A Dragon Idol's Reincarnation Tale

“Enjoy!” Tasianna, Beth, and I placed the dishes for tonight’s dinner on the large dinner table, placed outside my house. As it was supposed to include my rather large party and maternal family, this round table could serve a maximum of twenty people, albeit, it would be cramped.

Designed like a Chinese round table with the rotating tray on top—a “Lazy Susan”—I had our artificers create a manatech one that also acted like a hotpot cooker, stew warmer, and also a grill for Korean barbeque! All of these functions were placed in the middle, on this rotating turntable, with a non-moving outer ring where the grill grate could be placed to grill everything. An empty hole was right underneath, to allow charcoal to be place.

Large and bulky, this furniture was my answer to a modern feast. Most Asian dining cultures usually involve sharing various dishes with each other, instead of ordering and receiving your own. Everything would be placed in the middle, or cooked, and people would take whatever they wanted. It was quite traditional Mexican, if you wanted a more western example.

Japanese dining culture was more European with how we mostly eat what we ordered, although the barbeque culture was quite popular, especially in bars. During my K-Pop stanning era—so when I was addicted to Korean culture to the point I learned the language—I did quite enjoy Korean barbeque with my family, and I wanted to emulate that experience with my family on Peolynca.

Eating on a round table, with everybody facing each other, allowed people to speak with others in a more comfortable position than on a rectangular table. It was less exclusive, you could say, as it made everybody feel equal with all the food placed in the middle. No favoritism on one side, as people could simply turn the turntable to get whatever they wanted.

“I see.” Kahalameet stroked his whiskers after I gave him an explanation for the table, looking over at the marinated meat. “So, we grill the food on the table? I say, did you see this from Inferno Nest? The dragonkin there enjoy cooking everything on the spot with their control over fire.”

I shook my head. “I just really wanted to eat it. We did it a month ago to celebrate Rego and the others’ induction as my retainers. Still ‘temporary,’ as Shay still can’t get himself to accept them, though, but the celebration was still legit. Barbecue, grilled by a dragon that knows [Pyrokinesis] just sounded perfect.”

“Their minds are still invested with their home land! Even if they are no traitors or even spies in the first place, I will not allow them to call themselves your guards when they are still too weak! If they cannot even defeat Bethlieranha in single combat, why would we need another master of pyro in Aurora?” Shay glowered as he helped divide the kimchi and other side dishes.

“You are only dissatisfied with us because I still treat you as my junior, Captain. Age still brings wisdom, and that you cannot disagree with,” Rego spoke back in Draconic, prompting Beth to snicker while Shay glared at him. “Yet, you speak the truth. We are still weak. If I, the eldest, cannot contend with Empress Melloxtressa’s retainer wyverns, then I am still not able to protect Princess Hestia. I am fully aware of the ‘ash and fire’ now. I will train. With Her Highness’s blessing, I shall not shirk my training. Am I right, everybody?”

“For Princess Hestia!” the rest of the fire wyverns shouted.Shay grunted, looking away, but I knew he liked hearing the fervor. Considering his current focus on strength, seeing others pursuing the same goals probably made him feel secure, even if he wouldn’t want to admit it. Even if he didn’t like the fire wyverns yet, having more people would make his job of defending me easier, or at least, whenever I needed them to do something I couldn’t.

My guard retinue is growing, I see. Some semblance of rapport … Although, all that ‘For Princess Hestia’ thing is kinda cringe hearing it from up close.

“‘Rego?’” Kahalameet nodded with a faint smile at the interactions. “I see. Well, my young sister, you somehow managed to introduce a dining culture our fire dragonewts enjoy quite a bit. Marinating meat, adding vegetables on them, and then adding them to the fire. I do prefer my meat smoked, stuffed into sausage fillings and garnished with cepillium and other spices. The texture and flavor are outstanding. Simply scrumptious after ”

I chuckled. “I’m not much of a sausage maker, but I can make a pretty mean meat stew, so dig in, all right? Eat as much as you can, and I mean, Dragon Bro. Let’s see if you can beat my appetite!”

Brother chortled, stroking his chin with a wide grin. “A challenge? How can I refuse?”

As stated before, the entire middle tray could be turned. Charcoal would be placed beneath, allowing us to set a fire with the manatech table’s flame catalyst, regulating the temperature for the cooker and grill however we wanted. If you could manipulate fire, you could cook your meat to your preferred temperature with ease.

