3 Chapter 2

-Time skip for 5 years-

Vigor Kinsteel's POV:

After five years of longing, every day that went by for me hasn't been completely wasted. I spent 2 years developing my mana core until my parents allowed me to start my training at the age of 4. Every second, every minute, every hour of each day, I utilized all of them, it was either I attempting to push my training to the limit or spending time acquiring crucial mana, combat knowledge and strategies in library.

My parents also started playing a big role in training me as I inherited the affinities of both Earth and Fire . Despite being a talented fire mage at the dark yellow core, my mother is a conjurer so she could only teach me certain fundamentals in regards to fire mana manipulation and little practical combats since my awakening indicated that I am an augmenter. My father on the other hand, he was enthusiastic about training me with everything he had as a light orange core. Needless to say, opposite to my mother, he mainly focused on practical stuff or to be more precisely, sparring with me for hours per day. At the beginning stage, he and me would usually have hand to hand combats with the using of pure mana augmentation.

Then levels after levels, it would be combat with earth mana augmentation combined with practice weapons like wooden swords.

However, I wasn't going limit myself at only swordmanship. Hell no, I wanted to be as effective as possible, to be flexible enough to use all types of weapons flawlessly and effectively.

Hence, I asked my parents for their approval to let me practice all forms of combat weapon skill. They accepted my wish and my father ordered 5 guards who were specialized in 5 different weapon skills: sword, hammer, bow and arrows, spear and axe to train me. All of them were greatly impressed at how incredible fast I learned at my young age.

Among the melee weapons, spear was the one I found the most trust worthy. Long range, straight and accurate strikes, minimum movements and efforts required to approach th target. And it's also quite flexible as I could throw it as a projectile.

However, the skill which I mastered faster than the rest was none other than archery.

I'm currently standing in the training field section for my family's guards, holding a simple wooden bow in my left arm while my right arm is grabbing an arrow from the quiver worn on my back. I place my feet shoulder-width apart, pinch my buttocks together to bring my pelvis forward. My back is remained erect so that, when I pull the string, arms and shoulders of mine form a "T" shape. My stance now is comfortable enough to hold for long periods of time, but also firm and alert.

"Great job young master, your stance is perfect." Terrion, my family's leader of archer guards unit, who is also the person assigned by my father to hone my archery skills.

Terrion is a young man in his late twenties with a bright orange hair and brown eyes as well as a well-built body but not as muscular or bulky as melee soldier. His form is in fact best for agility, which is incredibly needed for archers who are required to keep their distance from enemies in range combats. In terms of his core stage, Light yellow, powerful for an individual in his age. Having him guarding this place, the security of my family will not be a problem at all. I can see that my father has talented men working for him.

As my mentor compliments me, he shoots 3 bullets of wind in front of me acted as practice targets with a suitable speed for me to catch up. He exclaims:

"Commence!"

After hearing him, I instantly attach the arrow after I planted wind mana on it to the drawstring. I then pull the bow's drawstring back toward my face quickly with my three fingers of my right arm. Aiming at the first wind bullet, I release the arrow as it flies even faster than regular thanks to my wind augmentation. As soon as the arrow contacted, Terrion's wind bullet exploded easily. I repeated my action to shoot down two left bullets with ease.

Then my mentor shot another wave of bullets with higher number and in different directions but still at the same speed. A little bit tricky, but not a hard challenge for me, now I will have to move around and shoot my targets simultaneously instead of holding my position, or else those bullets will hit me for sure before I can destroy all of them. As I aiming at each bullet, I imagine them as my enemies: mana beasts or augmenters that are speeding towards me. The way they move is just like living creatures, at that moment I was bewildered at how Terrion amazingly conjures his range attacks despite being an augmenter.

While I am busy shooting down one bullet, multiple others will immediately fly at my blind spots if they had a chance, just like a predator hunting for its prey. I had to stay proactive, hitting and running or in other word: "kiting" (A/n:League of Legends thing if you know). Due to 2 years of intense reflexes and muscle training, experience from previous life as well as my honed augmentation techniques on my entire body, this is but a warm-up for me. Bullets after bullets have been shot down by me for over 10 minutes straight. Sometimes Terrion had to pause the training because I ran out of arrows and had to pick up a bunch of arrows pinned on the ground that I shot earlier.

"Time's up. You can have a small break now, young master Vigor. Be back after 5 minutes and we will begin the next exercise.", Terrion stated.

