Chapter 14: A Blessed Morning

(This chapter was uploaded on Saturday 17/February/2024 8:00 PM, timezone GMT+3)

A quick announcement before the chapter.

Since the plans for the other story changed, resulting in me paying more attention for the serious version of it, the promise to return after Bell received his first spell was rendered invalid.

I will return to update this story whenever I have the chapters ready. More on that in the post-chapter notes.

Enjoy.

(Line Break)

('1), ('2), ('3), etc. means that there is some explaining for the thing in the notes at the end of the chapter.

"..." small moment of silence

"Talking"

"He-" Someone was interrupted.

'Thinking'

[Skills' names, chanting, spell keys and spells' names]

(PoV)

(Flashback)

Don't shy from commenting on typos and/or inconsistencies. That and/or suggesting a modification to certain things that didn't make sense to you.

I hope you enjoy reading this chapter.

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Eucleia woke up a little before dawn. She was very happy to see Nephelont where he was when they slept with his arm still wrapped around her as she put it. 

She looked at the window and saw that the sun had not come out yet. 

'Just like the old days' She smiled. She was reminiscing about the days before they were separated. She would wake up before him and gaze at his sleeping face. She would then wait for him to wake up and declare his rivalry with the sun. They then got up and went to their room's bathroom. The bathtub was large enough for the two of them to take a bath together. After that, he would sit her before the mirror and carefully brush and braid her hair. 

"I must do it today" She said. She always wanted to style his silky hair at least once. It frustrated her how he somehow managed to avoid that on the daily. He would whisper sweet nothings in her ears, and she would not be able to press him for it for the rest of the morning. 

By the time they were done, the mess hall was open for breakfast. They went there to eat with everyone else most mornings. 

Eucleia was reluctant to undo the hug, but she really wanted to pamper him now that she got the chance. She, with great effort, convinced herself to leave him alone in bed and go prepare things for when he woke up. 

She prepared their room's personal bath with warm water and set it up to keep that temperature. She then went to the mirror and prepared all the haircare tools and products she got and started sewing him new clothes as she looked at his sleeping face. Whenever she felt the urge to return to bed and hug him as he slept, she took a look at his sleeping face and remembered that he needed new clothes. That fueled her desire to sew his clothes even more. 

Years of making new clothes for Agni as she ripped them during her transformations cemented the skill into Eucleia's subconsciousness. Eucleia was done before dawn and before Nephelont woke up. 

She used threads that were shrunk so that when he passed through the door and went back to his natural size, the clothes would enlarge with him. She had used a white shirt as the base and added embroidery on the back. Then were the pants. They were also white. They were not tight, as Nephelont rejected all tight clothing back then. He loved the sense of freedom baggy clothes gave him. 

When she finished cleaning and ironing the clothes for him to wear after the bath, she looked at his peacefully sleeping face. She was very tempted to go back to bed. One look at the still-dark sky and she was snugly tucked under the sheets with Nephelont. 

Eucleia did not simply hug him. She put him above her as his head was on her bosom. She started feeling his hair as she waited for his morning catchphrase. 

Eucleia's patience was rewarded when she saw the sun rise above the horizon. 

"Sun, my mortal enemy. We meet again after many years... Why did I even say that?" Nephelont said as one hand was stretched towards the sun, fist balled and clenched hard. 

'Nephelont did this every day with such conviction that it became a natural reflex to the first sunrays of the day' Allen answered him. 

'How comfy... Wait! Why's the back of my head feeling VERY comfy!?' He realized that he was now where he was when he slept, hugged by Eucleia. They shifted in their sleep, and he ended up being on top of her with his face facing the ceiling, or so he thought. His face burned in many shades of red. 

"Should we go bath together? I want to clean your back for you, Bunbun" Eucleia said in a soft and low voice. 

"..." Nephelont's mind was not the cleanest. It immediately went to make up images of what could happen there and Nephelont almost fainted from blood pressure. 

"Fufufu! We will be wearing towels, silly!" Eucleia giggled as she was victorious. She achieved the quota of making him blush like a newlywed in the least number of words possible. Although it was not her main goal, him blushing like that meant that he imagined things that might have happened. It made her a bit happier to see that he secretly desired her that way even though he thought that he was a different person. 

'When are we going to get our food? I listened to your desire not to disturb your wife's sleep. Now that she's awake, we want food. Go eat already!' Gourmet said with a very frightening amount of urgency. 

