique of a chief god’s power. Over the millions of years he had spent training in the nine heavens, Willard only mastered the incineration of fire.

Willard stopped paying attention to the battle as he could tell he wasn’t going to be of any use the way he currently was. Willard sat in a meditative posture and started cultivating earth elemental energy. Willard noticed his rate of absorbing earth elemental energy was rapidly rising. He was surprised with this growth but ultimately couldn’t afford to waste any time investigating as he really needed to recoup some elemental energy.

Explosions rang out all around Willard, who still concentrated on his cultivation. It took a good five hours of rest and cultivation for Willard to fully restore his elemental energy base. At this point in time, shimmers of daylight had penetrated the dark skies. The battle between the water fiend and Aorah had reached its climax. From the intense level of destruction that had occurred to the surrounding structures and land, one could tell just how powerful saints and fiends were. Willard continued to watch biding his time for a single opportunity.

The bald headed water fiend had created a mist domain around the current battlefield. This did not prevent Willard from monitoring the ongoing battle as his senses and experience were good enough to fill in the blank of things he could not clearly see. Willard noticed the fiends ears had traces of blood all round it, from that he deduced that the fiend had rid himself of his hearing so as to not be affected by Aorah’s sound domain. ‘Something is still amiss.’ Willard said to himself as he watched the ongoing fight. ‘How come this fiends mobility still seems mitigated?’ Willard pondered for a bit. “Could it be?” Willard exclaimed as he seemed to have gained a little bit of understanding in regards to Aorah’s technique. “She has gained a vague knowledge in the true law of vibration.” This seemed to make the most sense to Willard. It could explain how he had been so powerless under Aorah’s techniques without even noticing it coming. Although Aorah had mastered the primary law of sound, she had a tiny insight to the true law of vibration. That was how she was able to still affect the fiend even though he had gotten rid of his hearing. “Remarkable.”

“Why did this fiend not just run away? Why does he still persist until now?” Willard was confused with the fiends actions. Normally, most people would just give up when they realize they cannot win. As for Aorah, she had persisted all this while just for Willard’s sake. What exactly was driving this fiend seemed to be on an even or greater scale to Aorah’s. “Willard!” Aorah’s voice came crashing in his head. This was a technique Aorah had used multiple times to communicate with him privately. She gave him a little bit instructions to carry out as she continued fighting.

Aorah seemingly exhausted had appeared right in front of the water fiend, she was currently attacking with a flood of torrential dagger stabs, each one seemed faster than the one before. She was both suppressing the movement of the water fiend, and was savagely attacking him. The beastly nature of each of her attacks seemed to be in complete contrast to her usual personality of calm and childish tranquility. As her moves gained in ferocity, the fiend had gained more visible cuts to his body, the mist in the surrounding was rapidly flying and congealing at the fiends body. “Die” Aorah yelled as she stabbed forward with all the strength she could muster. Her dagger seemed to have pierced the chest of fiend, when she noticed a water clone had grabbed her hand firmly holding it attached to the dagger in its heart. What she apparently stabbed was just a clone. This had been the fiends hidden trump card he was just revealing. The fiend rushed in to use this opportunity to kill Aorah.

Before he was able to stab Aorah with his sword, a cold metallic object stabbed him from his back. The fiend turned back to see what happened when he noticed Willard’s cold smile. The fiend fell to the floor breathing heavily. “So you were still in the area? I should have gone after you first.” He said as he coughed out a mouthful of blood. When Aorah had communicated with Willard earlier, she had told him the battle was about to get to its final stage. She knew the fiend had a trump card, and that Willard was to ask the moment it was shown. She knew once it got to that part, the fiend would completely focus on killing her, giving Willard the opportunity to sneak an attack.

“Where are the villagers?” Willard coldly asked. He could care less about the dying words of the fiend before him, all he cared about at this moment was the whereabouts of his family.

“So that is why you came here.” The fiend said as he laughed. His laughter was ended as he resumed his coughing of blood. “I guess we shall all be disappointed. A blood sacrifice to my goddess Akhlys.” the fiend said as the light in his eyes disappeared. Immediately, a colorless substance flew out of the dead fiend’s mouth. The substance gave a strange ripple to the fragment of reality itself, before it ascended, in great speed, to the sky. As that was happening, loud bellows of agony came from a certain region within the village. Aorah disappeared with Willard and appeared in front of what seemed like an enclosing for prisoners. Scattered all around the place were either already dead bandits, whose bodies were slowly melting, or others that were still barely alive but in pain and also slowly dying in the same manner. Willard broke the gate that covered the place and rushed in. The scene that followed had completely stopped him in his tracks. He saw a bunch of his villagers either dead or about to join the dead as they screamed in pain. To the corner of the enclosing, a familiar face caught Willard as he saw the woman screaming. This was his mother, Angelica, who was in apparent pain. Willard dashed to her side, raising her head and placing it on his lap. Aorah appeared right there and placed her hand on Angelica’s forehead. “Mother,” Willard called staring at his mother in pain. The emotions Willard was currently going through was nothing like he had ever known. This was the first time someone he had actually cared for was dying right in front of him. The pain on Angelica’s face seemed to lessen a little bit as she responded Willards call. “Willard is that you? Thank goodness, I was afraid I would not get to see you before I died.” Angelica said in a weary voice.