"Yes, mentor." I replied.

I walked to the bench where there was a pitcher of iced lemon juice with glass cups that were prepared for by our maids. What a great way to refresh your body and regain your energy. Took a sip of that delicious lemon juice, I sat down on the bench and relaxed a bit before continuing Terrion's lesson.

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"Now, we will do the final test for your visionary augmentation skill. Augmenting your eyes to increase your sight is one of the core factors for mages who use bows since it helps you catch up with your opponent's speed to aim properly. Ah yes, please ask your question." Terrion said as he saw me raising my left arm.

"Can eye augmentation increases the distance that user can see?" I asked.

"Apparently no mages in Dicathen have been able to do that. The concept of visionary augmentation with mana is to observe the movement of mana surrounding you, in the terms of fighting is to observe your enemies' actions that are enhanced by mana: running, flying, swinging weapons. We are only capable of making our eyes adapt to see objects moving with their speed enhanced by mana. While how far can our eyes see is unchanged." Terrion explained for me.

'Damn it! So I am restricted at only bows, crossbows, throwing spears and magic staff to use as long range weapons in this continent. Those are still long range but the range is limited by the human's far point of convergence which means I can only detect objects to shoot within my natural limited vision.', I felt quite disappointed, my plan to become a sniper like my former self wasn't available unless...

'Did Dicathen's technology develop binoculars or optic scopes yet by the way?', I asked myself,looking for possible solutions.

"It's actually quite an interesting idea you got there, young master. I'm wandering, how did a young boy like you come up with it?" Terrion suspected me.

"Oh it's nothing, sometimes I just observe the scenery and I keep imagining how far I can see. And I just thought that maybe magic could help me with that." I said nonchalantly.

"Alright, then let's get back to continue our training. Augment your eyes now because this time, I will speed up my bullets." My mentor said as he put more mana on his hand to ready for much faster wind bullets.

"Ready?"

"Do it." I responded.

He shot a wind bullet that had a smaller size but much more significant speed that was near invisible to plain eyes, making it even harder to get hit. The wind bullet now at the size of a palm, dashing around the training ground and continuously changing its direction randomly.

"I will control this spell to only flying in any directions except toward to you due to the severity of its damage. So you only need to worry about hitting the target." Terrion confident about his skill as he told me in advance.

'Now we have a real challenge here.'

*about 13 minutes later*

Seeing my arrow landed right on Terrion's wind bullet as my prediction about the distance and moment that my arrow would contact the damn annoying bullet was finally worked. Well, after more than 20 fails.

"YEAH!" I exclaimed in satisfaction as I fell down in sitting position due to mana depletion. In order to shoot that lightning speed wind bullet came from a light yellow core mage, large amount of mana was spent on my eyes' augmentation to catch up with its speed.

*Clap clap clap*

"Truly splendid my boy, I did not expect that you are so talented at archery too." Benjamin, my father gave me an applause as he walked with my mother, Selena.

"My lord, my lady." Terrion bowed.

"Father, mother." I simply waved.

"Terrion, has the training finished yet? We want to have some talks with Vigor."said my mother.

"Vigor has completed his today's training excellently my lady."

Chatting along with my parents about daily things for about several minutes, the topic was mostly about the upcoming important event of Sapin kingdom: the princess' birthday party. My mother reminded me about polite speaking between noble heads and their children that I just begrudgingly learned. After that, I excused myself to go back to my room in order to have a shower.

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Stepping outside of the hot bathtub, I cleaned myself with a towel and dry my wet hair with a hot air spell. Next, I put my regular outfit at home: a simple T-shirt and pants, both of them are black and made from comfortable clothing fabric. Finishing my personal hygiene, I observed my reflection in the mirror.

I had fair skin which I inherited from my mother with a not too sharp, firm face. Under my thin black eye brows are my gemstone green eyes exactly like my father. Turning to my hair ,it was black and uniquely messy styled with long spikes that jut out around my head.

The effects of Azrael's blessings made my body grew considerably faster than average kid at my age. My height was around 150cm with a firm built body thanks to physical trainings.

Tomorrow is the birthday of Kathyln Glayder. In the novel she happened to be a good character, and...one of many females who fell for Arthur's rizz, only to be forgotten after the 'War Arc'. There's nothing to be aware about her, except for her father of course.

