Noel quickly dodged as another tail slap came her way. The ground was gouged out and a large amount of dirt and debris was kicked up from the strike. She didn’t shy away from such power, and when next the attack came she rushed forward full speed and met the attack head-on. It was never her style to dodge around the place.

She lifted her arm and sent out a punch infused with earth mana clashing directly with the jade mana of the serpent. A loud crack occurred as both energies smashed each other to bits, however Noel’s lost out more as the force of her punch ended while the snake was still striking with its tail. However a moment later the sonic boom occurred and stopped the tails movement completely. The two attacks canceled one another out.

The snake was shocked, but Noel had figured out the strength of the snake’s attack beforehand and had judged it wasn’t any more powerful than her own attack. After that she used her movement technique to close in on the snake and placed her arm back and sent a haymaker at the snake’s body. The air around her fist warped and when she struck the snake nothing seemed to happen. However a moment later the snake started to squirm as if it was in pain.

After the first strike Noel didn’t stop. She used the same technique a few times, seemingly testing out the different positions she could use it from. A jab here, a kick there, and even an elbow strike. It seem it was a punch exclusive skill, however its power was devastating. Owari guessed it would send the force of her strike through the external body and attack the internals directly. It was an armor bypassing skill.

Soon enough the snake lay dead with blood gurgling from its mouth. Owari jumped down lazily and walked over. “Congratulations. You managed to grow your skill. I take it that new skill of yours was just created now?”

“Yes. I could not break through its armor with normal strikes, and the piercing attack I can do wouldn’t reach deep enough. My only option was to find a way to pierce its defense. Then suddenly I thought of something while clashing with it. What if I didn’t not only focus on piercing its defense and simply ignored it altogether?” She said proudly.

“Impressive. Only someone with your affinity could pull that off due to the control needed.” Owari praised her, causing her to puff her chest out.

“See? I can grow through danger as well.” She smiled confidently.

“So you’re ready to face a platinum beast?” Owari chuckled.

“I don’t think so.” Noel faltered.

“Alright, let’s rest for today and hunt again tomorrow. We just found dinner after all.” Owari gestured to the snake.

Noel tools some spices out from the cooking pack. “I learned a few things about cooking magical beast meat from some books. Apparently some spices made from magical herbs and plant type beasts can bring out the affinity better. How about some spiced and vegetable mixed stew?” She chuckled as she prepared all the materials.

“As long as you’re cooking I could eat anything.” Owari sat in the grass and pulled out his mapping tools to write out the places they had explored today.

“Smooth talker as always.” Noel smiled and got to cooking.

Due to Owari’s presence none of the stronger and more intelligent beasts would bother them as long as he didn’t try to hide it. They ate and slept in peace for the most part and the next day they began traveling again. Owari even made a point of traveling by using his wind step occasionally so he could make it more instinctual. As he used it for the fiftieth or so time he finally felt a now-familiar snap in his mind. Suddenly his body glowed grey and green and he started to run on the air as if it was a solid platform.

After a dozen steps he jumped onto a tree and resumed his previous method of traversing while restoring the bit of mana he had just used to activate his new spirit art. “Did you get a new technique?” Noel asked from nearby.

“A new spirit art. It lets me treat the air as a solid platform as I please, allowing me to change direction mid-air as much as I like, allowing for perfect aerial maneuverability.” Owari explained, he didn’t feel the need to hide anything from Noel.

“Here I am without a single spirit art.” Noel pouted.

“You’ll get there.” Owari comforted her before they got back to business.

The day was mostly boring, they found two mid gold rank beasts and left them alone. One was a frog and the other a bobcat. They didn’t have a ton of meat and were small and annoying to deal with so they didn’t bother. The two beasts also skittered off as soon as Noel showed herself. They knew better than to face her head-on.

The next day was more of the same. It wasn’t until the day after that they ran into something interesting. Owari’s eyes shined as he locked them on a massive 10-meter long alligator sitting half inside one of the many pools in the swamp. It likely had evolved past the point of needing to use the rivers to feed. It was colored bluish-green, Owari guessed it had the water affinity and maybe a wind affinity. Either that or it was remnants of its original color.

However what interested Owari was the sense of danger it gave off. It was clearly more powerful than your average beast. This was what he was hoping for. He smiled and dropped down, openly challenging the beast to fight. The alligator turned and glared at him with its massive eyes before rushing him at incredibly high speeds. Despite the gap of a few dozen meters, it was on him in a mere moment.

