Chapter 18: History and Magic

I'm EXTREMELY sorry for the disgusting amount of info in this chapter.. I did my best to make it easy-ish to follow but if you're confused on things, things will clear up as the story progresses, I promise.

I couldn't really think of a way to draw out this much info without just making 2 or 3 incredibly boring chapters or interfering with the story's progression so.. Sorry in advance.

Late Afternoon - Mid Spring : Home

A wave of excitement filled my body upon hearing mothers words. -Its time!!-

"Let's go up to the top of the mountain for our lesson. Krystallo if you want to come up and tune in.. you can."

Krystallo shook her head and started walking towards the cave entrance. "Ill wait for father"

She seemed to want to bond more with father, but I was far more interested in magic.

It wasn't that I didn't want to bond with Father, but to me currently, learning magic felt more important.

I contemplated whether my lack of interest in bonding with Father made me a bad son, but I shook off the thought since it wouldn't do me any good to dwell on it.

Mother nodded after hearing Krystallos response, and started to fly up the mountain. "Bring Ilios, he might pick up a trick or two."

Looking over at Ilios, I leaned down a bit and let him hop on my back before following Mother up the mountain.

Once on the peak, my eyes were filled with anticipation. -I cant wait!- I quickly moved over and sat down, ready for mothers lesson.

"You seem oddly interested in this, is it because you want me to take you hunting right after?"

"No.. well.. partially..." The main reason was because I had been cooped up in one mountain for the last 10 years, and I wanted to stretch my legs some.

I had started becoming increasingly bored as time passed and I needed to be able to move around a little more freely if I wanted to solve that boredom.

-Magic simply seems really fun and cool too.- Magic was a great method to solve my boredom.

"Huhu, well you seem to be looking forward to magic." She paused for a moment and gave me a sly smile. "But first comes history!"

In that instant, my hopes got crushed like an ant. "Aweee, come on!" I was pretty disappointed even though I was still very interested in learning some of the history of this world.

"History is important, Vasilias. Just push through it."

"Okay.. Let's just start." I wanted to get to the new things as soon as possible.. I couldn't wait any longer.

"So let's start with the main races of the world. The dominant intelligent races are the Dragons, Avians, Dwarves, Demihumans, Merfolk, Elves and.. Humans.." She said all the races with a joyous tone except for humans. "All of the non-intelligent species fall under the umbrella that is 'monsters'. They are simply animals but if they live long enough they can gain intelligence rivaling the other main races. This is only in extremely rare cases though, since most are killed by adventurers, other monsters or natural causes long before they can gain intelligence."

-Hm?- "Adventurers? What races have adventurers?"

Mother gave a slightly shocked and curious look. "They can all have adventurers, but a huge majority of them are human since they have the largest population. The other races usually have the advantage in terms of quality though." Mother showed a happy smile as she talked.

"How strong are they?" I was curious about the strength of said adventurers since many stories from earth showed them as extremely overpowered more often than not.

"They are ranked from F to S rank, F being the weakest, S being the strongest. Above S rank is Nation rank, the Nation rank is only home to a handful of adventurers in each of the major kingdoms. They are treated similarly to royalty and are almost always granted nobility and land in their respective countries."

"What is their strength like?"

"The strongest of them can rival an older elder dragon in strength, but they fall far behind in defense, stamina and most importantly, size. Even a single elder could kill several Nation rank adventurers."

I nodded in understanding before she continued.

"So let's get back to where we were. The main and western continents are dominated by the other various species which mostly live together peacefully with ceasefire agreements but small wars over territory or borders are common. There are a few nations that are much more aggressive than others though, for example the Holy Kingdom is very discriminatory to any non-human races, considering them on the same level as animals. This causes the Holy Kingdom to be at odds with all of the non-human dominated nations."

-Great.. They seem just as troublesome as I expected..-

"Nations that are the opposite exist as well though! There are a few kingdoms like Kaelallan where there isn't a dominant race, and the various races live without discriminating against each other. This forms mostly good relations with the nearby countries."

"You seem to really hate humans.." It was clear when she talked about either humans or the other races that the others were massively favored.

"Of course I do. How could I not hate those weaklings and their endless greed and confidence." Mother looked openly disgusted.

"So if the humans are so weak and annoying, why don't the dragons wipe them out, and why are they confident enough to back the rebellion?" I had long since changed from the mind of a human, to me now, a human life had the same value as an ant. Seeing those ants trying to fight dragons felt wrong because, at most, the humans would be moderately annoying to deal with, far from a challenge.

