After dealing with some of the tedium that came with building and maintaining connections, Max and Ignatius made their way over relieving them of this somewhat. “So how are things going for you two.” Owari asked with some relief as soon as the two were close.
“Well enough for me. I’ve met quite a lot of influential people today.” Max chuckled. It was well beyond what he had initially thought as well. As someone from the Vermillion family it was obvious he knew some of the people here. But even he couldn’t casually invite some of these people to a gathering. In fact some wouldn’t come even if his family begged.
“So have I. It’s very intimidating.” Ignatius admitted. He had it worse as he was only a member of an agency which are generally less well connected than the tamer families were due to relying on themselves more.
“I’m sure you’ve left a good impression on some of them. Though they don’t seem too sharp when it comes to determining strength.” Noel chuckled. “You should have seen some of the looks they shot Kent’s way earlier. I wonder how they’d react if they knew his rank.” She purposely said this loud enough so the peanut gallery listening in on their conversation could hear.
“You mean how he’s low electrum?” Max immediately caught on to what she was trying to do and joined her.
“Exactly.” Owari laughed lightly as he saw them toying with their guests. When they said that Owari noticed at least a few people almost choke on their drinks.
“Well considering his age it’s to be expected that they would underestimate him.” Ignatius played mediator. He had it the hardest when it came to impressing these people.
“True.” Max also backed off as he knew his place.
“Well either way I’m glad to hear you two are enjoying yourselves.” Owari chuckled seeing them back off so readily.
“Right. Enjoying myself.” Max sighed. “That’s not the words I’d use, but feel free to use them yourself.”
“I know I’m enjoying myself.” Ignatius was glad he could make these connections for his agency. He’d certainly be rewarded for doing so. Unlike the other three here he wasn’t exactly rich.
“Hm?” Suddenly Owari seemed to notice something and looked towards the ceiling.
“Did you notice too?” Noel asked a second later.
“Of course. Why’d they have to choose today?” Owari sighed. “Excuse us.” Owari and Noel made their way towards the door. Soon enough Francis joined them. “I’ll take care of it.” Owari said suddenly.
“Okay.” Francis nodded but he didn’t stop following along.
Seeing the three most influential people walking to the door people couldn’t help but watch curiously. Max and Ignatius who were talking to Owari and Noel a moment earlier even directly followed them out of curiosity. Some other people who were also curious decided to follow along, seemingly having their courage bolstered by watching Max and Ignatius following them. Soon enough a train consisting of half the party-goers made their way outside.
When they exited the building everyone saw Owari, Francis, and Noel looking in one direction. Far in the distance they saw five dots. Suddenly Owari spoke up. “Who would have thought a flock of dragons would decided to attack today? Do you think someone riled them up on purpose?”
“Probably. We haven’t had a dragon attack in decades.” Francis said with some reminiscence.
“Well whatever the case is, if someone thought this was enough to cause a problem then they severely underestimated us.” Noel said with a chuckle.
“True enough.” Owari also chuckled.
When everyone heard what they were saying they couldn’t help but panic a bit. Seeing the dots coming closer their first thought was ‘how did they know from so far away?’ followed by ‘what do we do now?’. However before they got their answer Owari summoned his spirit blade. Then he swung it six times using his new spatial slash. While he did that he activated dark steel fang, trying to fuse the two together. The first time he failed, but after that he got the trick of it and managed to succeed the next five times. The five dots in the distance suddenly started to drop towards the ground rapidly.
“You should have someone go collect those. The family can keep the materials and do whatever they wish with them.” Owari said casually as he unsummoned his sword.
“Um, were there really dragons coming here?” Max asked with uncertainty.
“Yeah. Someone must have riled them up. I wonder who is stupid enough to go bother a nest of five dragons.” Owari didn’t sugar coat his words causing some of the guests to panic a bit.
“Oh calm down.” Noel suddenly spoke up to everyone in the crowd. “It’s just a couple mid electrum ranks. They’re dead now anyways. Go back inside.” She shooed them away.
“Right. Everyone back inside. No need to stand around here anymore. Unless of course you want to leave.” Francis looked over at everyone and saw most of them were unwilling. After all, a lot of people had yet to leave an impression on Owari and Noel.
The party continued uninterrupted after that, that is until five dragons were brought in through the city and into the Silverblood compound. This confirmed to everyone at the party that there really had almost been a dragon attack. What’s more it was a flock of five mid-electrums. Rumours abounded about how Owari didn’t even need to move from his spot to kill them all. It was as easy as swinging his sword a few times.