“Don’t speak, I would definitely save you.”

“Haha..” Angelica laughed before she caressed Willard’s face a little. “Your father is still alive, he was not in the village when they raided.”

“Stop talking mother. Save your strength.”

“Willard, your mother has less than ten minutes before she dies,” Aorah said to Willard in a low voice before she walked away to give him some privacy.

Angelica narrated what happened earlier to Willard, she told him how the fiend had made all of them swallow a colorless pearl, which explained how he was able to kill Garach with a snap of his finger, and all the strange death before him. Willard sat there as he watched his mother’s body gradually liquidated to a pool of blood.

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1. N/a

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As the two men got to the area where the fight had been going on, they were shocked to see the level of devastation. At the point the men arrived, they were on three bandits left alive. Underneath the illustrious lumination of the moon, Willard was like a red-skinned demon with a pair of white glowing eyes. All three of the remaining bandit had given up all hope, as they stood in place almost as if they had come to peace with their inevitable deaths. “Who in the infinite hollows are you?” One of the men who had arrived at the scene yelled.

“You shall suffer a fate worse than death.” The man continued as his state of anger compounded.

Willard who only gave the newcomers a side glance rushed to the three bandits close to him. He grabbed the face of one of the bandits with his right hand and stabbed the other with his left hand. With the added strength of the earth element technique, Willard was using, he pierced through the face of the bandit he held with his right hand. The bandit was screaming his lungs out as Willard kept on increasing the pressure, until finally, Willard had ripped a portion of the man’s face out. Willard took the wailing man’s sword and stabbed him, before throwing that same sword at the last bandit close to him. ‘Why did they all fight me to the end? This makes no sense.’ Willard thought to himself without expressing any of his thoughts outwardly.

“Garach, support me. I want to personally burn this person to death.’ The bandit that had previously threatened Willard said to his partner.

Garach, who had remained silent the entire time stretched both his hands forward. The natural energy within his surrounding started gathering around him. Two whirlwinds slowly started forming at the basis of his palms. The man threw the whirlwinds, which continued to increase in magnitude as it flew towards Willard. Garach who was directly behind the whirlwinds bit his teeth with great force, creating some fire that set the whirlwind ablaze. Willard was shocked to not only see one elemental energy combatant but two who were above average elemental energy users. With this one move, Willard could tell these were expats that had definitely worked together in the past. Their co-ordinated attack wasn’t something they had just done at the spur of the moment. ‘Two elemental users and a water fiend in this bandit group. This is very strange.” Willard thought to himself as he got ready to engage the two fighters.

Willard rapidly utilized his movement technique to quickly evade the attack. Now that he knew they were elemental energy users, he couldn’t afford to be careless and waste the remainder of his elemental energy. ‘I can’t give them time and space to keep on using ranged attacks.’

Willard dashed towards them with all the strength he could muster. The two men were completely shocked to see Willard’s quick escape and immediate retaliation. “Find an opening to end this fast,” Garach instructed as he rushed to intercept Willard. Garach punched straight aiming for the head of incoming Willard, who instinctively evaded that attack. Willard and Garach were locked on a one versus one exchange of punches. Each and every single attack from Garach seemed like an attack from a volcano. As Willard evaded or blocked, he felt a high degree of heat burning the air as if he was bathing himself with fire. The one thing Willard wasn’t lacking in was fighting experience. Very quickly he controlled the tempo of the fight and feigned a sense of equilibrium between him and Garach. That quickly prompted Garach to increase the ferocity of his attacks, resulting in the lesser awareness of his surrounding.

Noticing Garach had fallen for his trap, Willard willed the earth to create a spike that directly stabbed Garach’s left foot. With that one step, he had completely thrown Garach out of balance. Willard rushed in to stab Garach with his fingers when he felt a cold sensation nearing his neck. Willard instead used the motion of his hand to intercept what was heading for his neck. Willard felt a little pain as he caught the sword handled by the other bandit that had been on the sideline the entire time. Willard feeling some pain from that attack knew that he was running low on elemental energy. Garach who had just been saved bit his teeth together and produced fire that aimed straight at Willard, who was left with only the option of retreat. Willard used the remaining bit of his elemental energy to use his movement technique and escape backwards.

At this point, Willard was drained completely of his elemental energy. The two men working in tandem pressed forward with their attacks. ‘Stupid woman now will be a good time to help.’ Willard cursed inwardly. Willard couldn’t do much as both men quickly overwhelmed him. They had caught Willard in a dead end, as they were about to strike a fatal blow before they came to a complete halt in their motion. Finally, Aorah had acted and robbed them of their mobility. Willard quickly seized the opportunity to disarm the silent fighter of his sword and quickly beheaded him. Before Willard could attack the other bandit, Garach, he heard a loud echoing laughter ring around him. “So that is why you had the courage to come here.” A loud voice said, as the image of a bald man slowly took form from a distance. “Come out saint in hiding. There is no real need for you to hide anymore.” The bald headed man said as he immediately shot a rapidly flying ball of water to Willard. Thanks to Willard’s strong battle instinct he was barely able to evade the attack.

