After finishing lunch with Tristain, Owari went home. When he was on his way there he actually ended up running into Rebecca who seemed to be on her way to his place. “Oh thank goodness I didn’t come when you were gone and I couldn’t reach you.” Rebecca seemed relieved.

“They want to meet you tomorrow at noon. They’ll be buying you lunch again.” Rebecca spoke fast.

“Alright, lunch is fine by me.” Owari felt he would have a lot of lunchtime meetings in the future. He might as well get used to it.

“Thank goodness. They seemed quite mad, even before I said anything.” Rebecca sighed.

“Why?” Owari was confused as to what would make them mad.

“They already knew one of the members threatened to kill you. It was in the report they received.” Rebecca explained. “Even if you hadn’t sent me to schedule a meeting they would have come to you.”

“Alright. Well now that the meeting is set up all is well. Now I know they were serious at least.” Owari mentally noted that the agency was handling things professionally, at least they were now.

“Well I have work to do so now that I’ve delivered the message I gotta go.” She bolted as soon as she finished, not even bothering to wave.

Owari stared at her back as she left and waved for the heck of it before going back to his room to study for a bit. When the time came he went to visit Lance who was luckily available. As always he went into the neatly decorated room and found Lance relaxing in one of the chairs.

“Hey there, long time no see.” Lance smiled as he pet his thunderbird who was perched on his arm.

“I see you two are still getting along. Yeah, I had a terrible week. I’m sick of explaining it though so let’s skip it and say it sucked. How was your week?” Owari would have to explain again tomorrow so he skipped it. He was much more relaxed around Lance so there was no need to use it as a conversation filler.

“Pretty boring honestly. I hunted down an ogre, it was quite strong but it died easily once me and Valkyrie worked together.” Valkyrie was probably the name of the thunderbird as it squealed happily after hearing it.

“I bet it was easier to take down with a spear which can pierce deep. Ogres have high regeneration in their skin but weak insides.” Owari was as well informed as always.

“So you know about ogres too?” Lance didn’t seem surprised. “It was easy with Valkyrie paralyzing it and me stabbing it. It was almost too easy. I should have left Valkyrie out of it so I could practice.” He seemed to really regret it.

“There’s always next time.” Owari just laughed. “It’s nice to see that people are getting out more. I bet you all feel cooped up in here all the time.” Owari knew it was the case since Lance and Noel always complained about it.

“Yeah, I got to do some serious practicing while I was out there, it’s fun to just let loose you know?” Lance was quite satisfied with his week.

“Of course, there’s nothing more enjoyable then a good fight.” Owari enjoyed fighting immensely. Especially when he was pushed to his limits.

“I wouldn’t go that far but it definitely is enjoyable.” Lance on the other hand was more reasonable.

“It’s all a matter of preference.” Owari replied.

“I suppose it is.” Lance nodded.

“So are things still awkward between you and Rebecca?” Owari asked with some interest.

“Not really. Luckily when we got back she started to calm down and stopped teasing me. That was quite surprising.” Lance wasn’t nearly as calm as Owari, and he was not at all experienced with girls.

“I thought you said you’d try to put yourself out there and find a girl.” Owari smirked.

“I did, didn’t I?” Lance seemed to recall. “But I’m not sure. It just feels awkward to approach a girl that way. “

“If that’s the problem then I suppose you just have to wait until it happens naturally. Or until a girl approaches you.” Owari threw in the last bit to make fun of him.

“Maybe I’ll just wait for the annual party. If I reach gold rank before then.” Lance sighed.

“Party? Why do you need to be gold rank?” Owari was curious.

Seeing that Lance smiled, it was the perfect bait. “Every year anyone under the age of 20 who reaches gold rank is invited to a party held by the top-ranking families and agencies. Anyone that young and that high ranking is considered a genius after all. Even independent hunters are welcomed, in fact one reason it’s held is to recruit such people. It also acts as a way to bring the geniuses together and ignite their competitive natures.” Lance explained casually.

“So basically it’s all about politics.” Owari smiled.

“Yes and no. It’s also a way to meet people. After all, building connections regardless of if they are casual or business is important for anyone.” Lance decided to explain in a way that might give Owari a more favorable opinion of the event.

“Well either way I’m not gold rank.” Owari chuckled.

