1019 AD, 1st Month of 12, Heiankyo, Japan, Planet Sky
It's been two weeks now since Uehara lost his consciousness. Not being able to take it anymore, Chizuki chose to go to the daimyo's palace to check on Uehara again.
As she flew high in the sky under the moonlight, her thoughts couldn't help but run wild. She'd been having nightmares from that night every single day and each time, she couldn't imagine what would've happened if Sakura hadn't come. She was well aware of how indecisive she was and it clawed at her every time.
As she got closer to the little house, she slowly began landing. Standing outside the door, she politely knocked.
The door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman with long red hair and black eyes.
"Minamoto. You are two weeks early."
Chizuki almost frowned at being called "Minamoto" but she lowered her head slightly.
"Please allow me to see my master, Lady Murasaki."
Shikibu looked at the woman before her. Sakura had always complained to her about how Chizuki was always together with Uehara. She never paid much attention to the words of the girl she treated as a granddaughter.
But seeing Chizuki in front of her, she could sense the troubled chakra hidden behind her calm facade.
Sighing, she retreated a few steps back.
"Come in, girl."
When she was presented with the way in, Chizuki was tempted to run inside and look for her master but she held herself back.
"Thank you, Lady Murasaki."
Walking in, she turned right into the first room. Peeling open the curtain, she was surprised to see that Uehara was covered in a bone cocoon. Fortunately, she knew it was a defense mechanism that he had told her about. However, she desperately wanted to at least see his face.
She placed her on the cocoon and she felt her chakra being drawn. Shikibu sensed the transfer of chakra and she was surprised.
[He didn't react at all when I channeled my chakra.]
Her eyes glowed red for a moment.
[Ah, I see. Soul connection eh? And it's stronger on the girl so she is the one who initiated it.]
A little smile formed on her face before she spoke.
"You do realise this little boy is a demon, right?"
"Yes."
Chizuki answered with no hesitation.
"I see. If you know, then it's fine."
Shikibu didn't press the subject any further, but she was amused.
[A human and a dragon. How interesting. Really interesting.]
In the meantime, Chizuki had never removed her hand from the cocoon. A few seconds later, the bone cocoon started to retract. Soon, it revealed a tiny dragon cub barely twice the size of a ruler, curled up in a foetal position.
It was sleeping peacefully and the sounds of its breathing filled the room. Seeing Uehara like this, Chizuki finally couldn't control her emotions anymore as she caressed him.
"Master. Y-you're okay."
Gently picking him up, she placed him on her lap and ran her hand all along his bone spikes while another hand gently scratched under his chin.
Shikibu was amused at the site before her. Seeing how the injuries on Uehara had completely diminished, she smiled.
[I never expected that the little drake would recover this quickly. But he should've woken up by now.]
…
Inside Uehara's mindscape, his training never stopped. After learning the hand-signs and how to combine them with other elements, it was now time for him to rectify his failures.
Standing in front of him was Volkarin who was about to guide him.
"Although fusing complimentary elements like fire and air is easy, fusing opposing elements is far more complicated. The closest thing you could get to a fusion between fire and water is creating boiling mist. That is why, you will need an intermediary element. If you want to fuse fire and water, you will need earth or air. If you fuse water, earth and fire, you will be able to create obsidian. With air, fire and water, you will be able to create smoke."
Uehara furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.
"I can understand smoke but won't I get obsidian from earth alone?"
Volkarin smiled as if he expected the question.
"For obsidian, I said 'create', not 'manipulate'. Just using earth chakra, you can pull obsidian from underground but that is manipulation. Watch."
Volkarin began weaving hand-signs.
[Dog-Ox-Tiger-Pig.]
After he finished weaving, he opened his hands and a small block of obsidian formed. He dropped it on the ground and it sunk inside.
"Let me show you smoke. You can create all kinds of smoke. If you're skilled enough, you can even create poisonous or even explosive smoke. Watch."
Facing away from Uehara, he began.
[Bird-Dog-Tiger-Pig.]
