(Oct 16)

There were several soldiers laying on the ground.

They seemed to be unconscious, but their bodies were twitching and shaking rampantly as if they were having a seizure.

On closer inspection, they were bleeding out of their ears, foaming out of the mouths and their inner magic was scrambled and messed up.

Looking over, I saw Mona on her knees, doing CPR on one of the soldiers on the ground or something like that.

‘What… was going on? What happened here???’ I thought to myself.

I rushed over to Mona and asked her what was going on, but I didn’t expect Mona to suddenly start yelling at me.

“YOU IDIOT! Don’t you, ‘oh what’s going on’ me! Get your fucking ass over here and help me stabilize these people!” Mona barked at me the moment she noticed I was here.

I was still confused, but it was obvious these soldiers were in bad condition as they literally looked like they were having a seizure or as if they were being electrocuted.

I quickly kneeled next to a random soldier who was shaking on the ground unconscious and pressed down on his chest.

I’ve been taught basic CPR before, but I wasn’t sure what to do in a situation like this.

“Their magic is messed up! CPR won’t help, you have to rearrange their magic back to normal!” Mona explained in a hurry.

Sure enough, the soldier’s magic were jumbled and messed up just as Mona had said.

Normally, a person’s magic flows naturally and evenly throughout their entire body, similarly to how blood flows and circulates through a person’s body.

But the soldier’s magic was going crazy, moving wildly and out of control causing their entire body to shake violently.

Their situation was really bad, they were slowly dying. Their magic would’ve cause their entire body to overload and shut down.

It’s like if all the blood in your body suddenly went in reverse and in all directions, or if all the oxygen in your lungs and body started violently rotating like a tornado inside of your body. This situation was similar, but it was with their inner magic instead.

There wasn’t enough time to go look for help or a locate a medic, so me and Mona needed to save them ASAP.

I needed to forcefully calm down their magic or else they’d die.

I’ve fought to kill before, but this was the first time I had to save someone’s life directly.

I didn’t even have time to be nervous though because all of this happened so suddenly, and a moment of hesitation could cause their deaths.

I placed both of my palms on the soldier’s chest and push down slightly to try to stop the shaking.

Through my hands, I was able to sense and feel his internal magic rampaging around in his body.

After injecting a bit of my own magic into his body, I slowly was able to stop the magic from moving around too much and tried to untangle all the unstable magic flow in the body.

This process was very similar to dispelling and reversing a magic spell.

Back when I had returned home, my wife has a sleeping spell put on her and I tried to dispel it.

Trying to stabilize the soldier’s internal magic was along the lines of that, and so I had a bit of experience.

When I tried to dispel the sleeping spell that was placed on my wife, it took me a long time and mentally drained me.

However, since then, my magic control has improved considerable.

Minutes passed, which felt like hours, and I was finally able to calm down the soldier’s magic and returned him to a neutral unconscious state.

But there were still several other soldiers who needed helping, so I couldn’t be relieved just yet.

Mona and I worked together to stabilize all of the soldiers.

When we were done, I plopped to ground sweating.

Controlling magic to save someone’s life, was a lot more difficult and mentally taxing than using your magic to attack someone.

My respect for healers and medics just increased.

Thankfully, no one died. The soldiers were still unconscious, but they weren’t in a critical life or death condition anymore.

Once I was able to take catch my breath, I started thinking.

What the hell happened here?

One moment, I was fighting Mona and then out of nowhere, people were dying from their own magic going out of control?

Something must’ve happened… but what?

Glancing back at the unconscious bodies of the soldiers, I noticed their ears were bleeding.

If their magic was simply out of control, it wouldn’t have caused their ears to bleed… so what caused the bleeding and what caused their magic to go crazy in the first place?

That’s when it hit me.

When I finally realized what happened, I felt a heavy sinking feeling in my stomach.

Fuck…

This was my fault…

I caused this…

I was naïve and dumb.

“You finally realized what happened now? A bit late…”

I just shamefully nodded to what Mona said.

Indeed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

The cause of the soldiers suddenly having a magic overload and nearly dying was because of my super dragon missile attack from earlier.