An annoying thing was that I needed to be a good son of a prestigious noble house to maintain the dignity and image of my family.

I just imagined how scary would my mother become when she witnessing me talking with a curt tone in front of other families. She would be considered as Asura's level threat.

Putting all the unnecessary thoughts for the tomorrow's event aside, I sat down and opened the map of Dicathen

For the last 5 years, I had successfully developed my core to Solid Orange with cracks but little process could have been done with aether core. Thanks to the archangel of death, I could sense the ambient aether existence and sometimes guide it to flow through my body. However, the amount of aether in my current area wasn't enough to make a core, no, it was very little to be honest.

Then I remembered a detail in the novel, the masochist himself gathered and reformed his core into aether core in relictombs located in Alacrya. So there should be a possibility that outer natural environments like dungeons in Beast Glades contain a similar amount of aether to form a core.

Nevertheless, only one way to test this theory: I'm going to have my first dungeon raid.

Starring at the map of overall Dicathen's geography, I estimated that it would take me from around a week to get to the nearest dungeon in Beast Glades. But that is by walking, if I can supply me with adequate mana potions to keep using wind spells and mana augmentation to boost my speed and stamina for a long period of time, I can reduce it to only 2, 3 hours.

Another worth noting point is the horde of mana beasts that I will need to deal with. I've killed people before, a lot to be honest in my first life, but my experience in fighting with mindless fantasy animals is a zero. Most of them may have small brains but their unpredictable number is not something that adventurers should underestimate. Moreover, there will be no teams to get my back if I am stupid enough to get surrounded or cornered.

After conducting extra researches, I gained essential information about the dungeon that I soon to enter: Growl of Kobolds, a D-class dungeon. Living up to its name, this dungeon is inhabited by Kobolds. Then, I turned to the encyclopedia book about mana beasts:

'Kobolds ,class:E, description: reptilian humanoids, standing between 60cm to 80cm tall, with scaled skin between reddish brown and black in color and burnt orange to red eyes. Their legs were sinewy and digitigrade. They had long, clawed fingers and a jaw like a crocodile. Small white or tan horns protruded from their head, and they had rat-like tails. They would often smell of wet dog and stagnant water, welp the last detail was gross.'

Moving on to the tips of fighting against Kobolds, I noticed a method that will make my plan so much easier although it requires crucial ingredients. Luckily, my uncle's lab has a giant storage room to contain hundreds of different ingredients for Alchemy and researching, I have to ask for his permission to take some.

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Walking through the great hall of Kinsteel's manor where my family would eat, welcome guests and conduct business, I unconsciously looked at paintings hung on the wooden wall that acted as decorations. Although I've seen those paintings for thousands of time, their unique aesthetics lingered over time never failed to get my attention. The main source of light for the great hall was a chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling with a fancy looking design, like a snowflake made from pure crystal with branches of light bulbs that run by an installed mana system.

On my way, I met some servants, maids of my family and said greetings to them. And then I turned into a room, opened its door, what I saw was the entire room filled with tons of cleaning tools and other household objects. My gaze however focused on a small painting hung on near the corner of the wall on the left with a size of a dining plate. As I lifted up the painting, I saw a button on the wall that was covered by the painting the whole time. The moment I pressed it, a part of the wall behind me which is the wall on the right of the room, slided down completely, revealing a secret stair case leads to our family's dungeo-, I mean our family's basement.

Sprinting through the stone spiral staircase , I came down to the floor of the laboratory and saw my uncle's sitting on a chair, examining several chemical glass tubes with various colored liquid inside them. It seemed that he didn't recognize my presentation, I attempted to prank him by cutting a leg of his chair with my wind spell to make him fall.

"I know you're going to use mana to make fun of me you little brat! Don't make me come over there and teach you a lesson." My uncle yelled while not even looking at me as if he's already known my present by minutes ago.

"Wait! How? You are not even a mage."

I was genuinely confused.

"Mana source detector wristlet, a new prototype by artifacters. Whenever a sudden rise of mana is near the user, the gem on the wristlet will glow. Pretty handy when I have a devil nephew who always try to prank me." He said with a grin and amusing tone.

'Damn it! He's prepared.'

"Now tell me one reason for me not to throw poison potions in your face brat!"

my uncle playfully threatened me.

"Haha, calm down uncle, it's just a prank. I'm sorry, I won't try to do it again." I giggled at his wanna be threaten tone.

