"Is that Sparky?" Lucian's arrived having finished building the tents, looking at the human form of Sparky with curious eyes, the dragon was chewing with a very satisfied expression.
"Yeah." Alan shrugged, then continued grilling more meat.
Lucian too sat down on an opposing log, taking out some meat to cook, sticking it in the flames.
"Oi Lucian, did you pack some biscuits?"
"No, you said to save money."
"Why the hell are you still on about that."
"Because we need money?"
"You idiot." Alan shook his head and raised a finger. "Julia and Iris coming with us."
"Yes...?"
"They are stacked!" Alan spread his arms wide. "Man, that girl was willing to pay a thousand platinums to pet that store owner."
"What's your point?"
"We just mooch of them?"
"That's very unmanly?"
"So what?"
"Okay, fair point." In the end, Lucian agreed to Alan's plans, then brought his attention back to grilling the meat.
"Grrr." Sparky growled, when Alan looked at him, he saw Sparky pointing with his brows knitted together and arms crossed.
"You really eat a lot, huh?" Alan smiled, tossing another slice of meat to Sparky.
Gulp
Sparky once again turned his head into a dragon before swallowing the cut of meat whole.
"I'll never get used to that..." Alan mumbled to himself, then just stopped thinking by focusing on cooking more meat on the campfire.
The three of them fell into a long period of peaceful silence, with only occasional gulps from Sparky.
Alan silently stared into the crackling campfire, with many thoughts running through his head, plans of the future, about what to do after leaving the capital, or even how to leave with the fourth princess and daughter of a grand duke.
But more importantly he was thinking of his own strength, just how he could get stronger, Alan obviously knew he was a prodigy, denying such claims would feel more like an insult than being humble.
While it was true, he was stupidly strong against those within his age group, but he knew those he would be facing in the near future would far stronger than him, hell he wasn't even the strongest in his own age group.
Julia Von Valenheart, despite her carefree, innocent and childish personality, she was also a monster at the same time, if Alan even thought of fighting her, his intuition fired off, telling him it was utterly impossible.
Iris Wyn Caelis, she was strict and calculating, but has a very odd soft spot for Julia, other than that judging from his intuition alone, she matched up with Lucian in strength.
But there was something these three prodigies had that Alan didn't.
It'd be their soul weapons.
In this world, every race despite their different mana core progression all share one extremely rare aspect, a soul weapon and soul armour.
They were something seldomly seen, only appearing a few times in one generation, those with true gifts possessed them.
And Julia, Iris and even Lucian, all three of them possessed soul weapons, something Alan didn't possess.
A soul weapon, as the name might suggest was a weapon that reflected something about the person's deepest parts of their identity, a soul armour was the same but taking the form of an armour.
It vastly increases the firepower of an individual, it was an absurd thing that Alan truly needed.
But he never awakened one.
He had nothing going for him, other than his combat prowless built upon his past life's experience, and his pure, raw instincts guiding his body.
But even that had a limit, compared to what soul weapon and armour could achieve.
Alan also had a system.
____________________________
[Name: Alan]
[Titles: —]
[age: 16]
[core rank: 3 (Manifest)]
[Affinity: Ethereal Ember]
[Soul weapon: —]
[Soul armour: —]
[Innate skill: Instinct, Intuition]
[Skills: Mana breath, Reaper, Gaze]
____________________________
But unlike the systems he read from web novels in his past life, the system granted to him did absolutely nothing to help.
It acted more as a tracker, showing his progression rather than to actually make him stronger, even the skills he possessed were things he either learnt from a manual or created himself.
The only obvious way he could grow stronger, was if he hunted mana beasts stronger than him, and take their mana to grow his own, but that would take time too.
He already asked Lucian on how he awakened a soul weapon, but the answer didn't help, Lucian simply stated the weapon was something he always had a connection to.
Alan, however, didn't feel a certain connection, still he didn't become frustrated or anything, instead he'd been developing a new skill, something that could theoretically push his powers up an entire rank.
Quietly Alan stroked his chest, where his heart was, this technique came with massive drawback, making it too dangerous to use in normal situations.
"Grrr?" Sparky snapped his head to the side, peering into the woods.
"What's wrong?" Both Alan and Lucian obviously noticed his reaction, turning to the trees with wary eyes, the two of them sensed the presence of two people, though Alan already had a rough idea on who it was.
"Oh my god!" Sure enough, it was Julia and Iris, Julia was rushing towards the campfire group with open arms. "Sparky!"
"Gah!" Sparky gasped, panic quickly filling his eyes, he immediately stood up and sprouted a blue pair of wings on his small body.
But Julia was too fast for the little boy to do anything, before he could fly off Julia grabbed him and pulled him into a crushing hug.
"Kyaaa! So cute!" Julia giggled and furiously ruffled the poor boy's hair.
"Grrr..." The dragon could only offer a low growl, helplessly accepting his fate.
"Do you want some?" She snatched a stick of meat from Alan's hands without asking, sticking in front of Sparky.
"Kyuu!" Sparky's gloomy demeanour instantly vanished, replaced by obvious glee, staring at the brown piece of meat.
"Have it!" She tossed it to Sparky.
Gulp
He polymorphed his mouth into a dragon's jaw, quickly devouring the food.
"So cute!"