"Well it's a little complicated... I guess I'll start from the beginning. Several thousand years ago, there was a major war, one between the dragons and the gods the humans were worshiping at the time.. it was a rather one sided victory for the dragons as our god Bahamut wiped the floor with most of them, allowing a few of the ancients to finish the others off. This overwhelming victory for us solidified our position as the kings of this world, but since we didn't desire to destroy what was left of the non-dragon races, we gave a cease fire to the main continents and isolated the dragons to the continent of Bahamut. We agreed that we would cease interaction with the world on the national level. Single dragons could still travel around of course, but they were to never show their dragon form to humanoids [1]. As time has passed though, it seems the creatures of this world forgot who the kings are and started to move more aggressively, hence the human backed rebellion of the halfies your father and I were discussing earlier."

-Ahh.. that makes a bit more sense..-

I had originally thought that the humans simply managed to get strong enough to rival dragons, and that's why they were getting pushy, but it was actually that the strength of true dragons was lost to history, the fear of that strength going along with it.

"'Dragons' are trophies to adventurers, most of them aim to be able to hunt a dragon in their life though most of them fail or never find a 'dragon'. Those that do manage to kill one, aren't killing any actual dragons either. The creatures they kill are either halfies in their dragon form, or a wyvern." Mother visibly cringed. "Their classification of dragons has been.. skewed over the years..."

-Interesting.. but it makes sense that their classification would change after never even seeing any for several millennia.- "So.. what about magic?" Although the history of this world was really cool, I was dying to learn about magic.

"Haah.. fine, we will continue history some other time. I need to explain about magic from the beginning though.."

I felt a sudden wave of excitement wrap around me hearing her words. -Finally.. I can learn magic!-

"Hooh.." Mother took a deep breath as she prepared for a long lecture. "Okay, are you ready?"

I gave a hasty nod that was full of excitement.

She smiled a bit more seeing my boundless excitement. "Haha, alright. The world is filled with a type of energy called mana, it gives beings the ability to manipulate and change the world around them in various ways. Nearly all beings are innately able to control mana to some extent, but to make it usable you need one of two things. You either need an attribute node, or a rune because unattributed mana is far less useful. For example instead of forming a ball of fire, it would create a ball of pure mana that would simply dissipate into the air." As mother explained this, she used magic to show what she meant.

I was so unbelievably focused on her lesson that I was unconsciously memorizing every detail. "So what are attribute nodes and runes?"

"Good question! Attribute nodes are nature's runes. They allow you to give an attribute to mana by passing it through the node and are something creatures are born with or acquire later in life. Not all creatures have attribute nodes, for example, very few humans will ever grow even one attribute node. Those that do though, have high potential to become strong magicians since they don't need to use a rune to put an attribute on their mana. A rune is something humanoid species have developed that works the same as an attribute node, except it is far less mana efficient which causes their magic to be weaker. Luckily, we dragons are usually born with one or more nodes, all in various areas around the body." She said the last part while full of pride.

-Man dragons really are born with a gold spoon..-

"The closer the node is to your breath gland [2], the higher your affinity because it is easier to flow mana through it before moving it into the breath gland. For example, my best attribute node is water. For me, I pass mana through the node to give it the water attribute, then my natural affinity with the cold (ice) will freeze it in the gland. You could also mix a fire rune and water rune to create ice, but it is far more difficult and costly." [3]

Trying my best to absorb the huge mass of information from the lesson I was put into a trance.

After a moment had passed and I had finally digested most of the information, I raised my next question. "So how many possible attribute nodes are there?"

"There are only 6 possible nodes: Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, and Light. There is also a 7th attribute, it can only be used with a rune. It is something that has been mostly lost to time known as the 'space' rune. We dragons are the only species with access to space runes, but we can only use them along with a specific artifact in a specific location. Dragons use them all the time because flying tens of thousands of kilometers is rather inconvenient.'' After she finished, she gave me a moment of silence to let me process the information. "So how many nodes do you have? You can check by controlling the mana in your body and moving it around. Think of it like a cloud you move through your body to look at it."

Following her instructions I used the smooth energy flowing through my body (mana). -Hey.. This is pretty easy..-

I quickly got control of a fairly sizable amount of mana and scanned myself from head to toe, simply looking for whatever might be a node.

-What am I supposed to look fo..- Before I could finish my thought, I found exactly what I was looking for, but something was odd about them.

They were all in a perfect formation around my breath gland. "I.. I have 7.. Nodes.."

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[1] - This is what lead to the halfies coming about because relationships between dragon and humanoids happened.

[2] - The breath gland is basically where dragons breath fire from (or whatever attribute, water ect.)

[3] - Fire magic is a little complicated since it can be used like a 'temperature' control to make something either hotter or colder