It took me about a week to finally achieve a fine control at the level of approximately doubling my strength. Of course Felicia was better at it than me, but I won’t be discouraged by a genius like that being better at everything… Not at all…

With my mana, I could keep that state for something between two and ten minutes, depending on how much I moved. This would increase along with my mana pool, but now I burned through it rather quickly. Fortunately the dragon showed us a method of meditation, that helped to regenerate all of the spent mana in about an hour.

[“You sure you are not a genius yourself? The guy before took almost a year to reach your current state. Honestly, even if you didn’t look like her, it would be obvious that you’re her daughter. I remember when she invented this technique, she too kept banging her head onto every tree in the forest.”]

[“My mother invented it?”]

I was honestly surprised, I knew that my mother was strong, stronger than anybody, but to think she thought of a technique like that, which could in theory increase your strength infinitely if you had mana. If I had a real face, I’m sure a smile would be already forming on it.

[“Of course, along with many other great techniques, that probably only she knows. I never managed to learn more than this one, with the degree of complexity she achieved. As a sworn protector of this forest, since the creation of this world she kept training to not disappoint her goddess.”]

So my mother is like that huh? I love to listen about her like that, learning not only about her strength, but also about the reason for it. She remained loyal to he goddess wish for all this time, and she succeeded in protecting her forest. I was so proud of her when I heard about that.

[“Maybe when you conquer this dungeon you can get her to train you?”]

That would be nice, but for that I would need to do something about this system protection. Maybe for humans it was useful, but for me, not at all. I mean how can a spider live, without a prey being caught in their webs? Whoever made that system never took into consideration the possibility of a spider being a part of it.

Hey, system guy or something, can you just disable this weird protection?

[Access granted.]
[Proceeding with rule exclusion.]
[Succeeded.]

I was ready to facepalm at this. Was it really all it took to get rid of this pain in the ass protection system? Did I really just ask for it and get my wish granted? Because I can’t believe it, I simply can’t. I can’t accept it that easily, because it was thanks to that thing I had to leave a comfy nest.

I briefly ignored the catkin uncontrollably flying past me while flailing her arms. I was genuinely angry at the moment, and I wasn’t sure if at me or at anything else. It took just one question, to be able to stay with my mother, and lead a peaceful life. Why didn’t I think of it earlier? Would it even work before?

But then I remembered the words of the caped guy. He told me about my siblings leaving the nest and getting killed. I doubted I would end up the same way, because I definitely met humans when I was much weaker, and they did their best to avoid killing me. Something must have changed from the last time when they killed one of mine, but it didn’t mean they could be forgiven.

All it meant, was that I would be able to live peacefully, not knowing about their genocide. But would that be right? To just forget their crimes and let them go unpunished? No, if I ever found about it, I would definitely choose to dive into the dungeon again, to get strong and leave the forest to search for them.

At first I had different reasons to get stronger, I wanted to live in the forest, even if alone, I wanted to survive, while being able to meet with my family. The strength of the monsters there was no joke, so it was necessary to be able to live on my own, without disturbing the nest.

But now it was different. I no longer planned to stay in the forest, at least not before I found the sword I saw in my memories. I saw humans using the remains of my siblings as a weapon to kill more of my kin, and that was when my blood boiled even more.

This was my new aim, to get strong enough to be able to infiltrate a human city, kill everyone on my way, and retrieve the sword from the hands of Arthur, the current wielder. I had no idea how I knew his name, but I was sure I was going to kill him as soon as we met, and for that I needed strength.

With newfound determination, I returned to training. To complete this technique and move on, all I needed was to practice control a bit more, to decrease the usage of mana when not needed. Right now my mana kept burning out even when I was not moving, and this needed to be changed if I didn’t want to exhaust myself before a battle started.

Suddenly I let out a loud grunt, because Felicia just fell onto my back from rather high position. I’m not sure if she’s trying to fly, or just mistaken the amount of force again.