Chapter 350: Welcome!
Mid Morning - Late Summer : The Eastern Oasis
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*Fwoom* Easing the speed of my divinity as Grace disappeared, the flow of time almost instantly returned to normal. -So much for getting the support of the Elder Hall first...- *vwoom-tap-tap* Quickly changing the destination of the space rune to Emporio, I gave Hera an unamused look before injecting my mana and letting out a sigh. *Vwoom* "Haah..."
No matter how much I wanted to deny it, I knew exactly what she was planning just by the smug look on her face. -So much for taking the time to plan her return to Bahamut...-
To be blunt, I had the feeling she was going to simply get Myles's support as he woke up rather than the Elder Hall or dragons like Amphitrite. It just made a bit too much sense. With Myles being the first to survive the step into the demigod stage since the war, and with his long-standing trust from dragons around Bahamut, people were going to rally behind him en mass, likely even overpowering the existing system using the Elder Hall and essentially putting him in control of Bahamut.
-Because he's close with our family, it won't threaten our position, but it will definitely cause some turmoil, and maybe even rebellions sparked by those in defiance...- But as if to make the situation even more troublesome, Hera's appearance would flip everything on its head.
I had to ask myself how people would react to her new appearance on its own, and while i thought I had it all figured out, Myles waking up threw a wrench into everything.
Or so I thought.
"Haah..." -This should be the closest point to the Elder Hall...- Generally calculating where we were within the void, I quickly created a gate at the top of the tube within the void, only a kilometer or so above the planets surface, quickly encompassing us and releasing us in reality.
*VWOOP-FWOOSH* But we were instantly hit with a wave of heavy, water-filled mist and a blast of wind.
We were in the heart of a massive storm. *Crrrrrrackle* Electricity instantly started leaping between Krystallo, Hera, Ilios, and I.
"W-Woah! Hehe..." A smile came to Krystallo's face right away as she moved her arm around and watched the electricity arc between her scales.
-Good lord... What a hot storm...- Pushing my aura down to the ground, the view of a huge section of forest as well as several estates came into view. -Looks like we're still quite a bit west of the old Elder Hall...- "We need to cover about a thousand kilometers still, maybe two..." -They need to get on my back...-
*Blub* Quickly creating a ball of liquid antimatter and liquid hydrogen, I split it up and spread it around us before combining the dozens of individual droplets with their opposites. *crackle-BAAAAANG* The light was so blinding for an instant that it could have damaged Krystallo's eyes, but with how immense the heat and shockwave were, my barriers to protect her from them didn't even let singular photons through.
On the inside of the barriers, it simply flicked to darkness for a moment, and a subtle thump sounded. *blackout-thump*
*crackle-FWOOOOOSH* Releasing the barriers and only maintaining the vacuum magic, we were instantly showered with sunlight, just as the vast green forest beneath us was.
"Change to your humanoid forms. We need to get moving." Hera, having anticipated what I was doing, had already transformed by the time I finished speaking, but Krystallo didn't take more than a couple of seconds. -She's gotten faster...- "Alright, hang on."
*crackle-WOOOOM* Accelerating at the limit of what Krystallo could comfortably handle, we zipped over the horizon in a flash, piercing through the wall of clouds from the shockwave of the explosion before ripping through storm clouds like a spear through water.
"Your control really is something..." Looking ahead as I split through the atmosphere far in front of us, Hera mumbled under her breath. "How does your vacuum magic even work?"
Hearing her genuine curiosity, I glanced back for a moment before simply saying. "All I do is run a program in my mind... Essentially I do all the calculations with one complex formula." -Although vacuum magic's is quite simple...-
"Hm..." Hera quickly started pondering before eventually sparking up conversation with Krystallo about it, discussing the logic behind my formulas, which I used to teach her most of her spells.
For me, it was just like running a few lines of code in my head, making most of my magic autonomous and able to have the heavy lifting done by my subconscious, but such an idea was completely foreign to this world, even to those who had been alive for over fifteen millennia. -Hera's methods aren't too dissimilar in most cases, but it's certainly less efficient.-
But I had to admit, whether my formulas were more efficient or not, some of the tricks and shortcuts she knew with mana left me in the dust whenever it came to speed. Her knowledge which had baked for millennia was simply something I couldn't compete with yet.
