Chapter 21
He coated the dragon fang with mana, sharpening and reinforcing the weapon until it shimmered faintly in the mountain light. Facing the cliff, he swung the blade without putting in his full effort. Though he stood several meters away, the displaced air from the strike hit the cliffside. Pebbles broke off and tumbled down the face, bouncing against previous cracks. The area echoed softly with each impact, showing signs of how often it had been used for practice. Ash narrowed his eyes, keeping all his focus on the sword.
He concentrated on maintaining the mana flow into the weapon without overloading it, a delicate balance that required constant control. He repeated the swings, not for power but for focus, training himself to keep a clear connection with the weapon while manipulating mana. The dragon fang hissed lightly through the air with every slash, stirring the wind and sending thin dust clouds drifting off the cliff base. Broken twigs, loosened soil, and small rocks around his feet showed signs of continued motion and disturbance.
Ash continued this exercise for hours, each motion measured and deliberate. His arms moved with precision, his breathing steady, and his mana control unwavering even as the environment around him grew quieter with fading light. Eventually, the shimmer on his blade weakened. His muscles felt heavy and his mana reserves thinned until finally, his dormant mana was depleted. Without complaint, he turned around, the frost returning to his breath, and walked back to his campervan.
Inside, he sat down, posture firm despite his exhaustion, and closed his eyes. The warmth of the van offered little comfort as he began his meditation. Outside, the wind howled gently across the scraped cliff wall and scattered loose debris, evidence of his hours of training. The dragon fang sword rested against the wall, faintly pulsing with residual mana, waiting for the next round of practice. This was Ash's new intense regime, while he waited for the crack to form and a monster to appear, he would practice his extension, which he was already good at.
This continued for days, with another crack forming, and this time, a flying centipede came, which pissed off Ash to no end as it flew around everywhere, and harassed him from the sky, but he eventually killed it, increasing the mana density of the area. He continued to practice extension, until on the fifteenth day where he had to stop using the dragon fang as it was getting easier to not overload it. Ash decided to increase the difficulty of the test by using a stone rod, which again tested his control. He shattered the stone rod every swing.
The next day, the rod only shattered after the fifth swing, and the day after that it shattered under the seventeenth swing. His practice continued to improve as no crack was formed yet, but the mana continued to funnel, meaning that a new crack was about to form. Ash's control over his extension had become refined to the point where he could imbue a nail with mana and not burn it up. In fact, he liked imbueing mana into nails which he launched at things, but before it left his hand, he would overload it with mana, creating an exploding projectile with added shrapnel.
The main takeaway was that his extension had considerably improved, to the point where Ash could even infuse his campervan with mana. This actually allowed it to go faster, be more durable, and the heat inside became warmer, making life more comfortable. The snow and cracked dirt around the van had long since frozen over, forming a ring of clear, impacted ground from the constant mana vibrations. His van's metal surface would shimmer lightly whenever he focused mana through it, showing the depth of his control. Ash's environment reflected the growing changes around him.
Ash could now be considered at the peak of the third stage, which was one of the requirements he had set for himself in order to advance to the fourth stage. The other requirement being that he had enough mana to increase his core upon stabilization. The battered cliff walls bore heavy scars of endless practice, with deeper gouges forming along the surface. His stone rods were now mostly intact after practice sessions, breaking only after many swings. The mountain air grew heavier, saturated with mana, and yet Ash remained focused, inching closer to his goal with each passing day.
That day had finally come as another crack formed, and inside the campervan, Ash opened his eyes with a sharp breath. The steady hum of mana vibrating through the frozen ground outside was a familiar song now, but today it carried a heavier tone. He rose to his feet and picked up the dragonfang sword, its weight feeling natural in his hands as he thought, "So it's finally time." The environment outside had shifted, the ground closer to the forming crack quivering faintly, dust and frost vibrating off the stone in tiny puffs.
Ash arrived at the crack location, the usual spiral of dense mana circling like a whirlpool into the air above it, creating distortions and ripples visible to the naked eye. He gazed at the phenomenon with a growing excitement and a trace of nerves, thinking, "Can this technique really do the damage I want it to do?" The crack widened violently with a tearing sound, and from it, the monster emerged — a crystalline blue dragon, smaller than normal but armored in ice, its lance-like tail twitching dangerously. Around them, the snow shifted as the dense mana thickened the air like heavy syrup, pressing down against the earth.
Ash raised the dragonfang sword high above his head, The surface of the ground beneath him cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern from the pressure, pebbles and frost being pushed aside by invisible force, he actived his mana, his eyes glowing white as a result. He then funneled all his activated mana into the dragonfang, causing it to glow blindingly, humming with an unnatural sharpness. As the dragon charged, muscles tensing to spring, Ash thought only one thing — "Cut." He brought the blade down with a clean, perfect motion, body rigid like a taut bowstring snapping, after all, he had been doing the same exact motion for days on end, for hours without break, it felt natural to him.
The swing was smooth and absolute, the dragonfang carving through the air not by force but by sheer control and mana density. The space before the blade compressed, pulling the air into a sudden vacuum, and for a split second, time seemed to halt. When the blade reached the ground, the earth didn't break from the sword itself but from the wave that followed it — a silent ripple of destruction that raced forward. The monster froze mid-charge, eyes wide, as the ground behind it split apart into a deep, razor-thin ravine, snow and dirt exploding outward in a clean line stretching far behind it.
The sheer air pressure from the swing sent a violent shockwave outward, flattening the surrounding snow for meters and making loose stones dance and skip away. The cliffside in the distance shuddered visibly as the invisible cut struck it, a deep vertical gash appearing with a crack that echoed across the mountain valley. For a heartbeat, there was only silence, then the dragon's body separated cleanly in two halves, its crystallized blood sparkling mid-air before both sides hit the ground and dissolved into mana. Ash stood still, the dragonfang buried lightly into the ground, surrounded by a ruined, altered landscape — a single strike that had rewritten the terrain itself.
Without a single particle of dormant mana inside his body, he sat down right where he was to meditate as he employed his breathing technique, inhaling and holding it for seconds and exhaling for 5 seconds.
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A/N well, its time for another GUESS THE MONSTER, this time i didnt spoil it unlike the last time, so you can have a go at it, and yes, ash developed his own technique, well, its a simple set of motion now, but it would evolve eventually.