25

I gave those eyes an amused wave before erasing us both from it's view. I wasn't a hundred percent sure that they would be able to see that wave, but if they could they would find it incredibly disturbing. That was good enough for me. Our quiet return to the road meant very little to the world around us. If someone took the time to track us then we might be in trouble, but our little secret wasn't going to last much longer.

My efforts to preserve our secrecy were slowly dwindling. To a certain degree I wanted to be discovered. That would be exciting, but at the same time I knew that being discovered was unlikely. Our timeframe was simply too tight for the elves to catch onto our little ruse before we moved on. I'm addicted to danger aren't I?

I snorted to myself from where I perched on the birds back. There really was no other explanation for the thrill I got from danger. I really hoped that the other dragons didn't pick up this bad habit from me. Danger in it's purest form wasn't good for them. While I did enjoy danger I didn't like the idea of the dragons I'd worked so hard to raise up dying from the same thrill seeking behavior I practiced.

I rubbed the back of my neck with irritation. I was distracted. I was still feeling the damage I'd done to myself, and the weakness wouldn't go away for another week according to the system. I'd set some serious repercussions for my Reset spell. Three days of pain, and three weeks of weakness.

It was never a good idea to decide on these sort of things while in the high of battle. I couldn't fault myself too much though. That actually wasn't that bad as far as repercussions went. I could fight with the strength, and vigor of two of me, and the only drawbacks were pain, and a little weakness. Having my strength temporarily halved was a light punishment considering.

If I used the spell again then my strength would be halved a second time would be a problem though. Once I could handle. Twice was a problem. I needed to tone it down until I regained my full strength. As long as we kept our pace down then I would recover completely before we reached the capitol.

That meant I had time to hit a few smaller towns while I was at it. My muscles relaxed slowly until the only part of me that was tense was the part of me that was required to stay on the bird. I inhaled slowly. Exhaling equally as slowly. I needed that relaxation.

Complete chill was a requirement of near instant movement. Despite how chill I was I was more then ready to defend if we came under attack. The bandits had largely taken themselves out which was a little disappointing, but I'd been rewarded enough that my feelings weren't too badly hurt. I closed my eyes, and focused on heightening my spatial awareness. I deserved a little bit of a break after what I'd done.

I wasn't going to be an ass about it, but I also knew that I couldn't relax properly while I was on this world. Being here felt wrong in a way. I didn't know if it was from me constantly having to fight off foreign mana or if it was from my natural connection to my home world. Neither mattered at the moment. I'd chosen this fight.

It was my job to finish it. I sighed to myself. I wasn't looking forward to this ending. To a certain degree I was enjoying the thrill of being on edge all the time. I wondered why I was enjoying this tension.

At the same time I was looking forward to the chance to properly relax. It was quiet on the road now that we'd cleared out the bandits. The bandits had cleared out most of the predatory beasts around their encampment so the few that remained simply weren't interested in the trouble killing us entailed. They had prey they understood, and that automatically made them less trouble then us. I wasn't interested in playing games with predators that weren't interested in me either.

The next few days played out nicely. It was quiet, and largely peaceful. I wished that the rest of our off days had been this easy. I went to raid another small city during the night this time around. Taking Sekka with me, and wearing my cracked fox mask.

The mask had started to repair itself now that I had mana to work with again. I managed to sneak in, and out without getting noticed. They probably knew we'd stolen their twenty-seven slaves by now. No noble house so the slaves were largely stored in one place. There were two female slaves that were in the houses, but I could tell it wasn't by choice.

I was able to pull them out of the houses pretty easily. I didn't even need to enter the houses with my space affinity being as strong as it was. I just blinked them outside, and snapped their collars off. Storing the useless collars, and disappearing with all the slaves I'd stolen. I wasted more mana on laying false trails then I did actually rescuing the slaves.

I was sure that my false trails were helping me stay unnoticed. Otherwise we would have been caught already. I was starting to get a little bored. This was a little too easy. I wanted a challenge.

I sighed a little defeated. I wanted a challenge, and I wasn't getting one. Once I had a good fight I would be worried about getting killed or getting Sekka killed. Sekka was talking to me more often, and he seemed to be showing less fear in my presence. That feeling that told me he was going to be a good addition to my bonded never went away.