by Ryan Johnson
“What’s the matter? You scared?”
“I am too weak to move on,” snapped Valverno. “I spent all of this time trying to get stronger, but I am slowly healing. I would die before I could make a jump. And I do have my fair share of climbing walls: saving Freyya’s sides from a rockslide while trying to climb out a ravine they were trapped in. And I have yet to fully recover from my fight with that lion beast. So, I can’t go. Not yet.”
“As I thought, you don’t have the determination to make it pass this,” said Halvdan. “I see a strong will, but no determination in your heart. You’re nothing special to us, human dragon hybrid, even if you are a hybrid.”
Valverno shook his head and turned away. He began to walk away and spat from his mouth, sparks of embers flew from Valverno’s mouth. Heating embers burnt deep into the rock and melt the rock into a pressuring liquid like lava dripping from a volcano.
Everyone gasped with shock when Valverno spat out sparks of glittering fire melting into the rock. And he was as shocked to see a few small sparks spat from his mouth. He gazed in wonder that his draconic fire was coming back. His inner body still must be broken, but on its way to being healed fully.
He felt this training is what he needed to get his body up and running again like a hatching trying to grow to becoming an adult fast. The more pain he felt across his body, the more he felt his muscles were getting stronger. He was thinking think magic couldn’t heal his body, but physical pain could be the element into healing his wounded body.
He remembered several times in his childhood at the barracks in Geraldus’s village that every recruit had undergo many broken bones and kept getting broken again and again until the bone marrow that would regrow and fix the bone. And after enough times bones broke and the bone marrow to reattach to the bone, the bone would adapt to the pain and began strong enough to resist into being broken; it was the heart of body of healing on its own without the use of magic.
If those recruits should have those bones and bodes heal of on their own, and then I need to feel the same way too, thought Valverno. And if I do get enough broken bones, then what Lusìvar destroyed and detached in my body is what my body can reattached, with my own body healing itself without the use of magic.
Valverno thought it could not work, but it was the only idea he had of how he could get a few natural abilities back like a Dragon breathing fire from his mouth, which he barely did but a small spark.
Suddenly, he felt an itch in his head, if a mosquito made a giant bite in his head. He scratched his head with his scaly fingertips. Then he pulled out some hair he felt was causing the itch. “Hm,” he scoffed and released the small strand of hair into the air and didn’t bother watching it fly into the air and landed on the river and flowed away downriver and over the waterfall’s edge.
Valverno was walking before the bleak of dawn. A lightless was on the eastern horizon, and it was a little haze of light. The time he was going through his training with the other Tokagehebi was rough as he thought it would be, but the pain he felt more intensifying than he thought. His muscle fibers felt cut like a string torn by a knife. His bones shattered if crushed by a comet. And his brain shrunk in size.
For three months, he had endured the same methods of training, but in a much harder and most difficult method that was an exact death sentence. Valverno felt he had entered a death camp where the training was to hurt and pained each recruit to the verge of death, and he was wishing to go against a horde of Lusìvar’s minions than to be in the training he was enduring.
Fortunately, a few recruits ended up with broken bones and blood knees or fists. No deaths had been deemed necessary by Okinawan. He only to make sure each recruit had broken bones and bloody fists, so when healed the injury would grow stronger and able to resist any physical pain, but Valverno was getting the worst of it.
His entire life had been spent using magic and draconic abilities. And he never spent time having his bones spilt or cracked and his muscles strain. This was a death camp for him, and he was feeling he was on the verge of dying and giving up.
The hybrid walked around the campsite, and he saw himself stopping in front of the huge stone pillar; the large spear was still stuck on the topmost point. It may seem easy to get, but the pillar was greasy and wet. The scales of his hands were not as smooth as they were before; they were drench with both sweat from his human skin and the liquid that swept bottom-to-top of the pillar and his scales’ shininess grown dimmed like a red rose that lost its red pedals.
The time he spent in the training field he felt he was ready to forfeit the training, but he didn’t have the will to forfeit and let go of the training. He needed to do the training, if he felt he needed to get stronger and learn the skill he needed to keep fighting and living.
And the hardest aspect of the training was trying to climb to get the spear from the tall pillar, which was impossible to get. With the pillar being greased and slippery, anyone with any skin or scales would fall before they could make it to a foot from the ground.
Valverno could sense there must be a loophole into thinking of getting it and make it easier to get to the pillar’s summit, but he couldn’t see the loophole. He sensed it was right under everyone’s nose, and he just couldn’t see what kind the loophole is or even it does exist.
As Valverno stood by the pillar, he heard heavy footsteps coming behind him. Halvdan walked behind the hybrid with his arms crossed. “Did you think it would be easy to climb to reach to your destination? You may have come across a rare lion, but compared to this pillar, you might as well end up playing kitty fight with a lion.
“You may just give up, hybrid. You just can’t make the cut in this little small army. For future generations to thrive, the weakest must tend to the plants and animals. And the strongest must tend to the army. You may have great strength, but you don’t have the strength or the personality to climb to get the spear. Just give up. You don’t have what it takes to be a real Pangaean.”
