“Ugghhh..”, Satoshi woke up groggily, compliments to the headache that persisted through his unconsciousness.

"I don't remember drinking last night…" Satoshi joked to himself. He knew he had gone overboard in the fight earlier.

He sat himself up in a meditative pose and started channeling his ability to help himself breathe. He focused within himself and on the air in his surrounding as tried to filter out the most fresh parts of the air and pump it into his lungs. Using his ability instead of his muscles to inhale helped him fill his lungs to full capacity with every breath, clearing his head up in a matter of minutes.

"You dickhead. Could've simply burst its lungs, but noooooo. You just had to fucking play it all cool and lift that sac of tons in the air. Could've bloody died if that failed. Could've also died when you were unconscious….. I wonder if my luck is good or bad."

Satoshi reprimanded himself at his actions but a part of him was honestly satisfied at the feeling of revenge as well as the rationality of knowing some of his limits and consequences of his new ability.

Ignoring the slight pain that still lingered in his head, he seated himself and looked around.

"Uhh, who bathed me in dirt while I was sleeping?"

*Zhuuuuu*

A swirling wind dislodged most of the loose dirt on Satoshi but he would have to wash his clothes and himself to truly be called clean.

*pat* *pat*

"I guess this'll have to do for now.", He said as he patted his clothes.

He searched for any presence nearby. Finding none, he hopped off the branch he was on and flew into the clearing.

“....and uhh.. who took my trophy?”

The corpse of the beast was nowhere to be seen. The sunken earth and the blood trail following out of it made it clear that someone had dragged the corpse away and it clearly wasn’t the work of any animal.

“I’ll consider this as some of my debt repaid.”, he said into the air as he remembered the face of a certain well-buffed man with wolf ears.

Satoshi flew up into the sky. He had been out for hours and the sun was now setting. For a moment, he felt in harmony with the world as a natural gust of wind blew around him, tickling his skin. His face, dyed in the red of the sun, seemed content as he felt the massive atmosphere move around him guided solely by the laws of nature.

As he looked at the sun, all manner of thoughts flew out of his mind as he took a deep breath, purely through the power of his lungs. He opened his mouth in speech, looking at the sun, though addressing something beyond, something much more powerful.

“You’ve given me a second chance at life. I will not thank you for returning what I had once forsaken… But I assure you that I shall live this one free of all earthly shackles that bound me in my previous one.”

He extended his palm towards the sun, reaching out to grab it.

“No regrets.”

The wind, as if reflecting his emotions, swirled around him blowing back his unkempt hair as he continued to look into the horizon. And as if the moment had passed, the same wind turned him around as he again started towards his destination.

Thousands of miles away, an entity opened its eyes. It smiled in amusement towards the declaration that it shouldn’t possibly have been able to hear. It closed its eyes again in wait for the inevitable. The faint smile still adorned its face.

-----------

The dark of the night had descended by the time Satoshi arrived at his destination. The light from the now four moons was enough for the sky-dwelling Satoshi to discern that the place he had arrived at was big enough to be called a city.

"Achoo!"

*sniff*

"Ughhh.. I want a warm cosy place to live…"

The night was just a little cold but using the wind to fly prevented his body from accumulating heat, making the cold feel worse than it was.

With now a bit of experience in flying, he tried to optimize in terms of area of contact and speed. He had become good enough to do these experiments mid-air without risking falling to his death.

As Satoshi lowered his altitude towards the city gates, he noticed a bunch of humanoid presences; guards but clearly inhuman in features with hunched backs and long faces. He didn’t dare go closer for he knew not of their abilities. He decided to head inside the city and look around while it was still dark. He simply flew over the 3-meter high city walls and after a quick search for any presences nearby came false, descended on a house roof.

“I have a feeling infiltration is going to be quite easy from now on.”

From what he could tell in the inadequate lighting, the houses were very similar to ones that he encountered in the wolf people’s village. This strengthened his theory that there was some sort of trading going on between the two places. Though the houses here seemed bigger and a hunch told him these were also better furnished.