“You’ll reach it within a year or two, I figured I’d give you a heads up. It takes place at the end of January every year.” Lance sighed, this time would be his last chance, he had been stuck at high silver for a year now.

“Well I hope you succeed. I’m not sure if I’ll make it this time.” Since it was at the end of January it was still three months off, he wasn’t sure if he could break the barrier between silver and gold rank before then, though at the rate he was going it was certainly possible.

“I hope so too. It would majorly boost my standing in the agency. The reason I got transferred to such a dangerous place was in the hopes of me finally being able to break the barrier using the danger as a catalyst. After all with Valkyrie here they have high hopes for me.” Lance pet Valkyrie as he spoke.

“I bet they do. When she is fully grown she will be able to fight on par with a lesser dragon. How did you even stumble in on that?” Owari thought it was ridiculous to just accidentally get a thunderbird egg and hatch it.

“I bought her as an egg off a traveling merchant. He only knew it was a magical beast egg of a bird type beast. As for me, I’m a falconer so I was interested in a magical beast who was a bird type. Obviously I bought it, when it hatched and I found out what she was I was terrified. Luckily she seemed to imprint on me and a few weeks later I turned 16 and branded her.” Lance told the ridiculous story.

“It’s no wonder people say luck is also a part of strength.” Owari couldn’t help but think of Noel’s grandfather when he heard the story. He had to agree with him in this regard.

“No kidding. If not for her I would be painfully average.” Lance spoke humbly. It was still impressive to reach high silver rank at his age. After all, most mid to late twenty-year-old independent hunters are around that level.

“Then you just have to train harder than anyone else.” Owari however didn’t see it as being humble. He was already about to catch up to Lance, so that meant Lance still had more potential to tap into.

“I plan on it.” Lance laughed. Normally when he said that the other person would say he was being humble, but not Owari.

“Maybe we should go on an expedition together one day. Now that I’m catching up to you that is.” Owari decided to put some pressure on him.

“I intend to make that gap wider before then.” Lance smiled confidently.

“If you ever plan on going on an expedition just call me up and if I’m free I’ll join you. Most of my expeditions are gonna be boring surveys and will only get interesting randomly on occasion. I don’t usually go looking for trouble.” Owari usually only ran into unexpected threats. It was the unexpected nature of them that pulled out his real potential. As for his last expedition Noel took care of all the enemies so he had been bored.

“I’ll take you up on that offer one day.” Lance said seriously. Every bit of help is worth taking when it came to safety.

“Right.” Owari nodded, he had a vague idea what Lance was thinking.

“It’s getting to be about that time. I have some finances to balance for the month. This is the worst part of the month.” Lance sighed.

“Alright. I’ll see you later then.” Owari stood up and left with a wave, it was as simple as that. No need to drag things out.

“See you later.” Lance answered as he too got up and prepared to get back to work. He on the other hand did drag things out and seemed reluctant to go back to work.

Owari left the building and thought about what to do next. In the end he just went home and studied some maps to determine his next business venture. Looking at some of the maps he had bought he narrowed down a place only one days run from the town. Hopefully this time he would be lucky. Though considering he found a vein of ore so close to town he doubted it. If he did find an aquifer worth turning into a well it would make this area one of the most valuable in the world.

He went to bed early that night and woke up the next morning without a single dream. When he woke up he went straight back to studying. He found another place to check out that was two days away. It was in a different direction of the ore vein. With his speed he could run about 100 miles in two days so it was far enough away that he felt it wouldn’t be too weird to find one. However he still chose the closer one first just in case.

As he was thinking there was a knock on his door. When he checked it was Marcus, the same person who represented the agency before. He opened the door and looked at the man calmly. Marcus sighed and spoke first. “Let me start by apologizing on behalf of the agency.”

“At least you know you need to apologize.” Owari shook his head. “Let’s talk about it over lunch.”

“Alright.” Just like that they made their way to the restaurant and ordered their meals. “We were planning on compensating you. What do you think?” he asked as soon as the waitress left.

“As long as you make up the difference in pay I gave up for that supposed protection I’ll call that even. Also I don’t know if they told you but they also abandoned me to die at one point against a high silver ranked beast.” Owari threw out the last part just in case.

“They did not tell us that.” Marcus showed surprise.