But that wasn't going to be the case forever.
Rather, it was just a matter of time.
*FWOOOSH* Quickly traversing the nearly sixteen hundred kilometers while Hera and Krystallo nonchalantly talked, we promptly came up to the ruins of the old Elder Hall.
Or so I thought.
-Huh? What is all this...- As we got close enough to start feeling the suction of mana from Myles, rather than finding a desolate land of abandoned buildings, I saw thriving marketplaces and bustling streets. -This place was almost exclusively populated with those working alongside the Elder Hall... Did they not move it?-
And to make things more confusing, as I got closer and closer to Myles, the city only got denser and denser, and eventually as the field of debris Leander had made was supposed to come into view, I simply saw a continued field of newly constructed buildings, eventually leading up to a massive stone platform loaded with countless mana accumulation runes, all surrounding a huge dragon with scales of mythril.
-They.. built a city around him?- Although certainly nothing on the scale of a city like Atlas, it was a huge city, and at the very heart was Myles, sleeping soundly.
Thinking back to Amphitrite's deal she made with me to help Myles through his sleep, I instantly knew who was behind it. -But to think she would reform the entire city that fast...-
"That Amphitrite woman is quite clever." Hera spoke softly as she looked over the city.
"What makes you say that?"
She paused before finally standing up and walking onto my shoulder, looking down at Myles far ahead of us. "She took advantage of the fact an ancient turning demigod was pulling in so much mana to make this a desirable place to live. She rebuilt an entire city by simply building a few mana accumulation runes and using some money to lower the cost of the properties the Elder Hall was leaving behind for non-nobles to comfortably move here. I wouldn't be surprised if this place became a trade hub for Eastern Bahamut like it used to be."
-Mother must have given her the details...- "I wouldn't be surprised either, especially considering that there aren't any major noble families by the looks of things. People in the lower classes finally have a chance to climb the social ladder... But I have to say, it would be ignorant to think someone who has monopolized the entirety of the Forgotten Islands isn't clever."
"Hoho~, so that's her." Hera quickly became curious, but after putting her hands behind her back and looking down at Myles with a smile, she spoke. "Maybe I should meet with her, too."
Quickly descending toward Myles, we steadily glided through layer and layer of incredibly dense mana before coming to a halt and landing directly next to him. -Looks like he really is about to wake up...-
Although it was a little faint, the mana suction was only just beginning to equalize as we arrived, likely thanks to the appearance of Hera, Ilios, and my aura.
"To think a mythril dragon would still be around..." Hera sounded a bit surprised as she slid off my back and changed back to her shrunken draconic form. "There were only two lineages of them when I was queen... What was it you said his family name was?"
"Kalfas."
"Hm..." She pondered as she looked over his rugged body, now nearly 135 meters tall, and with a slightly less bulky body than he previously had, now being closer to a more balanced form. "The name doesn't ring a bell, but it's similar to one of Atlas's underlings that was a mythril dragon."
-With how close Myles is with our family, that's probably the case.-
"Do you know if there are any other mythril dragons?" Gently scraping one of her claws across his scales, a scratch instantly appeared.
"I know he had a brother that formed a family, but I'm not sure how they're doing."
She paused for a moment before looking up towards Myles face. "I see... Maybe he'll be more open to concubines than his ancestors were."
"PFFT-" I almost instantly burst out laughing. "Where did that come from?"
But rather than getting some whitty response, I ended up getting an earful about how good strong mythril dragons are, and just how much they can strengthen Bahamut.
But it helped pass the time while we waited for Myles condition to normalize until, eventually, people in the city around us started to gather around for the historic moment.
We as a group were still cloaked then, so none of those coming around to see if Myles was going to wake up could see anything, but as Myles eventually sluggishly opened his eyes and the crowd watched with baited breaths, his gaze was met by Hera, donning her full-sized form, almost three times the size of him.
All she did was look into his eyes, smile, and speak calmly. "Myles Kalfas. Welcome to the afterlife!"
"PFT-HAHAHA!" I burst out into laughter before I could even think.
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