A Dragon’s Curiosity

 

 

Nisha, who had her legs crossed and focused her attention inwards while inspecting her [Inner World], fell back and stretched out her limbs as much as she could.

Quite some time had passed while she dealt with Eisen and learned more about the [Golem Control] skill, the sun outside the window had already passed most of its journey and was about to vanish behind the horizon.

Given that the elf entered her [Inner World] before noon, quite a lot of time had passed while she studied the new skill.

Sprawled like a starfish on top of her bed, Nisha did not find the inner strength to stand up and simply turned her head to look at her other familiar.

Curled up in the corner, Accalia had finished her breakthrough and slept with a peaceful breathing rhythm, where a gust of wind circled around the wolf every time it took a breath.

Compared to her state before the advancement, Little Lia now had a far stronger presence.

Instead of only the chest and belly region, the yellow golden fur all over its body now weaved together to display a scale-like texture, increasing the overall defense.

Especially prominent were the four paws, with a ring of dense fur right above them resembling anklets, as green wind aura flashed every time they moved.

In Nisha’s opinion, the wolf looked better than before and had an imposing bearing, promising brutal strength and swift violence once engaged, despite sleeping at the moment.

Now that both her familiars attained the fourth rank, the elf also noticed that her own stalled progress started up again, with [Dragon Force] once again circulating around her entire body, widening the pathways for aura and mana and excavating more potential.

After getting rid of the restriction on her physique and mind, the invisible power needed less effort to get better results, hence Nisha was quite optimistic that her cultivation speed would not slow down at all.

Perhaps, she even had a chance to catch up with her three dragon siblings, who by her own estimation, could very well attain the sixth rank or higher by now.

It had been a long time since the young girl was in contact with them, therefore she made up her mind - as soon as the Royal Academy went on winter break, Nisha would invite Henry, Luthais, Annabelle and Lydia to go on a trip to the Royal Hunting Grounds.

The twins already knew about her origins and the two men from the Dharnas House treated her especially well and never made her feel out of place in the family, so she judged that it was fine to introduce her dragon siblings to them.

Furthermore, the small lodge was the perfect place to let Accalia, Henry’s [Guardian Griffin] and [Cerulean Sky Owl] run wild and take them on a real hunting trip in the Wilderness.

 

Determined to ask Luthais if the household could make the trip later on, Nisha regulated her aura and let her thoughts run wild.

Since both her familiars had attained the same cultivation level as herself, her own progress would pick up soon again.

In regards to fourth level spells, the elf already studied the two attack spells, [Dark Shard] and [Fire Shard].

Due to the jump in capacity after making it past the first great divide, magicians and warriors had far greater reserves and could handle more at the same time.

To increase the destructive power, these two spells concentrated their respective elements to the limit until they condensed into a small shape, hence the name shard.

Once the projectile hit an enemy, all the condensed mana exploded and dealt great harm.

In respect to physical moves, Nisha did not see the need to learn more diverse skills at the moment.

[Shadow Clad] and [Embers Touch] worked in similar ways and lined the edge of a bladed weapon with aura, improving the ability to cut and overall power of different moves.

Combined with [Royal Swordplay], she still had to learn a lot and potential left to improve.

When the dragon hit a wall and no longer managed to improve her proficiency in the sword manual, then it was worth considering learning something else.

In the defense department, magicians and warriors also had new options due to the leap in ability.

Magicians learned mostly the same elemental series defense spells, starting from the first rank with [Dark Shield] and [Fire Shield], preparing a screen of mana in a defensive position to fend off physical assaults and enemy spells.

Although the spell was rather short and could be quickly deployed, it mainly defended in one direction and left other openings that made the caster vulnerable.

The improved version became available at the fourth rank, because a magician needed to invest a greater amount of mana to cover up the flaws of the Shield spell series.

[Dark Cloak] and [Fire Cloak] did exactly as their names implied and covered their caster in all directions with a sphere of elements, ready to respond to any threat.

And as soon as an attack came close, the scattered elements could gather in one place and defend better than a simple screen, with a higher initial cost but lower upkeep than the lower ranked spell series.

Warriors employed a similar methodology to deal with their defenses.

By discharging a concentrated burst of aura, spells and skills beneath the fourth rank could be repulsed without any damage and same ranked attacks greatly weakened.

It needed great timing to offset the damage, but most warriors had greatly sharpened senses thanks to the increase in cultivation and managed just fine to employ the [Aura Pulse].

Of course, variants of the defense method and unique skills dedicated to defense existed, yet the dragon did not have access to either of those.

 

Nisha would need some time to practice the new spells and [Aura Pulse], preferably with a sparring partner to match her.

She understood the underlying intent that shaped the skill, hence it was probably not going to be a problem for her to learn them in a short amount of time.

Thinking about the mechanics behind skills and spells, Nisha curled into a ball on her bed and her wandering thoughts arrived at her newly learned technique, [Golem Control].

