Chapter 13: Fire! Fire!
It took a couple more days for all of Ray's wounds to finally heal. The first thing that his father did when he had recovered was to take him outside to train.
Ray's father knew that he couldn't keep on spoon feeding his son. He had to leave him on his own in the future since he and his wife had their own jobs to do. Until now, they were fine leaving him alone, since Ray seemed to mature and knew better than others.
But now that an incident like this happened, Jack wanted to make sure that he could defend himself before he was given another quest to do. The spar this time went better than expected for Ray. As soon as the fight started, he activated his Dragon Eyes skill.
[Dragon eyes activated]
Jack ran up to him with a dash. The golden yellow light coming out of Jack's body gave Ray enough information on Jack's intentions. It allowed him to see where Jack's attack was coming from.
The golden yellow wireframe acted similar to an aura. It allowed him to take advantage of this, the aura would move before the trajectory of the attack was even sent.
This time, Ray managed to dodge most of Jack's attack and even tapped his father's side with his wooden sword. Of course, his father went up a notch and he lost straight after as usual.
"Wow… How did you improve so much in such a short amount of time?" Jack asked.
"I guess that life and death battle changed me for the better?" Ray nonchalantly replied.
Jack let out a smile. He ruffled his son's hair and said no more.
Words were unnecessary among men.
But to be honest, Ray felt somewhat guilty because he had never told his parents the truth. He didn't tell them that he defeated the wolf. He only told them that he managed to escape from the wolf using the trees as cover.
Although his reasoning had a lot of holes, it was more believable than the idea of a child defeating an intermediate tier wolf.
Ray went outside to train at his usual spot. The hilltop on the outskirts of town. Although training with his father was useful, he didn't have any plans of showing his father his new way of fighting. His father's wishes were for him to always become a swordsman. Not some martial artist who used their hands.
Because of this he still needed to practice his Swordsmanship.
While he was on his journey to his usual practice spot, he walked past Gary. Ever since that day, Gary had stopped bullying him. But the other kids, on the other hand, got worse with their bullying.
In fact, while Ray was doing his own business walking towards the hilltop. A group of kids hurled stones and one of them struck the back of his head. He stared at the kids for a moment and they all laughed at him.
Shaking his head, Ray proceeded to ignore the kids.
He could still endure their actions for they were children. But it would be a different story if they were adults. Similar to the parents of Bob and Kyle, they would have no excuse if they still acted like this when they grew up.
Finally reaching his destination he started his training. A few hours later, he decided to take a break and enjoy the view.
"I guess, she won't be coming anymore," Ray whispered to himself.
Since that day, he hadn't spoken to Amy at all. Rumours had spread that it was Ray that forced Gary, Amy, Bob and Kyle into the forest. The adults believed it for some reason, and the source of these rumours was, of course, the parents of Bob and Kyle.
Although he didn't see Amy as a friend. It was still better to have company than being alone. It was nice to pass time talking to someone else than to spend it in solitude.
Back when he was a dragon, he could feel the killing intent of humans directed to him whenever they saw him. Even now as a human. He felt as if he hadn't lost that ability.
Everyone who saw Ray so far had a bad impression of him due to his red hair. There were only three people in existence that didn't spite him despite how he looked. It was his parents, Jack, Scarlett, and Amy.
Ray let out a sigh and decided to call it a day.
He had a delicious dinner with his parents before heading over to his bedroom for a good nights sleep. Still plotting how he would eventually change the world.
In the middle of the night, Ray was woken up with the thick smell of charcoal. The source of the smell was obvious to him as the smell was something familiar to him, it came from a fire.
Ray's eyes snapped open in alarm. He activated his dragon eyes, so he could see where the fire was coming from.
To his surprise, only their house was on fire. It had started in the kitchen and was rapidly spreading throughout the entire house.
He quickly ran to his parents' bedroom to warn them of what was going on.
"Wake up! Wake up! There's a fire!" Ray shouted.
Both his parents awakened from their sleep and quickly assessed the situation. Without any hesitation, Jack grabbed Ray and Scarlett with both of his hands before he jumped straight out of the window.
While they were outside, the people were starting to gather at the commotion. Scarlett raised both of her hands and started whispering some words to herself.
The fire then started to move like a snake. It swirled, and Scarlett who was controlling the fire audibly mumbled, "Disperse."
The fire was split apart and it existed no more. The villagers gathering around the house started whispering with each other.
"It was the Talen's house!"
"Don't you think it's the boy's curse?"
"If we don't get rid of him then one day, the entire village might be destroyed…"
Ray proceeded to ignore the words of the people. It was painfully obvious that this fire wasn't an accident.
'The fire had started recently so the person who did all of these must still be nearby.'
As for the reason why they were sticking around?
It was probably because they wanted to see if they had succeeded in burning Ray down with his parents and their house.
Ray activated his dragon eyes and started to scour the area around him. There weren't many people out since it was in the middle of the night. The only people around the area were those wide awake, and reeling at the fire.
This made it easy for him to spot his suspect. Soon, his dragon eyes caught a figure shuffling about in the dark. It was too dark for Ray to see who the person was, but after following the figure for a while. He instantly realised the identity of the person who did all of these.
It was because the person had entered the residences that belonged to the family of Bob and Kyle.
Obviously, the perpetrators behind the fire were Bob and Kyle's mother.
Ray stood there in the dark with a grim look on his face.
He had enough.
'They tried to kill me and my parents and burn us down along with our house?'
'It seems like I have to start my revenge a little earlier than I had planned.'
Ray whispered into the air.