Owari used the spirit art of his phantom step, dark speed step, to dodge out of the way. He appeared to the side of the beast and swung his blade colliding with the hard scales of the alligator. His sword bounced off as he hadn’t put much technique into the attack. However he had barely saved it from breaking. He had long since started using his original higher quality blade as a decoration at his place and used mostly average blades now since they were replaceable.

After having his attack deflected the alligator became more confident. It whipped its tail at Owari as it ran by but Owari ducked under the attack. The alligator turned around shortly after and opened its mouth. Owari had a bad feeling and used his spirit art version of screeching wing which he named silver wave. He put a decent amount of mana into the attack, at the same time the alligator’s mouth flashed blued and a whirlwind of water gushed out like a vortex towards Owari.

The attacks clashed closer to the alligator because of the speed of Owari’s attack. It seemed his attack had the advantage as it directly sliced into the water vortex and split it causing water to scatter in the air. His attack continued and sliced into the alligator’s mouth splitting it a bit on one edge as it titled its head on instinct. There was now a large gash in the side of its mouth. It had been foolish to believe that a water affinity attack could match a metal affinity one given that the metal affinity was known almost exclusively for its sharpness and destructive power.

The alligator wasn’t deterred by its new wound, as if it couldn’t feel pain its mouth flashed blue around the wound and visibly started to heal. Owari’s mouth twitched seeing this. Regenerators were the worst. He didn’t even have any fire techniques to try and seal off the wounds either. It was probably going to be one of those longer fights. Owari started to change his breathing for stamina and mana recovery. If it was going to be an endurance battle then he needed to be careful and ration out his mana.

The two sides stared one another down for a moment before Owari jumped to the side as the alligator rushed him again. A moment later Owari landed and did his own rush towards the alligator. Using the steel fang without enhancing it he was able to slice into the alligator’s flank and leave a deep cut down to the bone in its side. The alligator continued forward a bit and skidded to a stop before turning to Owari with rage in its eyes.

The wound flashed blue and began sealing up, the alligator seemed to have a toothy grin as if saying ‘You can’t kill me.’ Owari just smiled back, however his smile was filled with scorn and a hint of viciousness. Only a fool believes it’s immortal. Owari waited as the alligator opened its mouth once again. He merely used the basic phantom step to dodge to the side out of the way of the incoming vortex.

The alligator rushed forward at him again. However he used the wind step to jump up above it. After reaching above it he used steel fang to split its back leaving another massive gash. The two wounds despite being surrounded by a blue glow they had yet to truly heal. They were both still bleeding quite heavily showing just how deep they were.

Owari landed lightly on the ground and watched the alligator that was truly enraged at this point. Its entire body flashed blue and suddenly the ground around Owari swelled. Water burst from the ground all around him and tried to close in on him from multiple directions. He smiled as he realized his training not too long ago wasn’t in vain. He spun in place rapidly and used his vortex shield to block from all directions.

The water was sucked into the vortex, however Owari didn’t end it there. He continued his spin and used his wave shield using the water as an extra boost blasting a large fan of water at the alligator. It obviously didn’t care about this water, however Owari used the blocking of vision to use his dark speed step to appear below the alligator’s neck instantly and swung using his dark steel fang to split open its neck and separated its head from its body just like that.

Thus was the end of the fight. Owari stared at the corpse of the alligator with a smile. It truly was foolish. If it had moved as soon as they lost sight of one another instead of relying on its hide to take any hit he threw at it then it would have managed to make it away with only a wound. The fight turned out more boring than he had initially believed.

“Good job. I take it this one was only a low platinum rank?” Noel didn’t believe it was actually too strong, after all Owari made killing it easy.

“Should be, it was quite strong though. In order to overcome that water vortex I had to use a spirit art.” Owari made sure she knew it was stronger than it looked.

“I see, so it truly was a bit strong. I probably would have had trouble overcoming that vortex, though I do believe I could probably cancel it.” She was confident in her raw strength and stopping power.

“If that thing had hit me it would have hurt.” Owari was always a bit on the squishier side among those of similar rank. He can take a hit or two but if he gets hit too hard he would most certainly die. He wasn’t one to rely on such things to ensure his life. He would rather not get hit at all, though things don’t always work out that way. Luckily he had been training his defensive techniques as of late to fix this weakness.

“It would have probably hurt me a lot too.” Noel however had a technique that dampened impacts on her body and can take a hit much better than Owari. She was much more suited to raw combat than Owari who relied on skill and precision.

