Early Morning - Late Spring : Kingdom of Zan

- Osto ~

I was in a panic after hearing that Vasilias ran off on his own to fight so many nation ranks.

-If it was up to me, I'd rather have Kaelallan burn to the ground than let Vasilias die..-

When I left Kaelallan, I was furious that Oliver failed to keep Vasilias from leaving alone, but the more I thought about it, it wasn't his fault.

Oliver did actually try to do something to assist Vasilias before the whole mana suction event even if his effort was futile. -They never would have caught up with him anyways..-

I knew first hand just how fast Vasilias was.. it was a speed unobtainable by any being other than him.

A flight that would take me over an hour, he could do in a couple of minutes.

-He is truly a monster..- with that thought, my eyes filled with determination once again. -I need to stop thinking about anything other than finding him..-

Picking up speed even more, I started scanning the area below.

The area was mostly empty forest, with the occasional large monster or dungeon below the canopy but there was no major aftermath or evidence of a fight anywhere.

-Where is he..- I started to panic more and more the longer it took to find anything.

Luckily, after nearly an hour of looking, I finally saw a cloud of dust rising up in the distance.

It was the sign of a big fight. -That must be it..-

Rushing towards it as fast as I could, I saw a massive white wolf with a seemingly dead 22 meter halfie in its mouth. Not far away was a completely mutilated 20 meter one as well. The sight of the two slaughtered halfies made me instinctively freeze.

Although the dragons were halfies, when it came to the size to strength ratio of dragons and halfies, they both were fairly equal with dragons only having a slight advantage, so a 22 meter halfie was by no means a small threat.

For that white wolf to drag around such a large halfie so carelessly without so much as a scuff mark on its fur gave me a huge sense of danger.

-But what a beautiful creature.. It reminds me of Ilios.-

As I was preparing to get a little more altitude, a huge plume of fire rose into the air around a kilometer away.

Once I got a little closer to check it out, I could see a disgustingly big halfie around 46 meters tall laying on the ground with its chest caved in.

-That halfie has to be nearly 400 years old.. its an ancient..- Although an ancient dragon and an ancient halfie were no match, an ancient halfie could definitely give a younger elder dragon a run for its money.

As I got lost in my thoughts, I heard a familiar yet unfamiliar voice.

"THIS.. IS POWER!"

Although the voice sounded unfamiliar, I understood who it was immediately. -Vasilias is fighting that ancient?!-

I tried to dive in to save him but before I could reach him, I was blinded.

A flash brighter than the sun appeared from the area making me have to look away.

Although I was still nearly 2 kilometers away and couldnt see anything, every fiber in my body was screaming at me to run away.

My instinct made me retreat as fast as I could, but I wasn't nearly fast enough.

*BOOOOOM*

A deafening noise met my ears as the shockwave from the blast plowed through me.

It felt as if my entire body was punched all at once. It was so strong it made me dizzy and lightheaded.

Trying to recover after nearly getting knocked out of the sky, I looked back at the scene.

A massive circle of the forest was completely obliterated, stretching a whopping 6 kilometers in every direction.

I looked over the scene in fear as my instinct still screamed at me to run away.

-Just what..-

I sat there and hovered, not listening to my instinct as the dust began to settle.

Standing in the middle of the crater of molten earth was a massive 29 meter black dragon. Its body was well defined and mature, it felt as if I was looking at something that was too perfect to exist.

It looked nothing like Vasilias besides the colors, it was too big, too mature, too.. strong.. -but there is no way that there are two black dragons that carry such an unreal beauty with them.. It has to be him..-

But that was impossible, -Vasilias was 'only' 23 meters when I left for Bahamut a few days ago..-

I just hovered there in the air for a while, unsure of what to do before the black dragon looked up and gave a familiar childish smile.

-It really is.. him..-

I slowly started to fly down with caution and uncertainty, landing in the patch of ground where the white wolf was sitting during the blast so I wouldn't have to stand on superheated earth.

-What happened while I was gone..-

- Vasilias ~

Wearing a childish smile, I walked up to father, but when I took a closer look at him I noticed something off.

My face switched to one of concern, "Are you alright father?!"

His face was pale and he was shaking slightly. "Yes I'm fine.. but first of all.. Are you really my son?" He looked both Ilios and I up and down.

“...”

My heart nearly broke when I heard my father say those words, but I quickly remembered my metamorphosis of a dragon sleep.

-Ah right.. How do I explain this..- Thinking back to the dream and my dragon sleep, I decided it was best to not say anything about the time barrier I somehow managed to create. -It'd just cause more issues and not solve any..- "Yeah.. it's me. I can't say a whole lot about my.. changes though."

Father gave me a look of confusion.

"All I can really say is that I entered a dragon sleep after doing something stupid."

"..." He stared at me with wide eyes. "You had a dragon sleep? In just a few days?!" Although what I said was normally impossible, father had begun to believe whatever I said no matter how impossible it sounded.

"Kind of? But not really... Again, I can't really get into details.." I felt bad about hiding things from him, but it wouldn't help to explain everything to him currently.

"..." Father stood there in silence for a while before letting out a sigh. "Haah.. I won't pry any more if you just promise to tell your mother and I about it eventually.." He looked a little saddened that I was keeping such an important secret.

"Of course. It's just something that would be.. troublesome to explain currently.."

Father wore a face of concern, "That's fine… Well to lighten the mood, WHAT WAS THAT EXPLOSION?! ARE YOU STUPID?!" He lightly hit me on the head.

"Haha, you didn't like my little firework?" I wore a childish smile as I cracked a joke about casually destroying a 12km circle of forest.

"LITTLE?! IT LOOKED LIKE YOU RECREATED THE SUN!" He was taken aback by my lax reaction to the situation. "If your mother finds out you did something like this she'll kill me.."

"I'll take the blame, don't worry. I'm not too badly hurt anyways so it's fine."

"Right, where are you hurt?" He got a little closer, luckily I had cooled off quite a bit by now.

"I'm fine, just a couple broken ribs which will heal in a couple days." Something I noticed while I was sitting here looking at them was that my bones were healing significantly faster than compared to before my sleep. -What a ridiculous dragon sleep..-

"Haah.. how am I going to explain this to your mother.."

"I can do that. How is she doing by the way?"

"Ah she is doing fine. Since we left, she has spent most of her time sleeping by the door to guard Krystallo. When I stopped by I made sure to get her plenty of food to last a while so she won't have to leave at all."

A warm smile came to my face, "how is Krystallo's sleep going?"

"So far it's been smooth sailing, but you never know what will happen during those sleeps.."

"Well we cant see into the future so all we can do is wait."

"Right.. well anyways, what about this guy?" He looked over at the halfie laying on the ground, staring at us blankly.

Seeing us both look at him, he tensed up.

-Right.. what to do with you..-