Lightning Bolt! I quickly materialized a purple magic circle while calling its name in my head, shooting out a single stream of lightning at the robed man standing before me as my opponent.
“Raptor’s Agility! Slithering Serpent!” On the other hand, my opponent was calling out all his spells, spreading his arms wide as if he was readying himself to embrace somebody. It was obviously a show of confidence, as his velociraptor-like head was grinning with pure enthusiasm.
Rightfully so, as the moment his two blue magic circles activated, his spells buffed up his high Agility even further. He deftly side stepped my lightning spell, causing it to crash right into the earthen wall acting as the outer boundary for our spar.
Really annoying! Bedrock Blades! Seeing Master, my sparring partner, dodge like that was beyond infuriating, but I couldn’t slow down my casting otherwise he would just ramp up himself. As such, I sent out several giant blades of rock to slice him up, leading him around so I could cast [Lig—
“Enough thinking, think faster! Kraken’s Destruction.”
—htning Bolt]. Well, there went my chance to attack as the saurian mage summoned a giant water tentacle from a magic circle. I was forced to dodge to the left as it slammed on the ground, cracking the earth under its might.
Thankfully, when it came to my legwork, I was still pretty fast. [Foresight] was a skill that allowed me to see a few seconds into the future if I spent Mana on it, otherwise it would function exactly like [Prediction], its previous form.
It was a bit of an exaggeration, as my options were never 100% so the idea of “looking into the future” was a bit false. The System allowed me to see simulated situations of what could happen a few seconds into the future, which I had to examine and act on. Using it every single second would drain my Mana like crazy, so most of the time I would leave it with its base function.
Another demerit the skill had was a need for focus. [Concentration] could be trained this way, but I did admit it was quite hard to cast spells and use this skill. Of course, my parallel minds could take care of the analyzing part for me.
Unfortunately for me, I told all my parallel minds not to participate.
“Woah!” I cried out as another kraken’s tentacle slammed in the direction that I was dodging towards, knocking me a bit back from the bone-shaking shockwave.
“You rely too much on that [Foresight], Hestia. Your instincts are good so stop relying on the System, instead, trust your body and decision-making!” the saurian mage scolded me while he started the cast of three additional spells.
Scheiße!
Wind Blast! Not knowing which spells he was about to cast, I cast a wind spell to push my body into the air, using [Air Walk] to hold myself up.
Using [Foresight], the System began overflowing my brain with information about two different futures, one showing me being caught as I waited for his spells to cast while I was able to avoid in the second by preemptively casting wind spells to maneuver myself in the air.
Using the information from this skill activation, I was able to learn that two of his spells were [Depth’s Call] to catch me with water tentacles and one was [Sapphire Membrane] to defend himself.
Damn, now I know how Saori and Tasianna felt when I had my parallel minds cast spells too. A mage with [Multi-Cast] is really tricky to fight against!
Tornado Bullet.
I cast my only [Storm Magic] spell, shooting out an incredibly powerful, spiraling wind bullet at my opponent. It sent me flying backwards due to the recoil, which felt like being blown back by a storm’s gale.
Meanwhile, I saw two blue magic circles appearing in the air before disappearing without getting cast, as the saurian mage evoked [Sapphire Membrane] to protect himself from my spell. Piercing through the water shield, the spell hit my opponent, shaving a few scales as he crashed onto the ground.
Using a few [Wind Blast]s to prevent me from flying out of the arena, I used another [Tornado Bullet] to propel myself forward like a rocket. Materializing a red-brown magic circle, I was ready to unleash it once I was above him. I kinda wanted to warn him, but then again, he probably would survive it even if I hit him.
Lava Ball! A ball of searing lava materialized around my hand.
After losing all my fire and inferno spells, I lost many of my extremely powerful spells. To fill in that void in my combat arsenal, I had to see if an element could emulate the amount of damage I once was able to do with inferno spells. From tests, I found two elements that could, and [Lava Magic] was one of them.
I personally never was a fan of lava spells as they required unbearably slow casting times compared to fire, despite having the same fire power. Now that I had no other choice, I needed to learn when to use them.
Master Kushlek’zar saw the ball of lava growing in size, reacting as I threw it at him. “That spell really is slow. Ocean’s Blast, Sapphire Blade.”
His water crashed against my lava, quickly cooling it down to solid rocks that were broken apart as a blade of water pierced right through them. Although I could prevent a direct hit by swaying my body around with wind spells, I couldn’t avoid the hit completely. The car-sized water blade penetrated my [Draconic Barrier], slicing my thighs as a shallow cut form and began leaking blood. At the same time, white flames erupted from the area, automatically healing me..
Ahhh, come on. The damage is nothing compared to how annoying this effect is. Debuffs suck!
Luckily, Master Kushlek’zar didn’t come out of it unscarred either. He didn’t have enough time to block the hail of rocks completely with one of his defensive spells.
“Ocean’s Healing,” he cast as he stroked his plumage. “Continue!”
“Yes!” I responded immediately.
With that said, our magician’s duel continued. I kept flying through the arena with my wind spells and [Air Walk], trying to cover up the inability to so with my wings, while Master Kushlek’zar held his ground like a boulder. He focused on reacting, forcing me to be more creative to even break through his solid defense.
Wind for movement and fast counters, earth for defense and disruptions, lightning for extremely fast attacks, and magma for slow but powerful spells. This was my current usage of spells now that fire was gone. This was one of the reasons why I was doing these battles with Master.
The other reason was for me to acquire [Multi-Cast] and train up [Concentration]. Master Kushlek’zar suggested we spar whenever I had time. To make sure it was effective, he forced me to order my parallel minds not to interfere during the duel, as using my parallel minds didn’t count towards the acquisition requirements it seems.
Of course, I could cheat but that couldn’t happen with both Tasianna and Saori keeping an eye on my status board. And even then, why should I cheat in the first place when this was supposed to be training for me. Master Kushlek’zar didn’t have to do this, after all.
Still, I had to admit that fighting without [Parallel Thoughts] was initially hard to get into. As my teacher had [Multi-Cast], he was able to overwhelm me with multiple spells at once with ease. The only reason why I was keeping up was due to my flexibility and wide range of spells.
The last reason for our constant sparring was to quell [Battle Frenzy]. No use living among other people when I couldn’t control my temper, right? The difficulty I was having to defeat him wasn’t even ‘cause of these restrictions, as battling him without restraint could get extremely heated, literally and figuratively.
