Chapter 41: Chapter 40: Steel mountains

[Steel mountains]

Flying above the mountain range, Darganth and the other dragons made their way towards Orynth's layer. After their conversation in the capital, Vagha had decided to return to the elven city while the rest made their way here. Allaire and Jennia were carried by him, sitting together on Darganth's back.

The two of them were currently staring mesmerized at the enormous mountain chain, stretching further than they could see. Its peaks seemed to pierce the skies, with even the giant dragons circling around them looking small in comparison.

But all of this paled in comparison to the peak they were heading for, a mountain so large that they wondered whether it was even natural. Standing at nearly twice the height of the rest, it held what looked like a temple entrance carved into the stone. While small when compared to the mountains height, it allowed even the largest of dragons present here to fit through it without much trouble.

Soon they also felt the pressure emanating from it, a dragons fear potent enough that they grew uncomfortable even at this still enormous distance from its source.

“Just a child bragging.” Darganth said when he noticed this. Following his words a liberating warmth encompassed them, freeing them from the effect of the dragons fear.

“I only now start to realize why this is said to be an uncrossable barrier. Even my mother would find it impossible to force her way through here, at least before her evolution.” Jennia said, letting her gaze fly over the hundreds of dragons whose power reached into the mythical rank.

Continuing their flight, they drew the attention of nearly every dragon they passed. While they already grew accustomed to the solar dragons flying overhead, seeing all of them at the same time still drew a lot of attention. But as soon as they noticed Darganth, a small commotion broke out. The void lineage was easily recognizable, leading to nearly all dragons in the vicinity turning towards them.

By the time they landed, words had already spread throughout the mountains, leading to hundreds of additional dragons flying in the area. When they landed in front of the entrance, nearly every dragon living in these mountains was there.

Ignoring their spectators, Darganth let Jennia and Allaire down before walking together with them into Orynth's lair. Passing through the entrance, they found themselves in a hall far larger than the throne rooms of most kingdoms. Directly in their line of sight, on the halls other end, sat a monumental dragon, curled into a crescent form.

Its red scales blended perfectly with the flickering flames around it, adding to the strange sense of majesty that permeated the room. Unimpressed by this, Darganth continued walking forwards, soon followed by Allaire and Jennia.

While walking through the room, they looked at the trophy’s displayed at its walls in marvel. From rare metals to powerful artifacts, all manner of them stood on display. The closer they came to the sleeping dragon, the higher the objects value. By now they could even see a handful true draconic weapons among them.

Coming to a halt a few meters from the dragon, they waited for a few moments. After a few seconds Darganth's own dragons fear burst forth fully, no longer just covering Jennia and Allaire and instead filling the entire room.

Felling himself being affected by dragons authority, Orynth abruptly awoke and opened his eyes. Seeing the group of sun-dragons he already wanted to berate them when he noticed Darganth. Shocked by the presence of a member of the void lineage, his words remained stuck in his throat. In this short moment he noticed the dragons authority pressing down on him to be unlike that of high tier dragons, confusing him.

“Who are you?” He asked.

Raisin his eyebrow at this, Darganth didn't answer the question. With his mana heart back, dragon mana is constantly circulating in Darganth's body, leading to the silver and azure lines along the edges of his scales to be always active unless consciously suppressed. After a second Orynth finally noticed the pattern, causing him to widen his eyes in shock.

“How?” He said, still shocked by the revelation.

Just as he finished his words, he got an idea about the situation. Looking at Darganth questioningly, the latter just nodded.

Having received confirmation about his theory, Orynth fell into confusion. Seeing his questioning look towards him, Darganth just shook his head. This made Orynth nod understandingly.

“Alright, what do you need?” He asked.

“Information and a ritual chamber.”

At the first part of Darganth's request Orynth just nodded and while he did the same to the second one, he was noticeable confused. Before he could voice his question, he noticed Jennia's dragon-hydra bloodline.

“Ritual chamber?” Jennia asked.

“What do I get in return?” Orynth asked nearly simultaneously.

“Witnessing the first dragon-hydra with the space and time elements.” Darganth said to Orynth before turning to Jennia. Ignoring his shocked look, he explained her it effects. These are, at its core, simply the ability to stabilize all manner of rituals and it is used by nearly all races.

“Though in your case its just an additional precaution.” He added. This alleviated some of her nervousness about her evolution.

“Deal.” Orynth suddenly said just after he finished. Nodding with a smile, Darganth kept the slight surprise at him not trying to negotiate further hidden.

“The are you read?” He asked Jennia.

Taking a breath to calm herself, she nodded. Looking towards Orynth, he waited for him to conjure a small portal. With both transforming into their human forms, they walked through it and were soon followed by the others.

Arriving on the other side, they found themselves in a cubical room with smooth gray stone walls. All over the walls, floor and ceiling were different magical inscriptions belonging to all manner of casting systems.

Magic circles masterfully worked together with words of power, runes and other symbols. Just by stepping into the room, they could feel the difference to the outside world. While mana normally was a strange mix of chaotic and orderly, at the same time following certain rules and being random, here it lacked this.

