Brandon Varnell
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WIEDERGEBURT Act V: Chapter 38
🕑 Added 2020-12-03 17:37:00 +0000 UTCThe books located in the Restricted Section didn’t make sense, so Kari and I decided to look through the main library itself. There were hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of books located within these shelves. Surely a few of them would contain information about what I wanted.
Unfortunately, we were met with disappointment.
“I am sorry. I have been the librarian for this library for over six decades. I know every book this library contains and can list them and their contents to you by heart, but I have never heard of one that deals with these higher level concepts you seem so interested in.”
The librarian who had spoken was an old man with a balding head, just a little gray hair on his sideburns, and a face so wrinkled his eyes appeared perpetually shut. He wore the same robes as everyone else. However, differentiating him from the others was the badge located on his chest. It was bright gold and had the symbol of a scroll—the Spiritual Research Sect’s coat of arms.
“I see,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment. “Thank you for your help.”
The old librarian offered us both a smile before going back to his business. Since it looked like there was nothing more that we could do, the two of us walked away from the main desk and left the library. As the sun hit my face, I tilted my head toward it, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
What should I do now?
Kari could no doubt sense my feelings. She took my hand in both of hers and gazed at me with those compassionate blue eyes.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“Since the Spiritual Research Sect turned out to be a bust, I will go speak with the Feuer and ask if he knows anything. He’s been around since before the Catastrophe, so he might know something.”
Kari slowly nodded at my answer. “In that case, I will go with you. I did not get to see the dragons in my last life, but I have always wanted to.”
I didn’t have a problem with her wish to see the dragons. Slipping one arm around her shoulder and one underneath her knees, I lifted her into a princess carry. The familiar weight of her body was comforting, as was the feel of her chest against me. Kari reached around my neck and hugged herself close.
Channeling my Spiritual Power, I lifted myself off the ground. All the Spiritualists within the vicinity stopped what they were doing and gawked at me, but I paid them no mind, oriented myself, and took off like a Spiritual Lightning Technique.
Wissen was located in the south east of the Northern Plains, close to an inlet that led to the ocean. The Westfang Mountain Range was located in the north west. There were several hundred kilometers worth of distance between these two places, but with my incredible reserves of Spiritual Power and ability to fly, it would not take more than a few days to reach our destination.
We traveled quickly over the land. The ground beneath passed by in a blur. I flew during the day and slept at night. I could have gone several days without sleep, but I was not in a rush.
Sometimes we would find a town to stop in, but there were times when the two of us would find ourselves sleeping under the stars, though not literally. Kari was always prepared these days. When we couldn’t stop at a town, she would summon a tent, a futon, and cookware. The two of us would cook dinner, then cuddle underneath a blanket and talk until we fell asleep.
Or we would have sex.
Some nights we didn’t actually get any sleep.
We reached the Westfang Mountain Range on the fifth day of travel. I didn’t bother hiding my Spiritual Power as I floated over the vast forests, valleys, and mountains. Before too long, numerous specks appeared from the ground, growing larger with every passing second.
“Dragons!” Kari shouted excitedly. “Those are dragons!”
“You realize Siv is a drakvar, right?” I asked with a laugh. “Why are you so excited just to see some dragons.”
Kari pouted at me. “Siv is my sister. It’s not the same thing.”
There must have been seven or eight dozen dragons present. Some of them were younger, easily recognizable by their smaller size, but there were also quite a few older ones. Aside from Feuer, I recognized the young dragon I had smashed into the ground the last time I was here.
“You are back. I did not expect to see you so soon.” Feuer’s tone possessed a gravitas only someone with a deep voice like him could have.
“Good to see you again, Feuer,” I said with a nod.
Feuer nodded his large head, but his eyes were not on me. They swept across the skies around me. While I couldn’t make out what kind of expression he wore since reptiles had different facial muscles, I thought I sensed disappointment.
“I see Lady Siv is not here. However, it appears you have another woman with you this time. This one is a human.”
I nodded. “This is Kari Astralia. She’s my first wife.”
“I care not for your human relationships. Welcome to the Westfang Mountains, young human.”
“Thank you. I’m really excited to finally meet a real dragon.”
This time, I was certain Feuer was looking oddly at my wife. Not that I blamed him. I was sure he was thinking the same thing I’d been thinking just a few seconds ago.
“I assume you wish to speak with me about the matter of us allying ourselves with you?”
I shook my head. “You are right in that I would like to eventually talk about that, but I actually came here for a different reason this time.” I paused. “Have you finished speaking about this matter?”
“We have, and we have even come to something of a consensus. Let us not speak of it here. Follow me.”
Despite how big his body was, Feuer turned around with incredible grace, flapped his wings, and took off at a relatively fast speed. The other dragons all turned and followed him, leaving me and Kari alone.
