Growth

Nadios raced through the dense brush of the Atalant forest, located on the opposite side of the Atalant river from Atalant city. In front of him, a quintaped tried its best to run away, using mana to send earth pikes back at Nadios. The quintaped resembled a wolf, with a long snout, pointy ears, and a bushy tail. The only thing differentiating it from a wolf would be its five legs. It had four legs where a wolf's legs would normally be, while its fifth leg was placed under its chin.

Nadios, while dodging the earth pikes sent at him, used spatial magic to teleport a short distance in front of the quintaped and smashed his fist into its snout. The quintaped could only give out a brief mewl of pain before it collapsed. Straightening up, Nadios gripped the quintaped by its snout with one hand and its body with his other hand. Then, once he secured a firm grasp, Nadios started to pull.

With a loud crack, the body and head of the quintaped split apart. Blood and guts decorated the lush green of the forest grass. Nadios stuck his hand into the quintaped's head and rummaged around for a bit, before gripping something and pulling it out. In his hand was a small yellow orb with clear mana swirling around in it. After inspecting it to make sure it didn't have any cracks, Nadios wiped it on the grass before sticking it in a bag on his back.

Nadios then turned his attention to the quintaped's body. He pulled out a small knife he stole from the kitchen and started to cut the quintaped carcass up. He cut off the tail and the legs before running his knife down the spine of the body and bringing out a mana vessel.

Like the mana core, the mana vessel was a yellow color. Unlike the core, the mana vessel was much smaller, only about the size of a pea, compared to the almost golf ball sized mana core. Nadios procured six more mana vessels; one in each of the five legs, and one in the tail. He cleaned them and put them in his bag.

Nadios raised his head to the sky. The sun was nearly down. He had to get home soon, or else Rianne would have hell to give him when he did return. Nadios used spatial magic to teleport back to a location near the Atalant river, protected from the eyes of others.

With spatial magic, Nadios found out he could set a waypoint of sorts by expelling mana at a place. Then, he could expel more mana and connect those two points, switching the mass of whatever was in one place with the other.

Nadios took off his bloodstained clothes and jumped into the river to bathe. After bathing, Nadios dried himself before putting on some clothes he had prepared earlier. He placed his bag into the crook of a rock; Then, he started to make his way home. Teleporting into his room would be too suspicious, and Nadios wasn't old enough to form his mana core.

He was only seven years old at the moment, and he would still have to wait at least two more years before revealing he had formed his mana core. At first, he had been worried that his parents or Rianne would find out he had a mana core; If he could sense his parent's and Rianne's mana core, why could they not do the same to him? It seems his worries were unfounded, however.

Nadios very well couldn't show his parents his mana core. After all, he was no genius. Although his light red core and vessels could carry him for a bit, in time the true genius would start to outshine him tremendously. Therefore, it was better to wait a couple of years before revealing himself, Nadios concluded.

Opening the front door, Nadios was greeted with the sight of Rianne making dinner.

"Nadios, welcome back. Did you have fun playing outside?" Rianne asked, turning her attention away from the pot for a bit.

"Yeah, I did." Nadios replied, giving Rianne a quick hug. "Where is Kye, Auntie Rianne?"

Rianne smiled warmly at Nadios and his choice of words. "Upstairs, in his room. Reading, I presume."

"Thanks, auntie." Nadios ran upstairs and entered his shared room with Kyrillos.

The brothers' shared room was simple. It had two beds, tucked away against two corners. Across from Kyrillos' bed was the closet, which housed the clothes of both the boys. In between the beds was a desk, meant to be shared when they started school in three years.

Kyrillos sat on his bed, reading the book on mana that Nadios had read all those years ago. His white hair was messily spread atop his head, while his crimson eyes gleamed with passion as he read. He was so engrossed in his reading that he didn't notice Nadios enter until Nadios spoke up.

"Hey, Kye."

Kyrillos' eyes shot up from the book and locked onto a tall, black haired boy. "Hi, Nadios. You're back from playing around outside, huh? Without me?"

Nadios detected a hint of jealousy in Kye's sentence and tone, to which he could only chuckle. "We'll play together tomorrow. You were sleeping when I went outside, and I didn't want to wake you."