'Shut up. Leave them be or we will lock you away, Gourmet. Do you think you could bear the weight of the loss you could incur with your careless remark?' All of the other instincts, even the nameless one responsible for Nephelont's lust, berated Gourmet not to ruin Nephelont's morning with Eucleia. Nephelont was preoccupied with what Eucleia was doing to him and did not have time to pay his instincts any mind. 

Nephelont forgot his surroundings and was unable to feel other stimuli as he was dipped in the warm water of the bath. Eucleia smiled happily as she watched his face melt in bless. When Nephelont came to, Eucleia was already done brushing his hair. It was a monumental task to brush 519 cm (~ 17'0.33'') of hair but she enjoyed every moment of it. 

Eucleia kept feeling a gaze directed at them for a while, but she did not see anyone around in their room. Her senses were telling her that there was someone, one of her children specifically, but she could not tell who and how they were hiding their form. She remembered that Nephelont did something similar, but he never explained it to the children. 

The naughty child was none other than Clementina. She was gushing and mentally squealing about how romantic her parents were acting, although they were doing it in reversed genders to the societal norm. She was captivated by the simple fact they were this close even when her father should have felt estranged because of his memory loss. Clementina attributed it to his attachment to Ais and his blind faith in her words. She left it there and enjoyed the ongoing show of affection. 

"What about I comb your hair now?" Nephelont asked Eucleia, who blushed a little knowing that one of the children was watching them. 

"Okay" Eucleia sat down and hummed as she enjoyed the feeling she almost started forgetting. Nephelont was not combing her hair as expertly as he did years ago, but he was giving his all to do the best he can. He later braided it. It was a bit sloppy, but it was still at an acceptable level. 

*THUD* Suddenly, a resounding thud emanated from the door. It was as if something heavy slammed into it. 

"I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE! MOM! DAD!" It was Agni. She tried opening the door to no avail. Clementina locked the door behind her to give her parents the longest time she could. She wanted to see moments like the fragmented memories she saw of their 'lovey-dovey' moments as newlyweds. 

"OPEN THE DOOR!" Agni knocked on the door with excessive force. If it was the door of any other mansion, it would have become shattered and become little splinters. 

"Agni is knocking on the door outside. Thuu and Augustus are surely not here since Thuu is too shy to do this and Augustus does not enter a room without announcing his presence politely. Then the one on the bed is Tina?" Eucleia called Clementina. Eucleia smiled at her daughter triumphantly. 

Clementina raised a double thumbs up while smiling as she undid her invisibility. She was happy that her mother took it as a game. 

"OPEN IT! I KNOW THAT TINA IS INSIDE TOO!" Agni sounded really annoyed that she could not enter and prank them before they knew. Nephelont at least would not have known. 

"Now, how will we deal with my hair? For now, we wrapped it around my neck. But wrapping all of it around my neck like this every time will be stuffy. Do you think aunt Hephaestus's scissors would work?" Nephelont asked while ignoring the increasingly powerful knocking the door was put to endure unjustly. The poor door did nothing wrong to deserve Agni's pounding fists of very justified fury. 

"Aunt? And here I thought you might mistakenly call her 'mom' like you did when we were little" Eucleia said to Nephelont teasingly with one of her hands on her cheek. 

"OPEN!" Agni continued pounding and was collectively ignored. Nephelont wanted to respond to her at one point. But since Eucleia did not, he saw that it was okay to not respond to Agni right then. Not to mention, his attention was now focused on Eucleia. 

"How cute you were, running behind her and giving her flowers, so confidently saying that you are giving presents to your future mother-in-law" Eucleia's words were calculated. 

"THIS DAMNED!" Agni pounded the door some more. 

"Stop it!" Nephelont wanted to wrap his hair around his face to hide it again. But remembering the gargantuan effort Eucleia put into straightening it, he went back on that. He opted to verbally object while raising his hands to the sides of his chest while closing his eyes. 

"DOOR!" *CRICK* *CRASH* Suddenly, Agni's voice turned a lot deeper as she finally snapped. She got enough and transformed into her dragon form. She punched the door with all of her draconic-infused strength, which in turn resulted in the door disintegrating. 

"Agni, you will pay for that. You know?" Eucleia did not mind it that much. Agni regularly destroyed stuff in fits of rage. A door was not much in comparison to some of the other things. 

"I know. I can just catch a few minotaurs and that's that" Agni entered the room. 