Aorah appeared a few feet away from the bald-headed man in a calm manner. Garach who had been previously held in place by Aorah, got his mobility back. He immediately took heels running off in the distance. Previously he had thought he was fighting just an elemental energy practitioner, but the sudden inclusion of a saint was a completely different matter. Against saints, elemental energy users were akin to infants. He did not want to aimlessly throw his life away, so he decided to give way and let the giants battle it out, while he, the ant, does not suffer the repercussive effect of the fight.

The bald-headed man had a disgruntled look to him as he saw Garach running, he snapped his finger, which immediately caused Garch to tumble and scream in pain. “I told you, no one was ever permitted to run during battle.” the bald-headed man said as they all slowly watched Garach’s body liquefy into a pool of blood. The bald-headed man’s action had severely startled both Aorah and Willard, who watched as Garach turned into a pile of blood.

“Now let’s get this battle started.” The fiend who stood in front of Aorah said with a creepy smile.

“Willard get back,” Aorah instructed Willard who took the cue to go hide somewhere safe. Willard was after all from this village, although it was in ruins at the moment, he still knew his environment quite well.

The water fiend charged straight towards Aorah, who immediately took to the air and started uttering a strange sound that uniformly spread around her. The fiend who had been on the chase immediately noticed his pace had been reduced. He knew exactly what was going on, as the legend of saints were spread amongst the top elemental energy fighters. “So she has mastered the elementary law of sound. Quite interesting .” Willard said to himself as he watched the fight progress. Although Aorah’s lips were sealed, the sound still continued. Aorah directly appeared behind the water fiend and stabbed with a dagger. As her dagger stabbed the water fiend, it easily pierced through his head, like she had stabbed the ocean, as the whole body of the fiend was in essence water. Immediately, a large water bubble congealed out of nowhere as it encapsulated both the fiend and Aorah.

Aorah could immediately feel her skin getting eroded by a very strong poisonous element within the water. She immediately used her elemental energy to blast the water bubble away. This immediately explained how the water fiend had just killed his subordinate. Not only did he control water, he could poison his captives.

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1. N/a

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Willard was momentarily in a contemplative state. ‘So in this world, a tempest existence is referred to as a saint. If that is the case, this Aorah is much more powerful than I had previously thought.’ Willard silently thought with a frown on his face. Although Willard was docile while he was in the presence of Aorah, he had still not given up the thought of killing her for keeping him against his will. ‘This would prove to be more difficult than I originally planned.’

“I see.” Willard feigned ignorance as he rubbed his chin. “What universal law have you mastered?” Willard asked with an innocent look to him. Although they were currently on the same side, Willard still considered Aorah an enemy. As long as he could gain some understanding of the depth of his enemy, he would have a better chance of killing this enemy.

“There is no need to ask, you do not train in any of the elements I study or have a basic understanding of the law I have mastered. In due time you shall see them for yourself.”

Willard did not press on with his question because, in reality, Aorah spoke the truth. If they were to go together, Willard would be able to decipher the elements and laws she had studied. At least for now he had also gained some vital information on his immediate enemy, the blue mist bandits. Aorah spoke some more with Willard about how they were going to approach the situation. Although Aorah was much more powerful than the current Willard, she still needed to make sure Willard was in tune with her so as to make sure unforeseen events of disaster could be prevented.

As nighttime approached, Aorah appeared right in front of Willard, who was in a meditative posture on his bed. Without uttering a single word, they both disappeared from the room and reappeared about a few feets away from the borders of the Yellow Hew village, behind the cover of some trees. “We shall do as I spoke earlier,” Aorah said before she mystically disappeared again.

After she left, Willard proceeded to head straight for the village. From afar, he could see the destroyed houses, farmland, and many more structures that created the former image of the village he once knew. After a few minutes, Willard had already reached the village. Willard noticed the lively atmosphere of the bandits who now inhabited the village. Most of the ones he could see were drunk as they were broken off in groups eating, drinking or doing whatever they felt like. Willard was shocked to notice that they paid little to no attention to their surroundings. He could understand why that was the case, after all, they were lead by a fiend. Not even entire kingdoms lightly made enemies of fiends. Which begged one of the questions that greatly disturbed Aorah, why would a fiend work lead and work with bandits? One had to understand, that the birth of fiends were inconceivable rare, and once one had appeared all the kingdoms will offer anything to get the fiend on their side. So why was it that this fiend chose to be a bandit?

One of the bandits noticed a youngster in what seemed like a silky white attire strolling through the village almost as if he could not see them. The bandit was holding a piece of chicken in one hand, and tapped the fellow to his side with his free hand before he pointed to the direction of the youngster. “What do we have here?” The bandit that had been tapped said as he got up. It was obvious, that he had way too many to drink as he wobbled on his way to confront the incoming youngster.

“What happened to the people that lived here?” Willard who was the youngster in question asked in the most authoritative manner the drunk bandit had ever known. Traces of anger slowly engulfed the face of the bandit. Who the hell was this youngster? And does he not realize they were bandits.

“Insolence. If you are wishing for death this badly, I shall grant it to you.” The obviously drunk and annoyed bandit said as he haphazardly grabbed his battle axe. Before the bandit was able to make use of his axe, Willard had used the earth elemental energy to strengthen his hands and plunged it straight into the bandit’s heart. With a “thud” the bandit’s body dropped to the floor, the rest of the bandits all stared at this youngster that had some blood stains splashed on his white attire. The bandits all stopped what they were doing and stared at the youngster that had just killed one of them.

