Chapter 28: Chapter 27: Slow progression

{Darganth}

After flying with Allaire on my back for a while, I landed in front of the mountainside cave where Enilla and Jennia live. Transforming myself back into a humanoid form, I catch Allaire who fell down due to my body suddenly vanishing. Seeing her disbelieve over the caves size, I chuckle slightly.

“You told me it could barely fit an adult hydra, don't tell me that beasts grow this large?” She asked once she regained her bearing.

“They can, at least theoretically, grow indefinitely. A peak fourth rank hydra is around 110 meters long, something that is slightly below average for that rank. Mythical rank beast grow along with their power, but nearly all species have a point where this growth slows considerable. So yes, they grow this large.” I answered her.

Seeing her surprise to this, I laughed lightly. Letting her down, we walked through the entrance with Allaire marveling at its size. While making our way inside, I noticed slight mana fluctuations around us. Focusing on them, I found water and dust balls being held afloat with space magic. Rolling my eyes at Jennia's antics, I decided to let her have this win.

After walking a few more meters, the harmless projectiles fly towards the two of us, covering us in water and dust. While Allaire tensed up in surprise, before bringing her arms in front of her body defensibly and activating external aura, I simple smiled.

“Not fair, I wanted to see you react in such a funny manner.” The perpetrator complained.

“Then you have to get better.” I answered Jennia with a laugh.

“Didn't expect you to bring company. But as expected from a dragon, its someone from the opposite gender.” Enilla said with a smirk.

“Its also good to see you again.” I said with a shrug.

“You talk as if it hadn't been earlier today that we did.” She said, causing me to simply shrug again.

Forming two spells of the water and earth element each, I freed Allaire and myself from the water and dust. Turning to her to see her stare at Jennia in annoyance, I pulled her into my embrace, smoothing her mood.

“That aspiring prankster there is Jennia. While it may be annoying to constantly watch out for balls of water, she isn't that bad.” I said.

“That bad?” Jennia asked accusingly, but I simply ignored her.

“And she is Enilla, Jennia's mother and, with the exception of the dragons of the steel mountains, the strongest being on the peninsula.” I finished their introductions.

“Hello.” Enilla said to Allaire once I finished introducing her to which Allaire just nodded in greeting.

“I take it that you are his lover? Or wive?” She asked after a short pause.

“Oh, right. I am Allaire, Darganth's wive. Nice to meet you.” She said.

“Oh, wive. Hadn't thought her to that close to you, but it doesn't matter. Your welcomed to stay here.” Enilla said, directed towards the two of us.

During this exchange I also noticed Jennia to start glaring at Allaire once she said that she is my wive, causing me to sigh inwardly. Looking towards Enilla, she gave me a 'I don't care' look. Deciding to postpone this, I made my way further inside.

Sitting down in the large room in the cave, Enilla transforms into a humanoid form and sits down opposite of Allaire and me. Jennia meanwhile lay down and placed one of her heads next to her mother while glaring at Allaire who was currently holding my hand.

Seeing this she got even closer to me, pulling me into her embrace and laying her head on my shoulder. I didn't even need to see her face to know that she was currently throwing Jennia a teasing grin. Deciding to join in on the fun, I started petting her between her ears, causing her to nearly melt.

Jennia narrowed her eyes at me due to this, prompting me to smile innocently in return. Enilla who watched this entire exchange in amusement. When her daughter turned to her in search for support, she just gave her an apologetic look and turned towards us.

“What do the two of you plan to do next? Well, besides teasing my daughter with your relationship.” She asked us.

“Spending some time together relaxing and training mainly. At least until we reach the third rank, then we will decided further.” I answered her.

“Right, when we are already on the topic of training, can you teach me some basic magic.” Allaire asked, getting not just my attention but also Enillas.

“Of course love, but why now? You haven't shown any interest in it previously and focusing on both paths is hard so I didn't bring it up.”

“Its convenient and with your help it wont slow down my aura cultivation. I don't plan to focus on it, but with my growth in aura my magic potential also grows so I want to use this little bit of free time we have to expand my amount of abilities.”

“You went from wanting to rely on me as little as possible to this quite quickly.” I said to her jokingly.