“Well,” I said. “Let’s go.”
With Kari in my arms and hugging me tightly, I flew after the dragons as they soared through the sky. I wondered where we were going. However, just as I pondered this question, the dragons all ascended even higher into the sky. Their destination was the top of Westfang Mountain.
The temperature became colder the higher we flew, and the air became thinner, causing Kari and I to feel a little short of breath. It was not a problem for Spiritualists of our level, but I imagine anyone below the Third State of Spiritualism would have died at this altitude. As we continued to climb icicles tried to form on our skin, but I used my ability to manipulate the water element to keep them off, and I even began circulating the blood through our bloodstream to warm our bodies.
We finally reached the top of Westfang Mountain. The very top of the mountain was completely flat. It was like someone had taken a massive sword and sliced off the tip of this mountain.
Because of the high altitude, nothing grew on the mountaintop either. Despite this, there was also no snow on this mountaintop, for the clouds actually could not reach this high. It would have looked like a barren piece of rock were it not for the single structure sitting in the center of the mountain.
The structure was a temple. Massive and imposing, this temple contained the same elegance I expected from dweorg architecture, with colonnades and archways that were large enough for even a dragon to fit through and still have room left over. Situated on either side of the entrance were a pair of massive dragon statues.
“It’s good to see the temple looks the same as I remember it,” I muttered.
Kari gave me a strange look, but I disregarded it. She knew about my past. I had not left anything out when I informed her about what happened after she and Kayli died.
The dragons all settled down just outside of the temple. Since it looked like this was where the impromptu meeting would be held, I flew down and stood in the center of their formation, setting Kari back onto her feet and grabbing her hand. Like this, the meeting between us began.
“Hmmm…” Flames blew from Feuer’s nostrils as he studied me and Kari with his rhomboidal eyes. “I believe introductions are in order. From my left to my right are Goildrun, Dozziss, Numun, Lysleleth, Vydet, Permiss, Chiro, and Katar. They, along with myself, make up what you might call the council of us dragons.”
The eight dragons that Feuer named were all vastly different from each other.
One had golden scales that gleamed in the light, a large body that was at least two times the size of the next largest dragon there. A single horn sprouted from the crown of this dragon’s head. However, this horn was so large it looked about four times bigger than me. Massive legs were planted firmly on the ground, while golden wings released a brilliant light as they sat behind this dragon’s back.
The one next to the gold dragon was a black dragon with scales the color of midnight and strange speckles along its body that reminded me of stars in the night sky. A pair or brilliant green eyes stared at me from beneath what appeared to be scaled eyebrows. This dragon was longer than it was wide. Its body did not have the gold one’s size, but it was much longer. It also possessed whiskers.
“My name is Eryk Veiger,” I introduced myself. “This is my wife, Kari.”
A low rumbling emerged from the dragons. They were talking amongst themselves. I wondered what they would say if they knew I could understand them.
“Is it true that you have mated with a drakvar?” asked the fourth one in the circle. The voice was feminine, though louder and more powerful than any woman I knew.
This dragon had white scales that seemed softer than the others. Her body was more slender as well, but her muscles were also more defined. An elegant neck connected her streamlined head to the rest of her body. What really made me surprised were the wings on her back. Pure white pinions covered in feathers and spanning at least ten meters on either side. She had the longest wingspan out of the entire group.
“Yes. Aside from Kari, I am also married to a drakvar named Siv,” I said.
Once more the dragons began speaking amongst each other, their guttural roars something Kari could not understand. She leaned into me and whispered.
“What are they saying?”
“They are expressing a positive opinion of me,” I answered.
“Really?”
I shrugged. “Apparently, sleeping with a drakvar is enough to make me worthy of respect.”
“I guess it would be something like that,” Kari said with a slow nod.
After several more seconds of conversation between the dragons, they all stopped and faced me again.
“We would like to meet with this drakvar,” said a dragon with glistening green scales. They were not as beautiful and lustrous as my wife’s scales, but they appeared very deep. This dragon’s body was smaller than the others, but the voice he used sounded older. Rippling muscles in his legs flexed as the large tail behind his back swayed from side to side.
“I can let you meet her eventually,” I said with a shrug. “However, before that happens, I would like to know if you have come to a decision.”
“We have,” Feuer said. “Our decision is that we will ally ourselves with you if you can prove yourself worthy of our allegiance.”
I was not someone who had been born yesterday, and furthermore, I knew more about dragons than this old dragon realized. Even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what he wanted.
“You want me to prove myself in combat,” I deduced.
Feuer grinned and the tail behind him wagged. “We dragons respect only strength. You being able to defeat one of our youngest and most impetuous broods proves you are stronger than most humans, but that does not mean much to the rest of us. If you really want us to follow you, then you must prove that you can best our strongest in combat.”