Halvdan, who Valverno hasn’t seen for three months, shook his head and walked away. He left the hybrid alone to tend to what the demihuman had said.
“Give up? GIVE UP!?” snapped Valverno. Valverno shouted loudly enough the entire camp could hear him. “After everything I went through and everything I did to get here, you tell me to give up!? I have gone through a living hell. Just when I was giving up, I found how value my own life is.
“I helplessly watched as Pangea was purged. I saved only a few lives from an island’s destruction that cost countless lives. I had a lover’s dye in my arms. I nearly killed a sister. The worst thing of all is that I have turned to the Shadows. Enduring that much pain could kill a mortal’s morale, but I still had and still have the strength to keep moving forward.”
“Then prove it to me… hybrid!” said Halvdan, gazing into the hybrid’s eyes up close. “Prove to this encampment of how much a Pangaean specimen you are to us.”
Valverno snorted and dashed to the pillar. He jumped and grabbed onto the pillar. By the single touch, he slipped with ease and fell back to the bottom. He landed on his tail in a heavy fall.
“You see? Only a true Pangaean of a noble heart and a firm mind can only reach. You aren’t a real Pangaean. And it would seem I was right; you weren’t meant to be the demigod.” Halvdan turned and walked away.
Valverno shook his head and looked to the pillar top point again. “ ‘A noble heart and a firm mind?’ That would be asking who and what I am. I know who I am, but what I am?” Valverno looked at his two hands; his fingers looked sharp like a Dragon’s claws and those scales almost stretched to his elbows. “I am a human dragon hybrid, whatever I am Demon Prince or a Demigod!”
Then Valverno jabbed and sank the fingers of his left hand into the pillar and pulled the weight of his body upward. He used the strength of one hand to pull his entire body upward, and he would use the claws of his feet to sink into the
pillar. After the claws everywhere had sink into the pillar instead of using the palms of his hands on the pillar’s external material, Valverno used his right hand to lift himself higher.
One-by-one and little-by-little, Valverno slowly climbed the pillar. He simultaneously lifted an arm-and-leg using the opposite sides. After he grabbed hold of the pillar with his hand, he used his left hand along with his right leg to move himself up and higher. And he quickly would use the same method with his right hand and left leg.
However, the climb still wasn’t easy; the entire pillar was wet and greasy from within. A few times Valverno felt his legs slipping from the grasp and a hand moving slightly downward. If it weren’t for that fight he had with the Nemean Lion, he would have been tending to the fields or watching over the youngest kids.
He still found it difficult in climbing like carrying a boulder tied to his back. And his fingertips dug deep into the pillar, and he felt every time he felt on slipping, he held by the tipping point of his fingers by the fingernail.
And there was a moment the claws of his fight foot didn’t sink into the pillar’s wall and caused his other leg to slip from its grip. His hands still gripped against the greasy, wet pillar and barely struck out. Valverno quickly latched the claws of his right wing onto the pillar and kept his body’s weight from falling.
And in no time, he began to sweat from his hair to his chin from having tried to climb to the top, but he was still determined to get the spear that stayed on the top for too long. He saw he was half way to the top, and he felt the dawn’s light sparking from the eastern horizon. Valverno groaned as his feet’s claws reattached themselves to the large stick.
He resumed his climbing and instead of just using wings and legs, he also began to use his one wing. He always thought it would be useless for him to use his only wing as he only saw it to fly and shield him from attacks. But now he was seeing it as another arm and helped him to climb closer and much faster.
Even with the sweat sinking above the skin of his half-human torso, Valverno still stayed to the top.
Within a sudden reaction he leaped toward the top and grabbed hold of the spear with one hand and the pillar’s top with his other hand. He, with the greatest amount of human strength he has, lifted himself up on the pillar’s top and pulled out the spear.
Valverno stood on just one foot, and he held the spear that’s been on the same pillar standing in the same spot for three months. He was painting hard with heavy breathes he took was in victory; he was now the number one recruit of the entire encampment and a way to show he wasn’t some hybrid. He was a human dragon hybrid. He looked down below to see Okinawan walking to Halvdan.
Okinawan saw Halvdan and didn’t bother to look to where Valverno has made it. “What’s going on here, Halvdan? What’s with all the commotion? Where’s the hybrid?”
Valverno smiled and threw the spear down to Okinawan’s feet. This caught Okinawan by surprise and barley flitted down when the spear struck the ground. Then Okinawan looked up and saw Valverno looking down from the pillar on everyone who was cheering for Valverno. At one point, he saw the hybrid looking up to the sky. Now, it was Okinawan looking from the sky.
“And that was without the single ounce of magic I didn’t need to use,” Valverno called from the top. Then he, without hesitation, leaped from the pillar and landed to the ground without cracking a bone. “And I can prove to not need magic to my calling. All it takes is determination, faith, and a sheer will of not to die.”
“You are impressive,” said Okinawan. “This must mean you must be getting ready enough to see you’re made out of. The strength you lost must be coming back.”
“Bring it on!” Valverno smiled, as he squeezed his tail.
