To exit the subspace only required any of them to wander out its front gates, since the disastrous events, Salvation, multiple Sages, and the Great sage Pondralle of the imperial family kept an eye on the group. Beyond the obvious reason, Raccelline, as the current princess of a major empire, and Icy as the dragon who broke quite a few records on his own, their every movement was kept within the eyes of others.
Obviously, he avoided any assimilations over this time period. Not because he worried that the event drew attention, but because an evolution awaited and a high frequency of them caused unbridled chaos.
Besides, if a Great sage accurately measured the density of bloodline energy contained within him, their stupendous discovery would quickly mess up things even more.
Once outside, the two still just appeared in an imperial garden right beside the capital. A considerably large illusory array transformed the surroundings into a blank clearing. No matter how hard one tried, they always walked around the garden at its centre. The array influenced the senses and fed false information to anyone nearby.
To enter the capital hardly took much work, and Icy found the considerable house given to the group to use in the meantime.
A building structured purely of wood, like every other house in the capital. Glass and metal could still be found, and they gladly tiled the roofs with slate or some other stone. But walls, supports, and frames all utilised various coloured woods. With theirs built on a rather notable street connected to a massive, oversized plaza, their house used woods made of luscious blues and soft whites which left one impressed by its wealth, but not blinded when in sunlight.
And yes, given this house. Plagued by nightmares after just a few nights inside the palace, Raccelline grew more detached as she stayed there. In the end, they moved her out. Rather accommodating of the elves, given they’d effectively placed the six under house arrest.
A girl with silver hair adjoined to a dragon drew considerable attention no matter where they went, but the two ignored such stares with ease. Besides, he actually met a substantial number of dragons here in the past six months, although only ten of them actually came to this city for personal reasons.
All the rest arrived with a single intent in mind.
The door opened before his converged psychic force touched it, easy enough to step inside with his current form. On entry, his appearance clearly surprised most of them, but Raccelline only showed off a pleased expression.
While the childish dependency disappeared… Actually, it never had. That thought only came about as she acted to match the adult attitudes around her. For the most part, she clung to him whenever the chance arose, although that became significantly more difficult since he learnt shrinking magic.
And he actively discouraged attempts to pick up and hold the shrunken dragon. For the most part.
For the meal, Jaren mostly cooked these days. Nothing that fanciful either, he just liked to throw various vegetables in a pot with some rabbit for a stew. A common meal in his younger years as he often hunted small game for his family.
“I’m surprised you came this time, we were sure you’d ignore Adret. Was the experiment not going well?” Raccelline spoke first, on account that she enjoyed his arrival most, as well as a general dislike for the girl beside him.
“It still collapses. Even if I engraved it, I’d need something like a hundred times what I keep stored.” He summarised the issues to a point where everyone understood his issues. Outside of that problem, the current materials for his Mind palace crumbled back into mana if he ever engraved such an array on it. “I’d be more worried about the fact we don’t have a moment of privacy. There’s no way we’ll get off so easily next time, if we can’t disappear, I’ll have to worry about another storm.”
“Are we sure they might not just give up and return their focus to the other continent? Given what happened, it’ll be at least a few months before any security relaxes.” Mala spoke of her own unsureties, the situation just too weird for her to understand.
And Korridan gave his own analysis of the situation on the side, “The momentum to beat the Empire of Man is pretty much dead in the water now. Some bandits are making things hard on the people, but no one’s looking to start wars now. Tens of millions died, and that’s just soldiers. Can’t even imagine the tragedies and what else happened…”
He obviously spoke of the civillians whose lives were raped and pillaged… literally more often than not. A few bad apples and you can end up with entire squads who partake in whatever they please.
“Why are you always so depressing? You’ve received unbridled treatment from an imperial family, killed an opponent far above yourselves, evaded about half of an entire race who want your heads, and now one of your members is set to marry the next prospective dragon elder.” Adret broke the conversation with her own points, but her phrasing only earned a humorous laugh from the whole group. She frowned from how insulted it made them feel.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
But Jaren came out with, “You still clearly don’t understand any of us the slightest bit. But since you don’t know the joke, Icy gave a very positive rendition of our shipwreck in the calm belt a couple years back. Just as funny.” He chuckled to himself a few more times, but even then the ability to understand this group’s social dynamic eluded her. He left out one part in that explanation though.
Icy absolutely despised her, so what in the world endeared her to think any of them cared for this iron-chain marriage?
The fact she took pride in it was half the joke.
Adret returned to a sulk. Her full name, Adromalet, meant Silver Rain. She chose it couple years ago after her third growth phase ended, and not soon after she flew over to see other dragons. Not the easiest journey, but as a dragon, she easily flew halfway across the world to her target. The Dragonlands, a crudely named place with good reason.