“Well, you cant blame me, I fell in love with being pampered by you. Having no bottlenecks is a complete cheat.” She said.

“No bottlenecks?” Enilla asked intrigued.

“Yes, I shared my innate knowledge with her. While I did so previously only with aura, I could make it so that any person I want will have none in either aura or magic.” I explained her. This caused her eyes to shine with excitement.

“Can I join the magic lessons? I would even be more than content with just getting the knowledge of the spells.” She asked me.

“No problem. I wouldn't even mind giving you the entire innate knowledge about magic.” I said, causing her to fall into her thoughts.

“No, the spells are enough. I don't want it to be handed to me on a silver platter, besides I have a reputation as a genius to maintain.” She said after a few moments.

“As you want. Do you want to join us too?” I asked Jennia. The young hydra thought about it for a few seconds before agreeing.

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After this our conversation drifted more and more into small-talk. By the time it was dark outside Allaire had already started sleeping on my shoulder. Softening the ground below us, I lay down with her in my arms before drifting into sleep.

The following days he spend most of his time either teaching magic to the others, training himself or on dates with Allaire. Both of them quickly became annoyed by the lack of bedtime interaction between them due to the two hydras presence, so they would spend every few nights outside. Allaire of course used these chances to tease Jennia the next morning, much to the hydras annoyance and her mothers amusement.

As she hadn't yet found the courage to talk to me over her feelings and I wanted to let her time to find out if it was just a childish infuriating or something else, she opted to get her revenge by upping her prank game. While the constants stream of harmless projectiles, stumble traps and other pranks started out as annoying, once I accustomed myself to them they became rather fun.

In the past I only really encountered similar machinations when they had true harm as an intent, mainly from particularly eccentric individuals. This more harmless variation of pranks was thus a more than welcome deviation from this, thought I quickly found out that she is also proficient in the other kind.

From time to time she would make her way into the forest, where she would toy with all manners of beasts. When I first noticed it I was rather surprise over this other side to her, though it didn't bother me one bit. When Allaire had learned this, she had a mischievous grin on her face which I learned just a bit later was due to her planning to tease Jennia with it.

This caused their little prank versus tease war to get to a new stage. As it remained harmless Enilla and I just watched it in amusement, though I would from time to time lean into Allaire's flirtatious behavior, sometimes even enough to embarrass her, much to Jennia's entertainment.

But despite this, their little war always came to a rest when I taught them magic or spend some time on a date with Allaire. This made their progress with magic quite fast, partially due to their already existing strength. Enilla and Jennia only wanted to receive the knowledge about elemental spells, allowing Allarie to get an initial head start.

The two still progressed fast, taking barely two weeks to enter the second rank. While it was easier due to their previous power, it was still impressive. After seeing the ease of her progression, Jennia initially wanted to try and learn aura too, but after a bit of convincing form me and Enilla she put that idea on pause.

The reason why we both were against it was that while aura would have a much larger effect on beasts than with humanoids, owing to their stronger body's, a beasts naturally slower progression made splitting their focus between multiple powers even harder than for humans.

Additionally magic is still an extremely useful compliment to a beasts power, partially due to their comparatively higher affinities. In addition, it could balance out some of the weaknesses that a beasts innate powers had, whether they be elemental control or elemental abilities. The latter suffered from a strong lack of versatility, something that magic and elemental magic in particular can provide. This formed a great blend between versatility, due to magic, and power, due to the elemental ability being far more efficient than if it were to be recreated via magic.

In the case of beasts like hydras, who possessed elemental control, these roles were reversed. Elemental control was even more versatile than magic, with especially its fine control being far better. In return it took more mana, but this weakness became negligible in combination with magic. Using the two in tandem would result in magic that was far more accurate, despite using only a minimal amount of extra mana.

Beasts with elemental control also profited from magic in the department of advanced applications. Due to magics structured nature, it is far easier to learn how to cast advanced application spells than it is to learn how to replicate them with elemental control. This results in many such beasts being proficient in only some of the possible ones, if any.

These advantages made it that in nearly all cases it is more efficient for a beast to learn magic than aura, with the two main exceptions being those with and already extreme focus on body strength and in the rare case that a beast possesses both an innate ability and elemental control. But with the second case being extremely rare, to the extend that dragons despite their small numbers are quite a large part of the creatures where such is the case, magic is generally superior for beasts.

