An hour after the disappearance of Telarion, the barrier preventing anyone from entering the sealed space was broken. But what the nobles encountered was something straight out of a nightmare. Across the room hundreds of bodies of teens lay, dismembered and brutally killed. Many nobles threw up at the sight while only a few were able to keep what they just ate down.

“Where’s my husband?!” Ariel could count on one hand how many people in Aevis could fight Telarion, so the fact someone like that was here and allowed a few teens to survive was a miracle.

Ariel ran over to Rina who was the only person awake besides Lily to get an account on what happened. Rina managed to recount the entire story of what happened and once Edward heard what she said, he began to attempt to run but was immediately attacked by Tyrion and Irian.

“They killed my fucking son! Don’t believe her!”

“I should’ve known you would do something like this you fucking coward.” Tyrion held out hope that Edward wouldn’t stoop as low as to cripple the future of the elves and humans, but he was clearly mistaken. Right as he got pinned down his body began to heat up and melt which Irian had seen plenty of times, but what surprised everyone was Bela appearing and ripping his soul out from his body.

Every effort was met in failure because a certain brand is what Irian had discovered, a brand not even the conspirators knew about, and it was effectively impossible to remove or prevent except for what Bela just did.

Nobody was even close in proficiency in matters of the soul compared to Bela, it would take someone multiple seconds to minutes to do what she did in a split second.

“You know it would’ve been great to have done this in the past.” Irian pleaded with Bela over this in the past but was firmly rejected each time and never knew why.

“Well, only until recently did I recover from something else, but now that recovery was all for naught.” The stronger the soul, the more energy it took for her to rip out their soul, it may look effortless, but it was something incredibly taxing to do which is why she had never bothered to help. Why do this to small fry when you could save up for a ringleader? Capturing Victor's soul before he departed was something that almost put her into a coma, but she refused to tell anyone about that.

While Bela, Tyrion and Irian were all talking, Ariel had made her way to see her son's brutal state. He had wounds all over his body, his arm had a fracture in it, multiple ribs were completely broken, and the amount of blood he lost was staggering. Ariel began to recount what she was told by Rina and couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride. Her 13-year-old son was able to fight against a pseudo–S Ranker and live narrowly. It was a true tragedy for so many lives to have been lost today but at least her son and Luna made it through it all. She was a lot more disconnected from death than Telarion was, so this sight didn’t truly phase her too much.

She was worried about Telarion but he had managed to pull through scenarios like this all the time. Plus, she had no idea where he went and had no leads minus a man who resembled a demon. She had her few ideas on who it could be, but she knew this was connected to the escaped prisoner from the sealed dimension. The amount of planning that went into this plan was absurd and she couldn’t begin to understand how long it had been in the making.

When the healers told Ariel that Solstice would live, she smiled and waved them away. She began to check his eyes and noticed that his eye had two rings now which showed he evolved his eye finally. There was no other way her son would be able to compete with a man who had much more experience with real duels than he did.

While she was holding her son and thinking about what to do in the future, a thin man with short blue hair appeared before Ariel.

“Lady Ariel, when your son awakens, I wish to thank him for saving my two kids. If it wasn’t for him at the very end fighting back with his life on the line, then maybe nobody would’ve survived today.” Luther Frost was the Patriarch of the Frost family and was a very cold person in public. He wasn’t by no means a mean person but when you run a prestigious family you have to maintain a certain public image.

“When he wakes up, I’ll be sure to tell him. Is your son going to be okay? That hole in his chest looked pretty serious.” When Ariel first entered the room, she did a quick survey by spreading her mana throughout the room to get a glimpse at everyone’s conditions. The worst condition besides her son was Hugo’s.

“In time I will know, thank you for the concern.” With that Luther bowed and walked away to tend to his children.

Ariel saw Lily looking over in her direction and just gave a warm smile before promptly teleporting away with Bela and Darius in tow back home. Over time the deceased were identified and released to their respective families. This was a terrible tragedy, but this did not stop the elves and human nobles alike from blaming Tyrion for this. Tyrion would have many problems for the coming years but hopefully the right people would be brought to justice and executed.

——Back at the cabin, 1 Week Later

Solstice had finally awoken and was startled to see himself back home. The first thing he saw was Bela sitting in the corner of his room putting down a book to check on him.

“Good morning cutie pie, how ya feeling?”

“My entire body aches, but I feel weirdly light?”

“Ah that? Well, you evolved that eye of yours so that’s probably some of it. But your body went through some tempering also, your muscles are much more developed now than they were.”

Much like when you empty out of mana reserves and get a bigger reservoir because of it, martial artists like to fight and get hurt in order to temper their entire bodies. Solstice had never noticed it because he started at an incredibly high level of body tempering due to being a dragon. So, increasing it was out of question for now unless it was a life-or-death battle like now, and his father was forbidden from doing it because of Ariel.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Hearing this Solstice finally understood why some people were battle fanatics. He could only imagine how high he could climb with his physique having a perfect duality of speed, agility and power.

“I’m just glad you’re okay.” Bela immediately grabbed Solstice’s head and buried it into her bosom, Solstice didn’t plan to fight back since he knew Bela got whatever she wanted.

After a few minutes of silence Bela finally began to tell him how the end of the tragedy happened and when he heard his father disappeared, he was incredibly worried. But before he could say anything else he was hushed by Bela.

