Chapter 26: The Sleep Lily

Mid Morning - Mid Spring : Home

After first seeing the effects of the lily, I laid down and did some general practice for what felt like several hours, but when I opened my eyes, something was clearly wrong. -It's.. still morning?-

The rays of sunlight that pierced the dense canopy were coming in at the exact same angle as they were when I first got to the pond.

It would make sense if I was only here for a few minutes to not notice much of a difference, but it had felt like several hours. -Was my instinct.. wrong?-

"Haah.." I tried not to think about it too much as I shook the thought out of my head. "Even if it really has been less than an hour, I should probably get heading back.."

As I slowly stood up and stretched, I looked over and saw Ilios splashing around in the middle of the pond.

*Splish-splash*

-How adorable..- I ended up just sitting there watching him roll around in the pond for a bit before he finally noticed that I had gotten up.

As soon as he saw me, he sprang to his feet and started happily trotting towards me.

Although he was a massive 5 meter long Ancient Fenrir, to me he just looked like a puppy trying to show off to his big brother.

As he got close, I leaned down a bit and he hopped up onto my back. He promptly found a good spot and laid down as well.

After taking my time to make sure he wasn't going to slip off, I started to head back home, carefully controlling my aura along the way. -There's no such thing as too much practice right?-

A few moments later I arrived back home where I saw father walking out of the cave with Krystallo.

"Where's mother?" I interrupted their conversation as I landed.

"She said she was going to check on something and get some food to snack on."

"Ahh.. okay." -So she didn't panic seeing that I wasn't home?- I took a minute to think to myself. -Maybe I have more freedom than I thought..- "Anyways, when she comes back tell her I'm at the top of the mountain."

"Sure thing, just be careful." He clearly wasn't as overprotective as Mother was.

Seeing Father wave me along, I didn't waste any time flying up the mountain. -I wonder what Mother said she needed to check on..-

A short moment later, I made it to the top of the mountain and carefully set Ilios down.

Once I made sure he was comfortable, I went ahead and transformed to my humanoid form.

"Hooh.." I took a deep breath as I tried not to think of the discomfort.

No matter how uncomfortable my humanoid form was, I needed to get used to it if I wanted to go to Kaelallan with Father. On top of that, I needed to find a way to conceal my aura indoors. -But I'll save that for later..- There was something else I wanted to mess with.

-Lets do a deeper dive into magic!- I quickly dug up some excitement to keep my mind distracted.

-But what should I try first..- My reserve had filled up to about half so I had plenty of mana to work with, but there was nothing that I eagerly wanted to try.

After thinking for a bit longer, I finally decided to experiment with what I felt was the most versatile, earth magic.

At first I thought it was simply too good to be true. -Everything has pros and cons, and everything has limits..- But once I started thinking about it more, I realized that there was definitely one major con. -Mana cost..-

Manipulating things on the atomic level was ridiculously expensive, on top of that, the cost seemed extremely inconsistent as well. -So, what dictates the mana cost then?-

The reason the inconsistency was so apparent was because of the cost difference between the steel darts for my railgun breath versus my atomic breath.

The cost of using a single atomic breath was incomparably more expensive than the railgun even though the steel darts had far more mass. Put simply, I moved far more protons and neutrons when making the steel darts as compared to the atomic breath, but the atomic breath was still more expensive.

It got me thinking though. -Is the cost dictated by atomic stability, instead of atomic mass?-

The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. -It can't hurt to test it..-

The test I was going to do was simple, I was going to take a single atom, and make it more and more unstable while carefully watching the mana cost.

To start, I found a simple, lone helium atom, and steadily added more and more neutrons until it was getting extremely difficult to hold together.

"Pfft.." I nearly couldn't hold back a laugh as I stared at my supid creation.

It was a hilariously heavy, helium-63 atom.

-Well, in any case, the experiment was a success.- With the results, it became clear that the more unstable and radioactive an atom got, the more mana it took to both manipulate and hold together.

Before I properly released the atom though, a stupid thought popped in my mind.

-I wonder if I can think of a use for crazy heavy isotopes..- It was a thing that felt completely useless, but oddly enough, it didn't take too long to think of a use. -I could actually probably use them as a primer.- (A primer for fission)

Such ridiculous isotopes were far too unstable to exist without my assistance, so when I released my hold on them, they just spewed out their excess neutrons. I figured that could those released neutrons to act as a primer to help force nuclear fission.

It was a truly fascinating idea, but I wouldn't be able to utilize it for a while because of the ridiculous mana consumption. At this time, my mana reserve simply couldn't handle it.

-Knowledge is never a bad thing though. Plus, just because I can't currently think of any other uses now, doesn't mean I never will.-

A proud smile crept onto my face after the successful experiment. -Hmm.. What should I try next?-

- Zachari Ragnarok ~

-Where was it again?- I was flying above the forest looking for a small opening in the canopy. -Oh, there it is..- It didn't take too long to find.

I quickly slowed down and lowered my altitude before landing next to a small yet beautiful pond.

"What.." -Where is it?!- The lily that was supposed to be in the middle of the pond was gone.

I looked around in disbelief until I saw a dragon's footprints lead into the pond. -How did they get that close?-

For context, this pond was home to a 'sleep lily', a priceless treasure that takes thousands of years to mature. [1] On top of that though, they were also nearly impossible to harvest.

Around each and every sleep lily was a small bubble that kept anything from even getting close to it.

It seemed as if everything within the bubble was simply frozen in time, unmoving and unchanging no matter what methods you used. Over time, the notorious barrier earned the name, the 'time bubble'.

Dragons didn't believe the barrier was truly unpassable though, because at one point in history, there was a creature who could harvest them.

Adding fuel to the fire, dragons denounced the possibility that a creature could do something they couldn't, so they assumed it came down to a specific method they needed to figure out, but their efforts were fruitless. Over the past ten thousand years, not a single lily had been harvested.

Even still, dragons never gave up. Although very few actually tried seriously to harvest them, some that lived near one would occasionally try. Coincidentally, I happened to be one of those folk. Although I knew any efforts I put into it would be for naught, I couldn't help but occasionally try.

Today I had high hopes though. I wanted to try using the magnetism thing Vasilias mentioned, but once I showed up to test it out, the lily was gone.

-What could've..- As I looked back at the dragon footprints, I couldn't help but feel like they were extremely familiar. -There's no way right?-

Not questioning it any further, I sprang into the air and flew towards home as fast as I could.

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[1] - What makes it so sought after will be explained next chapter.