The Dragon of Dreams

Chapter 21: A Proud Mother

Late-Evening - Mid Spring : Unknown Forest

- Zachari Ragnarok ~

As I flew over the forest with Vasilias, I was trying to think of what I should let him hunt. -What would be a good match for him..-

Before I could settle on anything though, a distant roar broke my train of thought.

"Roaaarrr!"

"Tch, a wyvern.." Although it wasn't too surprising, it was incredibly annoying.

Over the past several months, I had been constantly slaughtering wyverns. For whatever reason, there were more than usual flying through or trying to live in the forest.

"Actually this could work. Larger wyverns are between A and S rank so give it a shot, that will be your prey." -He is nearly as big as me so he should be able to handle a big wyvern no problem.. Even without magic.-

"So 'my prey is going to be able to fight back' is what you're saying.." He looked back at me with an excited smile.

Hearing me give him the go-ahead, he quickly darted forward. As he was about to dive down and fight, I finally got close enough to see the situation.

It was a 14 meter tall wyvern and a 12 meter one having a territory dispute. -Its a bit more than expected but it might be nice for him to have more than one enemy to focus on..-

Interrupting my thought, Vasilias dove and slammed into the larger wyvern completely mutilating it. -Welp.. so much for multiple enemies..-

I felt a bit of pity for the wyvern as it’s body got mutilated beyond recognition.

I was honestly in awe seeing his strength. -But what is he going to do to the other one?-

He stood still for a moment before he opened his mouth in the direction of the other wyvern. -Is he using a breath?- I preemptively braced myself just in case.

But nothing could have mentally prepared me for what happened.

*CRACK* *Cr-cr-cr-cr-crackle*

A deafening noise filled the air as a massive hole appeared in the wyvern. -What the..-

*Th-th-th-th-thud*

Behind the wyvern, several trees in a straight line started falling over.

-Just what.. did he do..- I was completely speechless. I had never seen or even heard of magic that could do what he did.

I couldn't even see what happened to even be able to guess at how he did it. The only evidence of it ever happening was the deafening noise and the aftermath.

I looked at the scene in awe before looking down more at Vasilias.

An incredible and unfathomable sense of pride welled within me.

To dragons, strength was everything, and there was no greater glory than having one’s child become the strongest.

-A true prodigy..- An excited and goofy smile came to my face as I looked forward to showing him off to my mother in Bahamut. [1]

-Maybe I'll take them to Bahamut before the festival... Maybe once Krystallo reaches adolescence..-

Finally deciding on future plans, I quickly made my way down to Vasilias with a proud smile on my face.

- Vasilias ~

After completely destroying the two poor wyverns, Mother came down and landed next to me with a beaming smile.

"My goodness, Vasilias. Your strength is already- Ahem.. nevermind." Her excitement was extremely visible even after she tried to hide it some. "Well, since you seem to have more than enough physical prowess..” She glanced at the pool of blood that was left of the first wyvern. “We will skip the physical part of your lessons and go straight to magic and aura!"

"Oh!” -Magic!!- “So what can I learn first!" I quickly turned around and sat down.

I may have already created some unfathomable spells but I had only scraped the surface of magic, I was incredibly eager to learn more.

"I meant to teach you this before the hunt but I got a bit side tracked... First you will learn how to handle and use your aura." She turned around and motioned me to come along.

We slowly made our way towards a clearing that was nearby before we sat down.

"What's aura?" I could assume what it was from stories in my past life, but when it came to magic I was completely in the dark.

"Aura is something every 'living' being has. It is the natural expulsion of mana from nearly any living creature. To most creatures, it is something that they can't utilize, but we as dragons have more than enough of it to be able to control it." She took a prideful stance as she talked. "What I said earlier, about unattributed mana being less useful than attributed, well that wasn’t entirely true. For example, since our auras are mostly unattributed mana, we can control or we can read it.”

She stopped for a moment to make sure I was following along before continuing.

“When I control my aura, I can change the distribution of mana to limit how much people can feel my presence, amplify it for intimidation or even use it to pressure people. When I read my aura, I can sense whatever it touches, this includes the aura of other living beings as well!" She spoke with such excitement that it was incredibly engaging.