After the first time we had this feast, Rego had been taking over as grillmaster. Technically, the grill could also be moved if wanted, but it would beinconsiderate as the idea of Korean barbecue was to cook your own meat while talking with others. You could assign one person to cook it all and place the finished meat in the middle tray to share to everybody, which is the grillmaster, but every individual could also cook here and there if they wanted a specific meat. Flexibility was a strength for this complex table.

Normally, you would also drink, but most of us were dragonkin. Although taste varied, the majority of us couldn’t handle alcohol too well and it applied doubly so for us true dragonkin. Since neither Tasianna nor Vifi liked it either—Vifi was a social drinker—we didn’t have a good supply for it when Kahalameet asked if we had any. Here I learned, my eldest brother enjoyed a good drink to destress.

In any case, the dinner continued with a raucous uproar as we all enjoyed the meal, successfully making a huge dent in my mammoth, walrus, and sheep meat supply. Kahalameet even volunteered to cook for a moment, so seeing him make some butter-melting mutton was amazing.

After the feast was over, my brother warned me his training would begin early tomorrow, so I should retire early. Like Brother Phso, he, too, was used to training dragoons and disciplining true dragonkin to help them suppress their draconic pride.

Unfortunately, I was addicted to playing my violin and piano, staying up a bit too late until my fingers couldn’t play any longer. An inspiration for a spell song was forming in my mind, and I just had to finalize what effects I wanted it to perform.

Suffice to say, me staying up so late gave me a rude wakeup.

“Rise and shine!”

“Waaah!” I screamed as somebody threw me off my bed, before grabbing me as I fell. As they placed me on the ground, I jerked back when I saw Kahalameet looming over me, pointing at my wardrobe. “Wh-what the he—”

“Quickly, put on some mana-threaded clothing and meet me in the valley outside the cave. I’ll meet you in an hour’s time. Your maid already prepared a light breakfast, so make haste,” he said before storming out, his footsteps feeling like earthquakes as I stood in my room, befuddled.

What the heck?

‘… Well, he did warn us he would go about it military-style. This is how enlisting works, right?’ Hikari said.

How should I know? I’m a silver-spoon kid. The only military training I have is fighting with military personnel as an adventurer or as a coup leader!

After putting on a shirt and sweatpants, I went down and ate some omelets, where Tasianna told me everybody was already waiting for me. Furthemore, I also learned it was five in the morning, and that everybody was already awake at four! Meaning, at minimum, everybody only had five hours of sleep outside of me!

I mean, I didn’t really have to sleep since [Abnormal Status Nullification] prevented drowsiness, but my mental health wanted me to get back into my bed. Nevertheless, I forced myself outside with Tasianna, where I frowned when I saw Vifi throwing lightning spears into the sky like Zeus, forcing the wyverns to dodge through the hail.

… It’s too early.

“I’ll be joining them. His Highness should be to the left … there!” Tasianna pointed down the rocky, ice-cored mountain at what looked like a pixel from up here. After he did, she let her wings appear from her back and flew towards Vifi and the wyverns, calling out to them.

Sighing, I descended to meet my brother waiting under a cliff, waving at me as he began to stretch. “Some warm up, first,” he said as I joined up, feeling puzzled that everything felt pretty normal up till now. Nothing out of the ordinary that you wouldn’t do before working out at a gym, at least. According to my party bracelet, it took us 30 minutes.

“All right, limber and ready.” He clapped. “Okay, Hestia, I heard what Phsothophus did to help you, and if you haven’t unlocked Greed just yet, it is all right. We have plenty of time for that, but my primary reason for wanting to train you is to prepare you for your trip to the north.”

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“I guess you heard it from Mom?”

He nodded. “I’ve visited Empress-Mother Melloxtressa here and there in my youth, journeying to this frozen land to either train or get to know my subjects. I’m not particularly popular, but in my opinion, they wouldn’t mind me becoming emperor.”

I concurred, as the ice dragons’ focus was to not involve themselves too much in the succession crisis. Of course, there were some who wanted me to take back Frozen Nest’s prestige after Kramps conquered the country in the past, but it wasn’t some majority that I had to worry myself with.

“As such, I have practiced surviving here. Most importantly, though, I am also here to make sure you finish your scale manipulation training, Hestia,” he stated, prompting me to ask if this was about using scales to create outfits and such. “Correct. You see my armor? It is entirely made of my scales outside of the robes underneath. Technically, I could create a scale yukata, as well, but I prefer the fabric on my skin.”

“Neill’s pretty much ‘naked,’” I said, as my older sister’s only pieces of clothing were her underwear and kimono that she would create with her scales. “Not to mention, my blacksmith did create a piece of armor that is able to mold itself to the form of somebody with mana. I don’t really need to make clothing out of my scales.”

