While Onyx and Midnight had been handling themselves fairly well, they had only split up for a short while.

Onyx had not resisted the urge to check on the other serpents and how they were doing. He found he was very prideful in the fact that many had begun exploring with adventurers and even acting as guards for a few small merchant groups. This meant that they had managed to grow enough to where they passed the tests needed of an adventurer or the merchants hiring them.

There was also the simple fact that they had passed the basic education currently being used within Genesis. The basic laws, acceptance of other races, and most importantly the goals to continue to move forward in a united manner. Just those simple things being ingrained within the young serpents was invaluable to their future and the future of Genesis.

Once he knew that the serpents were safe and that those within their race's territory were still trading supplies back and forth to keep growing, he changed his focus.

While before Onyx would have focused on manipulating light and dark mana while absorbing more light mana as sustenance, there was a greater change internally.

The life mana he had interacted with basically condensed his new stance as a monarch of a new race. While he was a patriarch to that race, in the grand scheme of things he would have been weaker than the future generations at their peak. Simply because his body had not been born the way it was not causing him to miss a few vital growth points that the other young serpents will naturally hit by growing slower than him.

The rapid growth that Onyx gained was due to his bonds with Walker and through Walker with Midnight. Therefore, he also had influence from them when it came to his growth and current standing. Having life mana within his body helped condense all of this allowed for Onyx to gain stronger innate resistance to manas than he had before he was affected by life mana.

This also went with the natural defense of his scales, the potency of his venom, and the overall ability to absorb mana from his surroundings. All were more efficient and overall more powerful. However, he found that as a patriarch, he had gained a little more now. The life mana had reacted to his title in that aspect along with a few other titles allowing for him to have an innate sense of the state his people were in.

Therefore, Onyx was not showing any outward changes, but he knew entirely that he was a better version of himself. Not to mention the insights he now possessed when it came to being able to better manipulate light and dark mana having been in the elemental planes and even seeing unique forms of each mana or unique uses of each mana.

The biggest benefit was that he could sense he was able to store more in his shadow. Not just the youngest serpents could hide there if they so desired. Onyx would be able to hide away materials within reason or even hide a few smaller people. It would be a good benefit if he needed to hide children during a dangerous encounter. It was a small boost to his skills but a very very good one.

Where Midnight found changes was also not to her overall outer body. Yes, she had grown a little taller and larger in her dragon form, and yes her dragonkin form had wider wings and slightly sharper eyes that seemed to see finer details. This was just growth at the basic level.

Where Midnight had grown the most was in her bind with Walker.

Normally she has gained some basic knowledge about manas and the feeling that she ended up utilizing them as a true dragon champion. For Midnight, it was like having Walker as a tutor. His understandings of manas always helped her in the smallest of ways. Now though, she felt that his changing understandings of mana were being passed to her a little more efficiently through their bond.

Not to mention more mana from their connection allowing for her to store more mana and more easily mix those manas together within her body. Therefore, she had found a larger store of natural mana within her than she recalled.

However, she did not forget that Walker was titled the true nature dragon by the royal dragons. Therefore, as his true dragon champion, she had the ability to use and split or make natural mana within her body. But right now she was able to sense it more clearly than ever before.

This led to her realizing she could naturally enhance her body better using it, mostly through the circulation of the natural mana as a whole. While she knew she would need to train more to be able to utilize the change in natural mana to other elemental skills, Midnight had focused on the enhancement.

She had received many buffs from Alice or Walker over their journey recently. She knew very well what each felt like. Using the natural mana to circulate through her entire body, Midnight found that it was like a basic small buff over the entirety of who she was. She was able to keep it up too as long as she increased her natural mana and ability to mix it in balance within her body.

While that would take time, it was a welcome and very useful self buff to have in the future as she might encounter more powerful enemies. Especially those that she knew she had no chance of fighting as she was now. Those powerful beings that had been able to hold them entirely in place or move them through space, those were the ones she wanted to be able to stand equal to or above one day. Just like Walker.

When Onyx and Midnight had returned to the mansion to find Alice and Su asleep in the training area in their mess of clear growth for their skills and techniques, they had not been surprised. They would have expected this more from Walker or Gil since the two had fallen asleep in the training grounds more often than they could count on one hand. Then again, seeing that Alice and Su were also working hard inspired Midnight and Onyx that little bit more.

While the four organized themselves and recovered from their own training, Gil had focused on his attempts to make a new archery style.

He had been reprimanded for taking the week and not moving to help Alma. This led to her saying that she would not see him until he was actually back. Meaning that the attendants who had come to lead him to her were stuck in the middle feeling not too happy about it. As an apology, Gil had told them to tell Alma one thing.

He would have a new high elf archery style for her to share with others once he was done.

The goal in calling it a high elf archery style was simply explaining that there was a gathering of natural mana involved. It could even be called the natural archery style but that would overlap with the nature's bow style used by some of the forest elves. But using a high elf meant that Gil who was a leader in such things was using what he knew of the high elven dagger style to adjust the archery style.

This rumor was already circulating amongst archers of the elven and not of the elven race. Meaning that a few had been stopping by the private training ground where Gil had been firing arrows nonstop.

The fact that Gil was reevaluating the archery style he used was a big deal. He had trained himself so that he could fire an arrow blind. He could do so while under the influence of various effects. He could do so in his sleep if he wanted!

If anyone else were to ask, they would say he was just getting in touch with his foundations. Something that everyone needed to do now and then to make sure that they had not developed bad habits along the way. But for Gil, it meant he would have something unique to show off. This was just what had happened whenever he stepped back and reevaluated his current skills and where he started. Hence why he could fire multiple arrows back to back without a flaw. Something considered a very high skill for any singular archer.

The sounds of basic plain arrows hitting targets was rhythmic. But the mages moving by would sense that mana was gathering and being pushed away over and over. That was the key point here. Gil was trying to replicate the natural manas drawn in by the higher eleven dagger technique in to the archery technique he was creating to be called the high eleven archery technique.

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