“Now that I have all of your attention, I would ask one last time. What happened to the people that lived here?”

As Willard finished his statement, one of the bandits caught himself from his earlier stupor and said;”Kill him.” The rest of the bandits within that area all slowly started to converge on Willard who was at the epicenter of the fight that was brewing.

“This child has too great a violent disposition. He should have done as instructed,” Aorah who stood up in the air above the scene said to herself as she sighed.

The bandits rushed in one by one to kill Willard who stood there mercilessly killing anyone within the range of his attack. Willard threw a battle axe, he had disarmed from one of the bandits, at a bandit who wanted to use arrows to attack. Willard was like the reincarnation of destruction itself. His originally silky white attire was completely drenched red with the blood of the bandits he had just massacred. As the bandits noticed their numbers dwindle faster than they ever thought possible, they all started to move away from him. “Who is this demon? Quickly, someone report this to the higher ups.” One of the bandits said as cold beads of sweat dropped from his head.

“Don’t attack him directly, we just have to defend against him until one of the higher ups comes to take care of him.” The remaining eight or so bandits all came together to help protect themselves from Willard. When the night had started, they were more than forty bandits leisurely enjoying themselves, but who could have known they would face such a disaster tonight. More than thirty and counting were already dead. What scared them the most wasn’t the fact that their companions had died, but how their companions had died. Each and every one of the dead bandits were either stabbed first or had their bones broken before they were decapitated by Willard. Willard did not even give them any more opportunities to talk to him, as he endlessly slaughtered them like sheeps.

Willard was the spitting image of the god of death to them. Wherever he went, only death followed. Willard was in a frenzied state, he was like an animal that had a serious blood lust and was satisfying its depraved urges.

In a room, located somewhere within the Yellow Hew village a bald headed man was sitting on a high chair that seemed like a thrown for a small time king. In front of this man were two other men who knelt on a single knee. They were currently reporting matters to the bald headed man, when suddenly someone burst open the door of that room and yelled, “Leader, there is a demonic character killing my brothers within the village. Before I left he had killed more than half of the entire group..” The man was saying before the bald headed man shot a ball of water that completely engulfed the man’s head. The man was struggling to push the water away from his face as he was slowly drowning. The next moment, to the kneeling men’s surprise, the ball of water started bubbling. “I have warned that no one was permitted to yell in front of me.” The bald headed man said as the man who was covered with a ball of water’s head slowly dissolved to a pool of blood. The man whose headed was berried in the ball of water could only scream till his death. The man’s body slumped to the ground lifelessly. “Go check on what is happening outside. Kill the character that dares to cause trouble in my camp.”

“Yes leader.”The two men who were still kneeling both gulped their salivas after they responded.

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1. N/a

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Willard sat there stunned with what he had just heard. ‘The village was raided by some outlaws’, kept replaying in his mind. “What do you mean? The chief and the warriors should have been able to fend off any outlaw.” Willard said snapping out of his daze.

“The village wasn’t raided by just any outlaw, they were raided by the blue mist bandit group,” Ayola said staring deeply at Willard.

“Did my parent survive?”

“I don’t know? I was in the forest picking wood when I saw the others running away. I followed them to safety.”

Willard immediately got up and dashed out of the restaurant. Thoughts of his mother came pouring into his mind. Although he had regained his complete memory of his former life, Willard’s memory of his childhood with his parents was still a part of him. For the first time since his true existence, he had experienced what it was like to have the love of a family. Although he hated his human existence, he had inherited a subconscious love for his parents. This was a feeling he had gradually grown fond of. ‘A mere mortal dares to take what is mine.’ Willard angrily thought as he ran. Within Willard’s elemental core, the strange red energy started slowly flaring. Every time he thought of the possibility of his parents being killed, the magnitude of the flares increased. On Willard’s neck, were the ring his father had gifted him before his trip was tied, started glowing a clear cyan blue color. This occurrence fell out of Willard’s attention, as his mind was completely occupied with the state of his parents.

Over at a distance location, within a different village, Aorah was drinking wine in the company of complete strangers. She had changed her appearance to that of one local woman who lived in that village. Suddenly Aorah mystically disappeared, leaving those people in a state of complete stupor.

As Willard ran, he saw Nana grooming the horses off in the distance. Without a word, he grabbed one of the straps attached to a horse. “What do you think you are doing?” Nana asked in obviously unpleased manner. Willard turned, with a sort of evil gaze It was almost as if he was in a state of blood lust. His stare was domineering and penetrating Nana had to take a couple of steps back while clenching onto a pendant on her neck.

Hovering up in the sky, Aorah was watching the whole thing with a frown. She disappeared from her current position and appeared right in front of Willard. “What are you doing?”

“I need to rush over to my village as soon as possible,” Willard said as he climbed and sat on the horse.

“Wait. Wait.” Ayola yelled running towards them.

“You can’t go there. The blue mist bandits will kill you.” she continued while she panted.

“I am leaving now.”

“You are not going anywhere,” Aorah responded.

Willard’s gaze intensified as he heard Aorah’s words. A sort of fiery aura seemed to permeate from him. Without a seconds notice, Aorah released a domain which had made everything within her surrounding to stop moving. Everyone living thing, animals or humans had stopped in place except for Willard who still had some his mobility.