As our battle was reaching an equilibrium, my eyes suddenly notied small glints in the air, swarming around in a trail leading to the back of Master Kushlek’zar.
Scale-dusts successfully placed!
Flying around the arena with [Air Walk] and my wind spells wasn’t just ‘cause I needed the movement advantage, but it was also for me to spread my scale-dusts. Normally, the correct way to do this would be to use my wings to spread the dust throughout the area but I couldn’t as I had no wings in my current form.
Honestly, I was having major problems using it to its fullest potential during combat. Before my body morphed due to gaining the skills [Hellblade Dragon] and [Dreadflame Dragon], I could only spread my scale-dust with [Spark Flame Veil]. It felt like my body finally unlocked its fullest potential, you know.
Magic was inherently more useful and easier to use, but I understood the potential of my scale-dust. I just to test things out, figure out how all my new dragon abilities worked. Maybe I was forcing its usage a bit but experimenting during spars like these was exactly what I should be doing.
After I snapped my fingers, a spark appeared around my claws before a river of small explosions erupted into action, blowing up the trail and Master. Noticing the chain reaction, Master only had seconds to conjure up a wall of water. He narrowly succeeded, but the explosions still breached through and staggered him, leaving him vulnerable to my next attack.
“Banishment Beam!” I roared as a ray of holy light descended down onto Master Kushlek’zar’s barriers.
Now that I had [Venerated Saintess], my holy spells finally received the power boost that they desperately needed to become a good offensive element for me. Still, losing [Holy Amp] was annoying but it was just my luck that [Venerated Saintess] was essentially the same thing. Only, it could grow in levels and power.
The force of my spell showed the beam scorched the scales on Master’s left arm in his attempt to redirect it. Even if he was a fast caster, a mage still needed time. With his smile finally fading away, I could feel a shiver run down my spine as I knew it was time for him to become serious.
“Wonderful! Ever since that bandit Quest, our duels have always been intense enough for me to be forced to take out my catalyst! You have shown this old scale your power, young scale, but it’s about time for me to end this,” he announced as he took out a rosary from his robes. “Feel the might of the oceans, Hestia!”
Kuek … Hooooooo, oh boy! I suddenly felt an urge to just stop.
From this point onwards, the battle only lasted for a few more seconds. His rosary was a catalyst, an alchemical equipment designed and enchanted to support a mage. Not only could it decrease mana consumption, it could also boost the powers of his spells. He kept casting two spells to support his defense while conjuring two [Plesia’s Grasp] around me, forcing me to stop my spell casting and dodge.
Although I was getting used to this after consecutive losses against him, my inability to learn [Multi-Cast] to cast multiple spells at once meant that my momentum quickly faded into obscurity, before I was quickly apprehended by his spells. I was knocked onto the ground before having my tail and legs pulled up by water tentacles.
“Eeeek!” I shrieked as I was held upside-down, holding onto my skirt to prevent it from falling down.
“Phew,” he let out, calming down his breath as he gave a prayer to Plesia. “Another victory for me, Hestia. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to defeat you without my catalyst, especially with how much you still have to grow. Ha, getting [Chant Revocation Lv. 10] during training wasn’t enough it seems.”
He wrote down today’s duel’s results on a wooden tablet before throwing it towards Akast as a part of their luggage. He was always ready to document stuff down.
“M-Master Kushlek’zar, what are you thinking!?” I shouted as my face became redder and redder. “PUT ME DOWN!”
He stroked his chin for a moment, looking genuinely confused why I would raise my voice, until Tasianna explained it to him. “Huh? This is usually never a concern for saurian females, thus I thought nothing of it. Regardless, if I have offended, I apologize sincerely as my tail is my witness.”
Tucking his tail between his legs, Master Kushlek’zar gave a short bow as he released me from his spells’ grip.
Landing on the ground like a cat, I stroked my tail as I responded back with a pout, “Jeeeeeez … At least understand the shame of a young girl, elder scale …”
“Gahahaha!” Ignoring my blushing face, Krim-Slak, the muscular red carnosilian approached us. “The fights are always so even before Kush becomes serious. So, any luck with [Multi-Cast]? This has been your sixth duel with him with the same restrictions.”
I looked through my status board, half-doubtful that I had it, half-hopeful that I missed the System notification during the battle, until I could confirm which one was correct. “… Nah.”
“… Is that so? Unfortunate,” his partner Grazlahta commented with a frown. “Your efforts aren’t wasted though, young scale. A warrior pursues strength no matter how often one fails. Be proud that you’re able to fight Kush on even grounds. There is no shame when he is far more experienced.”
“Well, Lady Hestia did use her scale-dusts during that one attack … which isn’t really a spell,” Tasianna suddenly interjected, freezing me up as I realized this.
“Well, that is debatable as her scale-dusts are part of her body, although it is considered an ability to the System. Punches and kicks are not disallowed, after all,” Saori came to my rescue, before letting out a defeated sigh. “Although I am pretty sure you mentioned that you would only use your spells to defeat him. Using your scale-dusts will not give you [Multi-Cast].”
“Why are you two throwing me under the bus!” I shouted at my two friends, feeling betrayed by their backstabbing.
“Nevermind.” Master Kushlek’zar shook his hand, telling me he didn’t fault me one bit. “If we follow the rules of a mage’s duel one-to-one as the mage’s guild established, then it would be a bore. The winner is determined by the first hit. This is what a fight between mages should be, ha ha ha!”
This was why Master was Master to me. Even if he was a water mage, which meant I couldn’t learn any of his spells unless I invested in [Water Magic], I still could learn a lot of fundamentals and earn his knowledge. His flexible way of teaching was perfect for my wild, self-taught magic talents.
After all, after such a great sweat-inducing match, it also calmed me down enough for me to listen to his lecture. Instead of feeling out of energy, I couldn’t help but be excited. The fact I was allowed to call this established and wise mage my master, and he considered me his apprentice ticked off one of my goals as a mage. I had a mage master, I had a mage master, ahahaha!
In any case, once Master told me it was lecture time, I cast an [Air Shield] around us. Aaaaaand another part of our daily routines began! Go go!
“Hmm?” Master tilted his head as I sat down, unable to keep my face from smiling. “I really appreciate your enthusiasm, young scale.”
