4 Chapter 3

The wooden clock ticking in my bedroom showed that the time is 11 p:m. I worn a coat with hood to cover my identity. All of my stuffs were stored a black backpack. On the left side of it tied with my practice bow while the right side held my quiver with a good amount of arrows. It was quite inconvenient as I didn't have a dimensional ring yet.

I tiptoed to the kitchen and saw the all the light was shut. Perfect. All the servants went to sleep too. Taking the opportunity, I stole a pot and a cheap wine bottle used for cooking - the last essentials for my plan.

I opened my compass and chose the window in the east to jump down to the ground. I augmented my feet with two mini whirlwinds to land safely.

Now the real challenge here was to climb through the wall without being spotted by guards. Hiding myself in a bush that was close to the granite wall protecting our manor, turns out this small figure of mine did come in handy since no guards have seen me yet. I observed and sensed each one of them, and unfortunately, there were 2 mages among those guards. Climbing the wall with mana enhancement was out of options.

Plan B then.

I opened my backpack and attached an equipment I stole in a blacksmith workshop to my right arm. The forger called it "grappling hook bracelet". It has two parts: the bracelet to wear in my fore arm and an external rope storage that tied to my bicep. Its mechanism is simple: extend your arm entirely and press the button inside your palm to fire the hook tied with the rope and then fold your arm and press the button once again to retract the rope to help you climb the terrain faster.

The moment I realised the guards were

moving out of the watch tower, I fired the grappling hook. The hook reached to the tower's roof and pinned on it quietly. Perfect!

Having suppressed all of my mana to minimum, I began to climb up quickly with help of the bracelet's mechanism pulling me up to the top by shortening the rope that connected to the hook and my legs stepping silently on the wall's rough surface.

I hopped on the roof of watch tower with an umbrella-like shape and withdrew the hook back to my bracelet. Observing for a moment, I focused my entire gaze on the nearest residential house and aimed at its red brick roof.

*(A/n: Inserting Spiderman's theme )*

My feet followed my command to step back by a few inches, I lowered my body to get the necessary momentum to make a big leap of faith. Straining all of the force on my calves' muscle, I sprinted and propelled my entire figure towards to jump.

'I'm free falling!'

'The roof! THE ROOF!'

My hand immediately pointed at the roof I chose as my target earlier and my middle fingers and ring fingers pressed the button of the bracelet in my palm to send the grappling hook flying.

The hook miraculously landed, but God must have hated me as it was off target. It didn't land on the roof but instead, on the rafter section. However it was too late, as the hook now acted as a steady point for my body attached with the rope to gain momentum to continue swinging to the house's first floor.

'Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit--'

*GLASS SHATTERING*

I shattered the window and broke into the room that seemed to be the kitchen of this house. Although I augmented my body with mana by instinct to reduce the damage, the fall's pain was still noticeable.

"Oh my back. Urgh, my back!"

I moaned painfully while my left hand holding my back and my right hand retracting the hook back. A minor miscalculation it was, I admitted. But well, at least I didn't land with my head.

"What was that noise?!" I heard the voice coming from the upper floor.

'Sorry!'

I planted mana on my feet and rushed through the door like I was being chased by ghosts.

________________________________________

*About 2 hours later*

Just running and soon switching to dashing via wind spells, I finally reached to the down of the Grand mountains. Just a little closer, right behind it would be the place where many mysteries remained undiscovered by the Dicathians: mana beasts and treasures for adventurers to encounter, the Beast Glades itself.

....Well, and also those bums Alacryans, if Cadell was able to come here to kill Sylvia, then they had already set up those portals for transportation to Dicathen a long time ago. But let the plotting plans for the war later, now I have to get as stupidly strong as possible.

Opening my backpack, I pick up a "Greater Mana Potion" and unplugged it. Moving in constant mana augmentation and spells earlier drained most of my mana core.

"Cheers!"

As I poured the glowing light blue liquid to my mouth, I began to feel the taste of it on my tongue. Let me tell you that mana potion is in fact 'strangely' delicious, it was sweet with a little bit of bitterness. Not bad at all. And of course, the potion's taste wasn't the only thing I could feel. My core was recharged to its highest peak of performance, ready to aid me climbing the gigantic mountains.