He flew from house to house in an attempt to locate one without any movements or breathing inside. It took him about 5 minutes per house. He was a little frustrated in the start, but it started to get faster when he got used to the similar architecture of the houses taking him about 2 minutes a house.

“This city is quite densely populated. I haven’t found a single empty house in 2 hours.”

It had already taken him quite a while to reach this place from the forest and wasting time was definitely not on his to-do list.

“My biological clock is yet to cause any complications since the very few days I’ve been here. Even if not same, I’m guessing the length of days here is quite similar.”

He estimated the time to be around midnight by his old standards when he finally found what he was looking for.

“His face lit up at the sight. ‘This is it!’, he thought.”

….He briefly stole the narrator’s lines before doing another sweep to check for any presence. Finding none, he flew up to see if there was any difference in this house and the others. By this time, he had been running on an auto-pilot like state so he didn’t care to look at the houses before his sweeps.

“Hmm... A little run-down, but otherwise no noticeable distinctions. And it feels a little lonely.”

He wasn’t talking about himself when he made the last comment, but the house. The house was located in a back alley and there was nothing around it that may hold or invite a living being near it. It was almost as if the place was used by some shady people before being abandoned. Perfect.

He tried the windows of the house, but they were all locked from the inside. Making sure there were no presences nearby, he descended to the front of the house and examined the door. It did not have a lock outside, but he still couldn’t get it to open.

“I’m sure there’s no one inside. How in the bloody crap of the shit piece of hell did anyone lock this fucking thing!?”

He didn’t know much about this world yet. They could have some kind of magical means to lock it, for all he knew. The idea of magic wouldn’t be too far fetched considering he could fly and create tornados.

“I have this intense urge to just bust this shit down. Unfortunately, I’m too smart for that.”

Even though he said that, he didn’t have an idea on how to proceed.

“Oh, I have an idea! Let’s bust this shit down!”

….If someone was around, they would’ve definitely commented on his arrogance.

Ignoring the conflicting statements he had just made, he proceeded to do his own thing.

*click* *click*

He started snapping his fingers.

..

And he continued clicking, but no sound came. He brought his hand near his ears with no difference. Success.

Satoshi took a step back as a blanket of air surrounded the house, acting as a barrier to prevent sound from leaking. He bent low as he drew upon the power within him.

“Kaaaa...meeeeeeeee……..haaaaa….meeeee…..HHAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

A bright burst of light consumed everything in its path, blasting away not just the door but the whole house, is something that did not happen.

*thud*

A strong wind did knock down the door and a very low thud sound reached Satoshi who was standing outside the barrier.

"Still room for improvement."

----------

*THUDD*

"!!!'

A being jolted awake due to a heavy noise as the world around him shook.

"What in the Volarian hell wassss that!?"

He looked about in apprehension and with Volaris’s blessing, nothing seemed out of place.

He hurriedly grabbed his cane from among the papers lying about and listened to... nothing.

The being made an expression equivalent of a frown as he wasn't able to comprehend the situation. It was clearly the sound of the main door being knocked down. He had personally reinforced the door and the windows of the house. It should've taken considerable effort to burst it open. He could count on one hand the people in the city capable of doing it and only 2 of them belonged to the military. And who other than the military would be looking for him?

But it was too quiet. If it were indeed the military, they should’ve been smashing down walls and floors to look for him. Yet, he couldn’t even hear creaks through the wooden floor from the intruder’s footsteps. It was as if someone had busted the door down for nothing more than their amusement and then simply floated in. Preposterous! There had to be an explanation for this.

Holding the cane to the front to intercept any attacks, the being made it’s way up. He opened the door to the upper level letting out almost no audible sounds and slipped past, still keeping the cane ready to attack at a moment’s notice. The door across the hallway that should have been broken seemed just fine, but it was hard to truly tell in the dark of the night. As he tiptoed his way over to check..

*creak*

The wooden floor welcomed his presence with a creak that seemed to reverberate in the eerie night.

