| 7 | Running Away From Gratitude

Lenna flexed her hand and smiled. Using 'Snow Piercer' drained the last of her mana, but the results were certainly satisfactory. Its destructive power was the highest Lenna had in her arsenal. However, the technique felt awkward to use. She suspected the technique needed an armament to bring out its full strength.

Morg had only trained her in unarmed martial arts due to their versatile usage with any weapon and their easy incorporation into fighting styles. This is because, upon reaching B-rank, a contractor's relic would grant them their own armament. If a contractor trained with a weapon that ended up not being the same as their armament, they would have no choice but to restart from square one.

Lenna wanted her own armament. It was vital towards her goal... She would get revenge.

The C-rank elemental's eyes went dark, and all of the flames on its body died out.

Once the C-rank was dead, its body and its greatsword began to break down into gray wisps of energy like the D-rank elementals earlier.

These energy wisps were the C-rank elemental's essence, made up from pure mana.

The essence from the elemental began to move and converge to Lenna.

The essence mostly moved towards Lenna, with a few strands moving towards the D-rank contractors from when they had "poked" it a little.

As the mana-essence approached Lenna, it began to accelerate the closer it got. Lenna braced herself for the influx of energy as it crashed into her chest like a torrent of water.

The essence quickly began to be absorbed by Lenna.

The amount of essence from a C-rank elemental was truly on a different level than D-ranks. She felt her mana pool rapidly increase as more and more of the essence was drawn inwards.

After just a second, once the last strand of essence was absorbed, Lenna exhaled and opened her eyes.

She normally wouldn't have frozen up when absorbing essence, but she was unfamiliar with the concentration of essence, which put her into a temporary state of ecstasy.

It wasn't uncommon for a contractor to freeze up upon absorbing essence for the first time or essence of a higher concentration.

It was the feeling of getting stronger, and it was an addicting feeling.

She grabbed her limp arm and gritted her teeth as she popped it back into place.

Surveying the battlefield, Lenna saw several bright orange gemstones, which had flames flickering inside, left on the ground by the elementals. Most were about the size of a finger, while one was a little bigger, being the size of her hand.

She pocketed the smaller ones while tossing the bigger one to Krom.

Krom walked over while catching the gemstone before storing it in his storage ring. With his hands in his coat pockets like always, and said, "Nice job. I only had to intervene once! Excellent for fighting an elemental without a team and for your first time!"

Lenna looked away, shy from the praise, and answered, "It was nothing much. I almost died, didn't I? I bet that's nothing for you."

Krom laughed, "Don't take your achievement too lightly; we are anomalies. It would normally take a team of five C-rank contractors to take down one C-rank elemental."

Lenna glanced over at the three D-rank contractors, who were trying to flip the carriage back up, and gestured to them while saying, "Wouldn't that make those guys really skilled?"

Following her gaze, Krom said, "They are quite talented, but I'm sure that you noticed how D-rank contractors and elementals have almost the same bodily attributes, but the disparity between their respective C-ranks is much higher."

Lenna nodded in understanding. The difference between D-rank contractors and elementals was negligible, but the difference between C-rank contractors and elementals was much more profound.

The three D-ranks managed to flip the carriage after a bit of effort. Unfortunately, it seemed that whatever had drawn the carriage had long since ran off.

The door opened, and a man with a merchant's attire walked out while tottering on his feet.

The three D-ranks whispered to the man about what transpired, then looked at Krom and Lenna.

The three D-rank contractors and the man dressed in a merchant's attire approached them. The merchant bowed, "I would like to thank you on our behalf. If it weren't for you, we would be dead."

Raising his head, the merchant said, "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Maximus Marximus the third, and these four— three next to me are the red-eagle group, my escort. If there is anything I can do to thank-!"

Krom cut him off, "Stay there for a moment..."

He scooped up Lenna in a princess carry before quickly running away at a moderate speed so she wouldn't be hurt, leaving the four from the carriage dumbfounded as they sped away towards the port on the dirt road.

Krom didn't want to deal with them.

"Are they going to come back?" Asked one of the red-eagle members.

The merchant sighed, "I doubt it. They don't seem to be the type of people to take gifts of gratitude."

The merchant raised his fist in the air, declaring, "On my pride as a merchant, and as a member of the great Marximus household, I will repay this debt!"

***

Krom, unknowing of what just transpired, continued down the dirt road.

Once they were a distance away, Lenna asked with a red face, "Umm... can you put me down?"

"Ah, oops. Give me a second," said Krom.

He quickly came to a stop and put her down gently.

