Chapter 28: Preparations & Metamorphosis

A/N:

" " : Dialogue,

' ' : Thought,

"Italicized text" : Telepathy,

[ ] : Spells, Techniques and Sacred Gear Casts,

"Bold text" : Ddraig & Albion.

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Gremory Territory, Main Residence

Narrator POV

"Huh, Haru-boya isn't coming?" Azazel asked Rias, and she nodded, her face sporting a wistful look. "Why'd he have to do this now? I was going to ask him how he trained you guys and work out something from there, but he's not here now." Azazel said, and began wracking his brain for a solution.

But before anyone tried speaking, a portal opened behind Rias, and one of Haruki's clones came out of it. "Hey, Pervy Crow. The boss sent me here to give you this." The clone said, putting a crystal sphere in Azazel's hands.

"That's got the training regimen he made for each of them recorded into it. Don't misplace or destroy it." The clone said, aware of the antics that Azazel could get up to. He then looked to Rias and her peerage, and reassured them that Haruki would come back in time, without any harm to himself. After which, it dissipated into motes of greenish light.

"Hmm... I see." Azazel said as different images flashed on the crystal in his hand. "Well, it seems that I'll have to take some time to create the kind of environment that Haruki gives y'all for training." He says with a sigh, as he puts the crystal away.

"I'll meet up with Zeoticus and see if we can make a room like that. *Sigh.* Why the hell does that woman continue to make stuff so overly complicated?" Azazel said, complaining about the complicated magic that had been applied to the training room back at the Natsuhiko family's home.

"Well, today's July 28th, and factoring in the time that we'll probably need to get your training instructors up to speed, we'll have about 20 days for your training for the showdown with the Sitri group. So for now, go ahead and..." Azazel stops speaking as he noticed Rias sporting a slight frown.

"What's the problem, little ojou-san?" He says, jolting Rias out of her thoughts. "*Sigh.* It's nothing... It's just that... I know that Haru also went to Sona and did something similar, so she's going to be making efforts to make something like Hanabi and Hideyoshi-san's training room." She complained, annoyed that she hadn't, in her own words, gotten ahead of Sona.

"I don't see why you're complaining. Haru has basically given you guys and the Sitri group a pretty effective boost, especially with the training that he's put y'all through." Azazel said, causing Rias to look at him with anger in her eyes.

"Hey, you can get angry, but you can't say I'm wrong. And don't expect me to do the same as him. I'm going to remain fair and give data to the various members of the devil side. So if you want any more boosts, I'm not the one to ask." He said with a nonchalant shrug, and Rias sighed in resignation, accepting the facts as they were.

"Well, I'll be going now. Make sure to gather in the garden tomorrow morning. I'll give you all your specialized training methods then, so be ready." Azazel said, and all the ORC members present replied with a resounding "Yes!"

Shortly after that, Grayfia appeared close by. "Everyone, the hot spring bath is ready." She said, much to the pleasure of everyone. And they went in to relax, with Azazel and Issei delving into perverted banter.

During the bath, the ladies of the group also engaged themselves in their own banter, which also happened to involve them touching and comparing each other's breasts and hips, with Akeno and Rias being the main culprits in this.

Over at the male bath, Azazel looked at Issei with incredulity, as he seemed to be the image of serenity. He didn't understand how Issei could stay calm in earshot of such titillating activities, and so he asked him how he stayed so calm.

"Asia and Xenovia would give it to me if I simply ask them, so I don't need to peek. Also..." Issei said, then gulped. "I have this feeling that if I even tried to peek, Haruki would kill me." He said with a few drops of sweat moving down his face. "Hmm, that's fair." Azazel said with a nervous chuckle

...

Location: Familiar Forest

Haruki trudged through the forest, with most of its fauna coming up to him, rubbing themselves against him and being in positions of submission. He just gave each of them a single pat as he continued on his way.

As he continued walking through the forest, his mind went back to the first time he was here, as a child following his mother.

*Flashback*

Hanabi had teleported to the underworld with a 4 year old Haruki in tow, using the teleportation circle that she had created after analyzing Mephisto Pheles' own teleportation circle.

In the time that she was studying the flora of the Familiar Forest, Haruki had wandered off further into the forest. At first, she was close by, but he eventually ended up moving farther away than she thought.

And unfortunately for him, he met with a beast that was far beyond him. With a man's face, a lion's body and a scorpion's tail, a manticore attacked him with the intent to kill and consume him.

