Passing time

Thanks to how powerful both Alex and Zane were their spars tended to be closer to actual combat than harmless practice sessions. The reason for this was that anything short of that level of difficulty achieved next to nothing during the spar besides wasting time. Even more insanely is that during their spars they still held back enough not to seriously harm the other party. This meant that for Alex he at most got a few bruises and cuts while Zane also only got similar injuries.-

The only other person who could join their sparring sessions was the admiral but even then the old man needed to be on his toes at all times as there were no rules to the spars. This meant sneak attacks , low blows and trickery were all fair game during that time. The admiral had suffered for a while before he adapted to this method of spar and had never been strong because of it. This was no joke as sparring like this forced all three of them to adapt on the fly as well as pushed their imaginations in the heat of the moment to their limits.-

If before the admiral was a mass of raw power barely contained in skill he was now on a whole other level than before. Alex himself gained the least amount of benefit from these spars due to the fact that he couldn't use any of his elemental powers or else neither of the other two would be able to even get close to him. Seliana started to get into the groove of things as Zane and his handler went about their investigations. Hunters were now regularly coming and going into and out of the gates with local resources flowing into the village.-

Alex himself had been lazing about for the last few days after his fight with the nergigante as well as the velkhana. He wasn't idle though as he was trying to find interesting ways to utilize his elemental powers. For example he was messing with his flames to see if he could change their color at will rather than getting stuck with accumulating energy first. He had made a little progress in this regard as he had managed to create sparks of blue flame by condensing the energy before pushing it out but anything more than that caused the flames to return to normal.-

He didn't get frustrated over this however as he was still making progress even if it was slow going at the moment. Finally though word came of the blizzard encounter with velkhana that the handler and Zane had that also led to a barrioth attacking them. From the story this was the same velkhana that Alex had previously attacked as it was missing an eye and half of it's tail. It also flew with a bit of a limp which showed it still hadn't recovered from the injuries he had given it. It be fair though most of those injuries were barely surface deep so it shouldn't take too long for a full recovery.-

Alex meanwhile remembered that this was the prerequisite event for the exploration of the northern regions of the hoarfrost region that just so happened to contain a subspecies of legiana. This subspecies known as the shrieking legiana had all the same abilities as normal legiana but stronger as well as a greater physical prowess and weaponized voice. Not in a manner meant to harm so much as cause stunning from ones ear drums being rattled or burst , nasty but not lethal really.-

Alex was curious if this variant would give him the same traits as a normal legiana or different ones so he left seliana to go find out. As he flew overhead he could already see the hunters hard at work clearing out paths to this relatively unexplored area. Flying further he soon reached the heavily hot spring covered mountainous part of the hoarfrost region that the subspecies liked top hang out in from his memory. Unfortunately he only found a normal legiana walking about the area completely oblivious to the fact a higher predator was debating whether or not to kill it from high overhead.