Kyrillos pouted. "You should've woken me up! When I woke up, Rianne had told me that you had already gone outside, and I couldn't go chase after you with my body. You know that."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

"That's what you said last week."

"Well, I mean it this time."

"Make sure you do."

With that, Kyrillos faked a mad expression and returned his attention to "Magic". Nadios hopped onto his bed and started to meditate with a smile. He lied down in a way that made it seem like he was sleeping. Although Kyrillos most likely doesn't know what meditation is, Nadios didn't want to take any chances.

Nadios finished his circulation and was about to compress his mana when the door opened. Rianne poked her head in.

"Dinner's ready. Lucelle and Vortick are also home, and they would like to see you two."

Nadios and Kyrillos hopped off of their respective beds and went downstairs to the dining room.

*

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*

Lucelle and Vortick gave each of their sons a kiss goodnight before turning off the lights and leaving. After they were gone, Nadios started to meditate. Once he finished the second round of meditation, Nadios opened his eyes and looked over at his brother. He made sure Kyrillos was sleeping before teleporting back to his base beside the Atalant River.

There, Nadios picked up the bag containing the quintaped's mana core and mana vessels. After securing the bag to his back, Nadios once again teleported. Nadios had three waypoints set up. One in his house, one at his base beside the Atalant River, and the final one was located at another house in the Atalant city. Nadios chose the house in the Atalant city.

After his vision cleared, a side effect of teleportation, Nadios opened his eyes to see himself standing in a living room.

"Gennadios!" A voice behind Nadios exclaimed.

Nadios turned around to see a balding young man in a bathrobe looking at him from a large brown couch. The man had a sharp jawline, his face was chiseled to perfection, and his violet eyes gleamed mischievously. He might've looked handsome, if not for the numerous scars running down his face and the large patch of burnt flesh above his right eye.

"You really have to stop teleporting into my house like that. What if I'm in the middle of changing, and you happen to see me? I'd be thrown in prison for flashing-"

"Yo, Krupt. I've got some more things for you to sell." Nadios interrupted the young man and threw the bag containing the quintaped parts at him.

Krupt caught the bag and opened it. "Another quintaped, huh. You're a monster, Gennadios. I don't think I've heard of any eleven year old who can take down one."

"You're exaggerating. What about those geniuses who form their cores when they're seven?" Nadios said, throwing himself down onto the couch.

"They awaken at seven, but I've heard they spend two years clearing their mana veins. After that, they only focus on tempering until they reach the blue stage, which could take anywhere from six to ten years. Only after will they start learning how to fight and use mana efficiently."

"Besides, aren't you basically one of those geniuses? You formed your core when you were eight, right?

"Mm. Well, will you be able to sell those quintaped parts or not?"

"Yes, of course, master. The same as usual, right? A 80-20 split?" Krupt asked. In reality, the last couple of times Nadios had sent monster parts Krupt's way to sell they split it 70-30. Nadios felt this was fair, but apparently Krupt felt that he was taking too much, and decided to lower his share from 30% to 20%.

"Sure." Nadios agreed with Krupt's proposal. He wasn't going to turn down more money now, was he? "When's your next dungeon raid? I wanna join."

Krupt's eyes lit up. "You're going to join us on our next mission? It's going to be two days from now, at sunrise. We're going to hit the Cyplir Dungeon."

"Ok. I'll be waiting for you at the dungeon entrance at sunrise." Nadios said, before getting up and teleporting to his riverside base.

Nadios rested for a bit, to refill his mana core, before making his way through the Atalant forest. While waking, Nadios was reminded of the day he met Krupt. It was three months ago.

Nadios had been playing along the shore of the Atalant River with Kyrillos when he sensed something with his mana sense. A few hundred meters away, a group of five people were getting attacked by a pack of small, fox-sized creatures. They had two long furry ears the size of their head, three tails freely swinging around behind them, and four short but powerful legs.

With his mana sense, he determined that the mana cores of the five people were around the light red stage, with one being in the neutral red and another being in the dark yellow. The gouni, the enemy of the human group, were nearly all in the light yellow stage.