Knowing he couldn't fight the beast, he ran for his life, heading deeper into the forest. His body was laden with scratches from the branches of shrubs and his clothes were torn in different places by thorns, but Haruki continued to run away.

He didn't know that this was all within the manticore's expectations, and was caught off guard when it hit him with a heavy, clawed strike on his back, ripping his flesh and cracking his bones. The manticore laughed with beastly snarls as it continued to play with Haruki, intent on making him suffer as its entertainment, before it killed him.

Haruki's body was laden with several wounds, when the manticore opened its mouth wide, ready to bite off his head, but it suddenly stopped. It looked up and saw a massive blue dragon looking down at it with disdain.

Fear gripped the manticore as it began to step away from Haruki's bloodied body, its instincts screaming at it to run away as quickly as possible. Its very soul was shaken by the presence of the dragon before it.

"Who would leave a young one such as this alone in this forest?" The blue dragon, Tiamat, said, looking at Haruki's quickly weakening body. Haruki turned his face to Tiamat, wanting to see what caused the manticore to be in such fear.

Although his sight had gone blurry due to the blood loss, Haruki still made an effort to make sense of what was in front of him. He lifted his hand, reaching out to touch what was in front of him.

Tiamat looked at Haruki and reached out to his tiny hand with her claw. Upon making contact with her claw, Haruki cracked a small smile, then passed out. Tiamat was confused as to why he felt comfortable enough to make himself even more vulnerable by letting himself pass out, but she didn't hate that he felt comfortable in her presence.

She picked him up and channeled some of her energy into his body, keeping him alive. The manticore, seeing this, took the chance and ran away.

Shortly after, Hanabi arrived, shouting Haruki's name with an extremely worried look on her face. Her breath hitched as she saw her son in the arms of a dragon. "Tiamat-sama, please may I have my son back?" She said respectfully and desperately, after seeing Haruki's wounds.

"Why should I give him back to you, when you weren't attentive enough to keep him with you?" Tiamat said calmly. "I didn't think he would wander so far away from me. Please, give him back to me." Hanabi said, tears falling from her eyes.

She thought that Haruki had possibly done something to offend Tiamat, and she had punished him, while keeping him alive. But, she wasn't going to leave her son in pain, or in the hands of the being she thought had harmed him.

Although Tiamat didn't know what Hanabi was thinking, she did see her desperation to get her child back safely. "Fine, but be more careful, or you might lose him forever." Tiamat said as she handed Haruki to Hanabi.

Quickly rushing forward to catch Haruki, Hanabi immediately began casting all the healing spells she had learnt and created. Without delay, the wounds, bruises and scratches on his body began to close, and his pale face regained some rosiness.

After healing Haruki, Hanabi turned to Tiamat, her eyes seeming like a spiraling abyss of hatred. "Tiamat-sama, may I know what did this to my son?" She asked coldly, surprising Tiamat. "It was a manticore. It ran away before you came." Tiamat responded, understanding that Hanabi was definitely going to avenge her son.

"I see. Thank you, Tiamat-sama." Hanabi said, then began flying away, with Haruki in her arms. Haruki was unconscious throughout the time, so he never knew that his mother was responsible for the extremely endangered status of manticores within the Familiar Forest.

*Flashback end.*

While he was in his thoughts, Haruki eventually reached the area that Tiamat had carved out for herself. "Tia." He called out to her, but received no response. He could sense her presence, so her being unresponsive was strange to him.

Seemingly realizing something, he sighed and shook his head. "I'm here, Tia-mama." Immediately he said that, Tiamat walked out to meet him. "There. Now, was that so hard?" She said, her voice holding a cheerful tone.

"No, but it's not getting any easier." Haruki said with a wry smile, and Tiamat huffed out a breath of hot air. "So what brings you here, hatchling?" She asked, and Haruki's gaze became intense.

"I need your help—" Haruki began speaking, only for Tiamat to interrupt him. "Oh? You only come to me when you need something from me? You wound me so, hatchling." Tiamat said dramatically, putting one of her giant arms over her head, and Haruki just sighed.

"It's in relation to me becoming a Dragon King." With that revelation, Tiamat became serious. "What is it that you need, Haru?" Haruki took a breath, then looked straight into Tiamat's eyes. "I need some of your blood." He said.