Out of everyone though the most shocked was Francis. He had seen the most clearly, and he wondered to himself if he could accomplish something similar. However he realized he’d need at least a minute to take out five mid-electrum ranked dragons. After that he wondered how he would fare against such an attack if aimed at him and realized that while he could likely dodge or block it, he would be entirely on the defensive. What’s more he realized such an attack required no mana which meant he couldn’t rely on a battle of attrition either. It was a sobering moment. He believed Owari had likely already stepped into the realm of low orichalcum.
The party continued for a short time before finally coming to a close. Owari and Noel made their way to their guest house after parting with their friends. It had been a bit of a challenge keeping Sophia quiet and compliant the whole day, so they had sent her back with Morgana halfway through the party. When they got back she was ecstatic. She was getting quite smart at this point. Being almost a year old she was already able to recognize people, and she knew who she did and didn't like. She was especially fond of Morgana and Erica. Other than her parents those two were her favorites.
After the party Noel and Owari stuck around until after their birthday at which point they finally decided to return home. By the time they got home the end of June was nearing. While he was gone Owari got plenty of mail, which he started to sort through shortly after returning. Among the mail he received word that the crystal card communication company was finally off the ground and running smoothly. They set up communication lines between major cities in their area, with plans to extend out and join up more cities.
With this a new job was created for hunters, just like with the maintenance of the rail lines, new jobs were opened up to maintain the communication cables. Of course the one who paid for such services was actually the government. IN exchange for them shouldering the cost, they were given free rein to use the communication lines without cost. Everyone else would have to pay a fee to have their messages transported over the lines.
On top of that news, there was news about the new drug being created. It was progressing well, with the mouse test subjects showing rapid signs of improved strength and endurance. Nearly twice as much as when they first took the drug. However they also showed signs of increased aggression. This was something which they were still ironing out. Originally not only did it increase aggression, but it also caused tumors, physical deformities, and heart failure. The only reason it got to the point it had was because all of those other things had long been cured already. By adding in certain medicines into the new drug they could counteract those symptoms. It was all about finding the balance in which none of the drugs counteract each other.
With all of that news Owari now had an up in his income due to the communication company starting their real business. It was about time he had a return on investments. For now it was only around 2,000 or so credits a month, but eventually it would grow higher as the number of lines increased and as the popularity soared. With some extra money in hand Owari sent over 50,000 credits to both the communication company and the medical research team to help cover costs. He still had a good 60,000 credits left after that which was more than enough for anything that might come up.
After that time started to pass quickly. Owari and Noel spent a lot of their time taking care of their kid, going on dates, and hanging out with Lance and Rebecca. It was a peaceful time for them, and they enjoyed it more than expected even if they were a little antsy for some action. They would also train often to ensure they never got rusty. Noel made strides towards reaching low orichalcum. She was now able to more finely control kinetic energy within her domain, and could even enhance or diminish said energy allowing her to greatly enhance her own strikes and weaken opponents strikes without needing to redirect energy to do so.
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About two months after returning home something interesting happened. Noel started to show signs of being pregnant again. Having already gone through it once she was more aware of the signs. And after that they quickly had her take a test and figured out she really was pregnant again. With this they would soon have another baby to handle. More importantly it meant Owari was once again in charge of taking care of Noel. Luckily they had started to take a more hands-off approach with Sophia so it wouldn’t be too much trouble for Noel to take turns with Owari to care for her.
Time passed swiftly after finding out that Noel was pregnant. There wasn’t a lot going on in life besides the peaceful daily life they had been living so far. Over the next few months Owari would get the occasional notification from the communication company and research team. He would also send money on occasion as well. Overall it was a peaceful and easy life that they ended up living.
Eventually enough time passed and March started to come around. The baby was due soon and they were preparing for it. Sophia had already been developing well enough, she had already started to expand her vocabulary and knew nearly three dozen words. She could easily understand what Owari and Noel were saying and was able to follow simple directions when asked. She was a bit of an angel really, she never became defiant or acted up at all.
When the third of March came up Noel ended up going into labor as they made their way to the hospital, arriving shortly after. She spent the next few hours giving birth. When all was said and done Owari and Noel were now the parents of a newborn baby boy. However oddly he wasn’t crying. Most babies cry when they are first born, but he seemed entirely calm. The doctors did some checking up and found nothing wrong with him alleviating their worries. If there was any one weird thing about him it was his snow-white hair. Unlike his mother he wasn’t born albino, but his hair was still white. It was hard to tell because he had very little hair, but once he got cleaned up it became obvious.