From a small distance away, Alan watched the entire interaction with a flat face. "What a bizarre duo."
"Why are you the one talking?" Iris arrived, settling down on one of the four logs, then pulled out marshmallows from her artifact.
"How come you two are here?" Alan raised a brow, curiously staring at the marshmallows.
"Well... Juli always wanted to try camping." Iris shrugged, stabbing the marshmallows with a stick, hovering it over the fire, toasting the surface of the white mallow to brown. "And now she can try, so why not?"
"...Well, you're going to be camping a lot after you leave the capital, though."
"So what?"
"Yeah, guess you're right." Alan dismissed it, pulling out a cut of cooked meat he drove his teeth into it, taking a large bite. "You two thought about it?"
"About what?" Iris lightly frowned.
"How you will leave the continent." Alan replied without lifting his gaze from the grilling meat.
"Wouldn't be an issue if you and Julia left because, you know, the two of you are kind of important."
"I suppose." Iris agreed. "But it should be fine."
"Why's that."
"Well..." Iris tapped her chin, staring at the overcooked marshmallow in front of her. "In my case, my dad just let me go when I said told him I'm leaving."
She shoved the burnt marshmallow to the oblivious Lucian, who was peacefully minding his own business.
"Oh, thank you." He thanked her, popping the marshmallow into his mouth... before going into a coughing fit.
Completely ignoring him, Iris continued. "As for Juli..."
Iris thought for a moment. "She probably wouldn't care about the result of her actions."
"Is that so." Alan glanced at Julia, she was in the middle of rapidly petting Sparky, who was becoming increasingly more annoyed by the second. "Alright then, when are we going?"
"After the age of coming ceremony." Iris stabbed another marshmallow into the fire. "We'll set out after Juli leaves a message for everyone."
"Three more weeks then." The age of coming ceremony for the fourth princess was in about three weeks from now. "Well, I guess we'll be here for a while then."
Iris nodded, handing over another fried marshmallow to Lucian, who stared at the sweet for a long moment considering his choices, and taking a bite... once again falling into a coughing fit.
"What are you guys talking about?" Julia arrived, carrying an extremely grumpy Sparky in her arms, then sat beside Alan.
"Why are you sitting here..." Alan sideways glanced at her.
"Why not?" She smiled, tilting her head, though Sparky was pushing her face, trying to escape from her grasp.
"Kyuu..." But it was pointless.
"I guess." Alan looked at Sparky, suddenly finding the boy's slumped expression to be very pitiful, thus tossing a cut of meat to him.
Gulp
And the dragon did his head transformation, devouring the flying piece of meat.
Alan scoffed, finding Sparky's polymorph ability interesting, then fell into a small silence, for a brief moment only the crackle of flames and Sparky's grunts remained, until Alan remembered his previous thoughts.
"How did you two awaken a soul weapon." Alan asked what he was wondering.
"Our soul weapon?" Julia raised a brow. "Do you not have one?"
"No…"
"What?" Her eyes flew open. "I thought you did…"
"Huh?"
"Your friend has one, so we just assumed you also have a weapon and armour like us…"
Alan's brain short-circuited. "Excuse me?"
"Hmm?"
"Soul armour…?" Alan voiced his utter disbelief, his eyes widened to an unnatural degree.
"Yes…?" Julia's tone was somewhat confused, as if stating the obvious.
"You have a soul armour?!" Alan yelled, rising from his seat.
Soul weapons were already extremely rare to come by, but soul armour, it was something someone could only acquire if their mana core was at level with Rank 5.
Meaning both Julia's and Iris's mana cores were capable of handling mana at the same level of those at rank 5.
While Alan was drowning in shock, Julia raised her hand, small crimson lighting rapidly surrounded his fists, gathering together, creating an object.
Her hand was wrapped in a gauntlet, a dark, eerie gauntlet, her fingers were long, sharp like five claws, the very look of it didn't suit her.
Alan noticed it before when Julia brought out her soul weapon in the inn, her weapon was a long, dark spear with jagged, uneven edges, it was rather something befitting an unholy being, instead of her.
Soul objects were the reflection of one's deepest identity, the person themselves may not know, making Alan wonder just what this implied.
Leaving thoughts of Julia behind, he glanced at Iris, understanding his intentions she too raised her hand.
Particles of light coiled around her arm, colliding together to form a gauntlet, it was golden, metallic and yellow like a knight's armour made of gold.
"You two are insane." Alan let out a helpless laugh, both Julia and Iris were stronger, much stronger than him, but he didn't let it affect him.
He simply returned to grilling more meat, stressing about useless things was a bad habit he long learnt to stop doing.
"Did you two bring tents?" Alan asked, after feeding Sparky again, leaving the previous conversation behind.
"Even better!" Julia shot up, tapping her bracelet, which was her dimensional artifact, from within two sleeping bags popped out.
"…Sleeping bags?" Alan scrunched his face.
"Yes!"
"Why would you bring that?"
"It's more exciting!" Julia didn't wait, releasing the agitated Sparky, she dived into one of the two sleeping bags. "Look!"
She wiggled inside the bag, rolling on the ground side to side. "I'm like a worm!"
"What the hell is your obsession with worms."
"They… are… Snore Snore." Julia fell asleep.
"What the fuck?" Alan wasn't even sure of what to say, Julia was probably the most unpredictable person he ever met.