Nadios could tell that the group of people were in danger, as multiple were splashing blood around everywhere. Now, normally, Nadios wouldn't bother himself with saving a group of strangers he saw struggling. But, recently, Nadios had learned that you had to be above 15 to sell items like monster cores and monster vessels or else merchants wouldn't trust your quality.

Nadios could pass for 11 or 12 with his height, but there was no way for him to stretch the truth to 15. Therefore, he had been looking for someone to sell his mana cores for him. His first thought was to pick a random person off of the streets and have them sell his mana cores, but that was too risky.

What if they scammed him and kept more money than they should've? Nadios would have no way of knowing, and if he threatened them, they might just stop selling his things. Then, he'd have to find someone else and the cycle would repeat. So, Nadios was at a loss. He had a ton of monster cores and monster vessels he had been saving up, however, he had no way to sell them.

That is, however, until Nadios stumbled upon such a treasure trove that day. First, Nadios created a waypoint before running back to his house with Kyrillos on his back under the premise of "I have to take a shit". After he dumped Kyrillos off, jumped into the bathroom, and created a waypoint in the bathroom, he teleported back to the riverside. Now, he was at about 60% mana in his mana core. However, that should be just enough.

Nadios crossed the river via visual teleportation, something different from waypoint teleportation. Visual teleportation required Nadios to see the place he wanted to teleport to, and it used a lot less mana than waypoint teleportation. Nadios raced through the trees, pushing aside branches and draping vines.

Reaching the spot where the people and gouni were fighting, Nadios saw that two people had fallen. One was a man in his mid twenties, another was a woman in her late teens to early twenties. Nadios gave no heed for the blood, guts, and gore decorating the grass and grisly tree roots. After all he'd seen in his previous life, this was nothing.

Nadios used teleportation magic like the waypoint teleportation to get a kitchen knife. The teleportation magic worked like this: Nadios coated an object in his mana, and as long as that object was still covered in his mana, he could use more mana to bring that object from the space it was in to wherever he placed the teleportation endpoint.

Nadios, armed with a small kitchen knife, rushed towards the nearest gouni. Krupt, clothed in protective leather armor and wielding a sword, saw Nadios. His right arm was bloodied and battered, with claw marks all along his upper and lower arms. An indentation of a bite mark was plastered onto his leather pants.

"Hey, why's a kid here?" Krupt asked a lady standing next to him, her hands pressed up against his right arm while a flame flickered gently.

The lady wore a white robe and tightly gripped an oak staff with a gem at the tip. "I don't know. Hey, kid! Stop running at that gouni, you'll get hurt!"

Nadios didn't reply to her and kept his attention focused on the gouni in front of him. Although he was 100% certain he could kill this gouni, he still had to be careful to not get hurt. The gouni noticed him for the first time and snarled menacingly.

The gouni, seeing Nadios not slow down, leapt at him with slobber trailing behind it from its mouth. Its short legs pounded against the ground again and again as it built up speed. When it reached a certain point, it kicked off the ground with its powerful legs and flew at Nadios.

Nadios narrowed his eyes. He watched as the gouni grew ever closer. Ten meters... five meters... three meters... one meter! At the last possible second, Nadios activated visual teleportation and appeared above the gouni. He thrust down with his knife, impaling the gouni in the head. At least, it should have been the head, but at the last second, the gouni twisted itself in a way that the knife passed through its ears and missed it.

The gouni opened its mouth and tried to bite Nadios, but its snout caught empty air as Nadios had teleported a few meters away. The gouni landed and regained its posture quickly, but Nadios was quicker. He darted forward, knife flashing. Once he was in range, he expended more mana to finish off the gouni.

Nadios' knife flashed forward, aimed at the gouni's chest. The gouni dodged it with ease. Or, so it thought, before a searing pain blossomed from its rear. Before the gouni could react 4, 7, 11, 15 more cuts appeared all over its body. Barely able to stand, the gouni let out a howl and released a wave of transparent air knives at Nadios, originating from its tails.

Nadios expertly dodged this by teleporting above the gouni, before impaling the gouni in the head and finishing it off. He was quite happy. Although the best tip for fighting gouni was to target its tails, where six of its mana vessels were located, as gouni could not activate spells without their tails. Nadios didn't opt for this method because the tail of a gouni goes for a lot on the market.