He seemed neutral and unaffected on the outside, but he was slightly panicking inside. Her embarrassed side was simply too cute and could make his heart melt. Her breath had tickled his neck and caused his nerves to tense up with slight nervousness.

Yes, despite being one of the strongest contractors, Krom would still be nervous with things like this.

Lenna was faring no better.

Her face was flushed red, and her heart beat faster than normal. When Krom appeared in front of her, he had been like a hero rescuing her from danger at the last second. Her face felt hot thinking about it.

She subconsciously touched her chest but forgot she was injured and suddenly winced in pain.

Deciding to ignore what happened, Krom brought out a blood-red potion from his storage ring before handing it to Lenna, "Here, this will boost your natural regeneration for a few seconds. It should heal all your injuries."

The potion was something Krom had made a while ago with his knowledge in herbology and with a bit of help from the archive. As Krom had said, it would boost a person's natural healing ability. It was highly effective, but the only downside is that it used up a lot of a person's stamina and couldn't bring back lost limbs.

Lenna drank it.

A pleasant, cool sensation spread throughout her body as soon as she downed its contents. She could feel her bones and internal organs mending themselves in real-time.

As Krom said, she was good as new in just a few seconds.

Lenna rotated her shoulder, making sure it was good to go, before saying, "Let's get going now. We still need to reach the port by the end of today, right?"

Krom nodded in agreement, "Sure, why don't we also eliminate a few elementals along the way. And by we, I mean you."

"Maybe I will reach B-rank!" Lenna excitedly exclaimed.

"Sure, sure. Just take care not to crash into any trees," Krom joked.

Lenna puffed her cheeks in annoyance, "It's not my fault that Aston is literally COVERED in trees."

Aston's surface was almost entirely covered in forest. Only a few areas of plains existed. Typically, each island was aligned to an element, and Aston aligned with the plant element. This resulted in a lot of the decaying mana forming plant elementals.

It was honestly quite rare for flame elementals to have arisen, considering their polar nature.

As they continued to make their way to the port, they encountered another small group of elementals.

They were a group of five D-rank plant elementals.

The plant elementals still looked like the elongated humanoids composed of dark stone segments. Rather than fire holding them together, they were held together by various plants and had vines climbing across their bodies.

Lenna summoned her relic and dashed towards them.

The plant elementals quickly noticed her due to the mana fluctuations and began to take action.

Two of them planted their hands on the ground while the other three ran directly at her.

Hearing the sound of soil moving beneath her, she quickly jumped into the air, and not a moment after, numerous vines about half a meter thick burst from the ground and lashed out at her.

She glanced at the two elementals in the back and saw that the vines were their doing.

Nimbly spinning through the air, Lenna landed on one of the vines and used it as a springboard to close in on the elementals.

The three elementals in front swung vine whips at her from both their hands while she glided through the air, but Lenna twisted her body, easily avoiding it.

Landing on one of the elementals, she knocked it down to the ground and created four snow orbs before throwing them to the other elementals.

"Engulf!"

"Cryo-maim!"

The four elementals were swiftly brought to an end as they got reduced to nothing more than mana essence that flowed into Lenna by her techniques.

She punched the elemental beneath her three times in rapid succession.

Raising her fist for a fourth strike, she used another technique to finish it off, "Flash Frost!"

Crack!

The last elemental shattered into fragments before becoming mana essence and promptly getting absorbed by her.

The fight was over in a flash.

Unfortunately for the plant elementals, they were no match for someone a whole rank above them.

The plant elementals left behind small, amber-like gemstones that had a small plant inside them.

Lenna quickly collected it and stuffed the gemstones into her bag.

Krom walked over and asked, "What are you planning to do with those mana-stones?"

Lenna shrugged, "I'll probably sell them to the contractors guild when we get to a city that has one."

"Makes sense. Remember to hold on to any frost-stones you happen to get," said Krom.

Mana-stones became particularly useful for contractors once they reached B-rank. Other than for contractors, they were often used in alchemy or as the cores for various appliances. As such, they were always in high demand.

They continued along the road and encountered several more groups of elementals, which Lenna had quickly taken care of upon encountering.

A few hours later, while they were traveling, Krom suddenly asked, "Now that I think about it, have you ever seen the sea in person?"

Lenna shook her head, "No, I spent most of my time inland, training. I've only heard rumors about it. Actually— I have a vague memory of it, but it was from when I was really little."

"Really? Well, we are almost there. I'm sure it will blow you away. We finally reached the sea," Krom said while pointing off to the distance.