Not Fox

Verdalite's words were like a jinx, because a few hours later, when Ciel was in the middle of the process of dragging Erin everywhere, someone came to be offended and beat up.

Ciel looked at the spiky haired boy in front of him who was exchanging daggers with Erin through his glares. With the amount of tension in the air, it seemed that a fight could break out at any time, but all Ciel could think of was;

'Huh, Erin's been getting more expressive lately.'

In fact, he couldn't understand how this had started. All the boy had done was come up to them and start staring at Erin—his self-absorbed expression immediately aroused Ciel's instinct to annoy him. But because the boy was only targeting Erin, Ciel held his instincts back, wanting to see if there would be a show to watch.

Then, they proceeded to stare silently at each other for a whole five minutes, with the hostility in their eyes increasing with each minute.

Ciel: "So are you going to fight or not?"

His feet were numb from standing in one spot for so long. If they weren't going to fight, then Ciel was going to drag Erin somewhere else to explore.

Before the boy could respond, a girlish chirpy voice sounded out.

"Young lord!"

Ciel looked back.

Ah, the other kid had come.

The girl, who Ciel recognized as the child who had been beside the teenager and the boy, ran up to the trio, panting. Her neatly braided twintails bounced up and down from her previous movements, the mint green color similar to the young boy's feathery turquoise hair.

It was strange, they were obviously dragons, but why did they feel more like birds? Tropical ones too.

"Pl-please wait for me next time. Don't suddenly run off like that!"

Ciel examined the thin girl.

'How slow is she to have only arrived here five minutes after this kid when they had the same start line?'

The boy ignored her.

"You wanna fight? Then answer this young lord, which of you is Onyx's heir?"

Not waiting for an answer, he locked onto Erin and started a one man show.

"If I beat you, then your position will be given to me!"

With a punch, he started to throw more jabs at Erin. Erin quickly reacted, not letting anything hit him.

Ciel was slightly pissed off: Am I invisible to you or invisible to you?

Erin felt even more wronged: I didn't even say anything!?

After a few minutes of watching a fight turn into a chase, Ciel finally realized something.

Erin couldn't fight. Even back at the base, Ciel had only made him dodge things.

But… Ciel tilted his head with laughter in his eyes. Was the dragon clan's heir retarded?

The turquoise hair was covered in sweat, and his young face was red with anger. After he found out that he hadn't even touched Erin hair, he angrily started hitting the ground.

They were already in a rocky area of the caves. Now that the ground was violently handled, small but sharp stones started to dislodge and rain down from the ceiling. Erin could only bring out his wings to shield his head.

'Wow, I guess a dragon is a dragon, even if he's young and brain damaged. Looks like Erin will lose.'

Along with the mint girl, Ciel backed away under a small cliff with no intention to help. They weren't Verdalite's heirs anyway. They also hadn't made any agreement with the boy, hence why the boy was retarded.

Besides, children's fights were a way to grow. Ciel had gotten into plenty of childish fights when he had been young in his past life.

Secretly reaching into his space ring, Ciel prepared to take out medicine and bandages. With rocks raining down, Erin would definitely get some scrapes and bruises.

He didn't have to worry about larger rocks because that meant the cave would collapse, and it was near impossible for a cave easily accessible for younglings to collapse. From the novel, he knew how eves treated their young—like a mama bear that had tried to get cubs for years before finally getting a single cub just when she had given up.

Yeah, younglings were incredibly valuable.

With the rocks raining down indiscriminately, the self-proclaimed 'young lord' was also being pelted. Even so, he still gritted his teeth as he continued chasing Erin around like a rabid dog.

Ciel was amazed at his persistence. It had been many years since he last saw such a single-minded fool.

Looking at Erin's unskillful but successful fleeing, he was once again reminded of his past life. Although they looked different, Erin's clumsy figure really reminded him of his older brother when they were young.

Suddenly, Erin whipped his body around and ran towards Ciel.

"Brother!"