-So it's a way to 'sense presences' like in all those manga from Earth..- I was excited at the idea of being able to not get snuck up on, but as soon as I tried to read my aura, I realized it was easier said than done.

Mother quickly noticed me struggling and tried to comfort me with a proud yet innocent smile. "Haha, It's not as easy as controlling the mana from your reserve, Vasilias. It takes time to learn how to read and control such a large volume of mana [2] and it only gets harder as your aura gets bigger, even for dragons, so don't worry if it takes a few years."

-A FEW YEARS?!- I was taken aback by her statement. -It’s difficult, sure.. but it shouldn't take that long to get the hang of..-

After fiddling with it for several minutes, I finally found a way to at least read a small amount of my aura by thinking of it as one single mass instead of several small bits.

Although it was far less detailed than I wanted, it did work.

-What the..- As soon as I actually started reading my aura though, I felt an extremely familiar sensation. -The dream..-

Reading my aura gave the same sensation that I had when I was in the 'dream'.

I could 'see' everything around me even when I wasn't looking at it, the difference being that, in the dream, I did it all subconsciously.

I also couldn't see the 'time' of anything like in the dream, but overall the sensation was similar enough to where I could get the hang of aura just by mimicking the sensation from the dream.

Slowly expanding the area of the aura I was reading, I started feeling a headache coming on.

“Ugh..” I winced a little as the headache continued to get immensely worse before I shrunk the volume of aura I was reading.

After lowering the amount I was reading until the pain subsided, I could only sense things within 5 meters of me. It wasn't a lot, but it was the most I could sustain at the moment.

Snapping out of my focus, I noticed that Mother was looking at me, awestruck. "My goodness you really are a quick learner.."

Although I wasn't really happy since I thought it was a 'poor performance', a slightly childish smile came to my face from Mother’s praise. "It's just because Mother is such a good teacher!"

"Well I guess now that you have the basics of that, we should head back. It's nearly morning already."

“Oh!” I looked up at her with a gleam in my eye. "Can I explore the forest on my own now?"

She immediately tensed up before awkwardly responding. "Let's go back and have a family meal first.." Not wasting any time, she immediately flew up into the air.

My anticipation got completely destroyed by her dodging the question but I didn't plan on giving up so easily. “Haah..” -I can't blame her for being reluctant..- With a small sigh, I hopped up and flew after her.

After a short moment of flying, I arrived at the field in front of the cave and saw father playing with Ilios. -It’s good to see that they’re getting along well..-

As I landed at the edge of the field, Ilios stopped what he was doing and sprinted towards me.

“Haha, I was only gone for a few minutes.” Ilios ran up and jumped on me, fervently licking my face.

"Welcome back, how was your first hunt?" Father walked up to me with a bit of jealousy.

"It was a little easier than I was expecting, but it was still super fun. I also learned about aura from Mother."

Mother finally landed behind me since I had flown ahead. "He is an incredibly talented child, he was able to use complicated spells and read some of his aura on his first try."

Father looked back towards me and expanded his aura to envelop me, curiously watching for my reaction.

It caught me completely off guard. Sensing an aura as strong as Father’s made my nerves jump, but it wasn’t nearly as oppressive as I was expecting.

Father looked at me in shock. "My goodness.. it's so dense... How much mana do you have left in your reserve Vasilias?"

"About a sixth. The breath I used earlier sucked up.. a lot of it."

Fathers jaw hung open. "You mean that you only have a sixth left and your aura is that dense?"

Mother chimed in before I could answer. "His total reserve is several times larger than mine, did you not notice his aura earlier when his reserve was full? It was honestly suffocating.. it was comparable to Mother’s.."

"Asimi is one of the stronger elders though.." Father wore a look of disbelief. (Asimi is Mother’s mother and Vasilias’s grandmother)

He slowly looked over at me in awe, but after a moment I noticed a gleam appeared in his eye.

-What idea could he have come up with from this conversation?- I was genuinely confused since I had no clue what he could possibly think of so suddenly.

But, once Mother spoke, he seemed to put his thoughts aside. "Well let's eat!"