Chapter 644: First night in the legacy world

Elion considered lying down as well, but he wasn’t feeling the slightest bit tired.

He could probably force himself to sleep if he really wanted to, though with several things still on his mind, he doubted there was much point in trying.

Instead, he stopped beside his tent and looked over the patch of ground in front of it.

There was enough room for a few simple movements, provided he didn’t get carried away and accidentally cut through someone’s belongings.

’I might as well try it while I still remember,’ he thought, drawing Kurogoroshi once more.

He held the blade loosely at his side and adjusted his stance, placing one foot slightly ahead of the other before slowly raising his arm.

Without using any mana, he repeated the opening movement of his first attack against the monster.

This time, however, he stopped halfway through, looking down at the position of his feet before shifting his weight.

It felt rather different doing it on solid ground, and he quickly realised that simply changing the angle of his wrist wouldn’t fix everything.

His shoulder and hips needed to follow the movement as well; otherwise, he would only end up making the same mistake in a slightly different way.

Elion frowned and tried again, moving slowly enough to notice where his balance began to shift.

The sword passed through the air without much sound, its dark surface briefly catching the faint glow from the dying fire.

He had grown strong enough that swinging it required almost no effort, but that was becoming a problem of its own.

It was far too easy to force a movement to work, even when his footing was poor, or his body was turned at an awkward angle.

Against something weaker, he might never even notice. Against someone who knew what they were doing, however, those mistakes would probably become quite obvious.

’Uncle Dorian certainly had no trouble noticing them,’ he thought, his lips twitching as he remembered how easily the man had corrected him.

At the time, some of those corrections had seemed rather excessive, especially when moving his foot a little to the side had hardly felt like much of a difference.

Now that he was trying to correct himself, he found that he would have appreciated having the man standing nearby.

Even a complaint about how terribly he was holding his sword would have given him something definite to work with.

Still, he continued, repeating the movement until it began to feel less awkward. Every few attempts, he paused to check his stance, resisting the temptation to speed up simply because he could.

At one point, he noticed Uta looking in his direction, though the boy quickly returned his attention to the lake.

Elion pretended not to notice and continued for a little longer before finally lowering his sword.

There was no point in repeating the same movement all night if he wasn’t certain he was doing it properly.

He would try it again tomorrow, preferably with enough daylight to see what his feet were doing without having to rely entirely on his senses.

He sheathed Kurogoroshi and sat on a low rock beside his tent, resting his forearms on his thighs as he let out a slow breath.

For a while, he simply watched the remaining embers, enjoying the quiet now that he no longer had to keep constant watch over the lake.

A soft rustling came from one of the nearby tents, drawing his attention just as its entrance was pushed aside.

Yaana stepped out, stretching her arms above her head before spotting him beside his tent.

"Bid bro Elion," she called softly, lowering her arms as she looked at him. "Are you doing anything? I’m bored."

Elion raised a brow. "Shouldn’t you be sleeping?"

Yaana rubbed her eyes with her fingers, readjusting the elastic band of her baggy pants around her waist.

"I tried," She replied, glancing back toward her tent before looking at him again. "But lying there with my eyes closed wasn’t helping, and you’re clearly not sleeping either."

"So you decided to come and bother me?" Elion asked, a faint smile appearing on his face.

Yaana gave him an unbothered look and stepped toward a nearby tree, carefully lowering herself onto the grass beneath it.

"You can tell me to leave if you want," she said, settling her back against the trunk and stretching her legs out in front of her.

The way she made herself comfortable suggested that she wasn’t particularly worried about him doing so.

Elion chuckled and shifted slightly so he could face her without having to keep turning his head. "Well, you’re already sitting down. What do you want to talk about?"

"I don’t know." Yaana tilted her head back against the bark while poking her cheek with her index finger, looking up through the branches for a moment before returning her attention to him. "Anything, I suppose. Just something other than monsters, maps, or what might try to eat us tomorrow."

"That’s unfortunate. I was about to ask whether you think the meat will still taste good after we’ve eaten it for a week."

Her expression soured, and Elion had to lower his head to keep his laughter from echoing across the clearing.

Yaana glanced toward the tents before giving him a displeased look, though the corners of her lips soon began to lift as well.

The conversation gradually wandered from there, with neither of them making much effort to keep it on any particular subject.

They spoke quietly about the meal, the comforts they were already beginning to miss, and how strange it felt to know that several months could pass here while hardly any time went by outside.

Yaana had quite a few complaints about the ground beneath her bedroll, though she seemed perfectly willing to sit against a tree now that she had someone to talk to.

When Elion pointed that out, she insisted that sitting and trying to sleep were entirely different things, then shifted her hips to avoid a root pressing against her side.

He let her have that one, watching with amusement as she folded part of her outer robe beneath herself.

Once she was comfortable again, she asked about his sword, and Elion found himself explaining a little of what Uncle Dorian had been teaching him.

He kept the explanation simple, mostly telling her about how often the man found fault with movements Elion had thought were perfectly acceptable.

Yaana seemed to find that rather entertaining, especially when he admitted that having enough strength to swing harder didn’t make the corrections any less frustrating.

For a while, she remained just as talkative as when she had first approached him, occasionally interrupting with a question or a teasing remark.

However, as the conversation continued, her replies slowly grew shorter, and the pauses between them became a little longer.

Elion noticed when she first covered a yawn with the back of her hand, though he decided not to say anything.

She had drawn her legs closer by then, her shoulder resting more heavily against the trunk as she listened to him speak.

Before long, she was answering mostly with small hums and the occasional nod, her eyelids lowering whenever he looked away.