“Your mother is already working on it; I believe she’s currently in hell leading some sort of crusade. If your fathers still alive, she is going to find him. I have no idea how it’s going since time flows differently than here but if she’s going after dukes then she’s probably been gone at least a year?”

Hell was a part of Aevis but was a different dimension, just like Heaven and the sealed dimension which Shael had finally named Purgatory.

All Solstice did was nod, he knew he wasn’t strong enough to help his mother at all, so he decided to just focus on recovering and getting stronger.

“Oh, before I forget, here’s a crystal your mother gave me, it has stuff to help you train gravity and space magic.” During his short training camp with his mentors, he wasn’t able to touch base on space, gravity and time since the learning curve was much higher than any other element.

“After you feel better, Darius and I are going to be overseeing you until either the academy exam or your mother gets back. We’ll switch off every month and have you focus on either tradecraft or magic. On your own time, Victor can take care of you.” After Bela said this, she noticed Victor appeared but was oddly upbeat.

“Did something happen to you? When the hell do you actually have energy?” Bela had known Victor for around fifty years but had never seen him full of energy.

“Nope, just ready to kick some ass.” Victor wasn’t planning on telling anyone about his interaction with Estel, but he was going to make sure he wouldn’t disappoint her.

Victor looked over at Solstice only to see him terrified of how giddy he seemed.

“What the fuck are you looking at? Let’s get going.”

“Wait, I almost forgot that you have a few things to do before we can start. You were invited by Irian and Tyrion to some sort of ceremony for the tragedy. After that you’ve got to meet the Frost family, they wish to thank you for what you did.”

Solstice just nodded and slowly got up before almost falling on the ground, Bela narrowly caught him before laying him back down.

“You aren’t that tough kid; you’ve got to sit there another few days. The meetings aren’t for another 2 weeks so you’ve got time. No need to rush and hurt yourself again, you aren’t the only person working around here.” Before Bela could continue talking a loud yell was heard from behind the door.

“Is my boy awake now!?” Darius came through the door with a mug of beer and rosy cheeks, clearly, he had been drinking for a prolonged period of time.

“I made a breakthrough kid! You won’t believe what I can do now!” Darius began to tell Solstice about his time experimenting with some of the bodies with runes on them and he was finally able to replicate some of them.

Runes are basically marks on a body that can have varying effects, and depending on the effect the difficulty in making it would increase, along with putting it on a body.

“I made a bird really fast! Look how fast this fucker flies!” Darius brought up a cage with a small white bird and released it, as soon as the door opened it flew out and practically left afterimages how fast it was. Even Bela couldn’t help but be surprised by how potent it was.

“Have you tested it on people yet?” Solstice shared the same mindset as Darius on how much of a passion they both had for crafting.

“Not yet, but I’m getting there. When you get healed up, I’ll go over the application with you. Until then!” With that Darius left the room and continued his celebratory drinking.

All of a sudden, a loud crash and aura enveloped the house, sending Darius rolling down the stairs and spilling his beer all over himself.

“Who the hell!” Darius went to open the door but was instantly surprised.

“Hello dwarf, is Ariel home yet?” A very tall man with long red hair, and bulging muscles was standing on the other side of the door.

“Ah sorry, I thought it was someone else. No, she isn’t home yet. But her boy is finally awake.” Darius pointed upstairs and immediately fled downstairs. The red-haired man could only chuckle at seeing the ex dwarven king run away to avoid him.

Slowly he made his way upstairs before seeing Bela tending to Solstice and his bandages.

“Welcome back Leviathan.” Bela didn’t even turn to greet the man.

“Good to be back, bloodsucker.” Solstice heard how the man talked to Bela and was instantly aggravated.

“My, he sure does take after my son.” The red-haired man didn’t find any fault in his actions and just chuckled.

“Stop Solstice, this man here is your grandfather.” After Bela said this, Solstice was instantly confused. His father had never talked about his family before as long as he had been around.

“I’m assuming my son never spoke about me, I mean he has the right. I was a shit father.” Leviathan casually shrugged after ripping on himself.

“Ariel told him what happened, and he’s taken it upon himself to guard the house while she’s gone. So please get along with everyone, especially you.” Bela pointed at Leviathan which all he did was give a double thumbs up.

“When you're healed, I’d like to test you, I’m curious if my son has taught you anything on what it means to be a dragon.” Telarion never brought up his father or family for one good reason. A dragon was the embodiment of pride, they believed themselves to be the apex of the world and everyone who wasn’t one of them was a lesser being. This mindset infuriated Telarion to the point of falling out with his family. Dragons had the innate pride and on top of that, most dragons besides a handful were all primordials, this served only to escalate their sense of pride. Leviathan was also one of these primordials, the top one of the dragons. But he never left his home so many people in the world had forgotten about him.

“You’ve got 5 days before I drag you out of this bed.” With that, Leviathan left and flew away somewhere to wait the five days. During these days, Solstice studied up on the crystal his mother gave and managed to grasp a small amount of the knowledge.

Four days later, Solstice walked outside and shouted for Leviathan only to see him drop from the sky like a meteor and leave a huge crater in front of the cabin,

“Four days, not bad. I’ll put you back in that bed for a little longer after this. Fight with your life on the line.” With that Leviathan charged at Solstice to begin the duel.