Although the elf attained a high theoretical threshold, it still required plenty of experiments and in depth study to implement those theories in reality.

Furthermore, knowing the diagrams alone did not mean she fully understood their usage.

While the arrays and inscription she picked for the wooden trunk managed to work correctly and allowed the golem to form a proper body, the design itself changed in the process - a detail that was unknown prior to this to the elf.

If she included the protrusion in the original diagram, was it possible for her to decide what limbs the golem would acquire?

The channels inside the treeman also broke down and incinerated once the stored aura changed from earth to fire aura, which made sense from a practical point, but there also should be a solution in the skill to power golems with the element of the caster alone.

Only plenty of practice could solve these questions and truly make Nisha grasp [Golem Control], although the benefits were already fairly attractive.

Just the construction of the new city wall required a lot of manpower for digging the foundation, carrying and cutting the rocks used for the wall and a lot of other areas.

If the elf managed to master the skill to the point where she could put it into practical use, it would speed up the construction a lot and save on costs.

Immersed in a world of diagrams, arrays and inscriptions, constructs made from mana hovered above the girl and either fell apart once their flow got interrupted or different areas clashed with each other and caused the entire formation to break down.

Unknowingly, Nisha immersed herself into the process to the point where all of her attention was devoted wholly to reviewing and implementing her knowledge, discarding and renewing complicated designs whenever her ideas did not match up to reality and crashed because of an error.

Nevertheless, every cycle of dismissal and reconstruction refined the arrays and inscriptions, turning them more suitable for the elf’s purposes.

 

At some point, the dragon discerned familiar connections between the parts of the diagram that were still unknown and illegible to her, neither written in the common language, elf tongue or dragon runes.

Frowning her brows with closed eyes, Nisha went through her memory and tried to recall where she had seen those symbols before.

It was so close that Nisha almost felt she could touch them if she just reached out her hand, but the final distance was just impossible to surmount, no matter how much the girl tried.

Frustrated with this tiny yet immovable obstacle, the elf unconsciously circulated her aura and mana much faster than before, summoning a small vortex of energy inside her room.

Fire and darkness alternated to dye the room with eerie shadows and flashing lights, while a sheen of age and renewal settled on all items inside the young lady’s bedchamber.

Little Lia, who was still in a deep sleep after its advancement in a corner, shuddered and curled into a ball as tiny as possible to guard against the uncomfortable invasion of foreign mana.

Thankfully, the phenomenon stayed rather small in scale, not even the maids or other residents noticed anything unusual this late into the evening.

Every time the energy threatened to break out of the room and devastate the Dharnas estate, it was forcefully pulled back by the dragon, who only needed a small push to break the layer of paper and see the light behind the screen.

And right before the swirling vortex broke under its own weight, the scattered elements returned into a shape, an order, that they took on before.

Deepening the shadows and releasing the portal to an infinite expanse of darkness, natural rules moved beneath the black cover of the night.

Flickering in scattered specks, fiery wisps gathered and converged onto each other until the small lights became blazing balls of fire, ready to erupt with solar fury against the all present darkness, wrapped in blazing chains of natural runes as well.

With a bout of sudden inspiration, Nisha snapped her eyes open and connected the clues in her mind.

Very cleverly hidden in the diagrams she learned from [Golem Control] were concepts derived from a natural law, forming a delicate balance between mana and aura in a closed loop, powering the golems to come alive.

With the film removed from her eyes, many sections of the diagrams that were confusing the elf before made sense now.

 

The burst of insights did not stop there, as the runes from [Midnight], [Solar Flare] and the unknown concept flashed in her mind.

Each came from a different element and the similarities in appearance were quite stark, but the principles all conformed to nature and had associations with each other at least.

[Solar Flare] represented the burst of power from a single concentrated point, making the best use of available energy to the point where it burned to nothingness.

On the other hand, [Midnight] returned everything in existence to the same point, nothingness and shadows, to create a connection between two places with the same conditions - as long as a shadow existed, the natural runes deepend the darkness until it could connect with another plane.

Two extremes in nature, they behaved more like two sides of the same coin rather than unrelated principles.

Nisha did not see the similarities before because of the outward appearance of the natural runes, yet [Golem Control] hid a principle associated with balance and cyclic flow.

Of course, darkness and fire elements were not compatible at all.

If she forcefully tried to balance them and apply this new inspiration, the same thing would happen to herself as the golem earlier.

Due to the clash of elements, the energy would run out of control and break down, dealing damage along with the backlash from the incompatible concepts.

Between a single concentrated burst of energy and a large plain of darkness reducing everything to nothing, it was the two extremes that had a common association.

Similar to the brightest light and the deepest darkness, there was bound to be a balance point where the deepest shadow appeared beneath the source of light and a single gleam of light had the power to illuminate the world if everything was veiled in shadows.

Heading towards an extreme gave birth to the opposite instead, reversing the general trend.

While fire and shadows did not mesh well with each other, their principles actually had common parts.