Puffing up his cheeks, he blew out a plume of black-grey smoke that slowly grew massive. Gnashing his teeth once, a spark formed and very soon, a large explosion occurred. The explosion was so powerful that Uehara started to worry for his mindscape.
After the explosion subsided, Volkarin turned to Uehara.
"You have seven days to learn this."
"..."
Uehara didn't have any tears left as he walked over to the cleared section by the stream to begin his practice session.
…
It had now been three weeks since Uehara had been unconscious. Chizuki had never once left his side for an entire week and Shikibu didn't chase her out after finding out about the soul-link. Sakura did come by every once in a while and she would train with Shikibu while Chizuki never left the room.
Shikibu was astonished when she saw Sakura's increase in control over the fire element. When Sakura revealed that she had learned it from Uehara by melting ice-filled craters on a remote island, Shikibu became interested in seeing the place.
When she also raised the question of wanting to see where Uehara lived, Chizuki had given her a flat "No". When she saw that Sakura was also on the fence, she didn't push the matter any further since she understood that dragons were very territorial.
While the week passed with peace and no notable events for them, the same couldn't be said for Uehara.
…
"You finally didn't kill yourself son. Congratulations."
While the week for Chizuki and the rest outside was peaceful, Uehara faced 'death' at least thrice a day for the last seven days. Volkarin always forced him to improve his chakra control before teaching him a new elemental technique.
After frequent failures of nearly blowing himself to bits, poisoning or boiling himself to death, Uehara learnt a new succession of techniques that were added to his repertoire. If it wasn't because Uehara wasn't in his mindscape where he was close to immortal, Volkarin wouldn't have left him be to experiment with different elements.
With him now successfully having let out poison mist from his mouth without poisoning himself, Volkarin brought a close to the training session.
"You've learnt all the hand-signs, learnt how to merge several elements and have now reached my standards. Now, I want you to take this time to decrease the number of hand-signs you will need to use to nil."
Uehara felt like collapsing on the ground and giving up. Before learning hand-signs, his techniques were quite simple. Yes, he could utilise all four elements without hand-signs but he when he had to combine two or more, he would need to focus more to use his chakra.
Before falling unconscious, the only elemental fusion he could use without much thought was wood, which was a combination of water and earth, and that was after years of training. Now with the existence of hand-signs, he could fuse elements much faster but Volkarin had realised that it would become a crutch if he didn't stop him soon.
"Don't look at me like that. You brought this all on yourself. I wanted to wait for you to reach the fifth path before slowly teaching you to fuse the elements without over-relying on hand-signs. But since you tried to do so prematurely, I have to give you something to keep you busy for the next few years."
Uehara sighed in defeat.
"Yes, father."
"And another thing. Don't neglect your darkness element too much. I understand you wanting to learn the four elements and their deviants first but don't neglect your natural affinity. You're a dark dragon. Don't forget that."
"Yes father. I understand."
"Good. For this week, we're going to focus on your scripting. Since you can already weave hand-signs, it's time to put them on paper. By the end of this week, I want you to be battle-ready. This means, you must be able to script on the spot and launch poison mist."
Recalling how long it took for him to script on the rusted sword, he shuddered.
"I…understand, father."
Grabbing his shoulder, Volkarin smiled.
"Don't be so sad son. This time, it will be much harder than before. And if you complete it, I will teach you the hand-signs you need to summon a contracted entity."
(AN: On 2023/02/23 20:00, there was a wide-scale power outage that led to a crisis that lasted almost a full day,and only ended on 2023/02/24 17:30. Then there were regular power outages that lasted from 20:00-00:00 and then from 02:00-06:00 and 10:00-12:00 today on 2023/2/25. I hope this will explain why I wasn't able to update on the previous day.
I'm very serious about this work and there's absolutely no chance of me dropping it. I've invested too much time into planning this work of mine to drop or start slacking off on it. I hope I will continue to get your support as always and a big thank you to those that leave their comment. If you like this story, add it to your library and recommend it to your families and friends.
Thank You)