“Think for a second before you act.”

“Do you know anything about the blue mist bandits? Who leads them and whether you are a match for them?”Aorah’s words made a lot of sense to Willard, but he was never the type to shy away from a fight.

“I do not care who it might be, but anyone who offends me must pay.”

“You will surely die if you go there tonight. Not even I can guarantee your safety.”

Willard was shocked to hear what she had just said. He knew quite well how powerful Aorah was, and for her to say what she had just said meant that this adversary was indeed powerful. Aorah had found out about the blue mist bandits through her hobby of mingling with the various villagers as they traveled. She had learned of the deeds this water fiend had been doing in those parts and had gotten a better understanding of the group.

“I promised to let you visit your village, but this is different. A water fiend leads the blue mist bandits. All fiends are comparable to saints in power.”

This was the first time Willard had heard the terms fiends and saint. Although he had learned of the martial cultivation ranks from his time in the Yellow Hew village, he had never heard of those ranks. This was due to the relatively low level of knowledge the villagers had and rarity of individuals at that level.

“If you want to be of any help to your parents and the villagers, if they are not already dead, you need to calm down and listen to me.” As Willard listened and thought about it, Aorah’s words seemed to make quite a lot sense. For now, at least, he had to understand who the blue mist bandits were. “When do suggest we leave?” Willard asked.

“When you are well rested, we shall depart.”

Aorah released her domain and everything went back to normal. Ayola resumed her panting, while Nana walked closer to Aorah. The group made their way to the inn Nana had gotten them on Willard’s request. Ayola had narrated the entire situation to Aorah and Nana, which helped to the ease the slight hostility Nana felt towards Willard’s earlier action. Of course, Willard could care less about Nana’s feelings, if it were up to him, he would have never joined them in the first place.

Willard sat on a bed in a meditative posture. He thought about his current state of mind and found that these feelings were completely alien to him. The reason for his state of complete anger couldn’t be correctly explained. Willard noticed the emotions he felt at the moment, had a new found effect on his soul. Willard noticed his soul was growing much more powerfully than it had ever done since he regained his memory. He couldn’t really find an explanation to the phenomenon and chose not to think much about it.

Ayola walked into the room where Willard was seated after taking a shower and having a fresh change of clothing. She had initially hoped to grab Willard’s interest but was disappointed to notice Willard wasn’t even paying any attention to her. Eventually, she could only leave and stay in the company of Nana.

“Come with me.” Aorah’s voice sounded in Willard’s head. Afterward, Willard had disappeared from the room to the top of the building.

“When one has a complete understanding of one of the universal laws, your body, soul and elemental core is transformed into a single entity,” Aorah said taking a slight pause. “This existence is what is referred to as a saint.”

“A fiend, on the other hand, is a person who receives the will of a god. I can’t really explain how this happens, but ever so often a god’s will descend and select a suitor. These people do not have the understanding of the universal laws, but they are able to draw a lot of power from the god and are somewhat comparable in power to saints.”

Willard knew a lot better than Aorah in regards to the so-called god’s will. This was something he had done countless times in the nine heavens. It was a means god’s used to gain followers in the different mortal worlds. According to gaya’s decree, all gods were forbidden from entering the mortal world. The gods used this method to instruct several mortals of their existence and make them serve him, thereby increasing the level of the god’s soul. After a suitable mortal gains the will of a god, the mortal gains a tiny portion of power from the god, who is also able to communicate with that mortal. The level of power the mortal is able to gain is dependent on the strength of the god and level of martial prowess of the mortal.

“Although I am at the level of a saint, I am still unable to guarantee your safety against this water fiend.”

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The deeply glowing ember from the burning wood created a peaceful and serene environment tonight. It wasn’t clear to Willard why he felt this way, but he couldn’t help but notice something about his current state was relaxing. Aorah sat staring at the stars with a longing expression. Nana quietly laid down with her eyes firmly shut. Willard was silently staring at the sky and occasionally moved his gaze to the both of them, as they seemingly embraced the night.

“This is the first time your mind has been at peace since you joined us,” Aorah said watching the stars. Willard’s expression did not change because he was already getting used to the strangeness of Aorah.

“If you let me go, my mind would always be at peace.”

“Hahaha. I suppose.” She laughed. Willard knew that letting him go wasn’t even an option at this point. Given the way Aorah had firmly proven her resolve to have him accompany her, there was no way she would let him leave.

“Why did you choose not to avenge the death of Nana’s entire village?”

“It is not always evil versus good. There is merit in forgiveness.” Aorah responded with a saddened look on her face. “Given your rate of growth, in due time you will understand the meaning behind my words.”

“What is there to understand? You simply chose cowardice in the name of peace, just like with those bandits today. It is specifically people like you I hate the most.” Willard said before he closed his eyes to sleep. Aorah turned to look at Willard for a couple of seconds, and then turned back to continue watching the stars.

The next morning, they got up and continued their journey. The events of the day went on like they usually did. Aorah mysteriously vanished without any warning, while Nana continued navigating the way with Willard. Neither Willard nor Nana knew of her whereabouts and frankly, neither of them could be bothered to even think about. Hours into their journey, the terrain slowly started becoming recognizable to Willard. He remembered the first time he got to this point, which was a couple of months back. The route before him led to the Blue Rose village, which gave Willard a certain sense of nostalgia.

