Early Morning - Mid Summer : Bahamut Estate

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"Well, now that Krystallo has gotten better at moving in her humanoid form, how about a trip?"

-Huh?- I gave Mother a surprised look. "Where to?"

"Well, I feel like your grandmother will kill me if I don't bring you guys to see her sometime soon, so why don’t we pay her a visit?"

"Grandmother!" Krystallo looked at Mother with an eager look, but I was a bit nervous about it.

“Wouldn’t us visiting her alert the elders?”

"We can visit her if we lay low now that we’ve worked out some issues, she just can't come to us."

-I guess that makes sense…- I still felt uneasy about it, but it would do no good to disagree any more than I already had. "So when are we going to leave?"

"I wanted to leave this afternoon, but there are only a couple things I need to finish before we go. Plus, it should be better for us to move at night."

-So, tonight…- "Alright, in that case, I should go check up on the pirate settlement by the temple so I'll be back in a bit."

Mother immediately turned to me with a confused look. "Pirate settlement? This is the first time I've heard of it..."

I immediately motioned to Father.

"Ah, uh…” He clammed up before lowering his head. “Sorry, I got a bit preoccupied..."

"Haah..." -I guess I can't blame him for forgetting...- "Well, can you explain to Mother while I'm gone. I won't be too long." Seeing him nod, I turned to the field, but I was almost immediately stopped by Mother.

"Before you go, let me send someone with you to show you how to activate the space rune." She hastily looked over her shoulder toward the estate, not noticing my confident smile.

"I won't be using the space rune, so I will be alright, Mother."

"Huh? Then how are you going to get there-? YOU ARE NOT FLYING ALL THE WAY THERE!" Her face immediately got serious as a wave of worry washed over her.

"Haha, calm down Mother, I won't be flying either."

"Huh?” Her face quickly washed with confusion. “Then.. how?"

"Haha, I guess it's about time I show off what I've been learning about recently!"

Everyone immediately gave me a weird look.

"Well..." Casually walking out into the field, I found a decent spot and sat down. "I'll be back later!" With a small wave of my wing, a gate encompassed Ilios and me, making us instantaneously vanish.

-

- Zachari Ragnarok ~

"Well.."

-What is he doing?- I tilted my head with a look of curiosity.

"I'll be back later!"

-Hm?-

*Vwoop* As an out sound met my ears, a black sphere appeared around Vasilias before instantly vanishing without leaving a trace of him behind.

My mind and body simply froze as a slough of emotions surged in my mind.

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The only one in the courtyard that seemed mostly unsurprised was Chloe, everyone else practically had their jaws on the floor.

"Did he just..." Osto slowly turned his head to stare at me with wide eyes.

-He.. used space magic…- Slowly turning to him, my mix of emotions started to thin, and a mix of pride and joy started filling my mind.

The next thing we knew, Osto and I were staring at each other with childish grins.

A feeling of pride like nothing we had ever experienced filled our minds.

I quickly puffed up my chest as I held my head high with a smile. "I told you I'd raise him to be the strongest!"

Osto immediately let out a laugh as he enjoyed the atmosphere moment as well. "Haha, I remember saying he was the next Bahamut as a joke several years ago but now it seems possible!"

"No." My smile turned confident as I looked at him. "Vasilias will far surpass Bahamut!"

Although it was incredibly taboo to question or refute Bahamut's strength even in the modern era, in that moment, we didn't care in the slightest.

We were simply proud to be raising the one who we believed could become the strongest dragon in existence. -It’s just a matter of time…-

-

- Vasilias ~

-Hehe.. I wonder how they reacted…- Quickly dispersing the gate, I threw my aura at Ilios and surrounded him in a cloud of mana so dense the ambient space mana couldn’t reach him. -He should be alright with this…-

Finally looking around and orienting myself, I found the node in the web of tubes that looked to be the temple rune and created a tiny amount of hydrogen that could bump me in the right direction.

*puff* It was hardly anything, but it was just enough to make me start moving. -But let's do a couple more…- *puff-puff* *puff*

Quickly getting up to a reasonable speed, I started floating through the void toward the rune node and took a moment to enjoy the beauty of the dimension before having to start slowing down again. *puff* *puff* *puff* -The scale of this place is really way too tiny…-

Coming to a halt just over the temple's rune node, I quickly double-checked on Ilios and started creating the gate. -I should come out just over the temple…-

In the void, I was making the center of the gate around a dozen centimeters over the node expecting to come out around half a kilometer above the rune.

Oh, how incorrect I was.

*Vwoooop* Immediately getting squeezed through the gate, I watched as the abyssal blackness around me vanished, but instead of being replaced by the bright blue sky, I saw stars. -Huh? Shouldn’t it be day…-

And that was when I noticed my flapping wings had practically no resistance. -WHAT?!- *fwwWWOOOOSH* Instantly falling toward the planet, I looked down to find myself upwards of 40 kilometers in the air.

-I.. Need to be more careful with this in the future…- A chill passed down my back as I questioned what would happen if I accidentally exited a gate in the ground before I noticed my body being surrounded by a blanket of warmth and snapped out of my thoughts. -Right, I need to find a place to land…-

*psh-FWOOOSH* Using thruster magic, I hastily slowed down and took control of our descent.

After just another moment, I finally broke through the clouds just over the temple and immediately noticed several changes. -She really stuck to her word…-

A decent way up the coast, I could easily see a large dock with several huge ships docked at it and no one near them. “Since it seems there are going to be some new faces, how about I make an entrance?”

“Woof!” Ilios let out an excited woof as he finally sat up and looked ahead of us.

“Alright! Hold on!” Immediately cloaking myself with light magic, I found a good, isolated part of the forest not far from the docks and decided it’d be my landing pad.

Finally changing to my humanoid form, I grabbed Ilios out of the air and came slamming into the ground, this time bracing myself properly.

*CRA-WHHAAAAMMMM* The whole island shook as the mix of dirt and sand beneath my feet turned molten.

*tap-tap* Letting Ilios down, I quickly brushed off my clothes and patched up the damaged areas before stepping out of the molten pool. -Alright, that should be fine for now…-

Feeling generally pleased with my appearance, I made my way out to the beach and slowly made my way around the bend I landed on the first time I came here.

-For only starting a few months ago.. this is pretty impressive…- The dock was quite large and actually very sturdy.

But the most shocking part was that instead of everything being tied together, they had been cut and fitted to one another. -They must have a pretty good artisan…-

But as I was idly looking over the ships and questioning where everyone was, I finally heard a few voices from inside the woods just ahead.

"What was that?"

"I have no idea, it was too loud to be a cannon… No other pirate groups should even know this place exists…" The man's voice was quite stressed.

"I hope it's not a sea monster… I hear there are some big ones around here…"

"Calm down man, I'm sure whatever it was won’t bother us."

Looking toward the widened pathway leading into the island, I saw a group of four big fully armed guys in armor running out onto the beach.

Seeing that they couldn’t sense me even though my aura filled the area, a playful grin slowly crept onto my face. -They might be fun to play with…- *Poof-FWOOOSH* A huge surge of air blasted past them as I suddenly appeared right in front of them. “Would you guys happen to know where Captain Lassar is?"