Planting a great amount of mana into both my legs, I squatted down and cloaked my body with additional wind augmentation spell.

I jumped and activated a big fire explosion spell simultaneously to launch myself like a literal rocket high to the sky. I kept pushing myself forward by detonating even more fire explosion spells in the middle of air while the wind spell reduced the air pressure that my body had to endure. Each time the spell activated, it generated deafening bangs which made my ears ringing constantly. As a result, I had to protect my ear drums with mana.

Until I finally saw my self at the height that exceeded the Grand mountains', I channelled the wind spell to form into a shape of wings connecting my arms with my legs like a flying squirrel and glided down to the "Growl of Kobolds" dungeon.

______________________________________

The color of the night sky covered the whole land. But it seemed that in the midst of the sea of forests submerged in nothing but total pitch black, there were flickering lights. Like small candles lit with little effort to shine in a dark enclosed room. Those lights came from torches mounted on the wall of a dungeon. Shapes of small figures standing next to those torches, which were also the inhabitants of these place.

Four humanoid creatures with only the size of 3 year-old human kid. Their two-horn heads, claws, legs and scaled skins signify the features of reptiles, their tails however were small and weak like rat's tail. But above all, the most interesting thing was they were holding weapons in their hands. One with a shield and a broken spear, one with a club, the others held knives. The four creatures didn't move from their position, staying at the exit of the dungeon to act like guards.

These are the Kobolds in their natural habitat. Despite their low level brute strength, they are mana beasts with adequate intelligent to form themselves a small-scale society in their dungeon. Moreover, they were smart enough to even stole items from dead adventurers to use such as clothes and weapons.

All of sudden, one member of four reptilian guards noticed something from a tree a far. It was making noises on the tree, continuous rustling between branches and leaves. It was not wind, it was living thing. The Kobold took a torch him and made sign languages with its three comrades to go check with him.

*Phhfft!*

A steel head arrow pierced through the holding torch Kobold's skull. Blood sheds from its head and splatters on the ground as the mana beast falls down. The moment it was witnessing its comrade's corpse laying down, the Kobold with a knife standing furthest from the formation tremble in fear as just one second later, the other fellow of it got shot in the throat, growling in the voice like it was being choked due to its broken vocal chord.

Its last fellow, holding the shield high up for protection yelled at it in Kobold's language to run back to the nest. The little Kobold sprinted with everything it had, tried not to turn its head back at the scream of the spear and shield wielder being shot by the deadly archer.

I jumped down from the tree I had been hiding on the whole time and dashed to the dungeon's gate.

"Ohh, no, you don't."

I said as I aimed my arrow at its heel. Releasing my fingers to let the arrow make it way toward the running Kobold. And now, three, and two and-

*Phhfttt!*

Years of being a veteran sniper serving for military. All experiences, skills and knowledge in archery from basic to advance have been imprinted deeply in my mind. So timing correctly for an arrow or a bullet to when it will hit the target was too simple for me.

"Arrghhhh!" the Kobold barked in desperation, holding its injured left leg with my arrow stuck in its heel.

Although I shouldn't have said it barked because it's a reptilian, not a dog. Gotta be respectful towards racial diversity.

Attaching the bow back on my backpack, I walked to the Kobold lying on the ground-

"Arghhaaahhh!" the Kobold's voice interrupted me from my thoughts.

-and it's still screaming a lot.

I grabbed the children-size mana beast and reverse lifted it up by its rat-like tail with my right arm.

"Get shot in the heel huh? I think I will call you..... Achilles."

I named the Kobold with my other hand's index finger poking at it.

Achilles opened its jaw with sharp teeth to bite my left hand. But instead of my hand being torn apart, now it seemed that Achilles really need a dental implant. The moment the reptilian beast's jaw about to make contact with my skin, I instantly hardened it with an earth spell gauntlet, breaking all its teeth.

"Oi! Bad Achilles! Bad!", I scolded my new pet.

"jdjdkfhwohd! iêkhdjdoswkb! ịheirkddkhsw!"

"Nice argument, unfortunately: don't care, didn't ask."

