I worry that I will not be able to soundly tell that my gift will trigger if just my sleepiness get dispelled, so I use my sword, pressing it against my thumb till there it starts bleeding, then just a little more to make sure there is a cut for me to tell if it is gone.

I then don't know what to do. I contemplate practicing my magic, still the two different spells at once elude me, but I don't dare in case my gift doesn't trigger and I run out of magic tomorrow. I've been casting read at my max range, which is about a thousand feet every 15 minutes or so while we travel, but I have kept what I think is a third of my mana left for emergencies, so I wouldn't have to omit it tomorrow even if the gift doesn't work.

I pass the time trying to guess what this world looks like from space. Either there is no sun, or it is completely blocked by the fog, only emitting a weak perception of light to slip through. But the temperature isn't changing. There aren't seasons, and no difference in heat between day and night. Probably between 60 and 70 °F if I had to guess. Where does the world get it's heat from? I also wonder if this is pointless. The world doesn't obey the rules of physics I know, I have already confirmed that with the experiment I did as a kid.

Soon the sky starts to brigthen. I dare not sit up, since it seemed like the guys at the clan did not want me to test this, I won't let them know. I stare intimately at my thumb.

Then, all of sudden, a wonderful feeling washes over me and the cut is gone in the blink of an eye, note just the cut, the surrounding dried blood too and I also feel completely refreshed. This gift has truly been great so far, but it got even better! In addition to the slightly drowsy feeling being gone, the hunger and thirst that had started to build is also gone. Do I not need food? Well even if I didn't, it would be tough telling whether ignoring it would have an effect on my growth or not, so let's not think about it and just eat when I can.

Thinking about it, I have never really been hungry in the morning here, but I always forced myself to eat some, since I remember hearing something about breakfast being the most important meal of the day or something like that.

After that, people slowly start waking up and organizing themselves. We fill our canteens in our own water barrels and drink and snack on the dried meat. Kamas brought our own, but he was allowed to stash it with the others, since it was easier to carry and we march on.

After some time walking, I walk up to Atna, who distanced herself a little from the group and looked at me.

"Thanks" I say in a low voice. "With this, I can grow even stronger."

"Hmph, be grateful that I want to surpass you at your strongest" She says. How beautiful is this? Last night, I thought about our duel, how she pierced my shield with ease, and how it would be the form of competition and unfortunately not racing.

"Older sister Atna, if I may ask, how did you pierce my shield at the duel?"

"It is my gift. I can use it some 15 times a day, but the number is still increasing. It allows me to pierce anything, but only for one thrust, and it has a little delay before I can use it again. How did you move so fast for the counter?"

"Huh? I just used bestowal magic on my legs?" I answer, thinking it would have been obvious since she knows my gift has nothing to do with it.

"A-as I thought. How did you manage to learn it so young? I hear one needs to graduate from the magic academy in the capital to use bestowal and creation, and that should take at least five years"

"I was taught by my foster mother. My gift also gives me extra mana so I can practice a lot more than regular people."

"Your foster mother also had a gift?" It is quite unusual for people of close relation to each other to have gifts, since it seems random and is only about one in a hundred people who have it.

"No she was a dryad"

"A dryad? Living among humans? Wasn't she scared?"

"I can understand uncomfortable, but why would she be scared?" I remember hearing most humans don't like other races, especially the women since they interfere with their God's directive.

"You haven't heard about the massacres?" eh? Massacre? I show a confused expression and use it to beg her to elaborate

"I can see that you don't. I hear that if you kill someone with a mana vessel, while you yourself have one, you will be awarded with part of it, growing your own mana vessel. This apparently led to hunts and killings of dryads some hundred years ago, when a faction of dryads remained neutral in the great dragon war".

"The great dragon war?" I actually don't remember any history being taught to me, maybe that's just a thing rural hunters don't care about?

"You really are a country bumpkin, huh? Very well, let this great older sister teach you".

And thus I learned about the dragon wars, a series of conflicts that took place a hundred years ago. Dragons are few and breed incredibly slowly, but sometimes a young dragon will get cocky. Apparently dragons usually live in the dungeons, in order to satisfy their enourmous appetites. Young dragons are supposed to fly far from home, finding an unused, suitable dungeon for their own, but sometimes they will end up thinking "Hey, there is a perfectly good dungeon here, and I am not allowed to use it just because the humans do so, that's ridiculous" and take up residence in a dungeon used by humans. The dragon's consumption of ressources will starve any settlement it live by, so the agreement since time immemorial has been that humans should deal with it on their own, ousting or killing the impertinent young dragon.

But once it was different. The perpetrator was the off-spring of the dragon king, which offered a large sum of wealth for only ousting it and not killing it. Apparently dragons are super rich because they can harvest materials while hunting for their food, never using much of it. The king of the nation the dragon had taken up residence in accepted, and a stern order not to kill the dragon was issued to the party going to fight it.

One man, however got greedy and killed the dragon after it was beaten, seeking the increase in mana it provided. The king was furious. He tried to make an apology to the dragon king by offering the perpetrator, all the gifts returned and a personal apology, but the king would not have it. Apparently the king thought that one dragon is worth at least a hundred humans, so the king should offer as many lives, but the king was not willing to sacrifice the innocent and so a war started.

The humans were losing as the dragons were terrifying in war, not only due to their magic and massive strength, but also their mobility able to easily flee should they judge the odds were against them. To combat this, a special group of gift users were formed, but the king feared they would not be enough. Hence, they sent an expedition to the far away lands of the dryads to ask for an alliance, but the dryads declined, remaining neutral.

It is said that the party then killed dryads by the thousands. At first only those who had not taken on human form, using magic to identify them, but the other dryads resisted by the killing of their brethren and a full-scale slaughter of them took place. Using this newfound power, the special corps completely overwhelmed the dragons in a large attack and finally took a significant victory.

Both sides tired from war, and now both thinking they could lose ended up signing a peace treaty. The terms of the treaty included the new rule that any dragon taking residence in a dungeon in human lands would not be spared and would be isolated from all support from other dragons by the dragon monarch in order to avoid the full-scale conflict again.

The special corps became known as "The Dragon Slayers" And were immensely respected and took up various positions in the country and nobility, but the last one died before Atna and I were even born. Once the history lesson had ended, Atna and I ended up chatting naturally until the time to make camp once again came.