As they continued along the path, they quickly came across a lot of villagers who seemed homeless. Willard thought about the last time he came through those paths, they weren’t that many inhabitants living in the Blue Rose village. As a matter of fact, he clearly remembered that the Blue Rose village was a transit village. One that got most of its economic activities from the warriors and mages that usually stopped over on their way to bigger cities. Although this scene was strange to him, he did not bother to think much about it.

“Please spare some change for me. I haven’t eaten in three days.” A young female beggar yelled as she ran alongside the carriage. Something about this beggar seemed familiar to Willard.

“Nana, stop the carriage,” Willard said as he quickly jumped down.

Willard kept staring at the young beggar for a long time. Something about this beggar seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Suddenly it all came crashing into his head. He knew exactly who this beggar was. Behind her currently dirty and worn out outfit, was a short small-framed beautiful girl. How could Willard forget, this was a person he had spent a lot of time around, while he was a child in the Yellow Hew village training to be a warrior.

“Ayola, is that you?” Willard asked with a surprised expression.

“Sir, have we met before?” Ayola asked while she panted.

Willard was seriously shocked with what he was experiencing. He thought back to how long he had left the village and realized it had been just four months. Sure he had grown his hair a little longer and might have added an inch or two to his height, but it still couldn’t explain why Ayola couldn’t recognize him at first glance. Willard seriously thought about what could have caused such trauma to cause her to forget who he was. He could smell something was wrong about the whole situation. The increased number of inhabitants and now Ayola.

“I am Willard, we were both trained by the warrior Azeya. What are you doing here? Why are you like this?”

“Willard is that you? You look so different. Can you please spare some change?” Ayola asked again. Willard did not necessarily feel pity for Ayola, he mostly felt a sense of bewilderment. He couldn’t figure out what was currently happening. From his memory of Ayola, she had a loving family that provided for her.

“Nana, do you some silver or gold coins you could lend me?” Willard asked

“Why should I lend you any money?”

Willard quickly checked his sack to see if he could find anything of relative value. All his current possessions, at the moment, were the root of the fire plant that Baya had acquired for him and a blue jewel stone Sebastian had gifted him for his victory against Mailey.

“Why don’t you hold onto this blue jewel stone, return it when I pay you back,” Willard said tossing the blue jewel stone to Nana. Nana sized up the jewel for some seconds and tossed a little pouch to Willard. She had an unusual smile as she kept on staring at the blue jewel stone.

“Nana, why don’t you find us an inn, I will also pay back for the accommodation,” Willard said leading Ayola to a nearby restaurant.

“It’s you again. Get out of here before I give you another beating.” A man who stood in front of the restaurant yelled. Willard ignored the man’s statement and brought Ayola to the restaurant.

“We would like a table ,” Willard said to the man.

“Are you both deaf?” The man said as he proceeded to grab Willard to throw him out. Unfortunately for the man, Willard was never the type to take any insults. Willard willed natural energy to his palms and slammed the chest of the man. The man tumbled backward and crashed into a sitting area outside of the restaurant. The noise from the confrontation invited a host of people to come check out what was happening.

“What is the meaning of this?” A chubby man who was better dressed said as he came out of the restaurant. The man frowned his face as he approached Willard. Just now, Willard had beaten his supposed security guard and he wasn’t sure what Willard might want to do.

“We would like a table? Or are you going to try and throw us out like him over there?” Willard asked pointing to the who was laying there unconscious.

“It is not that we don’t want to serve you, it is just that we need proof that you can afford the meal first.” The man said looking towards Willard and the dirty looking Ayola.

“Is this proof enough?” Willard said tossing five silver coins to the chubby man.

“Yes, Yes. It is proof enough.”

The man instructed someone to carry the unconscious security guard away before he went to go prepare a table for Willard and Ayola. A couple of minutes later, Willard and Ayola were seated and served by someone from the restaurant. Without a moment to waste, Ayola decimated the plate that was in front of her. Willard stared in amazement, wondering what on earth could have happened to the girl in front of him. Within the span of ten minutes, Ayola had finished three rounds of food. At this point, she slowed down and proceeded to eat normally.

“What happened to you?” Willard asked as he noticed some normalcy in Ayola.
“Three weeks ago, the village was raided by some outlaws. I managed to escape with some lucky others.”

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It had been five days since Willard was unwillingly forced to join the two ladies on their journey. Since the trio were passing through familiar routes, Willard felt somewhat at peace. Willard couldn’t help but think about his present predicament. For one of the few times in his mortal life, he felt truly powerless whenever he faced Aorah. This was a lack of complete control over his own life. Sitting beside Nana, as she steered the horses on their journey. Willard thought about the events that transpired two days earlier and sighed with great depression. Two nights earlier, the three of them had stopped and rested by a burn fire for the night. Willard pretended to be asleep, but quickly run off when the others were sleeping. He ran for hours before he got tired and decided to rest on a tree. Willard was certain, he had escaped the clutches of his oppressor, but to his surprise when he woke up the next morning, he noticed he was in the carriage with Aorah. Willard couldn’t understand what had happened, he was so sure he had made a clean breakaway, only to find himself waking up to the same carriage. What drove Willard more crazy was the fact that no one even spoke about his attempted escape. It was almost as if he had dreamt the whole thing up. Thanks to the various stains on his outfit that supported his memory of his attempted escape, Willard finally accepted his fate for the moment.

