Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix

"What a crazy pace…" Rain said and then facepalmed. "No wonder you guys don't visit anyone."

"No way, it is normal… for us, considering how we held back when we were working," Jori said while laughing while his oldest son was pulling his hair with both hands and pretty hard.

"You asshole… are you bragging?" Rain furrowed his eyebrows. "You are courting death! Anyway, where is Reca?"

"She is sleeping. She does that a lot lately, even though the kids are always making noise," Jori said.

The oldest boy was on Jori's shoulder, pulling his hair, and the oldest girl and the second were in front of the house playing with water while they tried and failed miserably to bathe and only threw water at each other. As expected of their kids, they are quite the troublemakers.

"Anyway, pack your things. I will explain the situation while you do that," Rain said.

"Can you help the girls while I do that? It will save time," Jori said.

Rain sighed…, but in the end, Jori had a point. Still, soon, he regretted that because those kids were hard to deal with. While Rain tried to make them hurry up, they threw water at him. Eventually, Rain got tired of it and used his magic to make them bath and then used wind magic to dry them up.

"I always knew that my kids are little angels, but I didn't think that most other kids are like walking nightmares," Rain thought.

"Don't frown while looking at them…" Reca said and then she yawned.

"Hey, it has been a while, did you hear everything?" Rain asked.

"More or less," Reca said, and then she approached. "Someone insane arrived and decided to pick a fight with the beast people and now we have another war in our hands… at least that is your assumption, right?"

"Destabilizing the human country when we are just about to make a full comeback seems his current goal… but aside from that, I guess his goal has also been…" Rain muttered and then opened his eyes widely. "To get stronger…"

War, for better or worse, had often been a crucible where individuals were forged into something more powerful. Rain understood this well, having survived countless battles and killed numerous adversaries. It was through these trials and confrontations that he had grown stronger, both in body and reputation.

His strength in combat earned him the title of a hero, celebrated and revered for his skills and strength.

"Killing the tribe leaders certainly made him stronger, but if he was already strong enough to defeat them without suffering a single scratch, he could have gotten stronger by killing other beast people," Rain said. "Why didn't he do that?"

"That is for you to find out," Reca said.

The number of things that didn't make sense or were still a mystery were increasing with every passing moment, so Rain felt like sighing. Was there any point in finding one answer only to find two more questions ahead of it?

In any case, when everything was finished, the group began to fly toward Rain's grandparent house. During the whole time, Rain sighed since Jori and Reca's kids were quiet… energetic and they didn't stop moving at all. Pulling his hair, trying to grab his guards, asking him to throw water at them. At least they could spend energy fast, and when they fell asleep, the peace was blissful.

"Aren't they angels?" Jori asked while smiling, seeing his whole family sleeping together in the corner of the chamber.

"... To each their own," Rain shrugged.

"We didn't see each other in two years, I thought that you would be three meters tall by now and your whole body would be covered in veins," Jori said. "I guess you have been slacking off on training too."

"Yeah, right… I am one hundred percent human, moron," Rain frowned. "While I wouldn't mind getting taller, that would make me slower, so I am fine with my height."

"Still, your aura seems different than before," Jori said. "A lot softer than before, I can understand why, though. Peaceful and happy lives made us softer."

Rain couldn't agree more… everything has a price in the world, even if that price isn't out in the open to be seen. In any case, the group arrived at their base I'd operations a couple of hours later, and after some brief small talk, they went back to business.

"Around fifteen hundred of them are already there and their camp keeps expanding," Roan declared. "We are keeping our eyes on them, but they keep moving to the sides of the fissure, trying to find their extension and split us. The worst case scenario is if they began to cross the fissure in small numbers to attack the villages in the area.

We don't have many soldiers here, and they can't even move properly since the peace made them lazy."

"It seems that we aren't as in bad shape as we imagined," Rain said while rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Anyway, I can probably track them down once they cross the fissure, but I will try to stay in this area in order to keep my tracking domain as big as possible… to avoid issues, I need to improve it in order to identify the power level of those people when they try to cross the fissure."

"Why not make a big golem to scare them off?" Kei asked, showing her usual deadpan expression.

"The big ones can only reach five meters of height using the limits of the skill, while I can customize that, I will have to control it completely and the size will only double," Rain explained. "That won't scare the beast people since their second warrior was a ten-meter-tall guy."

"So, Rain won't be able to fight. We will have a lot of work on our hands," Seara said.

"I will fight in a different way, but you can't do that. We can't let them think that the sea folk are their enemies too," Rain said.