The Dragon of Dreams

Chapter 24: Aura Control

Late Morning - Mid Spring : Home

Mother looked over at me as she was rubbing Krystallo's head.

There was something so surreal seeing an angel-like woman rubbing the head of a dragon that I got completely entranced for a while.

Once I finally snapped out of the trance, I turned to look at Father and saw him break out into a cold sweat.

"Father, I noticed earlier but why is it that when I look at you, you start sweating?" Although I didn't expect him to be all lovey like Mother was, not even being able to look at me was a little pathetic.

"Ah, right..” Mother wore a troubled look. “Well, there is an old phrase I read in a book that was, ‘even dragons have to bow before the Ancient Fenrir’. It seems like that phrase wasn’t just a metaphor.."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, as an Ancient Fenrir, your aura has a very special.. ‘majesty’ to it.” A bead of sweat slowly formed on her forehead.

“Majesty?”

“It just means that your aura enchants the weak and oppresses the strong." She finished with a proud smile before mumbling something under her breath. "I even caught myself staring at times.."

-Oh.. so that's why it sometimes felt like Krystallo was staring at me, but won't that become problematic?- "Is there any way I can control that part of my aura?"

"Well, to an extent. You can make it easier for people to resist but you can't totally remove it unless you completely pull your aura away from them." [1]

-I guess that's good enough..- "How do I make it ‘easier to resist’ then?"

"The thinner the aura, the lighter it's effects are. When we go to Bahamut I'll see if mother knows anything more. But for now, Honey..” She turned to Father. “You just need to at least try and resist his aura.. don't let it make you that uncomfortable. It didn't bother you that much before, right?"

"Well.. it did.. but I just used my aura to resist it." He looked incredibly uncomfortable.

"So use your aura now.” Mother wasn’t having it. “It's not like you don't have plenty of aura to work with even if you're in your temporary form. Plus I'm sure you'll start to get used to it like Krystallo and I have." She looked away from father with a slightly annoyed look.

After watching them have their little moment, I remembered something. -Ah, right..- "Father, you said you wanted to bring me along to a humanoid nation for something?"

Father had started using his aura to resist mine but he still didn't make much eye contact with me (he didn't before either). "Ah, yes.. I have some business with the royal family in the Kingdom of Kaelallan. I need to be there in a few months at the latest."

"What business do you have with them?" Mother gave a curious look.

The Kingdom of Kaelallan was a kingdom run by people of all races, and the current royal family were avians that Mother and Father both had a long history with. They were old friends.

"The elders told me to inform them about the halfie kill order.."

"Oh, right.. nearly forgot about that.." Her face momentarily filled with worry before she lightly shook her head. "Well it should be an easy trip there and back right? In that case it should be fine to bring Vasilias. It'll be a good experience for him."

"Yeah, he also has more than enough strength to protect himself if need be.." Father looked away just slightly, embarrassed that I was already stronger than him.

"Well let's plan for that, Krystallo seems to be showing some signs of her dragon sleep as well, it should line up with your trip. Before you even think about leaving though, Vasilias.. you need to learn to actually control your aura. I think humans would faint or die if they felt it unrestrained." She nearly laughed but stopped herself since she was only half joking.

"Of course, Mother! I need to learn how to control my aura eventually anyways so it works out." I subconsciously smiled along with her.

Father seemed more interested in Mother's first statement though. "Wait, Krystallo is going to have her adolescent sleep already?! Isn't she just 10?"

"Well Vasilias had his at 8.."

"I think we've already established that he’s an oddba- Wait, WHAT?! His sleep was 2 years long?!" Father’s mouth hung open as he slowly turned to me.

Seeing him looking at me, I just casually shrugged my shoulders.

"Haha, yeah. He isn’t alone though, Krystallo is also an oddball.” Mother glanced back towards Krystallo with a proud smile. “She is already much bigger than her age and her first sleep was also much earlier and longer than normal."

"Haah.. well at least we don't need to worry about their safety when they 'leave the roost'." Father looked towards Krystallo with a sigh of relief.

A warm smile slowly crept onto my face as I watched the scene. -I was truly blessed to be born into such a good family..-

After a bit more idle conversation, we all transformed back to our dragon forms and continued to talk while eating the rest of our bisons.

Towards the end of us eating though, I felt something interesting with my aura.

Walking over to Krystallo’s bison, I casually shattered it’s skull with a heavy flick and carefully pulled out a colorful sphere.

-A mana core!- Seeing me casually grab the core, Father looked at me wondering what I was doing, but before he could ask anything I casually tossed it into my mouth.

*Crunch*

Father’s face paled seeing me eat the mana core. "Vasilias! Quickly spit that out!!" He was in total panic but before he could get up to force me to spit it out, Mother stuck her wing in front of him.

"He’s fine, honey. He's eaten several already. He even had one the day after he hatched.."

Color slowly started to return to his face, but he was still in awe. "He did.. what?"

He looked down at me in shock just before I cringed. "Blegh.. this one was bitter.." Instead of savoring the flavor, I just swallowed it like a pill and started absorbing it’s mana. I had to go take a big bite from my bison to try and wash out the bitterness in my mouth.

After absorbing it for a bit and finishing my bison, I moved to the side and prepared to try and control my aura.

Krystallo was still eating her bison and Mother and Father were talking about something I didn't care to listen to.

"So, Mother.. Do I just control my aura like a spell?"

She quickly paused her conversation with Father to answer. "Yep! The only difference is that you don't pass it through a node."

-Simple enough..- As I sat there with my eyes closed, I focused completely on my aura.

As soon as I tried to control it, more than half of it, spanning nearly 50 meters in all directions, stopped flowing.

-Wow.. That was really easy..-

Mother and Father instantly realized what I had done once they felt my aura stop flowing. They both just stared right at me in disbelief.

"There is no way right?" Father was paying close attention to my aura.

Controlling 50 meters of aura was an impossible task for someone controlling their aura for the first time, but compared to my nuclear breath, it was practically nothing.

-If I'm going to be in a big city, I need to find a way to keep my aura off of people..- But I quickly ran into an unexpected complication with my ideas. I had no way to reabsorb my aura.

At best I could compress it as much as possible to form a thin layer around my body. The instant I gave that a try though, I realized a major problem. -Ah..-

I managed to compress nearly all of my aura into a 10 cm thick layer around my body but the mana density was so high that it became visible. -Well that's a problem..-

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