Dragon's Wrath: The Cursed Returnee

Things got messy as they could when the bomber birds appeared. It was only natural, given that they could fly pretty high and attack from a decent distance. The crossbows could hit them even after flying upward for quite a while. The problem was the lack of confidence and the nervousness of the survivors.

"For the time being, you should focus on eliminating the treants," Emily said. "Leave the flying enemies to us."

"Understood," Maerys said.

Some of the Clannians felt pretty embarrassed by the fact that they couldn't do much against a flying monster. At the same time, three much younger kids decimated them in a matter of seconds. Fortunately, that feeling served well to make their spirits burn and give them the will to practice even more.

In the end, Ethan wasn't much satisfied with the progress they made that day. On the other hand, he was more than satisfied with the fact that Maerys and her people could use the crossbows for quite a while without running out of gas. That much was to be expected since they could fly using their winds and magic.

In any case, the Clannians needed more training to hit flying opponents, so Emily decided to help them with that. By firing some Fireballs at night, Emily could give them the perfect targets to hit. Besides, she could extinguish the Fireballs before they could hit and burn anything.

"My father sent his thanks for your hard work," Ian said after suddenly appearing alongside Anna. "Thanks to you, we mapped all the areas that we needed to map for this mission and also learned about all medicinal plants in this same area."

"I thought the conversation would take a few days in order for you guys to create a map of this entire world," Ethan said.

"We can do that later after we deal with the devourers," Ian explained. "Besides, the areas where the portals are usually found are extremely rich in mana. So, most likely, we will find all the information we need about this planet here."

That made sense, now that Ethan thought about it. The area of the castle where he was summoned was so full of life that he felt weird after exploring Hedo for a few months. It was all thanks to the high concentration of mana around the capital of the kingdom. Maybe that was also why they had to fight so many treants.

"We need to confirm a few things first, but we already know more or less what we have to do thanks to the intel we obtained from the survivors," Ian said, and then he picked a stick from the ground. "We are here… and the devourers are here in the north, south, and east. If we walk for a while toward the west, we will find the ocean, so we can say that we are currently surrounded by three very large concentrations of enemies."

"Your father already formulated the battle plan even before seeing the enemies' forces with his own eyes?" Ethan frowned.

"Well, yeah," Ian said. "It is okay, and we are confident in the success of this plan. Anyway, we will divide our forces into three groups. The mercenaries will take the devourers in the south, we will take the monsters in the north, and my father will take the one in the East. Once he finishes things on his end, he will help the mercenaries on the south, and if by the time things are over there, we didn't finish things on the north, he will help us."

Ethan imagined that Ian was joking, but Anna didn't say anything and just waited for Ethan's response. That battle plan was as simple as it was weird… in any case, it looked like those two had absolutely faith that their father, who had so little mana in his body, would be able to do that much on three battlefields.

"Whatever you say," Ethan shrugged.

"Still, we don't know for certain if the devourers will just charge at us mindlessly during the whole fight," Ian said. "Their behavior might change, so we can't let any unknown factors stand in our way. As such, before fighting the devourers, we need to slay all the monsters in this area."

"That is pretty simple," Ethan said.

"Yeah, of course," Ian smirked. "Still, I forget to mention that between us and the monsters in the north, there is a distance of 150 kilometers. We have to walk 120 kilometers to find the monsters in the east and one hundred to find the ones in the south."

That was a pretty large area to cover… even though their forces duplicated, it would take a few weeks in order to make sure that they would kill all the monsters in the area. Still, it was the time they would need to train the Clannians.

"I don't know for how long do you want to stay here, but I don't want to spend more than two weeks," Ian said. "So, I will come pretty much every day after school to speed up things."

Ethan didn't have a better option… it was a pity, but it was for the sake of completing the mission as fast as possible. After that, Ian and Anna left and went to their tents. The mission was going to last a bit more than Ethan expected, even though he worked hard to bring the survivors to a single place and even obtained their cooperation. That was unavoidable, but Ethan still could work and try to decrease that time as much as possible. It would be a bit troublesome, but he decided to train more seriously than before, and by that, Ethan would use every single moment to strengthen himself.

Closing his mind and body to the outside world, Ethan began to meditate, but he didn't stop there. He began to do something that he had avoided because that was a path with no return. Little by little, that summer day began to be constructed inside his head. Like pieces of a massive puzzle, the image of the interior of his previous school began to form inside Ethan's head. The year was ending, and he was about to become a high-schooler. And then, one day, a flash of light covered his entire classroom when Ethan had arrived too soon for the classes… in the next moment, he appeared in an unknown room. Around him, Ethan saw brick walls and a circle glowing in a light blue tone. That day, Ethan had been summoned to Hedo.

Congratulations! You learned the skill Zen!

Effects: It grants you the power to access certain moments of your life and make them repeat inside your head over and over again. It passively increases your Mana by thirty percent per level.

Restores your mana by three points per minute while the skill is active.

Lv 01 – 0/100

For learning this skill by yourself, you received one hundred coins.