“And I the fact you took me in like this! I really thought you would run away after I told you everything, so I’m really glad I got to learn from you, Master!” I responded without hiding one bit of my emotions, causing the old saurian to turn his head away and cough, trying to hide his creeping smile. The old scale probably liked me calling him Master, I bet!
It really sounded like I was just teasing him, but I really owed him my gratitude. After what happened during the bandit fight, I did feel pretty guilty that I attacked him—an ally. However, he nor the saurians blamed me for it. It felt like a stone fell from my chest when even Grazlahta told me, “The life of a merc, young scale. Don’t worry, these things can happen, so it’s good it ended well.”
Once we reached the village, the first thing we did after the feast was to meet up with the saurians in the same spot where we first met them. At this point, our group pretty much trusted Master Kushlek’zar and his party enough that we practically divulged everything besides [Otherworldly Reincarnator] and the SP System. We even talked about [Venerated Saintess].
We wanted to keep the fact we were otherworlders to ourselves for now, since it would be too much to explain. However, the fact I was a dragon and that I was watched over by Aurena was put on the table. He already guessed I was a princess of Kargryx, so whatever, really.
Although, you should have seen Master Kushlek’zar’s darkish face when he confirmed Saori was a cadejo. It couldn’t be helped in the end that he desperately wanted to see our true forms, but the two carnosilians quickly interjected.
Frankly, the saurians were still curious why our profile still had “Information Blocked.” “It is something extremely personal, and we are only willing to tell you if you join our party,” I told them, shamelessly trying to recruit them to our party. I’ve grown quite attached to them, and it wouldn’t hurt to have more muscles in our party, right?
Of course, sadly, they had to reject it as their duties conflicted with our goals. It was an ordeal to explain to them what “idols” were and I had a bit of a hope that they would accept after seeing their reactions. Well, I guess the path of an entertainer wasn’t theirs. “Justice never rests.”
Even now, they couldn’t stay too long. They had to escort the non-Carine villagers back to their own village, while my party wished to stay here for winter and depart in spring. So whenever we could train with the saurians, we trained with the mentality it could be our last meeting.
Then again, one topic we had to handle before we split up was custom spell creation. After Shiterno’s little interference, I practically lost all my fire and inferno spells aside from [Symphonie des Feuergottes]. I tried to look through the skill shop to reacquire them but to no avail. Annoyingly enough, the moment I lost those two skills, I also lost my ability to create pure fire and inferno custom spells.
Honestly, considering he’s an Origin God, he’s pretty stupid as hell. Why would you steal away this ability of mine, you shitty fire god? Even [Divine Inferno] doesn’t grant any benefits to my retainers.
Anyway, due to this fact, I had to substitute my other spells now that my jack-of-all-trade fire element was gone. Two of our experiments included [White Flames] and [Corrosive Fire].
“Huuuuuuuh … huuuuuuuh,” I moaned as purple sweat began dropping from my forehead into a wooden bowl. “Huuuuuuh … compared to [Toxic Secretion], this is far too inconvenient. That bastard, honestly, doesn’t understand anything of how I was using my skill set.”
I scowled at the mere thought of the creator of this skill. That fire god was a constant reminder of all the pain I received from his “help.”
“Oi, young scale, we’re followers of Plesia but cursing an Origin God brings down bad luck,” Krim-Slak commented as he took out his amulet, shaking it in front of me as if he was trying to dispel a ghost. “You were chosen as God Danterno’s blessed, so you should be grateful.”
“Yeah, I could, buuuuut, I could also just continue cursing him.” My body was only filled with spite for that moron. “Don’t forget that Aurena and Kargryxmor blessed me. I have no idea what the gods are planning to do with me, but I’m currently leaning towards supporting the Goddess of Light. I even helped her reinforce the faith of Carine village.”
“Well, your little idol ‘performance’ did make the men pretty excited. I guess that is what you meant with ‘reinforce?’” Hearing Saori try to tease me only caused my flush to return, forcing me to hide my face with my robe’s hood. “Oh, it is about to overflow. Tasianna, you may cool her down now.”
I looked down at the cup of purple sweat nearly touching the tip of the wooden bowl. I nodded.
“Yes, Miss Saori. Please excuse me, Lady Hestia,” Tasianna uttered with a pleasant tone as she started cooling the air with a cyan magic circle, placing it behind my back to lower my body’s temperature.
As my body slowly cooled down, Saori took the bowl in her hand, identified it, and then handed it to me. “It is diluted but it is the real deal. [Corrosive Fire] has the same recreation feature of [Toxic Secretion].”
Identify.
One of our tests was to see if I could continue supplying Saori with venom and poisons, as that was one of her strongest tools in battle. Unfortunately, after losing [Toxic Secretion] I couldn’t just make new vials of venom upon request.
[Corrosive Fire] allowed me to create purple-colored flames imbued with toxins I could have created with its previous form. However, the flames were hard to handle as such, and needed me to mix the impurities with my sweat. Sadly, since I had a high heat tolerance, I had to literally overheat myself with rock-melting temperatures to reproduce it. As such, I couldn’t mass produce them anymore, or at least, as fast.
Not to mention, just like my scale-dusts, both of my new flame types also consumed Stamina to use. It was essentially a dragon ability in that aspect, and while they did bring some nice features, it really bothered me that I had to lose my fire spells for them.
It wasn’t like they were that hard of a nerf, really. While, yes, I did lose a ton of firepower and flexibility for this trade, I had two pretty unique skills to play around with now. Still, the Stamina part was a problem. My Stamina wasn’t nearly as high as my Mana. Spells suited me better, period.
However, interestingly enough, I could create custom spells with these flames. [White Flames] would create white magic circles like holy spells, while [Corrosive Fire] would create brown magic circles like earth spells. Although none of the test spells actually worked, it was good enough for me to know those skills allowed me to create some new spells myself.
After losing [Holy Magic], I also lost [Cure], the only way for me to remove status afflictions like poison and paralyzation. It wasn’t an offensive spell, but I absolutely needed it for my team’s safety. If I could create my own venom, then I should know how to neutralize them.
In essence, [White Flames] and [Corrosive Fire] were theoretically better than my fire spells in the long run. Theoretically, and only if I put the effort into using them. Master called these skills which didn’t have innate System spells but could allow you to create custom spells “empty vessel magic.”
Your intentions were nice, Shiterno, but your execution was horrendous.