Another thing I noticed in this time is Enilla's impulsive nature. As she had both space and time affinities she had she mainly focused on them, neglecting her other elements somewhat and failing to make use of the two elements advanced applications due to them being some of the most complex. When I taught her both the magma and explosion spells that are part of fire magic, she cast them even before I finished explaining.

After having both a volcano eruption and a small explosion happening in the room I gave her a quick rundown of all spells to prevent future mishaps. While there were still some mishaps, she started to develop an intuition to a spells usage. This lowered their frequency, even though she still skipped the information about the spell and directly went to its spell circle to cast it.

With this decrease in accidents the last few days were rather peaceful. Even Allaire and Jennia's little prank war calmed down significantly, though I was quite sure that it was only due to an arrangement between the two.

 

Currently I was making my way further up the mountain, accompanied by both Allarie and Jennia. The reason for our little climb was that I had learned yesterday that there is an old dragon layer there. As she still remembered when the dragon still lived there, Enilla was strongly against going there. While she relented after multiple hours of persuasion, allowing Jennia to accompany us, she herself stayed behind.

While she said that she doesn't want to go because of the possibility of traps, I was quite sure this wasn't the true reason. Would she truly suspect there to be traps she couldn’t overcome she wouldn't have allowed Jennia to accompany us. Because of this I am quite sure that she just does it out of respect for the dragon that once lived there, with the excuse existing only because she knows that Jennia needs a better reason to stay away than that.

Thus we were currently climbing the steep incline, with Jennia and Allaire bantering with each other. Reaching a plateau I stopped to sit down a bit and enjoy the view. Looking at me in irritation, both Allaire and Jennia soon become entranced in the gorgeous view unfurling in front of them. Allaire sat down next to, laying one arm around my shoulder and leaning on me, while Jennia just stood a bit further away while occasionally giving her envious glances.

“You know, without the extra baggage I would have jumped on you right now. Having some fun with such a marvelous scenery sounds like a great idea.” She said while licking her lips seductively.

“Extra baggage? Coming from the girl whose first thought is to have sex at such a place every insult is a positive thing.” Jennia said.

“What is the problem? Some fun with my husband is great, and such a great scenery is a great addition to it. But how would you know.” Allaire answered in a teasing tone, to which Jennia just clicked her tongue in annoyance. By now I was quite sure that they had made some kind of deal, previously she wasn't his direct with her teasing.

“How about you just enjoy the scenery in peace?” I proposed to them, causing both to shrug. Allaire just pulled me tighter into her embrace, causing Jennia to get annoyed but she gave no reaction.

Enjoying the view over the forest for a while, I noticed a silent conversation between the two of them. Seeing Jennia being visibly nervous and Allaire giving her a reassuring look, I chuckled slightly. This caused Allaire to turn to me, prompting me to give her a reassuring smile.

Sitting around a bit longer, we made our way further up the mountain after a while. Taking about half an hour, we arrived in front of the cave. Looking inside I found no trace of any trap or the likes, so I motioned to Jennia that it is safe. Watching her walk into the cave, I turned to Allaire and gave her a deep kiss.

“You can thank me later.” She said after it.

“Oh, that I will. And I think we both know what kind of thanks you enjoy the most.” I replied, whispering the second part into her ear.

Shivering slightly in anticipation, Allaire threw her arms around my neck, pulling me into another kiss. Stopping after just a moment she stepped back before taking a deep breath to calm herself.

“Oh how I would love to jump on you, but it will have to wait.”

“Yes, but I will make it good to you. And add a little treat for not acting possessive and jealous, the first time few manage to do so.”

“That I like her makes it easier. She is quite fun to tease, wouldn't mind doing for all eternity no matter the pranks aimed at me in return. Though I will gladly accept the treat, but that now really has to wait. See you tomorrow.”

“Likewise.” I said, watching her make her way back to the plateau we had visited earlier.

Turning around and following Jennia, I found her staring absentminded at different parts of the wall. When she noticed me, she quickly turned around looking around nervously. Seeing this I gave her a reassuring smile and waited.

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