I put my left hand inside Achilles' mouth and ripped off its tongue, silenced it from yelling Kobold's language non-stop. Now, things coming out from Achilles' mouth are spilling blood and weak non-verbal noises. I dragged Achilles with me and initiated my plan's set up.

*5 minutes later*

I emptied the wine bottle into the stolen cooking pot earlier. Next, I mixed the crushed hazelnut leaves and seeds with the flesh of a Kobold I just killed and pour the mixture into the cooking pot as I boiled it with a simple fire spell.

The smell emitted from the concoction is just awfully disgusting. But in the same time, this is the key of my plan because it's not just a normal nasty smell.

*Flash back~*

'The encyclopedia said that by crushing and mixing hazelnut leaves and seeds with the remnants of Kobold together. It can produce the smell of a female Kobold during mating season. Since it is a smell strong enough to attract male Kobolds from over hundreds of meters away, adventurers can set traps via using this mixture to kill Kobold more easily.'

'Moreover, adding alcohol with the mixture to produce a concoction with much more drastically effective smell.

But wait, there's a warning here: the entire horde of male Kobolds will go berserk to get to this concoction's smell, prepare yourself and your team well before you decide to use this concoction.'

*End of flash back~*

I poured the concoction on Achilles' dying body which lied on the area of soft earth that I made few minutes ago and stayed hidden behind a rock. Now all I need to do is waiting for them to bite my bait.

Couple seconds have passed, and I could hear the rumbling sound getting closer and closer directly at my place ... or to be more accurate: Achilles.

"I believe in you, Achilles. You should be charming enough to lure all of your "men"." I whispered.

The Kobold horde swarmed their way to my new mana beast "pet", jostling and fighting each other in order to monopolize "Achilles the beauty" as if he was an expensive rare product in the sales shop.

Observing at the horde, I saw that the quantity must be exceeding 60 and I was not confident to fight all of them at once. It would be definitely a disastrous choice with a reeeeeally fucked up ending for me. Especially with my current immature body and equipments. Furthermore, it was vital to conserve my mana in order to go back home.

Waiting until every single Kobold of the horde stayed inside the soft earth area, I took my chance and clapped my hands to dispel the fake platform I made. Immediately, the area was collapsing along with the entire horde falling down to a giant hole big and deep enough to imprison all of them. Numerous growls and screams of confusion could be heard from the Kobolds, some tried to jump out of the hole but failed due to the depth of it.

"You guys look cold blooded. Here, let me warm you up." I said as I conjured a fire ball to launch at them. But when I was adding more mana on to make the fire ball bigger with faster burning speed, I lost control of it. The fire spell deformed continuously which made me to release it at its unfinished shape and let it fly to the pit hole before it could self detonate right at my face.

Mixture of monstrous screams in terror and despair echoed the dungeon, along with the sound of burning flesh and its smell. Welp, I guess it worked well nevertheless.

And it seemed that the limits of being an augmenter made considerable restrictions to my conjuring skills. But that was just because I'm still an orange core, the difference between the two types of Mages becomes less apparent the lighter the mana core, thus allowing augmenters to will mana outside their body, and conjurers to reinforce their bodies, albeit far less effectively. Once I reached white core, the difference in ability is completely eliminated.

Entering deeper into the dungeon, I saw something could be called a "village". The houses were sloppily built of wood with cobblestones, their sizes were as small as kennels for dogs. Furthermore, heaps of items that seemed to belong to the killed adventurers scattered around. Swords, spears, daggers, shields, etc, and torn clothes, all of them were low quality, signifying that those belonged to low ranked adventurers that had been left here for who knows how long.

"Grrrrr."

A growling sound immediately got my attention. I turned my gaze at the source of that noise, pull my bow out and inserted an arrow to the string. Approaching closer and what I met made me just realized the obvious thing that ..... the concoction lured only the males.

In front of me was everything left of this "Kobold tribe", females and minors. Behind them was.... a nest, with hundreds of eggs. However, none of them seemed to be hostile at me. They should not be a threat for me unless they're trying to protect the eggs.

With all of the looks those left Kobolds gave to me, despite being mana beasts, monsters, I could see fear inside their burnt orange eyes, as if they were begging me to spare their lives if they could be able to talk in human's language. I walked closer to the female Kobold that was standing in front of all its fellows, it raised its both arms to inform me that it has no weapons and it completely surrendered. I bent down on one knee and let out a small sigh:

"You dumb little b*tch."