Agni, as a dragon, had the same appearance as Nephelont's dragon form. The biggest difference was that all the green in her was swapped with red. There was neither shadow nor pattern around her eyes, unlike Nephelont's. Her claws were not as sharp, looking more in line with smooth-tipped nubs. Her wingspan, in proportion to her body, was not as big either. She would need a few more years before her wings grew to the right size. Her head was not adorned with twin horns like Nephelont. All she had was one really sharp horn at the tip of her nose. Her tail was, however, of the right size for her body, unlike her wings. 

"Why is her horn there? And why is it only one?" Nephelont was curious. He went to her and started rubbing the horn to check it. 

"Dad! Stop it! This one's very sensitive! It tickles a lot!" Agni did her best not to burst out laughing. 

"Oh, let's stop then" Nephelont looked at her pleading eyes and decided to stop. 

"To answer your question, only the boys had horns like yours. For me and the girls, we had only that single horn. And just so you know, only family members are really capable of touching our horns. Anyone else, and our instincts will take hold of our actions and shred them to pieces" Eucleia said. She sounded as if it was not a big deal. 

"But what are we, really?" Nephelont was interested to know more about his new race. 

"For you, Bunbun, you are quartered between 4 different races. You have the blood of a great spirit, a human, and due to your skill, the blood of a dragon and that of my mother. It seems that when the skill took effect on me, with you considering me your kin, it made sure that we are the same. 

I checked on you in your sleep and speculated this. Since the skill could not remove my divinity, it resulted in that divinity being copied to you. As for me, that happened to me when I got part of your grandmother's great spirit blood. That is why you could sense me even though I was not born with it. The children were born with all 4 bloodlines, though" Eucleia gave him her speculations. 

"But as dragons, are there any detailed information on us? Is that what you wanted to know, father?" Augustus stepped into the room while looking at Agni with disappointed eyes. It made her want to punch him in the face. 

"Exactly that, Augustus. Thanks" Nephelont turned back to Eucleia. The kids were curious too. They were never told what they have from their draconic side. 

"We will talk about that after breakfast. How about that?" Eucleia suggested. She wanted some time to rearrange her thoughts about the subject. The kids did not ask about it often. And they looked more serious now. It was not right to prevent them from knowing about it anymore. 

"Dad, how about some spicy soupy salad?" Agni wanted to gauge Nephelont's reaction to one of his favorite dishes. It was something Ais made for him whenever he requested it, which was almost every day of the week. 

"Spicy soupy salad? It sounds interesting. I wanna try it. What're we waiting for?" Nephelont's nose finally picked up on the scent of food wafting off of the mess hall now that he was thinking of food. 

'Finally! Salvation!' Gourmet rejoiced. 

"GUH!" Nephelont wanted to sprint to where the food's scent was coming from, but something held him from the waist. When he looked up, he saw Eucleia's face. 

'Physical body, want some help?' Allen asked him. 

'Anything that helps is welcome' He gave Allen the green lights. 

'Say the following: "Dear Clea, what do you think of a bridal carry?". That should do the trick' Allen took inspiration from somewhere unknown. 

"Dear Clea, what do you think of a bridal carry?" Nephelont's face burned, but it was hidden outside of Eucleia's view as he was whispering in her ear. He saw her face visibly reddening to match her flaming red hair. 

While she was distracted by his words, he got out of her hug and took her in a bridal carry. She came back to the world of the living but said nothing about it. Eucleia was preparing herself for the others' reactions to what Nephelont was doing, especially a certain someone. 

Agni was left there to deal with her situation. Nobody told her to tear through her clothes to transform. She was forced to attend breakfast while in her dragon form. 

'I approve of this development!' Clementina was giddy. She almost stumbled on a perfectly flat and smooth floor.

(End of Chapter)

So, what will happen now will be that the update will continue as chaotically as before, with no definite schedule.

And another thing, the time I took until this chapter was completed gave me enough time to think some things through. I really wanted to rewrite this story again. But honestly speaking, the story already went through 2 rewrites already. I don't want to do it yet again.

Instead, I will finish it before writing it in a better way. I got attached to this story. And for those who were there when the story started, I did make the promise to try reaching the finish line one day. I intend on honoring that promise.

This time, I will continue writing the story purely for fun and to get a feel for the idea of a story going through a multiverse. Yes, this story would not end in the world of DanMachi. It would go through other worlds, one or two from my own making. Nothing completely original but still a world of my imagination. That will also serve to help me create my originals later down the line.

But do not worry. DanMachi's days are still not over. Nephelont will stay in this world for a few years. There will be major timeskips since this world is not the main focus, but he will spend enough time to get close with his family members.

Have a great time, ladies and gentlemen.