Chapter 25 Mark

"So do we have a deal?" Currently Yuna was discussing her terms with Raiju.

"Lemme get this straight. If I don't train your son, you'll toss me back into the gladiator's pit?" Raiju asked bluntly.

"Indeed." Yuna said with a smile.

"Deal, I'd have to be an idiot not to take that." Raiju laughed before shaking Yuna's hand.

"When you're done training him I'll let you decide on our other arrangement." Yuna said before seemingly gazing off in a random direction of the estate.

"Ryota, you should check on your daughter." She said with a shit-eating grin on her face.

"What happened?" He said worriedly.

"I knew she was obsessed with my son after seeing her room, but even this surprised me." She began laughing before putting her arm around Ryota's shoulder.

Ryota suddenly realized what might've happened and immediately darted towards the cove they were at.

As he left Raiju looked over at Yuna.

"His wife was pretty obsessive too, creepy as hell. Crazy runs in their blood I guess." He began to reminisce about how Ryota's wife would always keep him on a tight leash whenever she was around, she even had secret pictures of him. But he would take that secret to his grave, he didn't want to ruin her image in her husband's eyes.

"I've seen signs of her obsession over the years, it didn't take much of a push from me." Yuna smiled menacingly at Raiju.

"You're a different type of crazy."

"Hahahahah, indeed I am."

—-Secret Cove

Aiko and I were just sitting in silence after our kiss, which left me somewhat stunned.

I won't say I disliked it at all, if anything it felt great. But it's something I never thought I'd receive out of nowhere.

If I could see myself with someone currently it would probably be her, but I feel like I don't have that kind of time. I had spent almost every waking moment with Aiko, Yuna and Ryota since I arrived in Aevis. Needless to say I was really attached to them now, I finally know what I missed out on in my previous world.

"Aiko I-" before I could finish my sentence she shushed me.

"I don't need an answer from you, I understand you're carrying a burden. Hopefully one day you'll share that with me, but until then I'll be here." She didn't seem bothered at all by my hesitation.

"Aiko! Why!" Suddenly Ryota appeared and the first thing he saw was her white hair and tails showing.

"Dante, leave now." Ryota said sternly.

I merely nodded before getting up and leaving the cove.

"Aiko, what have you done?" He asked.

"What I felt was right." Aiko said without any hesitation.

"But why did you mark him?

Foxkin have a very old tradition in Aevis where they mark their beloved, doing so forces their hair to turn permanently white and their "marked" emit a smell that other female foxkin can smell in order to ward them off.

"He's mine." Aiko had a deep and abyss-like look in her eyes.

Ryota looked at her before accepting the reality that she was just like her mother.

"It's your life, I just hope you don't regret it." Ryota hugged her.

"Can we talk…" Aiko said weakly.

"Of course, I'm always here." Ryota smiled at her.

——-

Back at the estate Yuna was currently staring at me, for some reason I felt like something was wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Have fun?" She asked.

Instantly I realized what she meant, how did she know? We were at least half a mile away but she still knew.

"Mind your business…" I said weakly.

I still couldn't stand up to my mom, she felt like an insurmountable wall.

Thank god she was on my side….

"Hahaha fine fine, anyways, meet your new teacher. I'll come fetch you in a few minutes, I have preparations to take care of." Yuna waved and walked out of sight.

Raiju had just entered the room again and locked eyes with me, then I noticed his eyes widened.

"How the hell do you have a blue core?" He couldn't believe his eyes.

It took him until he was around forty to break through the wall to become a high ranker.

Everyone below Green Core were considered Low Rankers, while Green itself was considered a Mid Ranker. Reaching green core wasn't truly difficult since most people who tread on the path of power could at least make it there, but the real difficulty was ascending above Green Core.

The reason ascending cores took so long was that merely condensing your mana to the next tier wasn't enough to be considered complete. You had to increase your mana regen, this is the part that took the most time when climbing the ranks of Cores.

Very few ways were known to increase your mana regeneration, the most basic way was increasing your mana sensitivity and manipulation abilities. The more mana you could sense and gather in yourself, the better your regeneration was.

I wasn't sure if telling him everything was smart, so for now I decided to play it safe and just tell him about my heart.

"I have an Aether heart, so regeneration isn't an issue for me currently." Just having a dragon heart allowed me to ascend to being a high ranker, but it did come with downsides.

"Dragons really have it lucky, even if it's only high dragons that have those damn hearts." Raiju complained out loud.

Dragons were arguably the most powerful race to exist, but because of that they suffered from incredibly low populations. Aevis alone only had around a thousand dragons on it, with only five being high dragons. The dragon continent had a mixture of races, but they all were completely subservient to their masters. Even a kid dragon had the power to destroy an Orange Ranked combatant, even without using mana.

"Show me how you use lightning magic." Raiju said.

I began to coat my body with a small amount of lightning and held it for him to see.

"Amplify it to the max, strain yourself." He demanded.

I nodded my head and began channeling all the mana I had into my body, completely coating myself in lightning.

You could see the purple and black lightning coiling around my body, it looked as if snakes were all over me.

"Don't stop until I tell you."

I nodded my head once more and stood there, as time passed I felt my body steadily stacking up damage. I could hold it for as long as I needed to but it still drained my stamina, regenerating my body required a ton of it.

After twenty minutes Raiju waved at me to stop.

"I've never seen something so ugly and incredible at the same time."

"What?" I asked.

"Your control of lightning for your Core Rank sucks ass to be completely transparent, but your mana regeneration and the durability of your body is incredible. I can see why your mother wanted me to rebuild your foundations, if you didn't have that Aether heart you'd be incredibly weak. The most interesting part though is the color of your lightning." Raiju was impressed with some parts, but there was still plenty to be desired.

"It's hard finding someone to teach me about lightning magic, I've mostly had to come up with a lot of it myself." I tried to defend myself, I decided to glaze over the part of him talking about the color of my lightning.

"I get that, lightning users are incredibly rare. For how much time you've put into it though, you're doing quite good. But it's not enough, I'll fix that." Suddenly Raiju got a mean look on his face.

"I made a special space." Yuna came back from wherever she was.

"Great, what's the time difference?" Raiju asked.

"One month there is a day here." Yuna said as she pretended to flex her muscles.

"Damn, this'll take longer than I thought."

"Where are we going?" I was completely lost on what they were talking about.

"You two will be spending the rest of this month in a special place I made, you will train relentlessly until you need to head back to the academy. He's going to increase your efficiency in every way possible, so hopefully high rankers won't laugh when they see you." Yuna laughed lightly.

"Am I really that bad?" I thought I was doing great until now.

"Your martial arts are great, you have a giant arsenal of different forms you can use. Granted they aren't very high ranked, but that isn't a problem anymore since the academy will have access to much better stuff. But you can't treat mana the same way as martial arts. You can't always just force out all of your power, eventually your output of mana is going to dwarf your regeneration." Yuna explained.

"She's right, my job is to get you to the level of an actual Blue Ranked warrior." Raiju beat his chest.

"When do we start then?" I asked.

"Now." Suddenly Raiju appeared in front of me and punched me in the gut, then chopped the back of my neck.

"Was that necessary?" Yuna asked, looking at Dante's slumped body.

"No, but I enjoy it this way. Mind your business." Raiju smirked before disappearing, leaving only faint traces of blue lightning in his wake.