“Hmm, how about ‘Holy Fire, rid their body of impurities. Purify them,’ and how about this letter? Oh, maybe write these runes like this and this?” I began drawing a magic circle on a wooden tablet, writing down Common tongue words on it. This was one of the steps to create a custom spell.
As I was experimenting with words to create a spell which could “remove physical status ailments,” Master Kushlek’zar, Saori, and Tasianna were documenting all my progress on their own wooden tablets with coal pencils. Funnily enough, it reminded me of a scene of scientists congregating in a single room to create the next scientific milestone.
Then again, it probably was fascinating to Master and Tasianna, since these two flames belonged to the “Unique Skill” category. Well, I hoped they were unique. Master did confirm some unique skills were shared with others. It was just insanely rare, since the System could create these skills according to the person.
While on a break, I suddenly remembered what I wanted to tell him. “Oh yeah, Master, I was just thinking about my unique racial skills. I think it might be a good time to evolve.”
“Hmm!” At the mere mention of “evolve,” Master perked his body upwards, stroking his plumage as his eyes’ focus intensified. “Oh, you bless this old scale. God Istari, I thank you for granting me this chance to learn, and Goddess Aurena for granting me the honor to meet your blessed!”
Blessed were split into Saints and Champions, but since I didn’t know which of them I belonged to, Master just called me “blessed” once in a while.
“Well, we have been in the village for a week, and besides a few wolves or goblins, everything has been peaceful,” I answered. “I know you wanted to see Saori’s and my monster forms … Too bad there are far too many ‘birds’ around.”
It seemed the appearance of small monsters like [Wind Raccoon], [Loopabit], and [Blight Rat] weren’t a rare sight around villages far away from towns. Their lord was supposed to protect them with soldiers during these times, even hiring hunters if a swarm appeared.
Feral grimgarians like goblins and kobolds were also a common sight, showing little intelligence compared to the ones I met in the Belzac forest. They honestly acted like idiotic, cantankerous beasts that had to be exterminated before they cause problems for my life … too bad they were rank Gs.
Monsters were either born naturally like other animals or they could just appear from thin air through the high mana concentration in the area. This phenomenon was called “monster spawning.” Pretty easy to remember. I’ve already noticed this, but the area had far less mana in the ground compared to the Belzac forest, meaning only weak monsters like these could appear.
Rank G and F monsters were weaker than humans, stat-wise, but that didn’t mean they were any less of a threat. According to Master Kushlek’zar, goblins and kobolds had insane reproduction rates, meaning subjugation Quests for them were near limitless.
“The ‘birds,’ huh? Yeah, damn pest,” Krim-Salk complained as he washed his tail with a damp cloth. “Anyway, Kush wants to stay around a bit for your evolution and our wards aren’t ready just yet, so you don’t have to fear anything during your evolution, young scale. We’ll keep watch with your companions.”
“So, do you mind sharing to us your evolution choices? Saori already gave us a rundown of how monsters evolve,” Grazlahta proposed in his usual stoic tone, taking a sun bath on a moist grass bed.
“Sure.”
__________________________________
Evolution
[Young Black-Wrath Dragon]
[Young Angel Dragon]
[Young Infernal Demon Dragon]
[Young Ragnarok Dragon]
[Young Lava Dragon]
[Young Magma Dragon]
[Young Volcano Dragon]
[Young Thunder Dragon]
[Young Arcane Corrupter Dragon]
[Young Dreadflame Dragon]
[Young Hellblade Dragon]
[Young Obsidian Blaze Dragon]
[Young Sunfang Dragon]
__________________________________
“Two choices—[Young Mana Dragon] and [Young Noxious Blight Dragon]—were removed but I wasn’t considering them at this point anymore. The new options are pretty good, I think,” I responded with a small smile, happy to see so many options.
“Have you decided? I personally would recommend you take one of the God’s chosen dragons, despite your grievances with them.” Master Kushlek’zar stroked his chin as he perused through the description I sent him via [Telepathy]. “I will not preach to you, I consider it more important that you choose your own path. I will, however, warn you that defying the gods isn’t a smart choice, Hestia. You should consider it an honor.”
This was how most Peolyncians would act, especially a “priest” like Master. I had already gotten used to it, especially after I gave that sermon.
“I understand what you are saying, Priest Kushlek’zar,” Tasianna suddenly responded with a firm gaze. “However, my mistress will follow down the path that she considers best. I will follow her and defend her choice, no matter what happens.”
“Don’t take it too seriously, Tasianna,” Grazlahta interjected himself into the discussion. “You lasses aren’t defying Goddess Plesia or Xohulotel, so we have no right to speak up. However, gaining the ire of a god is irrational. Why not take the power? Gods are, theoretically, not allowed to interfere with mortal concerns outside of through their blesseds. As such, they treat them very well, as Saints preach their words while Champions handle Divine Quests.”
I had told the saurians about me usurping the blessings from the gods, so I guess they were a bit worried I was becoming an enemy to the gods. In his own way, Grazlahta just told me the gods couldn’t exactly deal with me personally, but they could send their minions to harass me. He wanted me to avoid this situation.
I knew that, but I couldn’t help but feel exasperated by it. “Guys, it’s not like I’m actually doing this ‘usurping’ stuff on purpose. Maybe I did actively defy Danterno’s control, but I never did it to Aurena’s or Kargryxmor’s. Nevertheless, Tasianna is right. If I am to evolve, then I will be seeking the best option.”
After looking through the SP shop, I’ve accepted that finding a unique or special skill that could influence my evolution options was hard. There was also the case that my SP was low now, and I didn’t have enough to do anything substantial.
“Chill, though, I only thought today was a good chance to evolve, not that I will evolve now. We have a ‘birdy’ problem, after all,” I uttered before looking at my wolfkin friend. “Saori.”
She nodded before disappearing into her shadows with a “Sure.” We waited at the spot for a moment, enjoying our tea and lunch as we awaited Saori’s swift return. Eventually, Saori walked back into sight, dragging along four tied up men with her mana strings.
After I dispelled my [Air Shield], she threw them before us, speaking with red mist emitting from her blood-red eyes, “Four spies like always. They have been observing you saurians for a week now, but they have not gotten better with concealing their presences. Should I also bring the ones from the village, Hestia?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” I replied with a dismissive hand wave, before forming a smile as I greeted the captured men. “Now, how may I help Lord Helvas, gentlemen?”