This caused the entire room to feel unnatural, the controlled mana flow causing an uncomfortable sensation on everyone’s skin. Waiting for a few seconds, they slowly grew accustomed to it.

“Are you feeling alright?” Darganth asked Jennia.

“Yes.”

Hearing her answer, he smiled and lead her to the center of one of the magic circles. Waiting outside of it, he motioned for her to step inside. As soon as she did the circle lit up in glowing white, making her look towards Darganth nervously.

“It alright. While this has never happened before, there is no place safer than here. And even if this room isn't enough, I am still here.” He said.

As soon as he said this, he made a small motion with his hand which caused a transparent azure dome to form around Jennia.

“Even if anything happens, in there I can freely control time. There is nothing that can't be fixed by turning back time enough, so you will be perfectly safe.”

Hearing his words, Jennia took a deep breath. Opening her eyes back up, they were filled with determination. While Darganth could clearly see her still worrying, he knew that he couldn't help more.

Watching her return to her true form, he did so too. Cutting his arm once more, he repeated the previous time and let the blood gather in a floating sphere. As soon as he finished, he stepped back and floated the sphere towards Jennia.

Turning back into a human form, he stood next to Allaire while attentively watching Jennia to make sure that nothing happened.

Jennia was meanwhile steeling her resolve one last time. Calming her nervousness, she opened her maw and swallowed the blood. Feeling it traveling down her throat like had happened multiple times already, she soon noticed the differences.

Feeling her body shift like she already experience twice during her rank advancements though to a much larger extend, she relaxed and let the changes happen. Soon she felt the familiar sensation of her body growing, though compared to previously it wasn't simply growing larger while keeping the proportions.

Instead she felt herself getting bulkier, her body getting wider and far denser. Her front legs grew especially in strength, having to support her wider shoulders and more muscular chest area. Additionally she could notice he scales changing, getting robuster and more diverse in size. Larger ones covered most of her body, with their size shrinking the closer they were towards joints and other such areas.

Before she could fully adapt to this new feeling, a slightly stinging sensation emerged next to her existing heads. Wanting to turn her heads to look at this, she felt them not being under her control. Panicking slightly at this, she noticed Darganth's calm look.

Soon she regained control over her heads, but directly noticed something to be different. A fraction of a second later the answer came when she noticed that she no longer saw the room with four pairs of eyes and instead seven. Trying to move these new heads, she found it to be no different than previously and started moving more.

By the time she tried to move her sixth head she started to loose oversight over them. Soon her necks were tied up with each other due to her unfamiliarity with having so many. Just as this happened, the circle around her dimmed again, showing that the process had finished.

“Are you fine?” Darganth asked after rushing towards her.

“Nearly.” Jennia replied slightly grumpy.

“Clearly.” Allaire said while laughing. This earned her a glare from Jennia, though she soon became more occupied with trying to unravel her heads.

While she was trying this, the others also slowly reached her. While the group around Siuring and Averyla were all trying to supress their laughter, with varying success, Orynth looked at Jennia in curiosity.

“She is not simply a dragon-hydra, or?” He asked Darganth.

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“No, she became the first of a new species.” He answered.

Having his suspicions confirmed, Orynth's curiosity skyrocketed. Focusing he eyes on her, he tried to find out as much as he could.

“It seems that gaining more than one head at once is too much.” Jennia said after a few minutes, having finally untied her necks.

“Got the hang of it?”

“Not really, I just keep two heads as still as possible. It will probably take a while, luckily I can transform in the meantime.” She said.

“Wait a second.” Orynth said when he noticed her wanting to transform, causing her to do so.

“Give me some more time, this is a unique chance. Imagine if I can replicate this, it would be a first.” He said.

Just as he finished those words, a heavy pressure descended on him. Tensing up invuluntarily, he looked to Darganth who looked at him coldly.

“Do not even think about treating my wive as a test subject, do you understand.” He said, his threatening tone causing Orynth to shrink back.

“Can I at least get a blood sample?” He asked somewhat meek.

“Her decision.” Darganth said, calming himself. Feeling the dragons authority receding, Orynth let out a sigh of relieve before looking towards Jennia.

Seeing his look, she wordlessly made a small cut on her skin before levitating the blood towards him. Giving her over the top words of gratitude, he took the blood and stored it into a space storage.

“The information.” Darganth said, remembering Orynth before the latter disappeared. Stopping his teleportation, he sight at being delayed any longer.

“The entire continent or just the northern parts?” He asked.

“Focus on everything that could bother me while going to the dragon peaks.” Thinking for a moment, Orynth agreed to this.

“Lets first change the scenery.” He said, letting another portal spring to live with a wave of his hand. Seeing it leading back to the hall, Darganth made his way through it. When they all crossed through, the portal closed up again.

“Probably the least important thing to know for your plans is that the vampires are currently trying to gain a permanent foothold in the wasteland south of here. And not just there, eveywhere in the beastmen kingdoms and even in some parts of the uninhabitable lands between the dragon peaks and the humanoid empires. Though there they have to compete with the beasts which slows them down considerably.” Orynth started.

“What kind?”

