Chương 103: Bane of Dragons

Viren was trying not to feel too down after the other day's little chat. Which wasn't that difficult. There was quite a lot to do and see on the skyship. Honestly, he was having a hard time believing the academy was bankrolling such an expensive trip. With all the people from the academy getting stellar service throughout the multi-day trip, the academy had to be spending hundreds of thousands of gold. All for one excursion. It was mind-boggling.

Viren was really tempted to ask the other clubs just how much the academy had spent for them. Although, he supposed several societies had their own large expenses that the academy appeared happy to bear the brunt of. For instance, the Manabeast Tamer Society had so much upkeep cost for keeping their manabeasts sated and happy. Food, Healer Mages specializing in manabeast treatment, shelter, maintenance of their grounds, and probably a lot more that Viren himself was unaware of from the outside.

Maybe it wasn't too exceptional that the academy had spent a lot on this trip. The issue with keeping himself happy most of the time was that he was often spending a lot of time with Acrypha. And after that day's conversation, her mood just refused to recover. She wasn't actively doing or saying anything depressing. But Viren had spent enough time in her presence that he could read her like a book.

The way her eyes looked distant, the thin press of her lips, and most telling of all, the way she had stopped aggravating him all the time. Now she treated him almost like an orphan in need of pity. Ew. Where was the old Acrypha?

"Come on!" Viren said as he led her towards his room the other day.

"Your room's on the other side so you can't see as well, but it's clear as day from mine. Hurry!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said with a light huff at needing to follow him rapidly. Like she had been doing more recently, she skipped the insult. Viren almost missed it. He ignored the mess of his room—this wasn't really his room to be fair, not for long, at least—and he hoped Acrypha did too. Because the main thing he wanted to show her through his window was already taking up all his attention.

"What are—" Acrypha gasped.

"Are those dragons?"

"Yes!" Viren said.

"That's what I've been trying to show you."

"What are they even doing out there?"

"Look! Look there!" Viren tried to point out the tiny speck flying in front of the enormous flying lizards.

"Do you see that? I think they're chasing that thing." Acrypha squinted for a bit. Then her eyes widened. For a while, they both stared, mesmerized by the sight. Viren had only spotted the monstrous lizards maybe ten or so minutes ago. The whole time he had been trying to find and haul Acrypha to his room, he had been afraid they'd move too fast and he'd miss seeing them again. Yet it seemed the distance they were maintaining was perfect for keeping them in his field of view.

They weren't the only ones who were aware of massive dragons not that far off. While he had been running, several other students and even Academ Jules were hurrying off to their own rooms and other perches from which to view the magnificent sight. Well, magnificent for now. If the dragons decided the skyship and its occupants would make far better prey, then things might take a turn for the worse. Something that the skyship was clearly aware of, going by their telegraphed warning.

"Greetings, dear passengers," said the smooth voice of the pilot over the Inscribed Glyph of Communication in Viren's room.

"To the starboard side, that is, to the right of the direction we're heading, you might see several Lesser Archdrakes chasing their prey."

"Not to worry, though. If there is even the slightest hint that the dragons might turn towards us, then we will take the appropriate measures. We here at Sirica Skyships take the issue of security greatly to heart, and we will ensure that nothing regrettable happens while you, dear passengers, are on board." That was reassuring enough, though Viren wasn't particularly concerned at the moment. Most of his mind was still basking in the fascination of what he was seeing.

And then one of the dragons had come to a sudden stop. Viren blinked. No, that couldn't have been right. Had he just seen a black dot in the far distance appear out of nowhere? Though, come to think of it, where was Ryland…

"Do you see that?" Viren asked. Acrypha leaned forward in interest, her eyes screwing tighter.

"One of them stopped."

"No, that's not what I mean." Before Viren could explain what exactly it was that he meant, the other dragons suddenly gathered around the same spot. He really wished he had an eyeglass or something of the sort because he was now desperate to know what could have made Archdrakes stop like that. And Viren was starting to suspect he knew the answer. Then another warning arrived through the Inscribed Glyph of Communication.