I pulled out my rhytilic armor to show him, but Kahalameet shook his head in disapproval.

“That isn’t the point. Scale manipulation and using them as shields or weapons is something every dragon must learn, and this should be especially important to you, as the Nordor-style dragoon style is all about using your silver powder to enhance your blows. Your scale-dust acts differently, but we can substitute it with your scales in a different style just for you.”

Brother then went back to where he sat and picked up the glaive he placed there, revealing the ebony-shining polearm. “I shall be training you and Vifi’Yok in spearmanship, as well. I will most likely invite the knight-commander of your order over to have him absorb what I will teach you, to allow you proper training when I must go. As dragons, we will not be fighting with our polearm as often, but it wouldn’t hurt in your case with your blade-like tail.”

I nodded but felt like shrugging, as it has been a while since I last really trained as a dragoon. I mean, even my [Dragoon] development Job hasn’t had a single experience invested into it. I knew I had to rely on my draconic and magical abilities more with how strong my primary opponents were.

Nevertheless, I accepted his training as it was still time spent with him. We still haven’t had a chance to speak about his ideals yet and what he wanted to do with Wendriosa now that the start of the civil war was imminent.

Beyond that, I just wanted to have some sister-brother memories for the future! I’ve managed to enjoy Nong’s and Ryra’s company, yet I didn’t manage to bond with Phso that much. This would probably be one of my few chances to do so, until things really got bad. As such, let us make some memories!

“Okay, strip.”

…

“Pardon?”

“To start out, I want you to remove your clothes,” he elaborated, but I didn’t want to hear that. What was his reasoning for saying this? “I want you to learn how to make clothes out of your scales. It is harder than it looks, since you need to layer everything in such a delicate fashion that it has to look like clothes. Furthermore, maintaining it throughout the day as if it was like breathing, similarly to your [Humanize]. With a higher [Scale Manipulation], the mana cost reduces to such an amount that you barely build any arcane corruption.”

That was a pure, practical answer with no ulterior motives at all. He spat those words out as if he had no idea what he was saying, and was looking at me as if he was waiting for me to do exactly what he wanted. I honestly thought this near 500-years-old dragon hadn’t had a single dirty thought for his entire life, until he said his next sentence.

“We dragons are practically naked every single moment of the day, and we are siblings. I can understand that it might be embarrassing to you, since you grew up in a human society, but I need you to visualize the fact that unless you manipulate your scales, you will have nothing to cover yourself with.”

… I want to forget this memory this instance.

I rubbed my face and temples, feeling like a headache was creeping up as I couldn’t find the words to respond. “… I can just leave my clothes on.”

“Desperation is always a strong motivator, and this technique requires—”

“Stop! Stop!” I held a hand up as I commanded my scales to morph into a gauntlet around my arm. While it looked rather lackluster even for a novice creation, as my scales were sticking out like spikes or loose “fabric,” I at least showed my brother I could do it if I had the practice. “Let’s just leave whatever you said there, Bro. It’s awkward for me, and I don’t want to deal with it. Huuuu … I take my training seriously. I might have disagreed with your reasoning, but if it is to get stronger, I would even shoot myself with my own spells for it. If you want me to feel ‘desperation,’ then how about every time I get it correctly, you start talking.”

“Talking?”

“As I said yesterday, you now have a chance to bring me onto your boat like Sister Wendriosa did. She told me about her ideals, but you still haven’t. Sure, I derailed the discussion a bit, but you could have imposed yourself on the dinner. We had time after we showered.”

Kahalameet shut his mouth, wrinkling his fine elf-dragonewt face, making his middle-aged looks seem older. A shadow was cast under his eyes. “There is nothing to say.”

“Nonsense. From what I heard from Wendriosa, you are equally as motivated to become emperor as she is.”

“‘Family does not lie to each other.’ I always held this phrase to my heart, even since I became a brother and learned of our family’s history. When I say, ‘There is nothing to say,’ then I mean I have nothing to persuade you with. I did not come here to speak platitudes that every other has come to you with to rope you into their schemes. I am not here to make you feel more important on a political scale, Hestia. I came because I wish for you to survive your journey.”

Now I was shocked into silence, widening my eyes at the intensity he said that last sentence.