Owari began to cut up the alligator. “It’s too bad I left all my beasts back in Leviathan city. Now the only one left to eat all this meat is us and Scythe.” Owari lamented a bit.

“Luckily I researched how to create a concentrated broth so we can gain more affinity from meals. So this one had a water affinity?” Noel had watched from nearby so she saw some of the attacks.

“Seems like it.” Owari replied as he continued his work.

Noel left him to it as she prepared the cooking utensils. Owari would separate what they were eating from what Scythe was allowed to have. Scythe timidly ate his meal, not interacting with Owari at all. Clearly it wasn’t willing to accept him, but it wouldn’t turn down the meal. Owari laughed at the little guy and handed the meat over to Noel to cook.

They ate and continued their search for another three days. It was on the final day that they ran into another gold-ranked beast which Noel practiced on to check her skills and make sure she really was high gold rank. Once she had the two packed up all the materials they were keeping. Owari had skinned the alligator and carried the entire hide with him. He didn’t care how stupid he looked or how hard it was.

Soon they decided to go back to town since they would only be here a few more days. They figured they should actually spend their vacation by vacationing. The two made it back to town the day before they planned to leave. It was a chore paying to have the alligator hide shipped with them but it was worth the effort. There was a branch of the Orion Tradecenter here as expected. Owari used a special membership card he was given to get his usual discount and sold off the material. Of course he had to meet with a higher up to discuss the sale.

“So you killed a platinum ranked beast?” An older gentleman in his mid-forties asked incredulously.

“Yes.” Owari nodded and pulled out his hunter's license. “Is there a problem?” He asked with clear impatience.

“No no.” The man was startled by Owari’s license.

“Alright, so let’s discuss the price.” Owari got down to business.

“Alright what’s your asking price?” The man really wanted that material, but he also knew that Owari was in an exclusive contract with their agency and had nowhere else to go.

“35,000 credits.” Owari said lazily. He wasn’t in the mood to bargain.

“That’s a bit too much. As a contractor of the Orion Tradecenter you should know more about our prices.” The man said slyly.

“If you don’t want it we can take it somewhere else.” Owari smiled.

“You’re under contract.” The man knit his eyebrows and glared at Owari.

“Yeah, I am. She isn’t.” Owari pointed at Noel.

“That would still be against the spirit of our contract.” The man showed annoyance.

“So would trying to cheat me out of my proper pay.” Owari said calmly as he drummed his fingers against the chair arm.

“But still.” The man said with finality.

“Alright, then goodbye.” Owari just chuckled.

“If you go I’ll terminate your contract.” The man warned.

“Go ahead. Have fun explaining that to those in charge of your pay. You don’t have the clearance to tear up my contract.” Owari laughed out loud.

“What?” The man was confused.

“Do you not know who I am? I guess that makes sense considering we aren’t in the Leviathan territory. If I told you that most of the Orion Tradecenter’s mining industry set in the Leviathan territory is partially owned by me would you understand?” Owari smiled at the man with amusement.

“I don’t get it.” The man was still confused, but he didn’t want to relent.

“Alright. Have fun trying to get rid of my contract. You have to go through some serious channels to do so.” Owari stood up and left. Not everyone in this world was able to use common sense. The man should have given up as soon as Owari warned him by saying Noel could always sell it by proxy.

The two went to another nearby trade center local to the territory and Noel sold it to them for him. The whole time both Noel and Morgana could help but pity that man for the hornets nest he stirred up. The moment anyone from the board of directors heard what the man intended to do they would fire him on the spot. It was said board of directors who held Owari’s contract and in order to cancel it the request has to go through them first. As if they would terminate the contract because of a little thing like this. Especially since not only was Owari a platinum rank, but it was a Silverblood doing the proxying. That was killing two birds with one stone. Except the birds were golden geese.

Of course Owari knew this, so he wasn’t afraid. Even if they did terminate the contract his only penalties would be that he has to pay a large sum of money and could no longer work with the Orion Tradecenter since they wouldn’t trust him. However there were a number of other trade centers willing to work with him if the Orion Tradecenter didn’t want him anymore.

Soon enough Noel and Owari were walking around town enjoying the sights. “Where are we going next?” Noel asked curiously.

“South, to the Phoenix territory.” Owari spoke. “The main city is close to this one so we won’t have to waste too much time this time.”

“How close?” Noel asked.

“About six days travel by express train” Owari answered.

“That’s much more reasonable than a few weeks.” Noel sighed.

“Agreed.” Owari nodded.

