After returning home, Rygar spent some quality time with his wives. Aisha and Leo also dined with them that night.
Even with all the things occupying his mind, he made a point of always spending some time with the people who mattered to him.
That helped him remember the reasons behind so much fighting and training.
Before it got too late, Rygar left his home and went to his parents' house, which was not far from there.
There, he played with Ruby, his adorable little sister.
Eventually, everyone went to sleep. The silence of the night enveloped the Great Forest and, under the silver moonlight, Rygar departed.
What he needed to do now could not be accomplished there, nor even at the Combat Temple.
Using combined Gravity Magic and Wind Magic, Rygar shot through the skies like a bolt of violet and silver light.
He instantly broke the sound barrier, and continued accelerating with no intention of stopping. His ultimate destination was the Blue Dragon Mountain Range.
It was a remote, dangerous place ideal for the kind of training and development he intended to undertake.
Over the years, Rygar had accumulated too many ideas.
Thanks to the experiments and knowledge brought from his previous world, his mind teemed with concepts, plans, and possibilities.
To prevent everything from becoming unproductively chaotic, he had begun, many years ago, a Progress Log.
That notebook had accompanied Rygar ever since.
In it, he wrote everything: his short-, medium-, and long-term goals; ideas for skills; thoughts on everyday life; combat philosophies; existential reflections; behavior analyses; fight strategies; magic experiments; technical adjustments… It was a truly confusing jumble that probably only he understood.
The notebook was covered by a complex Barrier Magic that could only be opened with his own magical signature.
Moreover, he could always sense when it was opened, and it would self-destruct automatically if anyone but him tried to open it.
Just basic precautions to prevent anyone from obtaining that knowledge.
Without that compilation of information, it would have been impossible to stay organized amid so many simultaneous paths.
He knew it would be ineffective to try to advance in all areas at once. Therefore, he decided to focus on only a few things at a time.
His swordsmanship techniques, for example: in the past year, Rygar had truly mastered only two techniques.
Surprisingly, the time he spent teaching at the Combat Temple proved to be an important catalyst in this process.
Teaching made him see swordsmanship from a new perspective.
There was truth in that saying: when you teach, you also learn.
Reviewing fundamentals, watching his students apply concepts, answering questions, and correcting mistakes all helped him consolidate and expand his knowledge.
The two techniques he mastered were Instant Light Flow and Wild Light.
Instant Light Flow was a fusion between the concepts of Instant Flow and the Longsword of Light. Rygar had created this technique long ago.
From it, Rygar could react immediately to any attacker in his line of attack, using the longsword of light as an extension of his reflexes.
It was not yet an omnidirectional technique like Reida's, but even so, it was powerful enough to be used against any opponent, even those at the God level.
If he wanted to master it for omnidirectional use, it would require even more precise control of the Longsword of Light and truly divine reaction time.
Rygar believed he would eventually get there. Aside from him, probably only Orsted would currently have the capacity to replicate something similar.
But obviously, Rygar would never teach that technique to him.
Even so, this technique alone was worthy of being considered above the Deprivation Sword Realm.
A definitive technique. In practice, this ability alone was enough for Rygar to be considered one of the strongest in the world.
And then there was Wild Light, a technique Rygar developed entirely after hearing an idea from one of the Temple's apprentices, Jal, of the Beastlike Leopard tribe.
Jal was an extremely talented youth, and while Rygar taught him, the boy wanted to show him a technique he had begun to develop, something that combined Wild Dash with the Longsword of Light in a single movement.
Rygar was truly surprised to observe Jal's method at the time.
Until then, he had always executed those two techniques separately and had not thought of fully combining them.
That was mainly because he already mastered both perfectly and could use them simultaneously with ease. That alone made him faster than anyone he knew.
The rudimentary technique that Jal presented was somewhat incomplete at first glance, with the Touki movement unrefined and execution imperfect, but the method behind it was innovative and carried great potential.
Since Rygar was already extremely familiar with both techniques, it took him only six months to create and fully master this technique.
Now he could execute the Longsword of Light while performing the Wild Dash.
It is hard to describe how much this increased his combat efficiency.
It suffices to say that, if Rygar had known this technique during his duel with Gall Farion, that fight could potentially have been ended in just two moves.
After this breakthrough, Rygar rewarded Jal generously for his insight and contribution.
The boy even received a sword with an embedded rank-S magic core.
Moreover, Rygar began training him much more frequently, recognizing the talent and creativity he displayed.
And, of course, he wanted to teach him to use Wild Light.
These two techniques, Instant Light Flow and Wild Light, were those Rygar fully mastered over the past year.
Besides that, his regular swordsmanship training focused on strengthening and refining his techniques, seeking to continually improve the speed, fluidity, and power of his strikes.
A year ago, using the Holy Beast Battle Aura still left him quite tired—not to the point of extreme exhaustion, but the residual effect was noticeable.
However, with constant training and bodily adaptation, he managed to improve significantly in that regard.
The subsequent fatigue almost vanished completely.
His next goal was to reach a point where he could use the Holy Beast Battle Aura constantly, or at least activate and deactivate it with minimal delay, as if it were something natural and instantaneous.