In a strange twist, things changed wildly from thereon. They selectively took her in as a rather talented young adult dragon, incredible prowess as well as evolutions with great depth, although she clearly lacked social skills at the time. It appeared that the location chosen by her parents contained very few intelligent beasts to converse with.
“Well, they can’t send an assassin now. Unless Asharvad grants another divine relic to… block my sense? However it works, I doubt they have so much divinity to specially create a relic against an ability they don’t know about.” Icy played around with some of the divination arrays in the Great sage’s palace, and he found a few ways to block or evade the ability, but he had to seal himself for it to work.
“But they don’t have to. They convinced 50 Great sages in less than a minute! If we failed there, they’d have let us die and captured her,” Mala repeated a fact that came out not too long after their house arrest began, and Icy nodded his head in acceptance. A century of lifespan, that’s all it took. For those who lost countless prospective years from the peach tree’s fruits, new ways to lengthen their stay meant far too much.
Korridan broke the train of thought and said, “I wanted to have this discussion later on… But I think it might be time to consider that option, Icy?”
They all looked over to him, even Adret who hoped for a positive response and a future in which she proved herself. Whether Icy would accept the summons to the Dragonlands after so long.
“I don’t know. Would it actually help to be there?”
“If you ever want to get her off your tail you’ll probably have to reject it in person.” Jaren threw out a low blow. And while it hit hard, he didn’t fall for the provocation straight away.
“Fine, but not until we finish with research. If that fool won’t reinforce his arrays then I’ll just keep on breaking into his labs. Did you still need any of the rooms?” Icy laid a firm decision which they all agreed to, and at the same time, Mala shook her head in response to the question.
More than a few points of research remained for the two, and the sheer choice of equipment available in that palace met almost any need a wizard ever needed. In the past six months alone, Mala completed a method to transform their crystal hearts a second time, not to mention all of them now completed that first procedure.
And all of them now regularly took potions to hide their ‘side effects’.
Icy spent a lot of time focused on Origin Force arrays, but lacked a spell in Draconic which met the criteria for great languages.
After that came some research on Scourge power, and while a Sage could have easily removed that infliction on Korridan, Icy did it himself through analysis of pure demon essence extracted from the progenitor.
Pure-blood demons referred to the beings who created the endless swarms of demons seen all over. The top of the hierarchy that all demons followed orders of in an absolute fashion, although, demonisation granted freedom from this control. Very little ever came to light about the pure-bloods, but just this little bit easily granted Icy a method to root out every tendril of Scourge power.
An array of blood, and his own soul manipulation, the combined power extracted hundreds of tiny strands which wedged themselves deep into that amputated arm.
These days, most of his arm had regrown, with just a hand left to regenerate. Darak predicted another two months of repeated spell usage completed this task. It took 3 years, but he’d soon have the other arm back.
Some other things of note happened, like a fourth soul armament not that long after what happened. A weapon designed for use with Origin Force, purely focused on destruction… In retrospect he blamed himself a bit too much. He only entered the awakening process thanks to the Nexus this time, but once there, he let his regrets dominate entirely.
Power to destroy loss.
Not that the Nexus bothered to explain why a soul armament dependent on Origin Force existed within his soul. Since it happened, he assumed that armaments instead generated once he peeled away the walls.
Hmm… He finished his second transformation and boosted his MP storage by a decent 30%?
He mostly lost interest in those thoughts, rather, the dread of what awaited in that place came about. Solitary dragons covered all ranges of behaviour, from kindly to utter despotic assholes that many of their own kind hated, but those who stayed at the Dragonlands generally fell within a specific category.
And just like the parents who barely believed in his chances of survival… Many saw genetic mishaps as hopeless failures. Just that most dragon mishaps die before they hatched, so who knew how they reacted to his existence?
Even if hopeful and friendly, a deep-seated paranoia forced him to consider that they simply kept up a persona to tie him with the clan out of self-interest.
In truth, he spoke pure nonsense when it came to fears. Icy knew nothing about dragons besides how they wrote in books, Adret hardly classed as a normal dragon, and those who he’d seen in the capital maintained friendlier dispositions for various reasons. But it remained clear that they used her as a tool for connection, the marriage nothing in this circumstance.
He didn’t think of it as something important but…
Icy stared at Mala for a few seconds, she entered a daze of her own thoughts and theories as well but snapped out of it. Her body felt Icy’s stare and reacted accordingly, giving a look of confusion to him in response. But he strangely shook his head and a puff of cold air escaped his nose in a laugh.
He really was too human.