"Dear passengers." The smooth-talking pilot's voice was no longer that smooth.

"I would highly suggest that those of you outside on the bridge and elsewhere return to your rooms immediately. We may be in for a turbulent ride. Please, make haste." Viren swallowed. What was going on? Beside him, Acrypha's attention was focused extremely intently on the distant sight of the dragons now attacking the speck Viren had noticed. It turned out, the speck was more than capable of holding its own against multiple Archdrakes at once.

The storm of fire that one of the dragons unleashed simply reformed and turned around to attack the monstrosity assaulting him. And it had turned into an even more ginormous draconic construct too, a humongous dragon's maw even bigger than the Archdrakes. It snapped fiery jaws closed around its target before slamming straight to the ground. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Cursed Calamities," Viren muttered.

"That's his magic, isn't it?"

"There's only one person I know who can do things like that," Acrypha said, but only after a gigantic rent had torn open in the far distance and swallowed up an Archdrake whole, before spitting it out at another Archdrake. Then came more magic that Viren would normally have considered impossible.

An Archdrake blitzed at its target, at the tiny speck none of them could make out, and it simply struck and fell to one side, rebuffed as though all that massive, lightning-wreathed power it had gathered was nothing at all.

"It's wounded," Acrypha said quietly. Viren saw it too now. Another black rent had popped up just before impact, and the Archdrake had impaled itself partially on what appeared to be a mountainous spear. Wait, no. It was a mountain. The jagged peak of one. Despite the incredible displays of magic, the Archdrakes weren't done. Not by a long shot. Now all of them were fired up on that same lightning, even their maws sparking as though they were about to shoot electric beams instead of flaming floods.

Ryland—for who else could it ever be? —never gave them a chance. Viren figured he shouldn't have been surprised, yet his mouth fell open as an enormous rift tore open in reality. It had to be the biggest one he had ever beheld. Larger than the skyship, larger than all the Archdrakes combined, larger perhaps than a good chunk of the mountain range they were flying over. And from that incredibly huge rift, a similarly sized claw forced itself out into the world.

The sheer size of the thing had frozen Viren's breathing. How could something living, possessing that kind of enormity, even exist? Just by punching out into the world, it had set off a gust powerful enough to rock the skyship.

"Take cover!" the pilot's voice once again crackled over the Glyph of Communication. He sounded almost panicked.

"We'll be able to bear the turbulence, but please hold on tight. We're moving away as fast as we can." Viren really wanted to countermand whoever had made that decision because he needed to see how Ryland finished dealing with those oversized monsters. Though, it didn't take long at all. The claw swiped.

Before the dragons were done gathering enough power to attack Ryland with unrestrained fury, the enormous monstrous arm of bone-and-sinew, tipped with talons bigger than the skyship, slammed into all the Archdrakes at once.

"Get down!" Acrypha said, forcing Viren beneath the window and joining herself. The very next instant, the shockwave of force from that impossible claw's motion and its strike on the Archdrakes slammed into the skyship. Their walls rattled, their windows sporting cracks here and there, everything in the room shaking and threatening to topple over. Viren himself was jerked backwards, though he quickly regained his footing. When they both got up, there was no sign of the Archdrakes in the sky.

Instead, massive craters had popped up far beneath them. Their height was great enough that they shouldn't have been able to see that, but the clouds had entirely dissipated in the last battle. Everything was clear. The destroyed forest, the crushed mountains, an entire lakeshore now sporting a dragon and its crater. And of course, that gigantic claw was now gone.

"He just took care of multiple Archdrakes at the same time," Acrypha said, like saying it was going to help her actually believe what she had just seen.

"Of course he did," Viren muttered. He glanced at the receding craters where the dragons were entirely unmoving.

"And pretty thoroughly too." He was left wondering what everyone else would be thinking. Viren hadn't been conscious for Ryland's full fight against the Eliminator Mages from Kurin, but if this was any indication, then surely they couldn't have lasted long against him. Now he was cursing himself for missing it.

"Let's go see where he is," Acrypha said, suddenly more energized than Viren had seen her in a while.