"Arghhh!" the female Kobold screamed in agony as its abdominal section got penetrated by my wind blade spell. And as I foresaw, a small knife behind its back fell down to the ground, making its metallic sounds. This sly ass lizard was holding the knife with its tail.

I sliced upward the female Kobold into halves and augmented the left arm with another wind blade. Its bloody dissected corpse fell down along with its guts and organs scattered all around. I cut and shot down the last survivors of the Kobold tribe, one by one, they ain't women nor children, they are simply monsters which killed people, no more, no less.

The carcasses of reptiles were scattered, dyeing their nest in crimson. Speaking of nest, I ignited a mini fire spell to turn their "future generations" into fried eggs.

________________________________________

After committing total genocide of an entire mana beast's race and not even bothered to take their core as they were just E ranked, would waste a lot of time and meanwhile the amount of mana from those cores is just not worth it.

I sat down and closed my eyes. Two gorgeous bright colors from two different streams of energy flowing inside the emptied dungeon. The blue one was mana, it was fluid, constantly moving and flexible like water. On the other hand, the one with ethereal purple light was none other than aether, this stream had a more stiff and stabilized nature. Mana was the liquid, while aether was the cup itself which cannot be changed without great forces. However, this blessed body of mine said otherwise.

I felt the aether flowing through my body just like when I first tried to form my mana core. Compared to the amount of ambient aether back at my home which was just like few drops of water, I would say that the density in here was similar to a small lake.

No wasting more time, I initiated leading the direction of aether to focus on my right chest. I attempted to hold aether and force them into the shape of an orb, which is the soon to be aether core.

________________________________________

Attempts after attempts, spending about almost half an hour inside this cave filled with stench from dead Kobolds and what was the achievement I have gained you may ask?

Totally failures. Everything I have repetitively done is channel aether in and out my body.

No matter how hard I forced aether to stay inside my chest, they only solidified temporarily, for a short amount of time to be honest, and just the moment later, their essence will leak back to the natural environment. My mind filled with thoughts and questions, is it because Azrael's built my draconic body's function different from Arthur?

I did a test by cut my left hand with a wind knife and concentrated the aether to run to my wound. Purple particles of aether swarming on my wound like hundreds of bees perched on their hive and healed my wound, stopped it from bleeding and enclosed it completely.

So it wasn't about my body....

What...

did....

I....

....miss?

Let's rewind a little, Sylvie sacrificed herself so Arthur can have a draconic body. And then he could manipulate aether, but at a very low level with noticeable limits. He could only use Aether to kill the Chimeras with Regis' assistance. And then he learned to form his Aether core, thus giving him access to contain aether and gain new abilities.

What did I miss?!?!

6 years was not a short time at all, so in case that I could forget, I wrote down all important things that I read from the novel to a notebook. But most of them are events, and information about characters such as their powers and weaknesses and knowledge about magical sources existed since the dawn of life such as aether. I do remember the concept of aether, its 3 types and their abilities, and most important of all, it can be used to defeat Asuras and their half-bloods since Arthur with aether defeated Nico and killed Scythe Cadell with little efforts. Later on, he even managed to kill Taci, a pure Asura. However, the particular details in regards to high level aether manipulation were vague to me.

This was nowhere near the point of mana manipulation. If my thoughts said that regenerating a certain part of my body took precedence over another part, the aether took heed of that advice.

Then I turned my mind back to the details of the chapter that Arthur formed his core. What did our masochist protagonist do? He injured himself a few dozen times of realize that intent influenced the movement of the aetheric essence.

He consumed as much aether as possible with a rapid pace, filled his body to an extent that it got overloaded, making sure that he was consuming faster than the aether would deplete from his body. Then Arthur told Regis to position himself right his shattered mana core and then leave as soon as he tell.

Next he.... plunged an arrow deep into his sternum where his shattered mana core was held...

He wasn't able to forcefully manipulate aether like he had been able to with mana. But the very fact that aether could be influenced to do something as crazy as fusing multiple bodies together meant that the intent of the chimeras that Arthur fought had tricked it. So instead, he tricked aetheric essence to fuse together his shattered remains of mana core instead of getting rid of it and built an aether core.