“I don’t blame them since there were six high silver ranked beasts. However there were two members I have to point out. The woman in the group started the expedition before we even left by flat out insulting me. There was also the guy with the rapier threatening to kill me. Both of them seem like liabilities for your agency.” Owari said this casually, as if he had no ulterior motive. He really didn’t, he laid it clear out in his opinion. They should be fired.

“We already planned to fire the man, but how bad was the woman? She has ties to our organization so she isn’t as easy to deal with.” Marcus sighed. There were three reasons they valued Owari’s cooperation; his mapping skills, his relationship with the Orion Tradecenter, and because of his talent. Owari had recently signed on another contract with the Orion tradecenter for 30% extra profit on materials sold and the contract lasts for a full year. Unfortunately they didn’t think they needed nor had a right to disclose all of that to such low ranking members.

“She insulted my strength as well as my appearance. They should have been told of my strength as a mid silver ranked hunter yet all of them, especially her, had discounted that as being false. She was the most vocal about it.” Owari was willing to pull back a bit if she was tied to the organization.

“Would it be alright if we just punish her and have her go through some etiquette training?” Marcus sighed. They really were in the wrong here, they couldn’t afford to try and take the lead and negotiate too much or they would definitely lose Owari.

“That’s fine. As long as she stops being a liability to you then it’s a win-win.” Owari accepted this concession easily. After all he really would prefer his allies to be stronger.

“Alright, that’s a relief. As for the pay we can make up the difference like you asked.” Marcus nodded, this should be enough.

“That should be the end of the serious talks. I don’t have any more complaints, unless you have something you needed.” Owari sat back a bit being more relaxed.

“Not particularly. We wouldn’t be so bold as to ask something from you after that debacle.” Marcus smiled wryly.

“Then let's just relax and enjoy lunch. I take it this is on the Sapphire Agency and not on you right?” Owari asked curiously.

“It’s on the agency of course.” Marcus chuckled, seeing where Owari was going.

“Then there’s no need for hard feelings here over who’s paying. How about we just relax and get to know one another better. Who knows, we may meet again in the future.” Owari smiled, not hiding his intentions at all.

“Sure, that sounds fine to me. Who wouldn’t want the chance to befriend a rising star?” Marcus also didn’t hide his intentions. He had long figured out the type of person Owari was.

The two talked over lunch and left on good terms. When he got back Owari started to study other topics as he brushed up on the various things he needed to know such as magical beast ecology and affinities. It was a fruitful day. For the next four days Owari pretty much stayed in his room studying. It had been a while since he really took the time to devolve into new subjects. Now he was studying how to identify herbs and their various properties. There was a difference between magical herbs and plant or fungus magical beasts. One could be tamed and the other couldn’t. It was as simple as that.

On the seventh day he spent the whole day going out with Noel before he left. He planned to go out for four days, two for traveling, one for scouting out locations for a well, and one for training. It was about time he did some real training. Especially after he had started to work on a mystic art technique. After the day was over he got a good rest and grabbed his things and prepared to make his way to his destination. He was just lucky that his salamander could pull the cart as fast as he could jog. This allowed them to make really good ground as both had large amounts of stamina. As a mud affinity magical beast the salamander shared some of the endurance of an earth affinity beast and vitality of a water affinity beast making it especially good at endurance.

After arriving at the location Owari took a careful look around. It was a field that was at the base of a large hill. The geological data that he could find for the area suggested it would be perfect for having an aquifer. He immediately began his surveying of the area to check for good spots. He used Fang’s mud skills to dig holes just like before. It was very useful.

It was a few hours after they had begun working when something interesting happened. Owari found a mid silver rank magical beast. This wasn’t a big deal for him since he was also middle rank, but he decided to leave it up to Fang this time. He had been teaching Fang all kinds of tricks and was hoping it would be able to go from being low silver to mid silver by using them.

The enemy he chose for Fang was a boar. Their tusks and hide sold for a decent amount, and it was even an earth type making its hide even more valuable. Fang understood Owari’s orders and immediately began to follow them. It also wanted to test its strength. It was a lot like Owari in that it was obsessed with growing stronger. It couldn’t wait to test its new tricks in an actual fight.

Fang opened his mouth and formed a ball of mud, however this time the mud was rotating as Fang fired it. The mud quickly thinned out into a spear shape and slammed into the boar with more force than ever before. However it didn’t do a ton of damage. It would bruise the boar at most. What it did do though was piss off the boar. It immediately rushed at Fang without a second thought or any tactics.