“How long have you been training under miss Aorah?” Willard asked out of boredom.

“Since I was six,” Nana responded with her usual expression.

After spending these past couple days with Nana and Aorah, Willard had begun to understand their personalities. Although Aorah was only fourteen years of age, she was quite mature mentally for her age. She was basically the one that took care of Aorah. Thanks to the weird upbringing Nana must have had with Aorah, she developed a weird personality for someone her age. She was too honest and quick to react. She was neither apathetic nor inconsiderate, essentially Willard concluded she was a different type of nut case like her teacher.

“When last did you see your family?” Willard asked again.

Nana turned and stared at Willard for a couple of seconds before she moved her gaze to the road.

“My entire family died when I was six. My teacher is my only family.” She responded without a slight change in her expression. Willard was shocked with her response and mannerism. He couldn’t believe she had responded without even a slight emotional outburst. ‘What on earth has this woman been teaching this girl?’ Willard thought to himself, he also couldn’t help but praise the state of mind Nana had cultivated.

“What happened to your family?”

Nana remained silent for some time before she responded, “Do you always talk this much? It’s a bit bothersome.”

Willard did not even have the time to respond before he noticed some people hiding in the bushes up ahead.

“Nana stopped the carriage, there are some bandits up ahead. Go get miss Aorah.”

“Teacher left the carriage a while ago. She said you will be able to solve any problems we encounter.” Nana said as she pulled the carriage to a complete stop.

“I am going to lay down inside the carriage. Come get me when you are done with the bandits.” Nana said jumping down from the front section.

Willard was stunned with what he had just heard. Willard was proud of his observations skill, but somehow, Aorah had left the carriage without his notice. To top it off, Aorah had left him with babysitting her student or the other way around. Willard thought of using this situation to escape, but he quickly remembered Aorah’s strange capability in finding him. Willard jumped off the carriage with a clearly vexed expression. He couldn’t believe this was what he was left with doing.

“I will only give you all five seconds to run away, or I shall kill every single one of you.” Willard angrily shouted.

Above the scene within the clouds, Aorah oversaw the entire event as it transpired. “Let’s see how this plays out.” She said

“Hahahaha” The bandits all broke into laughter one after the other. This might have been the first time someone had ever said such a thing to them.

“You brat think you can kill my brothers and I by yourself? No matter what academy genius you are, what can you do when faced with twenty people?” A bulky bandit said as he strolled forward.

Without even counting, Willard used his movement technique to get close the distance between him and the bulky bandit. The bulky bandit was startled by Willard’s action, he quickly tried to strike Willard with his blade but was surprised to see Willard catch the blade in its movement. Willard disarmed the bandit with the same motion and immediately severed the bandit’s head.

The other bandits were too shocked to react. They never expected things to take such a swift turn. They had fought several geniuses on this same road countless times, but they never experienced anything like what had just happened. Willard appeared before the next bandit and sliced his body diagonally. This second move made the bandits realize they had stepped on a hornet’s nest.

“Escape.” Another yelled as he turned tails to run. Within ten seconds, they had lost their leader, the bulky bandit. The bandits all scattered and ran in different directions. Willard wasn’t satisfied with killing just two of them, as he followed one of them that was running.

“This duckling is too vicious,” Aorah said as she watched.

As Willard caught up to the person he was chasing, he slashed the blade aiming for the head. To Willard’s surprise, the bandit he was about to decapitate had disappeared. Willard turned to chase the others but discovered he couldn’t find a single one of the escaping bandits.

“What in the world just happened?” Willard exclaimed in surprise. He couldn’t believe the bandits had just disappeared just like that. Willard walked back to the carriage frowning. He wanted to take out all his frustrations on those bandits, but somehow they had escaped. Willard got Nana out of the carriage and they continued their journey.

Up in the skies above Willard, Aorah stood with eighteen unconscious bandits floating. She nodded her head and disappeared from the sky with the bandits.

Willard looked depressed as he watched the endless trees pass by for hours. By this time, the day was already giving way to the darkness of the night. Nana took a quick glance at Willard and said, “My village was raided by a neighboring village. The villagers, including my parents, were all killed during the raid. I was luckily saved by my teacher, and ever since then I have been traveling and living with her.”

Willard was shocked to hear what Nana had said. He wasn’t shocked because of the story, he was more surprised that Nana took the initiative to talk to him.

“Did she take revenge on your behalf?”

“Teacher said revenge breeds a vicious circle, and that I shouldn’t be too quick to think of it.”

Willard made a grunting sound and said, “What utter crap. They started the circle, why shouldn’t you think of revenge?”

Immediately after Willard finished his statement, a loud banging sound was heard from within the carriage. Aorah poked her head out and said, “let’s stop here and camp for the night.”