In a nutshell, first step to control aether's power: become a masochist.

But there's a problem: I did not have a shattered core. Arthur's idea was to trick the aether to heal his core and in the same time turn his core into a vessel for aether itself. But in my case, my mana core was perfectly intact.

....

Now my head filled with limited options: either sacrificimg my mana core to gain access to aether's power or going back home to think for more solutions. The first one was too risky, hell no ways that I can hide my aether's power from everyone. The second one seemed to be hopeless, as the novel I read wasn't finish yet, literally no more information about aether that I could exploit further.

My first plan was to become able to use mana and aether simultaneously with the faith I had for my blessed body, but now, that plan is seemed to slowly out of my reach.

NO! I have come this far, there's no turning back. THINK VIGOR! THINK! Come on, there's must be another way around.

........

'It has to be a shattered core, but it doesn't have to be *my* shattered core, right?'

Testing my idea, I ran back at the pile of Kobold corpses I made earlier and butchered them to pick up 2 mana cores. I pierced a mana core with my wind claw and manipulated aether to flow inside it. Then again, I observed tiny purple particles doing their job exactly just as they have done with my wound.

The aether enclosed the small hole that I thrusted on the mana core in just seconds, leaving it undamaged. But the aether didn't stay back inside the mana core and depleted from it. The reason was because I healed the core so fast that it didn't leak too much mana outside so its function as mana core still remained. And my damage on it wasn't too significant either.

'So what if....'

Now with the second mana core, I also pierced it but this time, I waited until all of mana was leaked from it. I proceeded my aether healing ability once again. As expected, the core's shape was restored and moreover, the aether flew inside it! For the moment, the once mana core has turned into an aether core....

My moments of happiness were instantly extinguished as the shell of the mini aether core on my left hand suddenly broke down into ashes right after I stopped focusing aether on it. As a result, the amount of aether inside it was leaving too, until there was nothing left.

The aether saw the shattered mana core as an imperfection, slowly dissolving it since it has no purposes for not being inside of a body. But, if it was a part of my body, it would be a different story.

I took off my shirt and left my upper body naked so my parents wouln't suspect of my clothes tainted with blood. I put a piece a fabric in my mouth and bite it so I wouldn't bite my own tongue during the process of pure madness I was about to do.

I made another shattered Kobold's mana core that was empty without mana left inside.

I began to consume ambient aether rapidly. I continued despite a jarring pain growing within my body. It felt like every muscle, bone, organ in my body were being pumped with fluid to the point of bursting like an over filled water balloon.

More!

More!

Until I couldn't withstand the pain all over my body any longer. I sat down with a sweating body, my vision spun and pulsated while I could feel my heart beating madly against my chest.

Controlling my breathing in order to keep myself from passing out, I formed a wind knife and pushed it deep at my right ribcage, right next to my sternum and carefully not to let the blade touch my lungs.

"Urgmmmmmm!" I made a muffled scream in agony as I didn't loose my concentration and began to slit my cut wound bigger.

Immediately, I unplugged the knife and stuffed the shattered core with the size of a marble inside my right chest.

Millions of tiny purple dots which were aetheric particles, crawling like insects from every inch of my body, from my bones, muscles to my veins. All of them moving together with only one mission: to heal my ribcage section's injury. Grabbing that opportunity, I used every ounce of my brain to focus on maintaining this meditative state, forming a core around the coalescing aether where I put the shattered core, as I directed aether to also connect the shattered core with my body, become a part of it. Just one slight mistake or distraction could break down the condensed orb of aether that had been trick to gather at this vital point.

Finally, as the last bits of my second core had become restored, encasing the condensed gathering of aether within, my world erupted into a sea of purple.

*An hour later*

Prying my eyelids open, I couldn't feel any senses of pain, the fatal wound on my chest has disappeared. I felt like my chest is heavy... literally slightly heavier on the right than usual.

"The core!"

I concentrated internally, observed my insides. There were present of not one..... but two cores!

The orb with a solid orange color, my mana core. And next to it, a much more smaller one, it was closer to a red color, like magenta, but it still held the ethereal purple sheen of aether.