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Lightning Bolt! I quickly materialized a purple magic circle while calling its name in my head, shooting out a single stream of lightning at the robed man standing before me as my opponent.
“Raptor’s Agility! Slithering Serpent!” On the other hand, my opponent was calling out all his spells, spreading his arms wide as if he was readying himself to embrace somebody. It was obviously a show of confidence, as his velociraptor-like head was grinning with pure enthusiasm.
Rightfully so, as the moment his two blue magic circles activated, his spells buffed up his high Agility even further. He deftly side stepped my lightning spell, causing it to crash right into the earthen wall acting as the outer boundary for our spar.
Really annoying! Bedrock Blades! Seeing Master, my sparring partner, dodge like that was beyond infuriating, but I couldn’t slow down my casting otherwise he would just ramp up himself. As such, I sent out several giant blades of rock to slice him up, leading him around so I could cast [Lig—
“Enough thinking, think faster! Kraken’s Destruction.”
—htning Bolt]. Well, there went my chance to attack as the saurian mage summoned a giant water tentacle from a magic circle. I was forced to dodge to the left as it slammed on the ground, cracking the earth under its might.
Thankfully, when it came to my legwork, I was still pretty fast. [Foresight] was a skill that allowed me to see a few seconds into the future if I spent Mana on it, otherwise it would function exactly like [Prediction], its previous form.
It was a bit of an exaggeration, as my options were never 100% so the idea of “looking into the future” was a bit false. The System allowed me to see simulated situations of what could happen a few seconds into the future, which I had to examine and act on. Using it every single second would drain my Mana like crazy, so most of the time I would leave it with its base function.
Another demerit the skill had was a need for focus. [Concentration] could be trained this way, but I did admit it was quite hard to cast spells and use this skill. Of course, my parallel minds could take care of the analyzing part for me.
Unfortunately for me, I told all my parallel minds not to participate.
“Woah!” I cried out as another kraken’s tentacle slammed in the direction that I was dodging towards, knocking me a bit back from the bone-shaking shockwave.
“You rely too much on that [Foresight], Hestia. Your instincts are good so stop relying on the System, instead, trust your body and decision-making!” the saurian mage scolded me while he started the cast of three additional spells.
Scheiße!
Wind Blast! Not knowing which spells he was about to cast, I cast a wind spell to push my body into the air, using [Air Walk] to hold myself up.
Using [Foresight], the System began overflowing my brain with information about two different futures, one showing me being caught as I waited for his spells to cast while I was able to avoid in the second by preemptively casting wind spells to maneuver myself in the air.
Using the information from this skill activation, I was able to learn that two of his spells were [Depth’s Call] to catch me with water tentacles and one was [Sapphire Membrane] to defend himself.
Damn, now I know how Saori and Tasianna felt when I had my parallel minds cast spells too. A mage with [Multi-Cast] is really tricky to fight against!
Tornado Bullet.
I cast my only [Storm Magic] spell, shooting out an incredibly powerful, spiraling wind bullet at my opponent. It sent me flying backwards due to the recoil, which felt like being blown back by a storm’s gale.
Meanwhile, I saw two blue magic circles appearing in the air before disappearing without getting cast, as the saurian mage evoked [Sapphire Membrane] to protect himself from my spell. Piercing through the water shield, the spell hit my opponent, shaving a few scales as he crashed onto the ground.
Using a few [Wind Blast]s to prevent me from flying out of the arena, I used another [Tornado Bullet] to propel myself forward like a rocket. Materializing a red-brown magic circle, I was ready to unleash it once I was above him. I kinda wanted to warn him, but then again, he probably would survive it even if I hit him.
Lava Ball! A ball of searing lava materialized around my hand.
After losing all my fire and inferno spells, I lost many of my extremely powerful spells. To fill in that void in my combat arsenal, I had to see if an element could emulate the amount of damage I once was able to do with inferno spells. From tests, I found two elements that could, and [Lava Magic] was one of them.
I personally never was a fan of lava spells as they required unbearably slow casting times compared to fire, despite having the same fire power. Now that I had no other choice, I needed to learn when to use them.
Master Kushlek’zar saw the ball of lava growing in size, reacting as I threw it at him. “That spell really is slow. Ocean’s Blast, Sapphire Blade.”
His water crashed against my lava, quickly cooling it down to solid rocks that were broken apart as a blade of water pierced right through them. Although I could prevent a direct hit by swaying my body around with wind spells, I couldn’t avoid the hit completely. The car-sized water blade penetrated my [Draconic Barrier], slicing my thighs as a shallow cut form and began leaking blood. At the same time, white flames erupted from the area, automatically healing me..
Ahhh, come on. The damage is nothing compared to how annoying this effect is. Debuffs suck!
Luckily, Master Kushlek’zar didn’t come out of it unscarred either. He didn’t have enough time to block the hail of rocks completely with one of his defensive spells.
“Ocean’s Healing,” he cast as he stroked his plumage. “Continue!”
“Yes!” I responded immediately.
With that said, our magician’s duel continued. I kept flying through the arena with my wind spells and [Air Walk], trying to cover up the inability to so with my wings, while Master Kushlek’zar held his ground like a boulder. He focused on reacting, forcing me to be more creative to even break through his solid defense.
Wind for movement and fast counters, earth for defense and disruptions, lightning for extremely fast attacks, and magma for slow but powerful spells. This was my current usage of spells now that fire was gone. This was one of the reasons why I was doing these battles with Master.
The other reason was for me to acquire [Multi-Cast] and train up [Concentration]. Master Kushlek’zar suggested we spar whenever I had time. To make sure it was effective, he forced me to order my parallel minds not to interfere during the duel, as using my parallel minds didn’t count towards the acquisition requirements it seems.
Of course, I could cheat but that couldn’t happen with both Tasianna and Saori keeping an eye on my status board. And even then, why should I cheat in the first place when this was supposed to be training for me. Master Kushlek’zar didn’t have to do this, after all.
Still, I had to admit that fighting without [Parallel Thoughts] was initially hard to get into. As my teacher had [Multi-Cast], he was able to overwhelm me with multiple spells at once with ease. The only reason why I was keeping up was due to my flexibility and wide range of spells.
The last reason for our constant sparring was to quell [Battle Frenzy]. No use living among other people when I couldn’t control my temper, right? The difficulty I was having to defeat him wasn’t even ‘cause of these restrictions, as battling him without restraint could get extremely heated, literally and figuratively.
