A/N: Aww! Only five reviews for the second chap! Granted, the review for chap 1 went up by a bit, but still... Uuhh.. -3-. Anyway, here's the third. It wasn't easy to write this one, considering that I have just finished my exams and my inspiration box is kinda empty at the moment, but I've done it! Heck yeah!
So, let's address the reviewers first. Thank you for replying, as usual, I really appreciate it! Now, let's see here...
First, about the Secondary Magic. Yes. Yes I will definitely give him a Secondary Magic for an added fire power. Maybe even a Third or Fourth magic if it was still possible. Of course, I'm trying to avoid OPness so I doubt it will reach more than three.. I'm currently thinking what elemental magic should I give him. Thoughts, anyone?
Second, to RoyalRavenn, I'm glad that you liked this version better. I'm still trying to calculate the number of chapters I should use for this Childhood Arc, as I'm dubbing it. Oh, and I'll look forward to that fanart.
Third, Weaknesses. Don't worry, RadioPoisoning, I'm working on the limitations of this borderline god-like magic. As I said, I'm trying to avoid OPness so I'll definitely pay extra attention to this. Thanks for the look-out!
Fourth, I was kinda expecting this, Pairings. Well... It's undecided at the moment. I'm open to suggestions so go ahead and go wild, I guess. The Harem route is acceptable too, for now.
Fifth, Character Sheet. Maybe. I've never made one before so I don't know If I could pull it off.
Thanks ArcherShirou, I appreciate it so much.
And that's that I guess. Well, here goes the new chapter. Hoping for ahigher number of Reviews and all sorts of good stuff. Remember to click the fav and follow button as well as review. They're LOVE.
Chapter 3: The Lost City pt.1
I dodged a jab to my chest, twisting nimbly to the side before throwing a punch of my own in retaliation, disappointedly watching it miss by a hair's breath from my target's gut before leaping back to avoid a kick that would've forced me to regurgitate my lunch. I spun in mid-air and landed perfectly on my legs, crouching down like a tiger ready to pounce on its prey.
Old Man lurched forward, a punch aimed down onto my face. Utilizing my currently far shorter than him body to its maximum efficiency, I threw myself to the side, effectively dodging his blow and attempted to sweep his feet and trip him.
Keyword being attempted.
My foot met his with a loud smack and I recoiled in pain, quickly performing a handstand before leaping a safe a distance away to try and calm the ache burning on my foot. Seriously, how the hell did his body get so hard? It was as if I was trying to put a dent to a ten-inch thick titanium wall. My theory is that he secretly practices Haki from One Piece. He certainly got the look and attitude of someone from One Piece, so it seriously wasn't that much of a stretch to believe on the conspirative theory my mind cooked up.
"How the hell are you so sturdy!?" My frustration was apparently a source of amusement for him since this question has been left unanswered since pretty much the first day since our first meeting.
"Trade secret!" Fuck you.
When the pain in my leg dulled enough for me to not wince every step I take, I immediately dashed forward, jumping up to my Old Man's height to send a kick to his face. He easily countered my far weaker limb with his own stronger arms. I send a flurry of a kicks and punches to him, all easily blocked or redirected without him even moving from his spot.
Frustrating doesn't even begin to describe him right now.
Finally, having gotten enough of everything, Old Man caught my leg mid-kick and gripped on it, stopping me from performing any follow up attacks and threw me away. I flipped in mid-air and once again landed perfectly on my legs like a cat would.
Old Man clapped his hands, immediately gaining my attention. "Alright, That's enough for today's spar." He announced, earning a sigh of relieve from me before my form sagged and I flopped uselessly to the ground, exhausted from the short spar.
It has been a month since I began my training and the start of our subsequent residentiality within the convines of the quaint little town of Clavel. It was nothing short of grueling and traumatic, and unfortunately for me, it was far from over. However, as much as I hate to admit it, Old Man's torture of a training program was actually working wonders for me. I mean, I think I am now officialy the most firm-built four year old there is.
