Enigma of Sin

Kayn spent the better part of the next hour restoring at least a little of his mana by utilizing his adjusted Void Star technique. He then used the smallest amount of mana that he could to drench himself with water in an attempt to clean the blood off of his body.

He was able to get most of the blood that wasn't freshly leaking from his wounds off of his skin, but his clothes were dyed red still. His mask surprisingly hadn't broken when he got slammed into the ground, it hadn't even sustained any damage. It was as if all of the damage just went through the mask to his skull.

He focused his mana on healing his bodily wounds as he stood up before orienting himself and heading in the direction the village should be, though he was a little disoriented from having to run so far while escaping the gorilla.

Most of his small and medium wounds healed after the first few hours of travel, but his head had a large laceration that he was having troubles closing without using actual healing spells.

This also did not include the area where his wings were ripped off. He had to spend a fair amount of the mana he had managed to gathered on a spell to close off those wounds as he was nervous about losing too much blood.

With most of his wounds healed or at least stable, he focused mana into his legs and began sprinting back. His hope was to arrive in the village at least before sunrise so he could sneak in while it was still dark outside.

…

Meanwhile as Kayn was making his way back to the village, the scout had just arrived after several hours of intense travel. Forest lizards were insanely fast when running at full speed on a flat path, which was exactly what the scout rode back to the village where the subjugation forces were supposed to gather.

"Open the way! I need to get through and speak with the captain!" The scout yelled as loud as he could from a distance.

Hearing his scream, the guards at the entrance to the village quickly opened the way into the village seeing the speed at which the forest lizard was approaching them. Hearing the commotion out front, the captain of the subjugation forces that gathered quickly arrived to hear the scout's report.

"Sir, Scout Kro reporting!"

"Yes, yes, just tell me the report already, we don't have much time left before we depart!" The captain was quick to reply, urging the Scout, Kro, to make his full report. They needed to make any last minute preparations before leaving to confront the beast tide.

"About that sir, I don't think we will be seeing the beast tide any time soon. I witnessed a young dragon destroying the beasts with fire with my very own eyes." Kro quickly reported a short summary.

"I don't want to hear your opinion! Just your rep-…" The captain paused, blinked a few times, and continued. "What did you just say?"

"Sir, a young dragon, at least that's the only conclusion I could come to, was obliterating the beast tide when I arrived. It was flying through the air and launching fire down upon them. I couldn't see the actual figure well due to the fire and distance, but I'm almost 100% positive that the wings belonged to that of a dragon, they looked very similar to drawings in books."

"That's ridiculous! Are you daft Scout Kro?!" The captain was enraged, but Kro could only reply that he was telling the truth. Soon after, the captain made the decision to take half of the platoon he had brought from the major village nearby in order to examine the site of this so called "battle".

He didn't inherently trust Kro, but scouts were required to go through vigorous training. Also, elves didn't have the tendency to lie to bring harm to one other as all of the elves who lived in the Great Forest acted as a united force. Thus, he took half of the force in the case they needed to confront some of the beasts while leaving a way to protect the village.

As the troop of soldiers set off on forest lizards, night fell and the remaining soldiers were on high alert. If the report was true that the beast tide was thwarted, it was a miracle. However, if there really was a dragon that could do that and it was active, was it going to attack them next?

None of them had any interactions with dragons before, so they only knew of their personalities from reading books.

Some dragons were blood thirsty, but some preferred to live in solitude and sleep most of the time. Information on clans that stayed together wasn't easily available, so most didn't know about them.

While they were all distracted and focusing their attention on the east while looking at the skies, none of them noticed a figure wearing bloodied and tattered cloth with a mask hop over the walls near the west side of the village.

Fortunately for Kayn, his mask acted to naturally help him stay hidden when he remained in the darkness. He grabbed one of the blankets from the relief station, as no one was there currently since it was so late at night, and covered up his clothing with it before removing his mask and making his way towards the inn.

His head wound had stopped bleeding as he was running, but the blood had dried on his face, so he did his best to clean it off before entering the inn.

After fulling covering his head and body as best as he could, he entered into the inn and quickly made his way up to the room they were assigned. While he had completed this insane task in less than a day, it was still close to 20 hours since he had left, he only hoped Horace and Est didn't do something.

Kayn knocked on the door after discovering that it was locked, and within a second the door swung open with Est standing there with a worried look on her face. Though, instead of saying anything she only backed up and allowed Kayn to enter into the room.

