AN: Hello, your lazy author present you chapter 21 :D . Enjoy!

PR by Zenla, the royal proffreader

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Kerrina was very happy for Aenthar when he reached disciple rank in alchemy. She always knew he was an amazing boy, and she was proud of him, and proud to have him as a friend. He had to leave for a week to get his card and certificate, and she was eager to see it. The day he came back, she had been hunting. When she reached her home at dusk, she heard the terrible news.

On their way back, Roland and Aenthar were caught in the attack of Carduc village by a big group of bandits, but managed to escape. They rescued a girl along the way. She heard that Aenthar had to fight for his life and killed a few bandits, and that he was the one who saved the girl and carried her all the way back. She wanted to go to him immediately, but her father stopped her, telling her that Aenthar didn't get hurt, but didn't sleep at all and needed rest.

She relucantly obeyed her father. And after all, she didn't want to give him trouble after what he went through. Her father praised him for remaining strong minded in front of such violence, and making good use of his abilities to save not only his life and the life of his father, but also the life of a girl in a terrible situation. He said that now he believes even more that Aenthar will become a great man in the future, and he was happy his daughter would be by his side.

Her father isn't the kind of man to praise people much, that's why each time he praised Aenthar, she was happy. That evening he praised him more than usual, and with his last words, she got really happy she decided to follow him.

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The next day, before dusk, she went to see him with her mother, brother, and Namir. Namir is a single woman, a farmer, who is very kind and gentle. She liked her very much, she thought of her as a big sister, kind of. She was so happy and relieved to see Aenthar safe, then she looked at the girl he saved. She saw in her eyes that she was hurt very much, and she felt that she had to help her just like Aenthar helped her, she will be her friend.

She heard he did something good 2 days before, yet he surprised everyone again by noticing that Arren had magic ability, he could even guess how strong it would be. Kerrina was once again impressed by that friend of her, and grew to like him even more.

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The girl he saved was a bit shy and quiet, but Kerrina didn't mind, she grew to like that girl. She was happy to teach her about what she knew, and about things Aenthar taught her. The girl, Muriem, seemed to like it when she talked about him, so she was happy she liked her friend that much. She got happy when he suggested her as a teacher for Muriem. That meant he trusted her, and that also meant she could spend more time with her.

When they started to train together, Kerrina got a little uneasy. She saw that Muriem really liked to be close to him, and that he didn't mind at all. She started to get a little jealous because they would spend more time together, and during those times she would always be close to him or clinging to him. But she didn't hate her. She knew she was a nice girl, and that it was normal for her to like someone as good as her friend. But it was still a little annoying.

One day, he braided her hair and she looked really beautiful. Kerrina was really jealous at that time, but before she could say anything, he did the same for her and praised her. That made her really happy, he wasn't forgetting about her. She got happier when she received the necklace from him for the new year. She realised she would always be cared for, that she would never be left behind by him. She slowly started to really love him.

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The river was around 15 minutes away from the village. I didn't go there often because the water is quite cold, just once in a while to learn how to swim again. Later, on some rare occasions I would use the water resistance to train my punches and kicks. Because I didn't go there for fun, I always went when there was nobody around, I didn't want to be distracted. However, I decided to go there more often, and with both Kerrina and Muriem.

At first, it was to teach them how to swim, something that would undoubtly be useful later, but after seeing Muriem in her wet clothes clinging to her skin and revealing more clearly the shape of her ass, my priorities changed a little. I would sometimes use the valid excuse to train in the water just to see her wet afterward. When we were done with the training, we would play in the water for a little while. More time for skinship with the girls.

During my personal training, I would often try to reproduce some moves I've seen in my past life, moves that were from movies or martial arts mangas that looked realistic. I could imitate many of them, and practiced to improve them. More diversity in my hand-to-hand combat ability is welcome. Me and my old desire to be able to deal with anything...

I decided to add little things to Muriem's training as well. Capoera's offensive ability is mostly based on kicks, so I taught her palm strikes inspired from chinese kempo, karate chops, and elbow strikes inspired from Ong Bak. Those moves are good to avoid damaging the wrist and the fingers.

I also taught those moves to Kerrina of course. I made them stretch a lot because I also wanted them to be flexible, more swift in their movements.

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During the later half of my 10th year, I started to teach Muriem how to hunt, so 2 or 3 times per month we, along with Kerrina, would leave for a day and a night. She wasn't that good with the bow, but I didn't mind. It was mostly because I wanted her to know a bit about how to survive in a forest, but it was also a good excuse to spend time with just me and the 2 girls, and snuggle together at night. Muriem was used to sleeping with me, Kerrina was not, but it didn't take long for her to completly get used to it, she was fine on the second trip.

Around the same period, Kerrina reached magic maturity, however her magic ability is low. She can use magic in battle, but only at the right time. I gave her a few pointers to help her feel mana, and told how to practice meditation. I would secretly use magic near her to help her feel mana. She succeded after around 40 days, which is good, on average it take 60 to 80 days for someone to feel mana.

It took Arren 90 days, he was both proud and jealous, but obviously more proud than jealous. He had affinity for fire, body and holy while Kerrina had affinity for earth, body, nature and darkness. I taugh her all I knew about earth, body and nature magic, which wasn't a lot, but It wasn't a problem since we would be going to the academy. Arren wasn't half as good a student as she was, but he had become much stronger. He joined the adventuer guild after I was done teaching him.

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Since mana is present in all things with varying degree of amount, I was always using my mana sense during my time at Old Johrgard smithy. I was trained to identify and recognise differents kinds of ores and metals, and I greatly concentrated my mana sense on them to try and identify them by the mana within them. That right, it's something I discovered through the year. Depending on the nature of the object or the being the mana resides in, the ratio of the differents elements change. The difference was clear enough between organic and inorganic, but afterward the real troubles start.

If I could remember and notice these differences clearly, I would be able to identify materials without seeing or touching them. I want to be able to find hidden useful or valuable materials while adventuring to gather funds. Mythril, corundum, orichalcum, ebonite, moonstone and malchyte. They are the most coveted metals, crystal and stones in this world, and the hardest to work with, mostly wasted in the hands of people below master rank. Old Johrgard had a sample of each of them, the size of half a finger.

There are spells to help locate things, but they are advanced spells and there are things you can't locate if you don't have the right affinity. My mana sense bypass the need to wait to learn the spell, and the need to cast it, no waste of time and mana. Thanks to my mana sense I could feel more clearly the state of the materials we were working on, and made me improve faster. Later I would use it on alchemy as well, and try to reproduce some materials from my old world or their counterparts.

During the winter of my 10th year I got to the point where I could only distinguish metalic ores from non-metalic stones, but it made a significant difference. Once a week I would go to the river and spend some time searching for ores, and I slowly gathered a bunch of them. They were very small and the amount of metal in them was low, but dutifully gathering them would bring me a noticable amount of money later.

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AN: Kerrina, still 8/10 hearts, but the ninth one started blinking... :D