It took a few days before they could bring him home, at which point they set him up in the same room as Sophia. They decided to name him Gin after Owari’s father. However whenever they called out to him he remained stoic, not really reacting much other than looking at them. In the end they could only helplessly wait for him to grow a bit to see if something was wrong.
The family passed the time in one another’s company. Gin was very easy to handle. He only ever cried when he was hungry or needed changed. Even then it was easy to tell which was which, when he was hungry it would sound as if he was in pain, while when he needed changed he would whine like he was uncomfortable. With their experience from Sophia it was even easier to tell the difference. Other than that he was quiet and only ever observed the world around him carefully.
About two months after he was born someone came to Owari and Noel’s door. It was Francis. “So are you two busy?” He asked with some hesitation.
“As in at this moment or in general?” Owari asked.
“I suppose both.” He replied.
“Not really. Gin is very well behaved so he doesn’t take up much time or energy. He even lets us sleep at night.” Owari waved for Francis to come inside. In the house Noel was sitting with Sophia on her lap, Gin was in his room sleeping.
“I was wondering if you could help with a problem.” Francis felt a little bad. He would have preferred to come meet Gin on better terms.
“What is it?” Owari asked curiously. It seemed Francis was unusually nervous.
“A behemoth has destroyed phantom city.” Phantom city was the renamed city that had been attacked way back in the day by phantoms. It seemed like a truly unlucky location.
“How many people survived?” Noel asked.
“Not many died, it was large so they caught sight early on and fled.” Francis answered with a relieved sigh.
“So why come to us? You could probably take care of it yourself.” Owari was confused.
“It’s a low orichalcum rank at least. It wiped out the city by stepping on it.” He replied.
“By stepping on it? Is it really that large?” Owari was surprised.
“Not so big that its foot is the size of a city. But big enough that a few casual steps could destroy the city. Its body is as big as a mountain.” He answered dutifully.
“So how did we miss something like that living around on our continent?” Noel was shocked.
“It was laying down on the ground and had blended in as a mountain. Everyone thought it was an ordinary mountain until it got up and began walking around.” Francis chuckled wryly.
“So why did it get up now?” Owari asked sharply.
“Nobody knows, but if I had to guess, somebody must have hit it really hard and riled it up.” Francis gave his opinion.
“Sounds about right. So it’s a rock type behemoth?” Owari asked, based on the description it was likely not of the same species as the one he fought long ago.
“Right. It’s a turtle type.” Turtle type behemoths were one of a few species, and they tended to grow rather large, but this was unprecedented.
“So you want us to kill it?” Owari asked.
“It’d be much appreciated.” Francis nodded.
“Should we go together?” Owari asked Noel.
“Sure. I’ll watch if it doesn’t need both of us.” Noel stood up and set down Sophia. She seemed unwilling to be taken off of her spot. “I’ll go get Morgana. You two hammer out the details.”
After that Noel grabbed Morgana like she said and Francis debriefed Owari with what little information they had which wasn’t much. When Morgana came in Sophia was ecstatic and immediately forgot all about being rudely taken from her spot. She started to happily play with Morgana who was as excellent a nanny as she was a maid. Meanwhile Owari grabbed Noel and jumped into the air after exiting their house. In an instant he arrived near phantom city, or what was left of it.
Inside the city lying down was a mountain-sized turtle with a literal mountain on its back. It was a smaller mountain, but it easily eclipsed the size of the city. Just by lying down it crushed more than three-fourths of the city. Owari stood on the air and considered some things before looking at Noel. “I think I can take it.”
“Go ahead. I get the next calamity.” She joked before squirming out of his embrace unwillingly and floating in the air.
Owari stretched a bit before summoning his sword and phantom cloak. After that he started by swinging his sword and using his spatial slash to strike its neck. A small wound compared to its body size tore open and it suddenly opened its mouth and yelled out in pain causing shockwaves to explode out through the air. It clearly wasn’t used to being injured. Owari ignored the shockwaves and instantly appeared in front of its face a moment later.
He gripped his sword hard and used silver wave to create a massive wave of metal energy which he threw towards its eyes. The metal energy tore into one of its eyes as it barely titled its head in time. As the metal energy collided with its eye it popped like a balloon sending blood and gore into the air and down towards the ground. Owari instantly disappeared as the behemoth opened its jaws and snapped them at him in nearly an instant. It was surprisingly fast for something so large. But to Owari it was slow and clumsy.
He appeared on the side of its head and used another silver wave to destroy its other eye. Once that was done he jumped above its head and over its neck where he landed on it. He lifted his sword high into the air and swung down using dark steel bite. Dark mana coalesced on his blade and turned it into a massive sword. He swung down and sliced into the turtle behemoth's neck. He only managed to get a few meters deep before he ran out of steam. However that left a massive gash on the behemoth’s neck.