Krupt looked in shock. His mouth flapped open and closed like a fish, before he was able to spit out some words. "Kid… you… Who are you?"

Nadios turned back towards Krupt and the woman next to him. "We'll talk later. Kill these pesks first."

There were two gouni left. One was being held in place by the last standing member of Krupt's party. He was a shorty man with skinny limbs and long, shaggy black hair. He carried a large shield that looked like it could crush him at any moment. At the moment, he was using that shield to block the gouni's attacks, but judging from the sweat pouring down his face and his trembling arms, he couldn't resist for much longer.

"You help your teammate when you're ready. I'll get this other one." Nadios sprinted towards the other gouni, who was glaring at him cautiously and snarling menacingly to scare him off. He used the same tactic as he did with the previous gouni. Nadios leapt high into the air, his small kitchen knife shining with blood as it made its way towards the center of the gouni's head.

The gouni opened its mouth and let out a howl that was filled with mana. Its seventh mana vessel, located in its head, pulsated with a greenish light and lit up the gouni's head. Before the mana-enhanced howl, which would most definitely rip off a limb or two of Nadios', reached Nadios, he teleported behind the gouni and thrust his knife into its back.

The gouni expected this, however, and pushed its three tails together. It coated its tails with wind mana, which made its naturally fluffy tails sharper than knives, and thrust them towards Nadios' chest. Nadios redirected his attack to the gouni's tails, using his knife to deflect the tails thrust at him and using the momentum to spring himself away.

Nadios and the gouni stood a couple meters away from each other, circling and eying the other warily. Nadios was in a predicament here. His biggest strength lay in the power of surprise. His weak spatial magic only allowed him to move mass through space in a limited area. This meant that Nadios had little offensive and defensive spells that he could use, at the moment.

All his ideas, such as a spatial bullet that, as soon as it hit an enemy, warped the space it was in and teleported the matter it affected to another place, required his mana core to be a much higher stage. With this spatial bullet idea, he could separate limbs from bodies, create gaping holes, and cause fatal injuries with just a single attack. The only problem was that he did not have the mana proficiency and mana power to teleport living objects aside from himself.

His earlier attack against the first gouni was his only attacking method with his spatial magic. He sent his spatial mana to specific parts around his enemy, while assembling a straight line of spatial mana in the line of his weapon's attack. Once the weapon hit the first portion of the mana line, Nadios activated his magic.

His weapon would teleport from its spot to one of the mana spots on his enemy. Once his attack hit, his weapon would immediately teleport back. Those two mana spots would disappear, since they were used. His weapon would naturally continue its course, where it hit a multitude of teleportation spots. Thus, in just a second, Nadios would be able to dish out upwards of 15 attacks. The only downside was that it was slow to set up, and required a lot of concentration.

A loud crash from Nadios' left distracted him for a brief moment. At the moment when his attention was diverted, the gouni leapt forward with its speed boosted by wind magic. Nadios almost instantly realized his mistake and immediately whipped back around to face the approaching gouni, but it was too late.

Although Nadios could follow the gouni's movements, his body couldn't react fast enough. He tried to raise his arm, to move anything that could result in a different outcome than the gouni tearing apart his throat, but couldn't. He watched as the gouni flew rapidly towards his throat, curses aimed at himself sprouting in his mind.

Phoosh!

Followed by a high-pitched shout as well as a flash of heat, the gouni bent into a 90 degree angle from its body, flying away to Nadios' right where it crashed against a tree and splintered the trunk. While Nadios was stuck in shock, the three remaining party members of Krupt's party approached him.

"Thank you for helping us out earlier." The lady bowed her head to show her gratitude. Her oak staff flickered with flames at the gemmed tip. "We would have died had you not saved us. We are forever thankful."

Nadios flinched out of his shell shocked state. He looked up to find the lady with a grateful expression, while the two men stood behind her with… respect? … on their faces. "Oh… mm."

"Could I get your name?" The lady was sure that this kid in front of her was a genius of some important noble family. The idea that he was an adult from the dwarven race formed in her mind, but she almost immediately shot it down. This kid had the face of a youth, the skin of a youth, and the voice of a youth.