“@$%*$ (oh, hello)”

The next thing he knew, a shadow appeared in front of him and waved its hand and produced a weird sound from its mouth.

(Intruder!)

The being recognized the entity in front of him as hostile with its weird waving action and proceeded to chant.

“Oh sssignore di u focu! Presstami a vosstra forzzza e disstruggere tuttu in u mio caminu!”

A fireball appeared at the tip of the cane. The ball of pure combustion half a meter in diameter flew towards the shadowy entity, threatening to devour everything in its path, only to lose momentum as the door fell once again letting in a strong gust of wind in its opposition..

“WHAT!?”

The few seconds it took for the fireball to extinguish were enough so that the two presences could take a good look at their foes.

On one side stood a dark-colored humanoid, the exact color hard to tell in the brief moment but probably a deep shade of brown. Even with a hunched back, he stood a full two heads taller than his opponent. But the most prominent feature that the luminosity revealed were scales. The humanoid was covered in scales in the visible parts of his body including his long face, thick arms and an even thicker tail. With eyes having slit pupils that shined yellow even in the dark of the night, it was clear he was of reptilian origin. He adorned a full-body robe on his body even darker than his scales.

On the other side, stood with a straight back an entity that resembled one of those beastkins, only, the ears were eerily round and at the side of his head…

“A HUMAN!? HOW DID A HUMAN GET INTO VOLARISSS!!?”

The human in question, unable to understand the inquiry just stood, whether waiting or thinking or preparing a spell, hard to tell in the dark.

"Oh ssignore di u focu! Mi presstu a vosstra forzzza forti! Uccisssi u figliu di una puttana!"

The reptile-man produced another fireball to attack the enemy. The fireball though the same size, was clearly much more powerful than the first one, evident from the waves of heat causing the ends of his robe to catch singe. Yet, for some reason the waves of heat seemed to dissipate before reaching the human, but this strange phenomenon went unnoticed by the reptile-man in his urgency to launch the fireball. And that is exactly what he did next; launched it.

“What in the world….?”

The reptile-man couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The overcharged fireball that would have been enough to blow away all the houses in the neighborhood slowed down and came to a stop in the middle of the two people. He finally noticed that the waves of heat were dissipating so rapidly that the rise in temperature was minuscule, inevitably causing the fireball to slowly diminish in size.

The reptile-man grit his teeth as he exerted more and more mana to try and regain control of the fireball, but no matter how much he tried, it didn't budge. It was as if there was an immensely thick cover of mana around the fireball preventing his to permeate through.

The human, unaware and uncaring of the reptile-man’s struggle and turmoil, casually walked to the shrinking fireball and started examining it with the shining eyes of a child looking at a new toy.

"Impossssible! I'm Dravosss, the greatesst magician in the ccity of Volarisssss! There isss no way my magic can be so eassily dominated! ….Unlessss…."

Dravos shifted his gaze down to the human's legs. Now that he was examining the fireball in close proximity, he was well illuminated and Dravos could clearly see that the human was missing a leg, yet he was standing naturally.

"No.. he iss floating.. chantlesssss magic..human.. that power… no way! You! You're an elemental! What iss an elemental doing here!? Why in Volaris'sss name would He ssend one of you here!?”

Right as Dravos finished making his bewildered inquiry, his eyes shot wide as the answer donned on him.

“But of courssse…... It'ssss me issn't it? It'sss me. Tell me it'sss me. It hassss to be me! Me, Dravosss. Yess, yess, it is natural. It iss obviouss. It iss unmisstakable. It iss undeniable! Me, Dravosss, one of the greatesst magiciansss to have ever walked in this mortal realm! How could it not be me? He hass ssent you here to fetch me. He requiresss my sservicesss. Oh I have been sso rude to one ssuch asss your disstinguished sself. You're not just a messsenger, but a proof! Proof that I am worthy. I shall obey. I shall sserve. Mine power may not be as dominant as one of thee, blesssed by Himsself. But I will risssse. I will.. I shall risse higher than I ever could have by my own sself. In Hissss care. In Hissss sservice! In Hisss feet. Yesss. I will work. I will do my utmossst to…"

*burst*

"...to..pleasssssse.…"

*Thud*

-----------

"How about you s..s..s..s..shut up? Shithead."