I ignored how he changed “ally with” to “follow” and focused instead on the rest of his words.
“Come off it.” I snorted and crossed my arms. “You’re just saying that because you want to fight me yourself.”
“Ha ha ha! It is true that I would love to challenge you. However, I am not the one you will face.”
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrow and looked at the dragons gathered. “Then who am I going to fight?”
“I shall be your opponent.”
The one who stepped up, the earth rumbling as its feet pressed the ground flat, was the dragon with midnight scales and strange star-like patterns.
“Fine then.” I turned the face this dragon. “Let’s do this.”
The other dragons soon cleared out, flapping their wings and taking to the sky. Kari could not fly. Feuer agreed to let her sit on his head to watch the competition between me and the one called Dozziss. Such a thing would normally never happen since dragons were prideful and did not like anyone using them as mounts, but this was a special occasion. While dragons fought all the time, it had been a long time since they’d witnessed a battle with a new opponent.
“Human, I will warn you now that I shan't go easy on you. If you do not wish to die, you should use all of your abilities,” Dozziss said, his voice full of gravitas.
“You don’t have to worry about that.” I shifted my feet against the ground and began circulating Spiritual Power through my body. “I always use my full strength when battling strong opponents.”
“That is good. Then let us enjoy this battle!”
I was not sure what to expect from Dozziss. Dragons usually had some kind of giveaway that let people know what element they used. Feuer, for example, was obviously a fire dragon. Not only were his scales a deep red, but he snorted fire when he spoke. Siv was a wind drakvar. Her scales were a vibrant silvery green… though I think the silver tint meant she probably had another element she hadn’t used yet.
With Dozziss… his scales were like midnight, but I did not think he had a darkness element. When I tried to see through him using Spiritual Perception, all I could see was swirling nebula surrounding his body.
Just when I was about to withdraw Spiritual Perception, the world around me distorted. Space bent. Then it swirled, and I was in the center of this swirling space. Dizziness struck me. A sense of vertigo made me want to vomit.
I quickly erupted with Spiritual Power and used the Flash Step to move sixteen meters away. The moment my feet touched the ground, I saw, for just a moment, the space where I had been standing become terribly warped. It was like viewing something through a melted telescope. This only lasted for a moment before the space returned to normal.
Warning bells went off inside of my head.
I used the Flash Step once more to disappear from the spot where I had been standing. Once again, the area warped as though it was becoming distorted. My eyes went wide. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, but I knew that gawking would not do me any good.
Since I couldn’t figure out what kind of element this dragon was using, I decided to probe him by attacking. I gathered Spiritual Power into my right first, thrust it forward, and watched as a massive bolt of lightning rushed out of my fist and toward Dozziss. The lightning bolt changed shape. It took on the appearance of a dragon descending from above.
Dozziss looked up. He did not appear agitated or even bothered, and I soon found out why as a large crack appeared in front of my attack. It looked like a crack in the sky, like the sky was paper and someone had torn it open. My lightning dragon flew into the ground, and then emerged behind me, striking me in the back. I was fortunate I had reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism. Lightning did not affect me, whether it was my own or natural lightning.
“Fourth State of Spiritualism?!” Dozziss seemed shocked, but soon his lips peeled back in the most feral grin I had ever seen. “That’s good! Now that I know you have actually reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism, I can go all out!”
The moment those words left his mouth, I felt like something sharp was passing over me. I activated the Flash Step, moving so fast I created an afterimage, and then I had the pleasure of watching as an invisible blade cut through my afterimage. It wasn’t just my afterimage either. The space it was standing in had been cut as well.
Cutting space?! What kind of power was this?!
I had no time to question this dragon and his strange abilities. Dozziss swung his tail at me and several more invisible blades flew in my direction. The only reason I could make them out was because the space around them was sliced apart, creating a thick crack in the sky that grew longer with each second that passed.
The only saving grace I had was this dragon’s attacks were very slow, which gave me ample opportunity to escape. I wove left and right in the air, constantly dodging attack after attack. I didn’t dare try to block these strange blades when I didn’t even know what kind of element he was using. However, I soon realized that simply dodging like this was a terrible idea.
Because now I was surrounded.
It was still impossible to see the blades themselves, but I could tell approximately where they were based on the tears all around me. There must have been hundreds of them. These tears quivered in place before, without warning, they flew at me again.
“I’ve got you now!” Dozziss roared.
Time seemed to slow as my mind ran through a thousand possibilities. I couldn’t use Flash Step. That was a movement technique, not a teleportation ability. There was nowhere for me to move. If I wanted to get out of this alive, then I only had one option.
Compressing all of my Spiritual Power into myself, my body underwent an intense transformation. Lightning erupted from me as my skin disappeared, as my muscles vanished, as my blood and bones transformed into lightning. Held together purely by my own will, my body had transformed into a single element.