“My goal as emperor is to maintain the status quo. I wish to continue Father’s rule, as I believe Wendriosa’s plan to ‘rule’ the world to keep the peace, is a recipe for disaster. Dragons do not like giving up their territory or rule! Once one of us begins to nest somewhere to ‘protect’ it, then you will not get rid of them, unless you can defeat them. Wendriosa, as such, relies on those she trusts the most to peacekeep for her, unless she rises to the occasion and becomes a rank SS!” Eltharion spat out viper’s poison. “I do not believe our race is fit to rule anything else but Miononbolax. I have read about it, and I saw it firsthand just a month ago.”

Maustoovaka …

“They are content here, and while that slothfulness is a sin to Kargryxmor, I believe it is a blessing to Peolynca. To live up to our grandfather’s ideal and promise to Aurena, we are to become conquerors. No race wishes to be subjugated by another, and that animosity will live on into the future. As Frozen Nest and the former Dragon Ruler of Light proved.” Kahalameet sighed, relaxing his expression a bit. “If that is what you wanted to hear, then let it be heard. I have no grand ambition as Wendriosa does. I only wish for stability.”

I tilted my head, feeling uneasy as I could feel the earnestness in his words. “… You just made a point about not trying to persuade me, then why did you just say all that?”

“Because there is a difference. I answered your question because you asked me to, for I am your brother. Yet, after knowing all of this, I will ask you to stay out of the succession crisis.”

“You share Maustoovaka’s opinion?”

He nodded. “Not to the same extent, of course. I will not force you to do something you do not wish to do. You are your own woman and should choose what you believe is right, and if you wish to stop either me or Wendriosa, then you should also be prepared for that time. This training is meant to give you the chance to choose that option in the future. ‘Power is a dragon’s words.’ This is our culture.”

He walked closer, making me once again aware of the height difference between us as a shadow was cast down on me. “There is nothing to say, because you already made your decision. I will not dissuade you from that path. I can also not help you, even if it involves our father’s health. This conflict between Wendriosa and I will happen even if Father were to recuperate, because an heir apparent has to be chosen to prevent an even fiercer war if Wendriosa and I were to ever drift apart in the future.”

“That …” I sighed and turned away, pouting a bit as the serious mood was killing my lacking positivity from sleeping so late.

“You are strong for your age and rank,” he broke the ice. “I do believe you have a good chance to reinvigorate Father’s soul and mend your relationship. I do believe that, because Father loves his family even more than I do. I wager my own life that there is something in his heart that knows he loves you as his daughter. His hate for our grandfather clouds it.”

“… Mom said the same thing.”

“Guess I learned that wisdom from sticking with your mother, huh?”

I snickered, nodding profusely. “… I understand. That old man really needs a good melody to flush out his hatred.”

“The celestial order would break apart and kneel if it were to receive a personal serenade from you, my little sister. Our father will lower his tail if you give it your all. I can assure you he will not deny you like when you two first met.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and patted it, embarrassing me as the praises to my music filled my heart with warmth.

“Enough! You made your point. Sorry for forcing you … so, let’s get on with it, okay? Training time!”

Stepping back, he clapped and barked out a laugh. Grinning from ear to ear, he turned around, looking ready to begin our training. “All right, as I said, str—”

“End that sentence and I will smack you right out of the island’s barrier!”

Scale-manipulation training involved switching transformation, from dragon to dragonewt, all while materializing the scale clothes the moment your body stopped morphing. It honestly was quite tricky as timing things correctly was the difference between creating the illusion of having clothes on the whole time to still creating it as the mana mist disappeared, potentially leaving skin exposed.

As I told Kahalameet, it wasn’t too useful to me as I had armor and clothes for it, but it still taught me how to move my scales at a faster pace. At minimum, it leveled up my [Scale Manipulation] by a ton after two weeks of this.

Furthermore, dragoon training was also on the menu, as he told me. These two lessons were what we focused on as Brother stayed with me, putting my [Battle Frenzy] training as mostly a philosophical challenge as it was needed.

Yet, through all of that, two weeks felt so short … Brother had to return soon and I felt lonely when he announced it. Fortunately, before he actually had to go back to attend something with Inferno Nest, a senate meeting was called in Iceskale and I was summoned.

“Let me help you out. I can probably teach you some patterns to help you expedite the menial bureaucracy requests,” Kahalameet offered, and I grabbed onto that chance to spend time with him for one last time until his departure.

“Got it! Okay, everybody, off to Iceskale.” I then produced the runes and pointed at them. “Uh, you better go in for now, though.”

He stared at me, looking a bit sad that I was treating him like illegal luggage. Well, what could you do when he had to hide his real location from his supporters? Better get the stories straight