Standing at a respectable 4'8", which was already taller than most the average boys my age, I already showed signs of slowly developing into my Old Man's body type. I was pretty firm for my age, able to fight toe to toe with most kids twice my own age with the magic reserve of a high D-rank, low C-rank mage, which was to say, pretty impressive for a four year old.
Of course, knowing Lepanto, impressive just not gonna cut it.
So, he always upped the ante for my training in all aspect; physical, magic or otherwise. One month through and I think my senses of pain was halfway dead, or at least thick enough to ignore some pain. My movements, after getting drilled countless of time by the bastard with an iron-hard fist to reinforce the point, was as silent as a shadow's, complete with all the predatory grace of a beast and I think I know at least seven ways to kill a person quickly and cleanly.
I gave up trying to tell him that a four year old shouldn't push his body so hard and instead tried to survive through every gruelling exercise he gave to me. At this point, I just hope that I won't grow into something like Elfman. Urrgh...
Thankfully though, Old Man has the common sense to not go too far in his training methods. As such, most of my current training regime has been focused at building speed, stamina and endurance as well as several other useful tricks such as making a trap, hunting, silent movement, basic hand-to-hand. The last was simply traumatizing in more ways than one.
A piercing cry brought our attention to the sky where a red eagle I now knew from my lessons with Old Man as a messenger hawk flew in circles. My Old Man looked up with something between relieve, annoyance and impatience on his face. How those three emotions could polymerize into one was beyond me, but I've learned my Old Man was a very expressive person when he wanted to be, so combining several emotions together is no biggie for him.
He raised his left hand and the red eagle swooped down from the sky, perching itself carefully on his gauntlet-covered arm. The bird screeched several times, raising its left leg towards the older Bounty Hunter's face to offer the message tied to its legs. With an annoyed scoff, Old Man proceeded to smack the bird on top of the head before throwing it off to the sky.
The bird screamed out its frustration before flying off to god knows where.
I gave him a deadpan. "Was that really necessary?" I felt a sort of kinship with that eagle as two living organism who had had the misfortune of getting up close and personal with the rude bastard known as Lepanto. I mean, he did shove me off a cliff at the beginning of my training and he practically tossed that bird away like a bad cookie. In a twisted sense, we're both victims of abuse.
"That bird lacks etiquette." If that wasn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. "That lazy bitch should have trained her pets better." He grumbled.
I wasn't afraid of voicing my mind, though. "Like you're any better." I rolled my eyes at him to which he gave an annoyed stare at me. I skillfully ignored it. "And who the hell is this Lazy Bitch?"
"My informant." Huh. Very Informative. "I finally got a target to hunt. Let's head back, today's training is over."
The treck back to Clavel was spent with me nursing my bruises and him talking about some deeper stuff about Arc of Embodiment. Frankly, it doesn't make sense to me. Most of the stuff he told me was quickly turning into one of those dolphin shrieks often used to censor stuff in Spongebob as it went through my ears while my eyes turned into confused spirals.
"Do you get it?" He finally asked after preaching a whole five minutes without stopping, not even to take breath, about something along the lines of 'nothingness is bullshit'.
"I think?" I sounded more than a bit unsure about myself. If this is what Lost Magic is all about then I think I knew why they're classified as such in the first place. Most people probably don't bother learning something like this for months compared to learning something as simple as breathing fire in a matter of hours. The few that did probably either had too much time on their hands or, like me, wasn't given much say on the matter.
We arrived in Clavel shortly after the conversation died off and Old Man quickly lead me through the familiar streets I now easily recognized as the path to our inn, Golden Clavel. Ignoring the obvious arrogance in the name, it was a pretty good inn to live in. The room was tidy, the bed was comfortable, the bath was totally awesome and the food was delicious. True, Old Man had to pull some shady string to get a discount, but it was totally worth it.
We made our way through the lobby, ignoring the fearful glances some of he workers threw at us and quickly made our way to our room. Once there, Old Man wasted no time to lock the door and packed in all our stuff.
"So, what's your mission." I've got to admit that I am very excited, this will be the first time I saw my Old Man in action and what his, soon-to-be mine, line of business entailled. My instinct is telling me to expect major baddassery and awesomeness, so it was a bit hard for me to contain my curiosity.
