Chapter 7: The Assembly.

"What?!" That was news to her, she always thought they were only beings of imagination.

After all who could believe in the existence of dragons? Beings bigger than any building able to breath death on everything, immortal greedy monsters with indestructible scales who enjoyed the suffering of others they considered inferior.

"Yeah, well, it's better to say that they existed long ago, you remember how I left to go to the outside world when I was young, right?"

"How could I forget that, the young genius mage left to go the outside world and might never come back, that's all everyone talked about." she replied with curiosity

"Did they really talk about that?"

"Yeah, it's good that you came back, anyway, about the dragons."

"Oh yeah, as I was saying, they all died off long ago, but their gigantic corpses still litter some areas even now, the biggest one was around as big as the entirety on Icerock."

"How could such a big thing exist?!"

"I swear, I saw it with my own eyes, its body seemed to have petrified, no spell could even scratch its scales, it was a truly fantastic sight, I'd love to show it to you and Avys one day.

But it was only one of those dimensions, the others didn't even come close, most were at most around a few times bigger than our house."

"Still a lot, but I'd love to see them one day too." she replied as the atmosphere around them turned pink and love filled the air.

Meanwhile, a certain little girl had just burnt the extremities of her long hair off, but she was extremely happy about the results of her short time of study.

"Aha! I can't believe that it was this simple, I just have to create a bridge between a source object and my target, then I have to turn it to lightning mana and and make it friction on itself forming the bolt which will then follow the mana bridge and strike the target, this is so easy!" I rejoiced, I had done it, at the cost of a good part of my hair, but I had still done it.

Now, it was time to experiment, hopefully before I became completely bald, I cut my hairs to shoulder length with a wind cutter spell and send the cut hair out of the window with a light breeze.

I then sent another lightning bolt after them to completely burn them to ash.

"Oh wow, this is great." I mumbled to myself.

The lightning didn't emit a thunder, but a low buzzing sound, I wondered why that was the case, but I had all the time in the world to discover it in the future.

I started by trying to excite the without turning it into lightning mana to make a bolt, using the normal neutral mana, but this just created fire.

Ok, low amount of friction means fire, got it, this was different from my usual way of creating fire, it not only costed far less manawise, but the effect also created fire at a higher temperature.

Normally I had to channel my intent into the mana, manually turn it into fire attributed mana and then manifest the fire where I wanted, this new method needed less concentration and mana, I didn't know why this was, but I was happy nonetheless.

This was an unexpected gain, a great one, but now wasn't the time to explore this, it was time for lightning magic.

"Let's see how lightning reacts to different things." I mumbled.

First things first, I started from what I could find on the spot, or better, make on the spot.

I created a blob of water in mid air and sent a bolt at it, and weirdly enough it seemed to disappear.

"Huh, i hoped in something more, but it is what it is, now let's try with metal."

Unfortunately, I didn't have anything metallic at hand so I went to the kitchen through the living room, but what I found on the way was disturbing at best and disgusting at worse.

There they were, my parents conjoined at their mouths.

They were kissing! And holding hands!

How disgusting and perverted.

But there were a few ways I could react right now, so I chose the funniest one, the funniest for me, obviously.

I connected an extremely thin bridge of mana to the two of them and sent them an extremely weak bolt of lightning.

"Kya!" "Ow!?" oh, the sweet screams, how would I pay to hear them again, but alas, before I could run away I was caught, once again, by my father.

"Why did you… wait, what happened to your hair Avys?" he asked and I just remembered that I did, in fact, cut most of them off.

From a long loose braid that reached the bottom of my back to a waterfall of hair that reached my shoulders, I felt more comfortable like this, but that braid looked much better.

I'll probably let them grow long again in the future.

"Cut them off."

"But why? You liked them so much." asked the indecent woman that liked to hold hands.

"Well, I accidentally burnt them while practicing lightning magic, so I cut them off and used them as practice target and let me tell you, I can make both of you bald whenever I want now."