And in no time at all, Valverno felt his strength coming back to him. At his paste, Valverno could run fast without tiring. His muscle strength was at its upmost, strongest point, and it was to the point his former strength had come back. His running finally made him go ahead of each running group, even the Amazons carrying the heaviest of rocks were trailing behind him. The many of the Tokagehebi runners were also falling behind him.
Valverno spent an entire day running around the sandstone mountain terrain the settlement was camped in, and he ran around for miles dawn-till-dusk without stopping.
And the next day, he spent fighting with the Amazons and the Tokagehebi. His wing was always used as a shield, and his tail would suddenly curve around a high kick an opponent would attack him with. Valverno would counterattack with his own kick, with a spin he would more power into this counter kick.
And he wouldn’t have to worry about the claws of his feet to scar an opponent; his feet’s claws would be able to sink into the tip of the toes in order for Valverno to kick an opponent’s face without risking tearing through skin like ripping through paper.
Even for the Amazons, they were being outmatched by Valverno’s sense of skill. The time he felt pain that hurt him, and every skill they did to hurt him now wasn’t hurting him any longer. His body absorbed every skillful move into his own body.
Valverno could now replicate and copy every Amazon’s skillful move as his own skill move. He would be able to counterattack against the Amazon’s speed and strength.
Somehow he managed to absorb their own strength and incorporate into his own muscles. And he was stronger and faster than ever. He felt he got back his former strength and his speed that was lost to him coming back, but there was no magic power.
Valverno only sensed he was only retrieving his speed and strength in his muscles. He wasn’t getting any magic power, but he didn’t care for magic power. He only wanted to increase his muscle strength in order for him to counterattack without having to entirely rely on magic. He saw skill in combat was becoming more adequate than skill in magic.
Then, in the hand-to-hand training with Okinawan, Valverno suddenly developed a reflexivity of he learned from Okinawan’s training is what Valverno incorporated into his own bodily physique. He went against Okinawan and fought him for a short time before becoming the victor in the fight.
Valverno could feel like fighting like the warrior term Okinawan would call a “ninja.” Instead of fighting like a brute warrior charging on the front lines of battle, Valverno felt light as a feather, waved all of his body weight around him and fought, if a leaf could fight against the wind.
Valverno would outmatch all his opponents, and every time an opponent would try to sneak up from behind, his tail would react with a strong whip with a snapping jaw like a black mamba snake, the snake with the fastest striking bite.
Then, in the pillars over the river training, Valverno went in the same speed Halvdan displayed and came back without tilting the pillars in any direction. And he completed in a matter of a few amount of seconds; speed was on his side.
And in no time, Valverno, with all the skills and a mastered muscular system with a unique reflexivity, defeated Okinawan and his three Amazon bodyguards.
And at the end of it all, Valverno had complete this training his body needed, and he was feeling as strong as a human dragon hybrid should be.
HOT SPRINGS WITH UNEXPECTED COMPANY
A week after a three-month long training, Valverno gained more experience than he thought he needed: to fight with agile skill with brute force. And in doing so, he found great strength to fight, and he truly had the strength of a real Dragon and the endurance of a sprinter with the ultimate speed without end.
And in the three months, he learned a skillset the Pangaeans call “martial arts.” He, without flaw, could fight with his own body and angled movements and magic was not of the question of his ability to fight on his own. His new set of skills was enough to go against Lusìvar, but there was still one more thing he needed to do: unleash his divine power.
The week after he completed his training, Valverno thought hard of how to unleash his divine power. He had
very few thoughts how to unleash his power but to avail. He just had no idea how to wield such power, but he wouldn’t give up on it. He felt in the given time he will unleash his power, and he will save those in need of his help and combat the Shadow King from his reign.
But, in his current time, Valverno helped a group of demihumans setting up a tent, and he was pulling a string with five others. A small group of Tokagehebi placed long sticks cemented from the tent’s roof, which was the first to be going up, into the ground.
Valverno, with the other demihumans, pulled on strings attached to the roof, pulling out hard as a way to stretch the roof wide enough to make more room as they can for the tent’s interior room.
For about all morning, Valverno helped put up many tents, and he mostly did of pulling on strings. He was dressed back in his red-orange kimono that was stitched by Freyya and her kids, as a way of thanking him for saving their lives.
After helping out many Pangaeans for putting up new tents after old ones started to show signs of being worn and a few rips, Valverno walked back to the one tent that was never taken down: the same tent he spent five months sleeping.
“I see your back,” said Alfhild.
“Some Pangaeans needed help, so I gave them help they needed. And to think of how long I felt of being an outsider in a hidden society. Now, I feel like I am walking in Pangaea once again. I feel like myself again.”
“That’s good to hear, and…” Alfhild paused as she sniffed with her nose, and she caught a nasty scent from Valverno’s skin. “You reek of sweat on your skin. You should bathe.”
“And where would I take a bath to get this sweat off me?” asked Valverno. “There’s the ocean, but that would not help. The last time I took one was years ago; no cleaning supplies can get excess skin off my body.”
“So, you don’t know of hot springs we have here?” asked Alfhild.