"I've got a report about Oracion Seis, one of the three major dark guilds that made up the Balam Alliance. They're making some very shady movements and their leader, some shit-stain by the name of Brain, is actually reported to be there himself to supervise something." He grinned, fangs glinting under the late morning sun. "How fun."
"What!?" I screamed in outrage. Going against bandits and two-bit Dark Guilds is one thing, but going against the entirety of a major dark guild as prominent and dangerous as Oracion Seis is another. Simply put, it was as crazy as it was suicidal. "Have you lost your mind!? You're going against one of the big three! You could be kill-"
"Whoa, whoa! Stop right there, dipshit." He raised both hands, stopping me in my rant. "Now, I'm not bragging or anything, but I've never chickened out from a hunt since the start of my career. This one is no different." He said.
"Exactly the lines of a short-lived moron." I said. "C'mon Old Man, there's always a first for everything."
"Nope. I'm still going. You need to man up a bit and have some faith in your Old Man. I don't get to survive this long by being a weakling you know." Oh, I know that very well, my leg still hurt from kicking you, y'know? "Think of this as a study trip."
"Arrgh! Whatever! If you get killed, don't go crawling to me!" I huffed.
"You can hardly do a thing, anyway." He scoffed at me, a mocking smile on his face as his orange eyes glinted amusedly.
I huffed and prepared my own bag to pack what little stuff I had. "By the way, where is it exactly?" I asked, excitement flying out the window at the prospect of meeting one of the major villains of this series. Of course, the aces of Oracion Seis wasn't yet collected right now, but Brain himself is not a pushover.
"The Rosswelt Mountains, south from Clavel." He grinned, excited at the prospect of a challenging hunt. "Prepare some winter clothes, dipshit. We're going hiking."
That was all the prompt I needed to get packing.
"It's cold..." I shivered, suppressing my body' urge to clatter my teeth to the best of my ability. Fuck this mountain, I was drapped in triple layer of extra thick winter jackets as well as a thick scarf, gloves and earmuffs but the cold still pierced me deep into my bones. "How is it so cold in the middle of summer!?"
"The Rosswelt Mountains is always cold, they're almost always covered in snow and, even in summer, blizzard often happens from time to time. That's why many Ice mage in training came here to hone their abilities." He said, also trying his best to suppress the shiver trailing down his spine. He grumbled some profanities under his breath, to low for me to hear with all the winds raging around us. Although, one doesn't need to actually hear it to know that he was cursing the mountains with all the curses known to mankind.
I can't bring myself to fault him, seeing as I was close to freezing to death by this point.
It made me wonder what Brain was searching in a place like this..
"Where was he spotted anyway?" I asked. A part of me, that small vindictive part hiding in the back of my noggin, wished that the man would slip on some slippery footing and crack his head open somewhere deep under the Mountains' freezing abyss. Would have saved me all the trouble and the cold.
"The second mountain in Rosswelt, Edelweiss." Old Man answered, looking at the slightly smaller mountain ahead from us. Despite being smaller, the second mountain was covered in an even thicker layer of snow. It seriously made me even more disinterested to go. Seriously, what is there to see in this winter wasteland?
Snow. That's what.
"Just a passing curiosity, but why exactly are we climbing instead of riding your Manta?" I asked, irritation leaking to my voice as my eyes suddenly narrowed to slits at my Old Man.
He turned and grinned at me. "It's been a while since the last time I went climbing."
I pulled out a paper fan and slapped him on top of the head. "You shitty Old Man!"
A/N: Aaaannnnddd~ Scene! There you have it, guys! What do you think? Good? Bad? I hope it's good! Don't hesitate to let me know what you think on the Review guys!
See ya next chapter!
Coming up next:
"Watch and learn, dipshit. This, is how a pro does his job."
"I don't know if that was excessive narcissism, over-inflated man-pride or he was simply an idiotic man with fetishes for indian clothes but what the hell kind of person wears thin tribal clothing in the middle of a winter wasteland?"
Other Fic's Progress (FYI)
Trainer: Phantom = 30%
Phantom Wolf = 10%
It's Halloween = 10%