As our battle was reaching an equilibrium, my eyes suddenly notied small glints in the air, swarming around in a trail leading to the back of Master Kushlek’zar.
Scale-dusts successfully placed!
Flying around the arena with [Air Walk] and my wind spells wasn’t just ‘cause I needed the movement advantage, but it was also for me to spread my scale-dusts. Normally, the correct way to do this would be to use my wings to spread the dust throughout the area but I couldn’t as I had no wings in my current form.
Honestly, I was having major problems using it to its fullest potential during combat. Before my body morphed due to gaining the skills [Hellblade Dragon] and [Dreadflame Dragon], I could only spread my scale-dust with [Spark Flame Veil]. It felt like my body finally unlocked its fullest potential, you know.
Magic was inherently more useful and easier to use, but I understood the potential of my scale-dust. I just to test things out, figure out how all my new dragon abilities worked. Maybe I was forcing its usage a bit but experimenting during spars like these was exactly what I should be doing.
After I snapped my fingers, a spark appeared around my claws before a river of small explosions erupted into action, blowing up the trail and Master. Noticing the chain reaction, Master only had seconds to conjure up a wall of water. He narrowly succeeded, but the explosions still breached through and staggered him, leaving him vulnerable to my next attack.
“Banishment Beam!” I roared as a ray of holy light descended down onto Master Kushlek’zar’s barriers.
Now that I had [Venerated Saintess], my holy spells finally received the power boost that they desperately needed to become a good offensive element for me. Still, losing [Holy Amp] was annoying but it was just my luck that [Venerated Saintess] was essentially the same thing. Only, it could grow in levels and power.
The force of my spell showed the beam scorched the scales on Master’s left arm in his attempt to redirect it. Even if he was a fast caster, a mage still needed time. With his smile finally fading away, I could feel a shiver run down my spine as I knew it was time for him to become serious.
“Wonderful! Ever since that bandit Quest, our duels have always been intense enough for me to be forced to take out my catalyst! You have shown this old scale your power, young scale, but it’s about time for me to end this,” he announced as he took out a rosary from his robes. “Feel the might of the oceans, Hestia!”
Kuek … Hooooooo, oh boy! I suddenly felt an urge to just stop.
From this point onwards, the battle only lasted for a few more seconds. His rosary was a catalyst, an alchemical equipment designed and enchanted to support a mage. Not only could it decrease mana consumption, it could also boost the powers of his spells. He kept casting two spells to support his defense while conjuring two [Plesia’s Grasp] around me, forcing me to stop my spell casting and dodge.
Although I was getting used to this after consecutive losses against him, my inability to learn [Multi-Cast] to cast multiple spells at once meant that my momentum quickly faded into obscurity, before I was quickly apprehended by his spells. I was knocked onto the ground before having my tail and legs pulled up by water tentacles.
“Eeeek!” I shrieked as I was held upside-down, holding onto my skirt to prevent it from falling down.
“Phew,” he let out, calming down his breath as he gave a prayer to Plesia. “Another victory for me, Hestia. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to defeat you without my catalyst, especially with how much you still have to grow. Ha, getting [Chant Revocation Lv. 10] during training wasn’t enough it seems.”
He wrote down today’s duel’s results on a wooden tablet before throwing it towards Akast as a part of their luggage. He was always ready to document stuff down.
“M-Master Kushlek’zar, what are you thinking!?” I shouted as my face became redder and redder. “PUT ME DOWN!”
He stroked his chin for a moment, looking genuinely confused why I would raise my voice, until Tasianna explained it to him. “Huh? This is usually never a concern for saurian females, thus I thought nothing of it. Regardless, if I have offended, I apologize sincerely as my tail is my witness.”
Tucking his tail between his legs, Master Kushlek’zar gave a short bow as he released me from his spells’ grip.
Landing on the ground like a cat, I stroked my tail as I responded back with a pout, “Jeeeeeez … At least understand the shame of a young girl, elder scale …”
“Gahahaha!” Ignoring my blushing face, Krim-Slak, the muscular red carnosilian approached us. “The fights are always so even before Kush becomes serious. So, any luck with [Multi-Cast]? This has been your sixth duel with him with the same restrictions.”
I looked through my status board, half-doubtful that I had it, half-hopeful that I missed the System notification during the battle, until I could confirm which one was correct. “… Nah.”
“… Is that so? Unfortunate,” his partner Grazlahta commented with a frown. “Your efforts aren’t wasted though, young scale. A warrior pursues strength no matter how often one fails. Be proud that you’re able to fight Kush on even grounds. There is no shame when he is far more experienced.”
“Well, Lady Hestia did use her scale-dusts during that one attack … which isn’t really a spell,” Tasianna suddenly interjected, freezing me up as I realized this.
“Well, that is debatable as her scale-dusts are part of her body, although it is considered an ability to the System. Punches and kicks are not disallowed, after all,” Saori came to my rescue, before letting out a defeated sigh. “Although I am pretty sure you mentioned that you would only use your spells to defeat him. Using your scale-dusts will not give you [Multi-Cast].”
“Why are you two throwing me under the bus!” I shouted at my two friends, feeling betrayed by their backstabbing.
“Nevermind.” Master Kushlek’zar shook his hand, telling me he didn’t fault me one bit. “If we follow the rules of a mage’s duel one-to-one as the mage’s guild established, then it would be a bore. The winner is determined by the first hit. This is what a fight between mages should be, ha ha ha!”
This was why Master was Master to me. Even if he was a water mage, which meant I couldn’t learn any of his spells unless I invested in [Water Magic], I still could learn a lot of fundamentals and earn his knowledge. His flexible way of teaching was perfect for my wild, self-taught magic talents.
After all, after such a great sweat-inducing match, it also calmed me down enough for me to listen to his lecture. Instead of feeling out of energy, I couldn’t help but be excited. The fact I was allowed to call this established and wise mage my master, and he considered me his apprentice ticked off one of my goals as a mage. I had a mage master, I had a mage master, ahahaha!
In any case, once Master told me it was lecture time, I cast an [Air Shield] around us. Aaaaaand another part of our daily routines began! Go go!
“Hmm?” Master tilted his head as I sat down, unable to keep my face from smiling. “I really appreciate your enthusiasm, young scale.”