"I'm still wondering why he went to fight off a bunch of Archdrakes." Viren frowned as he hurried after Acrypha.

"That thing the dragons were chasing. It had to be that. I'm pretty sure he wasn't originally there."

"Right. That's why I'm wondering what the connection is." They threaded their way through the skyship's interior. Both Viren and Acrypha knew the way to Ryland's room. They knew where to go. The question was if Ryland would even be there. Everyone on the skyship appeared to be some level of shocked by what had just transpired. People were talking loudly everywhere. Viren spotted Academ Jules rushing again, this time heading towards the pilot's cabin, possibly to talk with the skyship administration.

Just how many of them recognized Ryland's magic? He had shown glimpses of it at the Manabreak mine. There had also been the Living Mana Incursion at Arcoryx, though that hadn't been publicly attributed to him. Thankfully, it turned out Ryland was there in his room. With a Glyph that blinded Viren the moment he pushed open the door with an excited "Sir!" He fell back with a cry, shading his eyes with his hands instinctively.

In hindsight, he probably should have knocked and then entered once he had gained permission. Served him right for barging in like that.

"Are you alright?" Ryland asked. Viren blinked back to awareness as Acrypha hauled him back to his feet with just one arm. He really needed to stop being surprised by her strength. That blinding Glyph from Ryland was gone now.

"Sir," she said.

"What just happened out there?" Ryland looked over them both critically, as if ensuring that they really were alright, before finally answering her.

"The Archdrakes were chasing one of my Golbirds. Ah, right. You aren't aware of them. But essentially, they are summons I've recruited to help me find the rest of the pieces of myself."

"Oh!" Viren said. Now it was starting to make sense.

"The dragons wanted to eat your bird, so you had to stop them."

"Indeed. I'm rather fortunate I came upon it at such a time instead of wondering what happened to it." Viren had to admit, in an abstract way, that it was a big stroke of luck.

"Are you going to tell everyone else what just happened?" Acrypha asked.

"Hmm." Ryland took a moment to consider. Or deliberate, as he would have put it.

"I don't intend to go out of my way, but if anyone is curious, I will be happy to inform them about the truth of the matter. That said, I did see the route we were taking and didn't realize we'd be passing through lands untamed enough for Archdrakes. Another stroke of fortune."

"So, sir," Viren said, eyeing the spot where that Glyph had been shining. If he blinked, he could still see the Glyph's imprint on his eyelids. So bright.

"What exactly did you get from the piece of yourself?" [Achievement Recognized: Glyphic Ingestion You have converted a piece of yourself, imbued with the power of aeons, into a Glyph now integrated with your manasoul. Rank up from Mithril [19] to Mithril [23]. Reward: Glyph of Presence. Glyph of Presence already discovered in possession, so Glyph of Presence evolved to Glyph of Aura.] Yet another interesting reward. A Glyph of Aura. Hmm. It was odd.

The last time, Ryland had absorbed one of his muscles and gotten a Glyph of Banishment. This time, by magically ingesting a small chunk of flesh, he had attained a Glyph of Aura. The Grand Frame's rewards didn't always make sense, though Ryland was of the opinion that its rewards were based on his efforts to obtain a piece of himself, rather than the piece itself. Which was fine by him. Free evolutions for Glyphs he already possessed were always welcome. Well, they weren't really free.

He was paying the price in a different way. It was nice seeing the mystified and wondrous looks on Viren's and Acrypha's faces when he had cast the Glyph of Aura. The Glyph was at a high Tier, Tier [19] if Ryland was remembering right, so he had only used it for a moment. But even in that short period of time, the aura he had cast had nearly turned everything around him to Glyphs. And that was without releasing the chains around his Incarnation form. Ryland hadn't forgotten things, though.

It almost felt like a distraction. While he was glad he had regained a piece of himself, the real point was the missing Vestige. It still felt odd to let it simply travel with them, but it wasn't as though there was time. As the day ended, the call from the pilot came as Ryland had been expecting.

"Dear passengers," he said.

"We have arrived. Gildharbour is right underneath. Please be aware of the Living Mana Incursion that has taken root just beyond the city."