While transformed like this, all of my thoughts and reflexes were magnitudes higher than before. It wasn’t as simple as adding one plus one to get two or two times two to get four. It was more like adding two times two times two times two times two times two to get sixty-four. The leap in my ability to think and my physical reflexes was both qualitative and quantitative.
As a being of pure lightning, I was able to easily dodge the strange tears in space, but I didn’t just end things there. I didn’t want to remain on the defensive like this.
After escaping from the encirclement of invisible blades, I shot forward like a bolt of lightning and slammed into Dozziss. Even if he was powerful and could block my attacks, he could not react fast enough if I was moving close to the speed of light, and thus he released a loud and angry roar as the scales on his body cracked where I struck him. The ground underneath him cratered. Cracks spread across the ground. However, while my attack was certainly powerful, Dozziss did not appear too harmed. There was just a little blood leaking out from between his scales.
I landed back on the ground and shifted back into a human. My eyes were narrowed as I glared at Dozziss, who was only leaking a little blood.
“You know how to use higher level concepts,” I said.
“That is right.” Dozziss seemed a little surprised. “I’m surprised you know about the higher level concepts. The concept I am using is called Space. It is a concept I stumbled upon several decades ago while thinking of ways to increase my Spiritual Power. Sadly, while I was able to touch the concept of Space, cultivating this power is hard, and I have not improved at all in these last several dozen years. What you just witnessed is the best I can do with this power currently.”
Space. I still didn’t understand what kind of concept this was, but it appeared Dozziss could manipulate the space around us to his will—at least to an extent. What I really wanted to know was: How could someone manipulate space to attack? Dunherr said that using a higher level concept required knowledge of that concept. In that case, how does one gain knowledge of a concept they have never heard of before?
I sadly did not have an answer, and I didn’t have time to ask more questions because Dozziss chose that moment to attack me again. This time he did not attack me. He attacked the ground beneath me. I was so shocked when the ground suddenly split open like it was made of paper that I lost my balance. Dozziss was more than willing to capitalize on my mistake, and he sent another invisible sword to cut me down.
But how could I possibly make things so easy for him?
I once more used the Flash Step to get out of the way, then began channeling both lightning and water through my body.
In nature, the action of warm air rising and cold air sinking plays a key role in the formation of thunderstorms. If warm air was forced to rise, it would continue to rise because it was less dense than the surrounding air. In addition, it would transfer heat from the land to the upper levels of the atmosphere.
Thunderstorms occurred when very strong updrafts are balanced by downdrafts. The air cools as it rises. Water vapors condenses and forms cumulus clouds. When condensation occurs, heat is released and helps the thunderstorm grow.
I used the water element to cool the air high above my head and condensed water vapor. At the same time, I channeled lightning into my surroundings, forcing the molecules in the air to vibrate and heat up. The intense hot and cold caused powerful fluctuations in the atmosphere. However, I didn’t do anything too fast, too overt. I didn’t want Dozziss to see what I was doing.
“You move awfully fast, human! I wonder if you can take my attacks!”
“I’m not sure, but I sure as hell don’t plan on staying in one place to find out!”
I had a lot of Spiritual Power left. After reaching the Fourth State of Spiritualism, my reserves had increased nearly a dozen times over. Having reached the Fourth State with both lightning and water, I was about two times more powerful in this life than I had been in my previous life. This was a result from a combination of me being more powerful in this life than my previous one, starting my training early, and reaching the Fourth State of Spiritualism for both elements when I was only nineteen. If my Spiritual Power had been a well in my last life, then right now it was a lake.
It seemed Dozziss was no longer satisfied dishing out entirely Spiritual Attacks. He charged forward, his tail waving behind him, the mountain rumbling as he raced across it. Strange nebula-like flames licked at his body. However, he did not seem to notice.
He was pretty fast, reaching me within just a few seconds and attempting to squash me flat with his claw. I didn’t use the Flash Step this time because I was concentrating heavily on what I was doing. That did not, however, mean that I was slow. Rather than leaping backward, I leapt forward, letting the claw smash against the ground as I traveled underneath the dragon and delivered a punishing blow to his chest.
Dozziss roared as he stumbled back. He raised his paw again to attack me. I planned on dodging, but the moment that thought crossed my mind, my body froze in place. A moment of horror passed through me as I realized I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even twitch my pinky. It was like someone had locked my body in place.
Fortunately, my Spiritual Power was not affected, and I let it erupt from my body, gushing out like a torrent and shattering whatever had been holding me in place. It was too late to dodge, however. The claw was literally right there. I had no choice but to take it. Raising my arms in a crossguard, I took the hit, and found myself being smacked with what felt like ten thousand tons of force.