When I launched my dragon missile with the dragon’s jet and web essence combined, it broke the sound barrier and sent a powerful shockwave traveling throughout the forest.

However the shockwave contained my dragon essence in it, due to it being made from my dragon essence.

Now that I think about it, the dragon missile’s shockwave caused my eardrums to ring, it clouded my magic senses temporarily and even caused my entire body to temporarily go numb.

I was the one who launched the dragon missile, so obviously I would have natural resistance to my own attack and I’m also quite a powerful B ranker, but even then, the magic shockwave was powerful enough to affect me.

Now what if those same shockwaves were to hit a normal person that doesn’t have any magic resistance…?

It would explode their eardrums and the sudden impact from a dragon essence imbued shockwave would cause all the magic in their bodies to go wild.

A similar analogy is if you take a glass of water and you tap the side of it, the water will slightly ripple… but if you take smack the entire glass of water, it will spill over and break, comparably to this case where the glass cup is the bodies of the soldiers and the water is their internal magic.

Long story short, this was all my fault that these soldiers almost died.

I should’ve known… after the recent events, I should’ve been more careful.

I knew that my dragon essence was dangerous, and yet I still recklessly used it.

Since when did I become such a battle junkie? I was so immersed into the fight, I forgot to think about the consequences.

“Thankfully no one died… that was pretty stupid of you though.” Mona bluntly said.

I totally agree.

“I’m sorry, I was stupid.”

Mona just shrugged her shoulders and let out a sigh.

“Let this be a learning experience. Imagine if this had happened during the day of the subjugation of The Grinch, that would’ve been disastrous. In a way, we should be glad you made this mistake now, so you won’t make this mistake in a more crucial time.”

I just nodded again without saying anything, a feeling of guilt eating away at me.

I just felt like shit.

It was a mistake that could’ve ended an innocent life.

But then Mona put her hand on my shoulder.

“Honestly, I’m not even surprised that this happened. Most A rankers train for years upon years, most take decades to get to where they are. But because they grow strong over a long period of time, they have time to adapt to their own strength.

You, however, are growing at such a fast pace, you don’t have time to fully comprehend just how strong you are compared to those around you. You’ve only been hanging around monsters like Briggs and William who warp your sense of strength.

A word of advice from a veteran A ranker; take a long break and observe your surroundings, take time to realize your own strength in comparison to everything else. You’re too caught up in training yourself, you fail notice things around you.”

Mona gave me some genuinely good advice (which I’m now writing down before I forget) that I will probably try to follow.

“Ya know Mona, when I first met you, I thought you were cold and strange, but you’re quite nice.”

I genuinely complimented her and Mona just slightly blushed before turning away.

“Thanks… I guess…”

Tsundere?

Well, that was sort of unexpected.

Mona started to walk away, but she stopped for a brief moment to say, “I’m glad someone strong yet innocent like you still exist.”

“Me? Innocent? I don’t think I’m innocent, I’m a middle-aged man with a kid afterall. I already lost my innocence.”

“I already know that, I’ve saw what you did to your wife while she was unconscious… ahem. But that’s not what I mean by innocent. Most people who become powerful, like us A rankers, we tend to change… we’re not the same people as who we used to be.

We become numb and desensitized to the sight of people dying and getting hurt. Seeing you, is like seeing myself when I was younger. Don’t change Anthony, stay innocent. Don’t be like Briggs.” And then Mona left.

I don’t fully understand what Mona was saying, but she seemed sad when she said that.

I’m also not sure why she mentioned Briggs at the end.

Does she have some sort of complex relating to Briggs? They did seem to have a strange relationship with each other…

To be fair, they are both potential candidates to be the next successor to the throne and are competing for it, so I guess it’s not that weird.

Right after Mona left, a gunshot was fired in distance, which indicated the end of the capture the flag match.

My team had won, as Alisha had destroyed the enemy flag while I was dealing with Mona.

Even though we won, I wasn’t exactly happy.

Mona called for help and gave medical attention to the soldiers who needed it after the game.

And that ended the capture the flag match, in the most unsatisfying victory that we could’ve achieved.