"Alright, why of all sudden you come down to here brat? Aren't you supposed to be preparing for yourself for the tomorrow big event ?" He asked.

"Well, I have done it actually. I'm here for some hazelnut leaves and seeds if you have some to spare for me, uncle." I spoke right to the main topic.

"Hazelnut leaves and seeds? What do you need those for?" He stood up from his chair.

Observing his overall appearance, Trevor Kinsteel is a slim man in dirty dark brown Alchemy coat with glasses. He inherited the same hair and eyes colors exactly like my father but instead of a tidy hair cut of a business man, my uncle's hair is long and tied into a pony tail that reached to his back. Although his face always look grumby, he is a hard-working person who cares about his family. His intellect in Alchemy and science is just unbelievably incredible despite not being a mage. While he is responsible for the mass production of elixirs and potions in my family, my father is the one who plays the role of commercialization. One takes care of making products, the other takes care of selling them for stonks.

"It's just that I has been reading a book about plants recently and I found out that we can make cookies with hazelnuts, and their leaves can be used to make tea. So I want to try to do them myself." I lied.

"Oh god, tea and cookies? Why my devilish nephew is interested in girly stuffs like that? What, trying to impress some girls at school?"

He teased me as he slapped his cheeks with both of his hands to pretend that he's in great shock.

"First, I want to try cooking cause who knows? Maybe in the future I will also need cooking skills rather than just only combats. Second, I haven't even attended any school yet uncle." I sighed. I'm used to his jokes now.

"Hmm, it's just hazelnuts after all, not a poisonous nor expensive thing. Follow me."

My uncle gestured me to walk with him to the storage section. Caught in my eyes were all kinds of plants, animals and mana beast's remains such as: bones, skins, scales, horns and even their internal organs and flesh being contained inside translucent glass jars. Interestingly, it seemed that they were filled with special liquid for long term preservation. Those glass jars came with all sizes and were either placed on wooden shelves or in a special freezing container that runs by an ice spell artifact. It was a literal fridge but it consumes mana instead of electricity.

My uncle turned his gaze to the first shelf and searched for the ingredients that I needed. He picked up a jar, inside it were small brown branches along with a handful of bright yellow seeds.

"Also one more thing, can I have more mana potions? I need them for my training." I took the leaves and seeds as I asked him for my additional important supply so my plan can work.

"Tch, then come this way."

Trevor then leaded me to a different room. The second room is also acted as a storage , but instead of ingredients, it stored the completed products: elixirs that can accelerate the cores of mages considerably and potions with various effects: damaging, strengthening, healing, and the one with light blue colored liquid that I need: mana supplement.

"Please choose the products that satisfy your demand my dear customer." My uncle teased me.

"I think I will have 6 'greater mana potions', please." I replied him as he opened the container and pick up 6 glass bottles with honey pot shape. The light blue liquid inside them glowing softly.

"Here you go, now shoo shoo, go away so I can get back to my work."

"Thanks, will you join the party tomorrow? I need companion instead of snotty noble children." I asked him with the hope that I won't be the alone in crowded events like this one.

"Hahaha! Nope, I have perfect excuses so my brother can't force me to come to any form of public meeting. By the way, I thought that you are supposed to get along well with children in your same age?"

"Hell no, they're a bunch of little annoying insolent loud mouth shit heads that hide behind their moms' dresses whenever they got insulted, or when they can't get their favorite toys. I feel that my brain will literally melt if I even try to listen to their conversation's context for just few seconds."

I roasted those kids nonchalantly in front of my uncle, who just had an even bigger laugh like a wild dog after hearing the words that shouldn't suppose to be spitted out from a 6 years old boy.

"For the deity's sake, sometimes I just forget that you are no ordinary kid, brat." my uncle hold his laugh.

Well, he's not wrong. Trevor was somehow the only member in this family who did not concern about my real personality. While my parents forbid me from talking eloquently and informally because as they said it is not acceptable for the "standards" of a "true noble", my uncle is pretty much chill. So I considered him as more like a big brother who I could have relaxed conversations with and even cracking jokes.

"Well, good luck on tomorrow. And don't forget about whatever your mother told about communicating with nobles." He reminded me.

"You damn traitor, let me alone with those brats." I muttered as I felt that I was betrayed.

"No, you are the real "brat" here, and you totally deserve that, hahaha."

I said goodbye to him and got back to the staircase .