“And I the fact you took me in like this! I really thought you would run away after I told you everything, so I’m really glad I got to learn from you, Master!” I responded without hiding one bit of my emotions, causing the old saurian to turn his head away and cough, trying to hide his creeping smile. The old scale probably liked me calling him Master, I bet!
It really sounded like I was just teasing him, but I really owed him my gratitude. After what happened during the bandit fight, I did feel pretty guilty that I attacked him—an ally. However, he nor the saurians blamed me for it. It felt like a stone fell from my chest when even Grazlahta told me, “The life of a merc, young scale. Don’t worry, these things can happen, so it’s good it ended well.”
Once we reached the village, the first thing we did after the feast was to meet up with the saurians in the same spot where we first met them. At this point, our group pretty much trusted Master Kushlek’zar and his party enough that we practically divulged everything besides [Otherworldly Reincarnator] and the SP System. We even talked about [Venerated Saintess].
We wanted to keep the fact we were otherworlders to ourselves for now, since it would be too much to explain. However, the fact I was a dragon and that I was watched over by Aurena was put on the table. He already guessed I was a princess of Kargryx, so whatever, really.
Although, you should have seen Master Kushlek’zar’s darkish face when he confirmed Saori was a cadejo. It couldn’t be helped in the end that he desperately wanted to see our true forms, but the two carnosilians quickly interjected.
Frankly, the saurians were still curious why our profile still had “Information Blocked.” “It is something extremely personal, and we are only willing to tell you if you join our party,” I told them, shamelessly trying to recruit them to our party. I’ve grown quite attached to them, and it wouldn’t hurt to have more muscles in our party, right?
Of course, sadly, they had to reject it as their duties conflicted with our goals. It was an ordeal to explain to them what “idols” were and I had a bit of a hope that they would accept after seeing their reactions. Well, I guess the path of an entertainer wasn’t theirs. “Justice never rests.”
Even now, they couldn’t stay too long. They had to escort the non-Carine villagers back to their own village, while my party wished to stay here for winter and depart in spring. So whenever we could train with the saurians, we trained with the mentality it could be our last meeting.
Then again, one topic we had to handle before we split up was custom spell creation. After Shiterno’s little interference, I practically lost all my fire and inferno spells aside from [Symphonie des Feuergottes]. I tried to look through the skill shop to reacquire them but to no avail. Annoyingly enough, the moment I lost those two skills, I also lost my ability to create pure fire and inferno custom spells.
Honestly, considering he’s an Origin God, he’s pretty stupid as hell. Why would you steal away this ability of mine, you shitty fire god? Even [Divine Inferno] doesn’t grant any benefits to my retainers.
Anyway, due to this fact, I had to substitute my other spells now that my jack-of-all-trade fire element was gone. Two of our experiments included [White Flames] and [Corrosive Fire].
“Huuuuuuuh … huuuuuuuh,” I moaned as purple sweat began dropping from my forehead into a wooden bowl. “Huuuuuuh … compared to [Toxic Secretion], this is far too inconvenient. That bastard, honestly, doesn’t understand anything of how I was using my skill set.”
I scowled at the mere thought of the creator of this skill. That fire god was a constant reminder of all the pain I received from his “help.”
“Oi, young scale, we’re followers of Plesia but cursing an Origin God brings down bad luck,” Krim-Slak commented as he took out his amulet, shaking it in front of me as if he was trying to dispel a ghost. “You were chosen as God Danterno’s blessed, so you should be grateful.”
“Yeah, I could, buuuuut, I could also just continue cursing him.” My body was only filled with spite for that moron. “Don’t forget that Aurena and Kargryxmor blessed me. I have no idea what the gods are planning to do with me, but I’m currently leaning towards supporting the Goddess of Light. I even helped her reinforce the faith of Carine village.”
“Well, your little idol ‘performance’ did make the men pretty excited. I guess that is what you meant with ‘reinforce?’” Hearing Saori try to tease me only caused my flush to return, forcing me to hide my face with my robe’s hood. “Oh, it is about to overflow. Tasianna, you may cool her down now.”
I looked down at the cup of purple sweat nearly touching the tip of the wooden bowl. I nodded.
“Yes, Miss Saori. Please excuse me, Lady Hestia,” Tasianna uttered with a pleasant tone as she started cooling the air with a cyan magic circle, placing it behind my back to lower my body’s temperature.
As my body slowly cooled down, Saori took the bowl in her hand, identified it, and then handed it to me. “It is diluted but it is the real deal. [Corrosive Fire] has the same recreation feature of [Toxic Secretion].”
Identify.
One of our tests was to see if I could continue supplying Saori with venom and poisons, as that was one of her strongest tools in battle. Unfortunately, after losing [Toxic Secretion] I couldn’t just make new vials of venom upon request.
[Corrosive Fire] allowed me to create purple-colored flames imbued with toxins I could have created with its previous form. However, the flames were hard to handle as such, and needed me to mix the impurities with my sweat. Sadly, since I had a high heat tolerance, I had to literally overheat myself with rock-melting temperatures to reproduce it. As such, I couldn’t mass produce them anymore, or at least, as fast.
Not to mention, just like my scale-dusts, both of my new flame types also consumed Stamina to use. It was essentially a dragon ability in that aspect, and while they did bring some nice features, it really bothered me that I had to lose my fire spells for them.
It wasn’t like they were that hard of a nerf, really. While, yes, I did lose a ton of firepower and flexibility for this trade, I had two pretty unique skills to play around with now. Still, the Stamina part was a problem. My Stamina wasn’t nearly as high as my Mana. Spells suited me better, period.
However, interestingly enough, I could create custom spells with these flames. [White Flames] would create white magic circles like holy spells, while [Corrosive Fire] would create brown magic circles like earth spells. Although none of the test spells actually worked, it was good enough for me to know those skills allowed me to create some new spells myself.
After losing [Holy Magic], I also lost [Cure], the only way for me to remove status afflictions like poison and paralyzation. It wasn’t an offensive spell, but I absolutely needed it for my team’s safety. If I could create my own venom, then I should know how to neutralize them.
In essence, [White Flames] and [Corrosive Fire] were theoretically better than my fire spells in the long run. Theoretically, and only if I put the effort into using them. Master called these skills which didn’t have innate System spells but could allow you to create custom spells “empty vessel magic.”
Your intentions were nice, Shiterno, but your execution was horrendous.