"How would my blood help you? You've already done most of the dragonification yourself." Tiamat said. "Yeah, for me to become a draconic human. For me to become a dragon as fast as I want to, I need something with a very strong concentration of draconic power, such as dragon blood from the strongest dragons." He explained to her.

Tiamat squinted her eyes, and huffed. "No. I will not give it." She said, causing Haruki to sigh once more. "If you're worried about me going crazy, then calm down. My Dragon Seed doesn't have the faults that the ones before it did." Haruki said confidently.

Over the time since the Khaos Brigade's attack on the conference, Haruki had taken to meticulously studying the nature of his Dragon Seed. And he had found out a few things about it that were different from the Dragon Seeds in dragon slayers of previous generations.

For one, he would not experience the lunacy that others did when they went through full dragonification. He also didn't have motion sickness as a weakness, either. He also had unfettered access to Dragon Force, which he figured out after looking back at the time that he activated it purely from intense emotions.

And for what was perhaps the most important difference, he had a very high resistance to the dragon slayer attribute which only seemed to grow with time, and had greater plasticity when compared to other dragon slayers, allowing him to more easily consume things that either weren't a part of his element–which so far, he hadn't come into contact with, or things with divine or demonic roots.

He essentially received a version of dragon slayer magic that had gone through multiple refinements to throw away its weaknesses. He explained this to Tiamat so that she would let go of her aversion to giving him her blood.

"Alright, I'll give you my blood, but I will be watching over you." Tiamat said, and Haruki smiled at her. "I wouldn't have it any other way." As he said that, Tiamat gave herself a cut on her front paw and let out some blood.

Haruki then formed the blood into a sphere, and suddenly opened a spatial rift, this one being a door to the pocket dimension that Ophis had gifted him, and pulled out two vials, also with dragon's blood.

One of the vials had red blood that glowed with bright green and gold colors, while the other had blood that was deep purple with small shimmers of black energy moving about it.

"What are those?" Tiamat asked him with narrowed eyes. "They're also samples of dragon blood. This one is from Yu Long." He said, holding up the vial with green and gold light. "He gave it to me as a way to mess with Old Man Son and my dad. By then, I already had Ophis' gift, so I just put it away there." He said as he levitated the vial into the air.

"And this is Ophis' blood." He said, holding the vial with the thick purple liquid in it. "I don't know why she gave it to me, but I've hardly been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I never bothered to find out." He said, then began disrobing.

After undressing to his boxer briefs, he folded his ensemble and neatly put it away. After taking a short breath, he slammed his hand onto the forest floor, causing the earth to form runes and sigils in a 6 meter wide magic circle.

After making the magic circle, he uncorked the vials and pulled out the blood from them. He made the blood flow in three spirals that came together and pierced into his chest. For a while, all of his blood vessels bulged out, becoming visible through his skin, before eventually returning to their normal state.

As the dragon blood entered his body, Haruki felt an ocean of energy rush through every part of his body. All the runes that constituted the dragon slayer magic in his body lit up, and a shockwave burst out from his body.

A shout of pain ripped through Haruki's throat as he felt agony flood his entire body. The runes on his body shifted and writhed all over, seemingly increasing in number. He felt like every single fibre of his being was being violently deconstructed then reconstructed.

His skin tore open, revealing dark green scales. His blood was forced out of his body, yet he didn't turn pale, as his blood was replaced with pure dragon's blood. His horns grew out of his head, looking darker and sharper than ever.

Black claws grew out from the points of his fingernails and toenails. All of his teeth sharpened into fangs, and his canines extended. His eyes became a deeper green, and his pupils narrowed into vertical slits.

He suddenly banged his head onto the ground, and his shouting turned into a loud, bellowing roar that caused the entire Familiar Forest to quake. Two points on his back, near his scapula, protruded outward, eventually piercing through his flesh.

And at the same time, two large wings tore out from his back and lifted him off the ground. As if reacting to his lack of contact with anything else, the runes on his body seemingly peeled themselves off him, then enlarged, covering him in a cocoon of draconic power, that was shaped like an egg. With that, all the commotion caused by Haruki's change ceased.

Tiamat watched all of this go down quietly. "When you emerge, you will be a Dragon King, Haru. I just hope that you won't be an Evil Dragon, for your sake." She said, watching as the cocoon landed right in the center of the magic circle that Haruki had created. Choosing to not touch it, she laid there, waiting for the eventual emergence of the world's next Dragon King.

Chapter End.

Word Count: 2,719

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