Ciel's eyes widened as Erin pulled him into a tight embrace, with Erin's large wings fully enveloping the two.

"Eh?"

The outside sounds were muffled by thick feathers, but Ciel could make out the young boy's panicked voice calling out to someone, presumably the girl who had been next to him.

"Aspen!"

With a crisp crack that sounded like bones breaking, the ground beneath the four children broke away.

….

On the other side, Azar and Verdalite were in a heavily sealed room. In the largest building near the bottom of the cave system, they stood alongside the matriarch before a sleeping dragon.

The dragon was gray, and even though hints of turquoise occasionally flashed across his scales as he breathed in and out, he still looked like a stone statue. He had a standard western dragon body, yet his large wings were filled with feathers instead of scales. But if someone touched the dragon, they would realize that both the feathers and the scales felt like smooth stone with no texture nor softness.

As if sensing their presence, the dragon opened its eyes, revealing deep green pupils with the center dyed in gold, giving his reptilian pupils a golden glow. Despite his majestic appearance, his eyes were lifeless, only gaining a spark when he caught sight of Veralite and the matriarch.

"I… didn't.. expect …. you."

His words were raspy and quiet. If the three present didn't have abnormal hearing, they wouldn't have heard his words at all.

Meanwhile, Verdalite forced a laugh.

"The formerly valiant patriarch has been reduced to this state, how can I not come see you?"

His black wings unfurled as the black dragon appeared in Verdalite's place. After completely morphing into a reptile, he sniffed the air, trying to feel the mana in his surroundings. But after a few seconds, he turned to his companion.

"Azar, remove the barrier on me for a second. I want to see how heavily polluted the mana is."

Azar looked at the idiot reptile still sniffing the air like a dog and sighed, snapping his slender fingers.

The instant Azar snapped his fingers, the black dragon's green pupils constricted and he quickly returned to his human form.

Hiding mirth in his eyes, Azar patted Verdalite's back as he gagged.

"You've been enduring this disgusting mana for how long?"

In response, the gray dragon snorted softly. He didn't answer, but his wife did.

"The mana ores had been rooted in this mountain range for generations. Without them, our younglings wouldn't have been able to grow as strong as they are now. When we found out that the ore veins had been contaminated, there was no other option other than for him to take it all into his own body."

Verdalite narrowed his eyes. What bullsh*t was that? The patriarch in his memory had been kind, but he wasn't this kind and foolish. He would have migrated the entire clan somewhere else immediately upon discovering the pollution.

Was it because his son still needed nourishment from the mana ores?

Verdalite looked at the patriarch with a complicated gaze, then looked at Azar.

"How are you?"

As a combatant, he could only feel a bit of mana when he was in his original form, but even he felt like the miasma-polluted mana was extremely revolting. So how would the archmage who was much more sensitive to mana feel?

Azar's gaze when looking at him was akin to looking at a idiot: "I have a barrier."

After confirming that his companion was fine, Verdalite turned to the couple.

"Even I can tell that his state is serious. What do you want us to do? I know you know that I wouldn't have agreed to teach your son. So why did you call us here? Neither one of us are doctors."

The matriarch smiled sadly, gently caressing her husband's scales.

"But that fox is an archmage."

Miasma was the pollution brought into the world alongside the demons. Though the demons were currently sealed, their traces couldn't be cleanly erased.

To demons, miasma is their mana, to natives of the world, Aeon, it was similar to a lethal but slow-acting poison. It didn't just extend to living things, anything could be polluted.

Although most of the miasma had been cleared by the previous generations of heroes, there were still some leftovers, like a virus. The reptilian clan's mana mines were a prime example of this.

Only those possessing incredibly pure and natural energy could cleanse miasma. This included archmages and above, and those who owned holy powers.

Verdalite understood the implications in her words and turned to Azar for his opinion.

Wanting to say no, Azar coldly glanced at the stone dragon then saw Verdalite's rare worried face.

…He gave up.

"I can try. But no success is guaranteed. And, my name isn't fox, it's Azar."