The fireball had slowly died out and Satoshi had been getting more and more annoyed by the lizard's rambling.

"And damn that felt good!"

Ever since the wolf-men's house, the urge to burst the lungs of a living creature had been eating away at him. The feeling of immense power he felt just by being able to perceive everything in his surroundings through the air molecules; was exhilarating. And when someone breathed those same molecules in, the instinct to prove them his dominance; it was nauseating. It had taken a lot of effort at Smirnie's house to control himself, but now that he could plead self-defense to his self-conscious should it ever bother him(it most probably wouldn't), there was no need to hold back.

"Now let's see where this guy was hiding."

---------

Next day early in the morning.

*Door opens*

"Sire! Karnos requires your permission to enter!"

"You're already inside the office, Karnos. And it is only 4 Demas in the morning. What is it that has gotten you so hyped?"

"Karnos begs for forgiveness, sire! But sire, this is urgent!", Karnos exclaimed with a salute as he stood in attention.

"Would you spit it out already?"

"Yes sire! 4 dead bodies were found dead in Block 12 of the South wing!"

Barkos, the mayor of the lizard-man city named after their Goddess, Volaris, narrowed his slit eyes.

"And I'm guessing this wasn't some random skirmish or work of some drunk hoodlums?"

"The bodies most probably belong to the terrorist group, Snakiens!"

"Ah, those plebeians who claim to be descendents of the ancient Lamia and go psss-psss. Anyway, four or five dead terrorists is no big deal."

"Sire, one of the dead bodies belonged to Sorcessor Dravos!"

Bam!

"WHAT!?"

Barkos stood up in bewilderment causing the wooden chair he was seated on to fall over.

"ARE YOU SURE IT WAS HIM!?"

The indomitable voice of the mayor made Karnos stand at extra attention.

"No sire! Karnos mean, yes sire!”

“Karnos, I’m going to kill you right now.”

Karnos felt a chill run through his spine.

“Karnos apologises sire! Karnos did not personally see the dead bodies! Karnos informed by Sire Lord of military!!!”

“My brother personally confirmed it?”

“Yes sire!!”

“What about the research?”, The mayor asked in a voice so cold that the temperature seemed to plummet at that question.

“Yes sire! It was all burntttt!!!!”, Karnos shouted as he closed his eyes towards his imminent death.

“DAMN!”, the mayor slammed his fist on the table in front of him.

“All that wait for nothing.”, said a third lizardman who entered the mayor’s office without permission.

“Sire!” “Brother!”

“Leave Karnos. I will discuss the rest of the details with the mayor personally.”

“Yes sire!”, Karnos disappeared so fast, one would’ve believed a pink alien snapped a golden gauntlet.

“Barkos, it’s true.”

“But without that research!”

“I know.”

“We let their charade go on for so long just to get our hands on that research! Our lifelong dream of attacking the beast kingdom, Domania!”, the mayor exclaimed with another fist to the table.

“I know.”

“Where was he killed?”

“Inside his house.”

“Inside!? Was he killed in his sleep? That would make sense. As crazy as he may be, there is no way he would lose in a confrontation.”

“He was killed in a confrontation.”

“Then somebody got the jump on him? Someone he trusted? A part of Snakiens?”

“I doubt it was anyone he trusted. The assailant broke through the main door.”

“But there’s no way that paranoid bastard would ignore to reinforce the building with magic!”

“The house was reinforced. The door still had lingering effects of magic from before being broken through.”

“Then how….. ?”

“All four bodies were killed the same way. It is the most bizzare thing I have ever seen.”

“No way…. Who could’ve….?”

-----------

*achoo*

*sniff sniff*

“Damn those lizards. Didn’t even let me get a proper sleep.”, a human complained to the clouds as he rubbed himself through the cold of the early morning.

*sniff*

“AHHHH! I’m going soooooo going to miss that fireplace!”