“Hmm, how about ‘Holy Fire, rid their body of impurities. Purify them,’ and how about this letter? Oh, maybe write these runes like this and this?” I began drawing a magic circle on a wooden tablet, writing down Common tongue words on it. This was one of the steps to create a custom spell.
As I was experimenting with words to create a spell which could “remove physical status ailments,” Master Kushlek’zar, Saori, and Tasianna were documenting all my progress on their own wooden tablets with coal pencils. Funnily enough, it reminded me of a scene of scientists congregating in a single room to create the next scientific milestone.
Then again, it probably was fascinating to Master and Tasianna, since these two flames belonged to the “Unique Skill” category. Well, I hoped they were unique. Master did confirm some unique skills were shared with others. It was just insanely rare, since the System could create these skills according to the person.
While on a break, I suddenly remembered what I wanted to tell him. “Oh yeah, Master, I was just thinking about my unique racial skills. I think it might be a good time to evolve.”
“Hmm!” At the mere mention of “evolve,” Master perked his body upwards, stroking his plumage as his eyes’ focus intensified. “Oh, you bless this old scale. God Istari, I thank you for granting me this chance to learn, and Goddess Aurena for granting me the honor to meet your blessed!”
Blessed were split into Saints and Champions, but since I didn’t know which of them I belonged to, Master just called me “blessed” once in a while.
“Well, we have been in the village for a week, and besides a few wolves or goblins, everything has been peaceful,” I answered. “I know you wanted to see Saori’s and my monster forms … Too bad there are far too many ‘birds’ around.”
It seemed the appearance of small monsters like [Wind Raccoon], [Loopabit], and [Blight Rat] weren’t a rare sight around villages far away from towns. Their lord was supposed to protect them with soldiers during these times, even hiring hunters if a swarm appeared.
Feral grimgarians like goblins and kobolds were also a common sight, showing little intelligence compared to the ones I met in the Belzac forest. They honestly acted like idiotic, cantankerous beasts that had to be exterminated before they cause problems for my life … too bad they were rank Gs.
Monsters were either born naturally like other animals or they could just appear from thin air through the high mana concentration in the area. This phenomenon was called “monster spawning.” Pretty easy to remember. I’ve already noticed this, but the area had far less mana in the ground compared to the Belzac forest, meaning only weak monsters like these could appear.
Rank G and F monsters were weaker than humans, stat-wise, but that didn’t mean they were any less of a threat. According to Master Kushlek’zar, goblins and kobolds had insane reproduction rates, meaning subjugation Quests for them were near limitless.
“The ‘birds,’ huh? Yeah, damn pest,” Krim-Salk complained as he washed his tail with a damp cloth. “Anyway, Kush wants to stay around a bit for your evolution and our wards aren’t ready just yet, so you don’t have to fear anything during your evolution, young scale. We’ll keep watch with your companions.”
“So, do you mind sharing to us your evolution choices? Saori already gave us a rundown of how monsters evolve,” Grazlahta proposed in his usual stoic tone, taking a sun bath on a moist grass bed.
“Sure.”
__________________________________
Evolution
[Young Black-Wrath Dragon]
[Young Angel Dragon]
[Young Infernal Demon Dragon]
[Young Ragnarok Dragon]
[Young Lava Dragon]
[Young Magma Dragon]
[Young Volcano Dragon]
[Young Thunder Dragon]
[Young Arcane Corrupter Dragon]
[Young Dreadflame Dragon]
[Young Hellblade Dragon]
[Young Obsidian Blaze Dragon]
[Young Sunfang Dragon]
__________________________________
“Two choices—[Young Mana Dragon] and [Young Noxious Blight Dragon]—were removed but I wasn’t considering them at this point anymore. The new options are pretty good, I think,” I responded with a small smile, happy to see so many options.
“Have you decided? I personally would recommend you take one of the God’s chosen dragons, despite your grievances with them.” Master Kushlek’zar stroked his chin as he perused through the description I sent him via [Telepathy]. “I will not preach to you, I consider it more important that you choose your own path. I will, however, warn you that defying the gods isn’t a smart choice, Hestia. You should consider it an honor.”
This was how most Peolyncians would act, especially a “priest” like Master. I had already gotten used to it, especially after I gave that sermon.
“I understand what you are saying, Priest Kushlek’zar,” Tasianna suddenly responded with a firm gaze. “However, my mistress will follow down the path that she considers best. I will follow her and defend her choice, no matter what happens.”
“Don’t take it too seriously, Tasianna,” Grazlahta interjected himself into the discussion. “You lasses aren’t defying Goddess Plesia or Xohulotel, so we have no right to speak up. However, gaining the ire of a god is irrational. Why not take the power? Gods are, theoretically, not allowed to interfere with mortal concerns outside of through their blesseds. As such, they treat them very well, as Saints preach their words while Champions handle Divine Quests.”
I had told the saurians about me usurping the blessings from the gods, so I guess they were a bit worried I was becoming an enemy to the gods. In his own way, Grazlahta just told me the gods couldn’t exactly deal with me personally, but they could send their minions to harass me. He wanted me to avoid this situation.
I knew that, but I couldn’t help but feel exasperated by it. “Guys, it’s not like I’m actually doing this ‘usurping’ stuff on purpose. Maybe I did actively defy Danterno’s control, but I never did it to Aurena’s or Kargryxmor’s. Nevertheless, Tasianna is right. If I am to evolve, then I will be seeking the best option.”
After looking through the SP shop, I’ve accepted that finding a unique or special skill that could influence my evolution options was hard. There was also the case that my SP was low now, and I didn’t have enough to do anything substantial.
“Chill, though, I only thought today was a good chance to evolve, not that I will evolve now. We have a ‘birdy’ problem, after all,” I uttered before looking at my wolfkin friend. “Saori.”
She nodded before disappearing into her shadows with a “Sure.” We waited at the spot for a moment, enjoying our tea and lunch as we awaited Saori’s swift return. Eventually, Saori walked back into sight, dragging along four tied up men with her mana strings.
After I dispelled my [Air Shield], she threw them before us, speaking with red mist emitting from her blood-red eyes, “Four spies like always. They have been observing you saurians for a week now, but they have not gotten better with concealing their presences. Should I also bring the ones from the village, Hestia?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” I replied with a dismissive hand wave, before forming a smile as I greeted the captured men. “Now, how may I help Lord Helvas, gentlemen?”
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