But he deduced that such familiarity with the technique would take a few years of training.
In addition to regular training, Rygar was developing two other advanced techniques.
One was a fusion between Beast God Style Prediction and the Five Secret Techniques of Water God Style, which would substantially increase his ability to anticipate and respond to enemy attacks.
The other technique was based on the dual-wielding grip of North God Style and aimed to execute more than one Secret Technique at the same time for different purposes, increasing his versatility in combat by allowing him to adapt his strategy according to the situation.
Overall, regarding swordsmanship, Rygar was steadily advancing in his mastery.
As for magic, it was more complex.
Magic offered far more options than purely physical combat.
Just the countless new spells that Milis possessed were a huge temptation for Rygar, but he knew he could not spend time learning new magics that would not be so useful at the moment.
Rygar's current priority was to increase his strength as quickly as possible.
In Support Magic, the only branch in which Rygar reached Emperor level was Healing Magic.
Things like high-level Detoxification Magic and Barrier Magic had little to no use in direct combat. And Divine Magic was not Rygar's strong suit.
That did not mean there was nothing useful among them.
High-level Barrier Magic had spells related to blocking divinations, for example.
This type of technique would be useful for hiding Hitogami's sight and was already being studied. He also managed to improve Mental Block Magic.
In Elemental Attack magics, he found more utility and learned some of them.
But Milis did not possess any deity-level magic of that type.
However, Rygar's main focus was not learning new magics.
Regarding magic, his objectives were threefold, primarily: casting speed, Lightning Cloak, and Gravity Magic.
Casting speed spoke for itself.
This was the point where Rygar progressed the most over the past year. He used various methods to push his magical reaction time beyond his natural limits.
He studied in detail the pathways mana traveled within the body and adapted his physiology to respond better to mana flow.
He plunged into volcanoes to train the fire element. He submerged himself in the ocean depths to adapt to the water element. And he underwent all kinds of insane training until he completely optimized his speed.
But it was not an easy barrier to overcome. After all, magic had that innate disadvantage when it came to speed; such an obstacle was not easy to conquer.
His experience in merging external and internal mana was extremely useful in this process.
The Mana Blades, in fact, became as familiar to him as his own sword strikes.
Even so, Rygar realized that it would never be possible to achieve as high a speed for magic as his body could.
Gradually, he concluded that he would need to choose specific techniques to reach that level of speed.
And coincidentally, that was precisely what he began doing with Lightning Cloak.
This technique was the ultimate evolution of what he had created at the start, Flash Step. The technique was extremely demanding on the body, a complex fusion between internal and external mana.
Rygar could use it at full capacity only because of his absurdly strong physical body and even more impressive Touki.
The technique made him feel like a living lightning bolt. His speed became so absurd that only with his Demon Eyes could he fully keep up with his own movements.
Lightning coursed through his muscles, his nerves, accelerating his reflexes and gestures to completely supernatural levels.
Rygar was certain that this technique would be one of his best weapons against the Dragon God.
Gravity Magic, however, still did not have a clear, defined direction like Lightning Cloak.
But it was its unlimited potential that made Rygar dedicate a great amount of time to perfecting his control over it.
He was in the dark about learning this type of Magic. There was no manual or master to guide him.
But he could already manipulate Gravity. And with that, he could experiment.
And experiment was exactly what he did.
Gravity was like a vast, unexplored field. Its applications were not limited to merely attracting bodies.
Theoretically, it could involve Density, manipulate Mass, Distort Space, Distort Time… and even create singularities like a Black Hole.
Of course, that was an almost fanciful objective at the moment.
Even for Rygar, something like that seemed distant. Unattainable for now. But he did not need to achieve the impossible immediately.
His first goal in exploring this energy was a simple, practical application: the Gravity Field.
If he could control gravity over the battlefield, he believed he could turn any fight in his favor.
He could manipulate the gravitational axis horizontally to accelerate his own movements and attacks, or force his enemies to the ground by a sudden increase in gravitational force.
He could create zero-gravity zones where movement would be chaotic and uncontrollable.
He could distort force vectors to deflect physical attacks or directional spells.
He could divert weapons, drag enemies, collapse structures.
Gravity, if well controlled, had no defense. It was invisible. Inescapable. It was everywhere.
And that was only the beginning. More complex control would allow him to create even more dangerous techniques.
And it was precisely this kind of control that Rygar sought to achieve eventually.
If he could reach an absolute mastery of Gravity Magic, combining it with Lightning Cloak, with other magical and swordsmanship techniques, and with the magical items he planned to create for himself, then he believed he could kill Orsted.
Perhaps in ten years. Maybe a little more or a little less. He needed to be as fast as possible.
In fact, in his current view, he was already overestimating Orsted. He did not know the full extent of that man's power because he had never seen him fight at full strength.
In fact, he had never seen what someone at the top of the world was like. He had no real benchmark for comparison.
But, for safety, he decided to treat him as an almost unattainable opponent. He considered him many, many times stronger than Gall Farion at his peak.
Just as a measure of caution.
But all of that was still far off. Rygar was not ready for it yet.
For now, all that remained was training. Training until all his enemies lay beneath his feet.
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