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1. N/a

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The steady vibration of what seemed to be a carriage woke Willard from his slumber. To his surprise, he realized was laying in a large carriage usually used by nobles. All he could vaguely remember was the moment Allada was about to cut his hands off. He had no recollection of what had transpired afterward. Willard moved both his arms to confirm they were still connected to the rest of his body. Seeing nothing had happened to him gave Willard a wild sense of joy, not only was he not dead or missing an arm, he was apparently not in chains. Turning around to investigate his surroundings, Willard quickly noticed the piercing gaze of a strange woman sitting opposite him.

“So you finally woke up.” The strange woman said with a hint of cynicism.

“How long have I been out?”

“About a week.”

Willard was startled to hear that he had been unconscious for a week. “Who are you?” Willard asked.

“Your benefactor of course. How do you intend to pay this merciful benefactor back?” She asked with a straight face. Willard couldn’t help but scratch his head a little. Normally most people in the woman’s position wouldn’t be so direct about wanting a repayment, but right now the woman had directly demanded repayment.

“What would my benefactor want for her payment?”

“One million gold coins or the equivalent,” she responded in all seriousness.

“Haha. You must be joking right? Not even the governor of Marquis city would have a million gold coins to give.”

“If you don’t have the gold, pay me with something else that’s worth that exact amount.” The woman said staring straight at Willard.

Willard was beginning to grow slowly angry as he listened to her words. He just had about enough of the unreasonable woman’s demand. But for some mysterious reason, he decided not to act out.

“Thank you for saving my life, but I can’t afford what you are asking for. Sometime in the future when I have a million gold coins I will pay you back for your kindness.”

“Young duckling, that can’t do. Ah, I got it.” the woman said in a manner suggesting she just had a thought.

“Why don’t you become my slave and I will release you when you’ve done a million gold coins worth of indentured labor.”

Willard couldn’t hold back his anger anymore, “Look here miss, I don’t have a million gold coins or the equivalent to give you, neither am I interested in being your slave. I am grateful for your kindness, but I did not ask for your help in the first place. Now I will be taking my leave.”

“That also can’t do young duckling. It took quite a bit of effort to save you. I can’t just let you leave like that.”

Willard ignored her statement and proceeded to leave the moving carriage. The moment he pushed open the door of the carriage, his vision immediately became pitch black and then he passed out. The next moment Willard woke up, he realized he was resting behind a tree in front of a burn fire. Right in front of him was a young girl who seemed to a little younger than Willard, who was seated close to the strange woman he met in the carriage.

“Oh, you are already conscious.” The strange woman said with a cruel little smile as she was biting into a piece of roasted meat. “That’s strange, no one within the elemental energy levels should be able to recover this fast,” she said in a jumbled fashion as the words were impaired by her chewing.

Willard immediately got to his senses. He remembered his earlier conversation with the crazy woman and immediately thought to run away. “Don’t think of running except you want to go back to sleep,” Willard ignored her warnings and tried to use his movement martial technique to escape, and like earlier, his vision turned pitch black as he passed out.

“Teacher, is there something wrong with his head?” The young girl asked in a serious tone.

“I am not sure Nana. He might be a little slow in the uptake.”

“I see. Teacher, why did you bring him?”

“There’s something peculiar about this one.” The woman said as she closed her eyes and rubbed her belly.

The following morning, Willard woke up to the sound of the two ladies getting ready to leave. His thoughts quickly flashed back to what happened before he passed out when a cold sweat broke on his back. ‘What kind of sorcery is this vile woman using? What kind of problem have I gotten myself into?’ Willard silently thought to himself.

“How long are you going to pretend to be unconscious for? I can make you pass out again if you want that?” The strange woman’s loud voice came crashing in Willard’s head. Willard immediately opened his eyes and stared at the woman, his thoughts seemed to become more rational now that he had really experienced some of the woman’s ways. ‘Now that I think of it, if this woman was capable of snatching me away from Allada, she ought to be at least as powerful as Jayesh.’

“Where are we? And where are we going?” Willard asked in a more revitalized tone, his action gave the impression that he had fully accepted his circumstance.

“Finally given up on running? That’s too bad, I wanted to test exactly how powerful your soul was.” The woman said nodding unapprovingly. “We are headed to Malay Kingdom. Go help Nana prep the carriage.”

“How long am I going to be working for you?” Willard asked as he was walking towards the carriage.

“Until a million gold coins worth of work is done.” hearing that Willard seemed to be in a deep thought. The biggest problem he had with the entire situation, was the fact that he wouldn’t get to see his parents in a long while.

A thought suddenly sprang to Willard’s mind,“Merciful and lovely benefactor. Can we please make a stop at my Yellow Hew village as we go? It is on the way to the southern border. Let me say goodbye to my parents before I make this journey.”

The woman thought about it for a couple of seconds and agreed to stop briefly at the Yellow hew village. “You should know by now it’s impossible for you to escape me right?”

“I have no such intentions benefactor.”

“What might I call my benefactor?” Hearing Willard’s question, the strange woman smiled and responded: “Nana tell this young one what I am called.” as she reached her pouch to drink some water.

“Teacher is called Aorah, queen of mischief.” Aorah hearing Nana’s response couldn’t help but cough out loud. “Nana, it is the queen of mysteries and not mischief.”

“But the old man with the long staff said you were..” nana was saying as Aorah cut her short. “Forget that senile old man’s comment.”

‘She is indeed the queen of mischief. When I get the opportunity, I will pay you a thousand times back for every single thing you have done.” Willard silently thought to himself.

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