Fang flashed brown and suddenly the ground around it became mud which he slid across to the side dodging out of the way of the boar. As the boar stepped in the newly transformed mud it slipped and face planted into the ground. Fang didn’t bother shooting it again after seeing how ineffective that was. The boar stood back up and shook the mud off its face. It seemed totally unharmed.

Fang flashed brown again and more ground became mud. The boar turned and rushed him once again, and again Fang slid to the side. The boar didn’t face plant this time though. Instead it changed direction slightly by kicking the ground allowing its back leg to kick out towards Fang’s head. However fang suddenly sunk down and dodged. He then dived into the ground seemingly disappearing. However the truth was revealed as the ground around the boar slowly turned into mud causing it to sink. As it was fighting the sticky feeling mud Fang suddenly popped up underneath it and slashed its soft stomach open making it start to bleed.

The boar jumped forward and tried to kick back at Fang’s head but the salamander had long disappeared back into the muddy ground. The ground in the area slowly became more and more muddy. This was Fang’s greatest weapon, it could turn the battlefield into an enemy, and could even hide within the ground.

Fang jumped out of the mud and crashed into the boar as it tried to run out of the muddy domain. The boar slipped due to the sudden impact and rolled over. As it skidded to a stop the mud around it suddenly rose trying to form a dome around it. The boar got up and tried to push through one of the mud walls, succeeding. However soon another mud wall popped up in front of it and causing it to lose its footing once again as it crashed through. Again it skidded to a stop and again the mud tried to cage it in.

Unfortunately for the boar it was too stupid to do anything but charge and kick. Neither of which did much. It did have a magic ability, but all it did was increase the strength of its charge by giving it more weight. When it tried to use it here it ended up sinking a foot further down and tripping even harder. At least it was smart enough to know not to do it again.

The fight turned into an endurance exercise as the two sides tried to wear one another down. But this was a fight that Fang was predetermined to win. Since he had both toughness from stone and vitality from water he was able to last a long time and recover quickly. If it needed rest it could just stay underground. Meanwhile if the boar rested it would sink down and drown. The boar eventually ran out of energy after an hour of running around and collapsed. The area around that was muddy slowly turned back into dirt as Fang came back up looking exhausted. It was also tired after such a long battle.

Owari pet him as he made his way over to the boar and stabbed it in the head to put it out of its misery. After that he had Fang clean it of dirt and mud and then he took it apart. He made stew on the spot and fed the rest to his moth and Fang. The three of them enjoyed their meals together before getting back to work. The rest of the day was as boring and uneventful as the first chunk of the day.

Owari didn’t find any spots good for a well much to his disappointment. At least he had the boar materials. He also finally had a chance to train again. As he stood in the field only a little way away from the highway he swung his sword to get a feeling for it again. He was using one of the basic swords he brought along to see how much stress his technique put on the blade.

As he swung his sword he used the full strength moth wing strike and kicked up the wind around him. Seeing this he nodded his head. It was clear that he could use this version of the technique with a regular blade now. With that in mind he held his sword steady and swung it using the same technique. This time however he stimulated his mana and metal affinity and let it flow into his sword and out into the air. This time however he mentally proded the mana to flow more efficiently.

As he swung his sword the air around his blade came to life with silver energy. Instead of the typical roar of his moth wing strike, this technique screeched like metal grinding on metal. As he swung out the silver wind released itself at the height of his swing at about 90 degrees of motion and went flying. The silver wind didn’t just fly like the silver arc of Owari’s opponent from long ago. Instead it seemed to roll over itself and left a trail of dispersing energy.

Not long after being released the energy turned in the air and followed an arc before it ran out of energy. Overall the distance was a bit pitiful, only about three meters. However that was why he was out here training. He swung the sword a few more times trying to get the timing down. He found that as soon as he pulled his sword back to finish the swing the silver wind would be released. Theoretically he could artificially release the silver wind by pulling on his sword early sending it flying.

Another thing to note about the silver wind is that it curves after being released. Owari tested it and found the earlier he released it the more it would arc. To extend the range on the other hand was the hardest aspect. To do that he needed to apply more force into the attack and also use more mana. One thing about this technique was its versatility in regards to mana. In theory he can use any amount of mana he wanted to power it. It was an arduous process to perfect a mystic art technique, but Owari felt it was worth doing. He already had an idea for what to do with his mud affinity.