The two walked around town for a bit and bought their train tickets before making their way to the inn and sleeping. The next day they were on the train and riding their way to Phoenix city. Owari remembered something about the city as they rode their train towards the city. If he recalled correctly, this should be the city his old friends moved to. He smiled as he thought this. There was no way he’d run into them there after all. It was too small a chance, it was a big city after all.

Owari and Noel arrived six days later which passed by as boring as usual. They were getting much better at meditation which was good news. The more they focused and let go of their surroundings the more mana they could absorb and the faster they grew. While it may not mean as much to Noel who had large reserves to begin with, Owari got a lot out of this. His reserves had gone from above average to being quite high for a hunter. He wasn’t sure what the average was for platinum ranks, but he knew he didn’t have as much as either Noel or Morgana so he practiced harder.

When they arrived they went looking for an inn and slept right away. It was late when they arrived so it was too much of a bother to look around town yet. Plus they wanted to get some real sleep for various reasons. It wasn’t until the next day that they got to see the city for real. The buildings were all designed with sandstone making them all brownish tan color unless the bricks were re-colored.

The buildings tended to be wider than tall, split into different sections for versatility, and mostly compact. This reflected the style of the southwestern badlands. They were typically monks who travelled only taking as much as they needed and not building permanent structures. Of course they still need sturdy material to make a lasting city, but renovations occurred often in this city. It wasn’t odd to see a house or office building undergoing a change of some kind either to make it more space-efficient or just to replace worn materials.

Owari and Noel walked around town observing these things with interest. After all it was all quite novel and interesting. Leviathan city had buildings built from durable bricks made from some of the toughest materials. It was rare for buildings in Leviathan city to need renovating, and it was a difficult task to do so. This lack of novelty or interesting traits was mostly because the city itself was new and didn’t have much cultural connections so there was no need to get fancy with it.

While the group of three was walking around they heard a commotion. It was at a nearby restaurant, it seemed some people were fighting. Owari and Noel walked over and observed. They easily pushed their way into the crowd as if it wasn’t even there. When they arrived at the center they saw two men were staring one another down, however both had weapons at their hips. It was a sword. Owari noted that one was an older man with a gruff look. The other was a teenager no older than Noel and Owari.

“Get out of here kid. You don’t want to mess with me today, I’m in a bad mood.” The man warned for the millionth time. He was especially annoyed by the crowd gathering.

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” The young man said defiantly.

“Of course not. But people go missing from their hunts all the time.” The older man smiled cruelly.

“What a threat.” The young man laughed fearlessly. “I’ll take anyone from your agency on any day. Even if it kills me.”

Owari looked at the older gentleman more closely and noticed a Howling Wulf insignia hanging on his belt. “Is that so?” The man said as if he didn’t believe him.

The young man glared at him and the tension started to rise. Owari and Noel looked and saw that the boy had no markings showing his allegiance to a group. Noel glanced at Owari who was smiling as he watched. Noel recognized that he was very entertained and smiled herself. It seemed this was an interesting matter to Owari so there was a high chance he would get involved.

As if to confirm her thoughts Owari walked over towards the young man. “You have a problem with the Howling Wulf Agency?” He asked with a curious tone, not at all hinting what he felt about the matter.

“Who are you? And so what if I do?” The young man became guarded at once.

“Butt out kid.” The older gentleman grew increasingly annoyed.

“I have a problem with them too. They’ve tried to kill me a few times. Of course they’re too weak to kill me so they failed. It’s quite embarrassing.” Owari ignored the man and spoke out loud so everyone could hear.

“You can’t prove that we ever tried to kill you.” The man refuted.

“Just like you guys can’t prove whether I had to kill your members or not.” Owari fired back.

“What’s your name kid?” The man knew all of the people he had tried to kill around here and this guy wasn’t one of them.

“Nobody you know.” Owari proceeded to ignore him again. “So what did they do to you?” Owari was more curious about the young man.

“You mean other than try to kill me? Some piece of garbage from their agency stole my girlfriend.” He was absolutely furious.

“Figures. Do you know his name?” Owari continued to question. The young man seemed to calm down ever so slightly from being hostile to being angry.

“Some asshole named Lucas. Why, you know him?” The young man crossed his arms.

“Of course I do.” Owari smiled. Perhaps the city was smaller than he thought. “Why don’t we walk and talk? There’s no need to consort with people like him. After all he wasn’t the one who wronged you. It’s important to focus on the problem at hand.” Owari thought that his vacation here was going to be quite interesting.