At this moment brown energy began to coalesce around Owari who warped away in an instant. A moment later the entire area he was at before was encased in solid stone. He would have been suffocated to death by stone had he not teleported away. However he obviously didn’t panic. This was no different than any other fight he had been in, dancing on a razor-thin line where a single hit was almost guaranteed death.
He warped here and there using dark steel bite to leave giant gashes across the behemoth’s body. As he did it continued to try and encase him in stone. Sometimes it even fired off giant boulders at him. As they flew through the air Noel would smash them apart to keep them from flying far away and killing someone by accident. It was an intense fight as it was basically Owari’s mana pool versus the behemoths vitality.
Owari mainly focused on its neck hoping to cut off its head. Eventually after what seemed like forever he managed to completely sever the head from its body, but even still it didn’t die right away. Owari then spent the next ten minutes frantically dodging the dying volley of magic from the behemoth who realized it was going to die. With nothing left to lose it didn’t hold back whatsoever and desperately tried to kill him.
Eventually though it did die. After all it had been beheaded. With the beast dead there wasn’t a particular reason to stick around so Owari took Noel and returned home. When he did so Francis was still waiting there. He seemed to be having fun playing with Sophia. “So is it dead?” He asked as soon as he saw them.
“Yeah. It wasn’t too hard. It was just a bit tricky since I couldn’t afford to get hit. I’ll be sending our beasts over to your home, I want you to bring them over to the behemoth so they can eat their fill. Our beast handler will be there too so no need to worry about them being too rowdy. He’s very good at his job and our beasts seem to like him.” Owari informed him.
“That’s fair.” Francis nodded. It was only natural that Owari did what he pleased with the remains. Such a powerful beast was sure to be helpful in their evolution.
“Right, so I take it you'll be returning home now?” Noel asked with some dissatisfaction. She clearly wanted him to stay longer but knew he might not be able to. She slightly regretted going with Owari.
“I can come back after dealing with all the other stuff on that side. We can spend the day together tomorrow.” He smiled.
“Splendid.” Noel was elated.
“I’ll let you two do that then. I’ll be in the study dealing with things if you need me.” Owari tactfully gave them some time to themselves. It had been a while since Noel had some time to spend with her grandfather after all.
That day Owari spent in the study going through all of his recent business ventures. He had recently branched out and started to get into new fields. He bought out the blacksmithing shop in town that his old smith runs. Other than that he also bought stocks in a car company, and so on and so forth. He wasn’t too interested in amassing money, he mostly did it because he had money to burn and was somewhat bored.
While he did that Noel showed off Sophia and Gin. Sophia had already started to speak a bit. She could ask for things and call out to them. She was quite smart for a kid her age. She was quickly going on two, with there only being only a month left until then. Gin on the other hand was a bit of a conundrum. He was not only well behaved, but he was sharp. Owari and Noel often found him looking at everything and anything. He also listened intently to anything they had to say.
In the end though no matter how weird their son was he was still their son and they loved him all the same. When Francis went home Noel invaded Owari’s study and started to pester him about going on a date. Of course he happily obliged and the next day they were making their way around town doing the usual. They were sitting on a bench currently watching everyone pass them by.
“It’s been almost eight years since we met.” Noel said with a face of reminiscence.
“It has. It’s been quite a long time. It almost feels like yesterday that you were asking me to ride back to town with you with such a hopeful look on your face.” Owari chuckled.
“Indeed.” Noel couldn’t help but burn up at the thought of it. It had been very forward of her at the time. She had even slept in the car with a complete stranger as well. Even if she was confident he wouldn’t try anything because of her status it was still very careless and more importantly, when she recalled how she used to snore, embarrassing.
“I remember how we used to pretend we weren’t dating even though we basically were. It was very childish of us, or really me.” Owari admitted.
“Yeah, I was always worried about when you would suddenly decide you really didn’t want to be in a relationship. You strung me along quite well.” Noel playfully hit his arm.
“Yeah yeah, I’m sorry. But I’m glad you kept at it. Otherwise we would have never ended up as happy as we have.” Owari rubbed his arm. She might think it was a playful hit, but her punch was still hard enough to bruise him which was saying something considering how tough he was. Of course she probably did it on purpose.
“Right.” The two of them sat in silence and enjoyed their date together. When they were done they went home and prepared to take care of the kids. Their peaceful life barely interrupted by that interlude. It was quickly forgotten as if it never really happened.