Seeing everything in order and knowing that he had saved their livelihood, Kayn's tension finally dropped and the exhaustion of everything set in. He didn't pass out, but he did hobble towards the bed while dropping the blanket on the floor before falling onto the mattress.

Horace and Est were horrified as they saw the state his clothes were in. They had turned from their original white and light brown to pure red. There were even remnants of red staining his face and hair. Not to mention they could see the two massive wounds on his back clear as day where his shoulder blades were, though they looked scabbed over at least.

"Wh-what happened to you Kayn?" Est asked with a stuttering voice as he shouldn't have sustained injuries like that while acting as a healer for the village. No, he shouldn't have injuries at all!

Taking in a deep breath, Kayn let it out slowly before sitting up with a grimace and speaking. He was done hiding some things from them. They had welcome Lara and himself into their family with open arms, it was time Kayn repaid their trust with some of his own.

"I saved your farm and took care of the beast tide."

Horace and Est couldn't help but think he had sustained a head injury to be thinking that way, and in a sense, they were right since he did have a head injury.

"But aren't you a healer? Not to mention you only just turned 17! There's no way you're strong enough to take out a beast tide, even if you can fight as well as perform healing! I even talked with some of the guards today to ask about mages and mana cores!

"They all said that people at your age should only be at the mid to late part of the 1st stage at the very most, but those were supposed to supreme geniuses!" Est replied back to him.

She had been curious to learn more about mages during the day while Kayn was away, and to her surprise, most of the people gave her funny looks when she claimed that Kayn had healed Horace's finger while being so young, it simply wasn't possible in their eyes.

"I admit that you've done things that break the norms I've heard today, but there's just no way you could defeat a horde of rune beasts like the one we heard about!" Est had started saying whatever came to her mind, but she tried to stay somewhat quiet as the kids were asleep and she didn't want to wake them.

"Haaa," Kayn sighed. "They were actually so far off their estimate about the number of beasts in the tide that I'm tempted to go give whoever spread that falsehood a piece of my mind. As for fighting them, I'm a bit unique…" Kayn paused after his small rant to hold his hand up before manifesting a different element at each of his fingertips with the sixth in the middle of his palm.

"You may not know this, but mages generally have a single aptitude, two on very rare occasions, and three at most. Yet, I can use them all as you can see. And while I may be young, I'm almost to the 4th stage already. Though, if I'm being honest, a normal 4th stage, let alone a peak 3rd stage like me would never be able to fight off that number of beasts. Let me emphasize the word 'normal'."

Kayn paused for a few seconds before continuing. "I trust you two with not only my life but also my sister's. That is the only reason I'm revealing this to you as if the upper echelons of any of the empires heard about me, they would probably spare no expense to kidnap me and study my body. It sounds ridiculous, I know. However, my parents went through a lot of effort to keep my talents hidden before they were killed."

Est was staring in a daze, but Horace finally opened his mouth for the first time. "So, say that we believe you, you're still a healer are you not? Why haven't you healed the wounds on your back yet?"

"Well first off, I wanted to get back here before either of you two asked the guards about my whereabouts. Second, unfortunately, it's not that simple. It will probably take me a few days, if not a full week or more before I can heal my back wounds." Kayn replied. He wasn't afraid of revealing a little more, but he also didn't necessarily want to.

"Why would it take so long, we've seen you heal your back before fairly easily…wait aren't those the same areas as before?" Est was quick to draw a connection to his first arrival in an injured state upon seeing his new wounds.

"Unlike Uncle Horace's finger, regenerating my wings will take a bit more time." Kayn gave an awkward smile. "Before I hadn't lost them, but this time they were ripped clean off of my body."

Est once again was standing there in a daze with her mouth wide open, so Horace spoke for both of them. "Your wings? We've seen your back plenty of times, and there were never any wings there. Plus, aren't you half-elf and half-demon? How would you have wings?"

The couple was starting to become hurt as they felt like Kayn was lying to them over and over again. And seeing the hurt expressions that were growing on their face, Kayn himself couldn't help but feel a bit heartbroken.

"I swear to you both that I'm not lying. And if you want to be accurate, I'm only a quarter elf and a quarter demon, but I'm half dragon. That is where my wings come from."

Simultaneously, both Horace and Est looked at Kayn with startled expressions while speaking at the same time, "Dragon?!"