“Shadow manipulation and the standard vulnerabilities.” Orynth answered. This caused Darganth's interest in the matter to drop significantly.

The reason for this is that while powerful, vampires are a far cry from the great danger most portray them as. These stories mainly come from certain subspecies of them and amongst the large variety of those they are the minority.

While all vampires are physically more powerful than most other humanoids and have one of the most potent regeneration abilities, most variants of them have too many weaknesses to be truly dangerous. Even those who have a special powers, the most common ones being control over blood or shadows, are not all that powerful.

While having abilities similar to the beasts elemental control certainly raises their danger, some being even more powerful but at the cost of a more narrow range of applications, even just staying in the sun was enough to be safe from them.

The two abilities that he would watch out for are sunlight immunity and ability absorption. While the first only frees them from their greatest weakness, the latter makes them some of the most powerful creatures. While the ability to gain other creatures innate powers by drinking their blood has limitations, these don’t hinder them greatly as there are more than enough powers they can acquire freely.

Even just the fact that they can, theoretically, gain nearly every innate ability that exists makes them dangerous as they would have enough that their combined versatility doesn't loose out to that of elemental magic while still being more powerful.

But without this being the case, Darganth cared little for them. Seeing this dismissive attitude from Darganth, Orynth continues. He had already expected this as it closely mirrors his reaction. While some variations of vampires can be a danger to even dragons, those that still fear the sun are far from it.

“The next thing would be that conflict between beastmen and beasts is currently growing more intense by the day. Wouldn't find it strange to see it erupt into a war that will drag the beastmen emperor and beast empress into the fight.

Though I doubt that it will be too intense, the races rulers all know that killing one of the others is just another dead mythical rank. And while rare, they are far from irreplaceable so they will likely try to thin the general number by targeting the weaker ones first.” He said, earning a disinterested shrug from Darganth. While this may cause some chaos, he doubted that either side would try to antagonize him to prevent them from strengthening the other.

“The last would be the hero summon by the humans.” Orynth said. This directly drew Darganth's interest.

“Let me guess, an about three years ago?” He asked.

Seeing Orynth confirm this, he let out a sigh. While he had already known that his return to Vunreon allowed an unknown number of souls to be summoned here, after all his sister is one of them, but he didn't expect to have to deal with it so soon.

“Do you know anything about him or her?” Darganth asked.

“Not much. I only know that he is a man, about twenty now. But I don't know anything about his power, not even whether or not he has one. Though it is likely as the emperor himself seems to train him from time to time.” This made Darganth frown.

Among the different kinds of summoned individuals, heroes were the most troublesome to deal with. Due to the individuals traveling through the barrier around the Vunreon multiverse much of their latent potential get unearthed. This leads to most of them being especially talented or to have a unique power.

And the hero summoning ritual specializes in summoning those people with the most raw power. This leads to them often having powerful abilities or affinities rivaling those of dragons. This is especially dangerous when one doesn't know what their power is as some can turn the tides quickly unless countered.

Dealing with the other major type of summoning was far easier in that regard as it specializes in summoning a suitable apostle for a god. This means that often compatibility is favored over raw power.

“But why do we need to bother? I doubt that they will send him after us.” Allaire asked, breaking the silence.

“Probably not, but running into him is not impossible. Heroes are commonly send to form the front-lines. Him being send to attack the beasts isn't unlikely and we will cross over their territory.” Darganth explained.

“And that guy apparently has an obsession with immortality, he could quite try and ask a dragon for a method to archive it.” Orynth added.

“Another one of these?”

“Yes. There are actually two rumors concerning him, the first being his constant hopes for immortality. The second is his extremely discriminatory view towards other races, going as far as nearly causing an incident with the dwarfs.” He told them.

“Another troublesome one.” Darganth said with a sigh before thinking about how to best deal with this.

After a few moments he decided to at least offer him the chance to return. With him being largely responsible for allowing the recent mass summoning to happen, he would give them at least a way out. Though after this they would receive the same treatment from him as everyone else.

“Can I go now? My curiosity is killing me.” Orynth asked after a few seconds. With Darganth shrugging his shoulders disinterested in response, he teleported away.

Seeing this some of Siurin's group also decided to go their ways, with soon only Siurin and Averyla remaining. Seeing this he turned to them once he finished his thoughts. Seeing Siurin's communication rune floating above his hand, he conjured his own and they exchanged them.

“Just say when you need anything. And while I would accompany you for the rest of your way, I think my girlfriend would kill me if I didn't spend some time with her. Though I doubt this to be our last meeting.” He said, while Averyla nodded with a dangerous smile at the scenario.

“Alright, see you.” Darganth said, followed by Allaire and Jennia.

With the two teleporting away, they were they only ones still in the hall. Making their way to the entrance, they discussed how to proceed.

“Vampires and a monster infested wasteland, I don't see any not to visit.” Allaire said sarcasticly when the topic of stopping in the wasteland directly south came up.

“So directly to the dwarfs?” Darganth asked.

“Definitely.” “Alright.”

Hearing their responses, he nodded and transformed into his true form. Soon they were again flying above the mountains, heading straight south.

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