"Na- Gennadios." Nadios didn't want them to know his real name. His parents were quite famous in the field of mercenaries, and they might hear of him helping these other mercenaries.

"I'm Krupt." Krupt stepped forward. "I am very grateful for you saving us! I would very much like for you to join our mercenary party. As you can see behind us, " Krupt waved his hand towards the mangled corpses of his unfortunate teammates, " we lost two members of our party. So? What do you say?"

"... I'll have to think about your offer." Nadios replied, getting up and brushing off the specks of blood on his clothes. This offer quite surprised him. He expected at least a little bit of grieving from the three, not for one to just suddenly say "Join my party".

"I'm Miriam." The lady said. "Nice to meet you, Gennadios."

"Mm."

"I-I'm called Benjamin." The tank, or who Nadios assumed to be the tank judging from the massive shield on his back and his earlier actions, said in a shaky voice. "Nice to, um, nice to meet you."

"Mm." Nadios detected this would be the best time to propose his offer. "I have an offer for you. See, I have these monster parts…"

*

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*

Nadios broke out of his thoughts when he stepped past the edge of the Atalant Forest and broke out into a flat plain of dancing green grass. The Cerulean Moon was at its highest point, shining down blue rays of light. Following its brother closely, the Amethyst Moon was just barely peeking over the horizon.

In front of him, a massive mountain range loomed. The mountain range reached the sky, its highest mountain easily smashing through the little clouds in the sky. Its other, smaller mountains poked into the sky, jagged and menacing.

Nadios didn't let the threatening mountains intimidate him; He continued moving towards the mountain with calm, steady steps. In just a few minutes, Nadios had crossed the vast plain and was at the base of the mountain range. Even though this was not his first time being this close to the Iringor Mountains

Nadios began to make his way up the mountain range. He had meant to make a waypoint the last time he was here, but he had forgotten. After all, the events that transpired just moments after he had that thought chased all his thoughts away. Nadios climbed up the mountain by using quick bursts of teleportation every so often combined with regular manual climbing.

Before long, he was standing in the mouth of a massive cave. It could easily hold a couple houses. Although big, the cave couldn't be seen from anywhere other than right in front of it. The reason being that it was covered with an illusion, making the gaping cave hole appear to be like any other part of the mountain.

Nadios walked deeper into the cave confidently. Although the cave was nearly in complete darkness, Nadios could still somewhat see; Something he could only presume to be a benefit of a red mana core.

"You're back, boy?" A deep, growling voice echoed in Nadios' mind. It was a technique he had seen his parents use and heard them talk about. The technique required the user to have at least a neutral blue mana core, but Nadios wasn't intimidated by the fact that there was such a strong person near him. Instead…

"Mm. Yep," Nadios replied to the voice in a nonchalant tone.

"Hahahaha! You're funny, boy." The voice laughed, and on que, blazing flames appeared all around the cave, lighting it up. "I'm surprised you actually came back. Not everyone would return to a wyvern's cave after escaping, especially one as young as you are."

"First of, I did not escape. I left. Second, I know you're using all your mana keeping that daughter of yours stabilized while her mana core forms. It's to the point where you've even gotten mana deficiency. You couldn't even kill a rat in that state." Nadios sat down on the hard ground and checked out the lifeform in front of him.

Directly in front of him was a large, dark head. Its eyes were opened and looking straight at Nadios, a yellow sea with dark islands that could paralyze even the most willful of men. Its mouth opened in a yawn, revealing multiple rows of teeth sharper than blades and a long tongue that in more ways than one resembled sandpaper.

Above its eyes, two large horns stuck out. They were devilish, curved, evil-looking monstrosities that, even in Nadios, inspired fear. Stretching out from the head, a long, scaly neck was laid down on the floor in a resting position. Running along its length were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny bristles sharper than cut glass.

That neck connected the head to a burly body of scales, spines, and muscle. The body rose and fell times with the slow, steady breaths emanating from the head. Attached to the bottom of the body, two thick legs descended. Each leg had a foot, which in itself had four wicked claws.

To either side of the bulky body, massive wings were folded against its side. Behind the body, a lengthy tail coated in spikes and containing a curved tip was tightly wrapped onto a transparent blue orb, in which a similar, but much smaller, wyvern was curled.