A heavy sigh left my father's mouth, that meant he was proud of me right now, after all he did the same whenever I carry out a new successful experiment, "Right, obviously, why did you leave your room so soon? Usually you'd stay there for much longer after getting a new book."

"I'm testing my lightning on different things to see the reactions, it dissipated after touching water and now I wanted to try something metallic."

"It dissipated in water? Completely?"

"Yeah, I put my finger inside afterward and I didn't feel anything, completely dissipated."

"Did you make the water with water magic by collecting the water droplets in the air, right?"

"Yeah, in what other way could I have done it?" I asked sarcastically.

Ever since I learned how to do so I only used the water in the air, not only did it consume less mana as I used things that were already there, but it was also faster to cast, the problem was that big amounts of it were problematic as there wasn't that much water in the air.

"That's the reason, water made like that is extremely pure so it has different properties from normal water, why don't you try again with normal water? Maybe you'll have different results."

The way he said it meant that there would indeed be different results, but the question now was, different in what way?

'Oh, this is great, this single new type of magic is giving me so many new possible experiments, I'll love the next few days.' I thought to myself as I left the perverted couple back to do their own perverted things.

"I love seeing her so immersed in her little magical world."

"Yeah, and I love you!" He whispered softly into her ear after kissing her once again.

"Where did that come from?"

"Well, which mother would be this fantastic with a child not hers by blood?"

"She isn't yours by blood either, but I get what you mean, other women could have problems with Avys, but not me, I've seen that child grow up into the splendid little girl she is right now, I've considered her my daughter for a long time now." she whispered back.

What followed were things that the little girl in question's mind would be unable to comprehend, couple things.

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"So, you're saying that this kingdom or whatever is clearing the Wild Lands of beasts for us and the only thing they're asking in compensation is that we become part of their kingdom, gaining many more things in the process too, did I get that right?" Asked Rodrick Bluewing, the merchant of Icerock that once tried to get his son together with Laurence's daughter.

"That's what they said, I knew one of the two from my travels in the outside world, I decided to believe in their intention, at least for now." replied Laurence Winterridge, one of the two merchants that had ever left the Wild Lands among the presents.

"Laurence, not that we don't trust you, but people change during the years, how sure are you that this is not some sort of trap?" asked Marcus, an engineer that loved experimenting by creating new gadgets for the younger generation of Icerock.

"I'm pretty sure, first of all, their uniforms were different from the ones that particular kingdom used long ago, even their coat of arms is different, this kind of deception would have been useless as none there had ever been outside the Wild Lands.

Secondly, even back then, there was air of revolution blowing, so one actually happening doesn't sound exaggerated.

Finally, the words he used and the emotions in his eyes as he talked about that king of his seemed too real to be deception, I'm inclined to believe in them."

"Anybody else wants to speak up?" asked Sigmund, the strongest mage in Icerock and officiant of the city assembly, "No? Well then, we'll talk about this again when these people get here, we'll vote on it after hearing their official proposal."

Sigmund's full name was Sigmund Redtear, he was an old man, twice the age of Laurence, but this also meant that he had studied magic twice as long and had more than twice the experience, making him not only the strongest, but also the wisest among them all and as such, he was chosen as a leader figure in the city.

The City Assembly was made up of the best merchants, engineers and non mage representatives chosen through election by the non mages of the city, they took the decisions for the city and decided on new rules when there was a need.

And the kind of choice in front of them was exactly what their job was for.

"I think that this decision is too big to be taken only by us, let's make the entire population vote on it after we receive all the necessary informations from them about what they want, this way we'll be sure this is what everyone in the city wants." proposed one of the non mage representatives, to which the others didn't object.

They believed that none would object, but one can never know for sure, this was just to prevent unsavory situations.

The assembly finished and as the others started leaving the room, Laurence was stopped by the old Sigmund.

"How are you doing my boy, it's been a long time since we had a good conversation, isn't that right?"