"Whoooooh!" I yelled as I held on to dear life while my Dragon Waifu soared through the air at high speed.
"That's not enough to beat me, sister!" Velgrynd called out from beside us as she zoomed past Velzard and I, flying away into the distance leaving behind a sonic boom.
"Come on Velzard! We can't let that upstart beat us!" I yelled.
Velzard turned her head back to look at me for a second with a gaze that was painful to endure. "What's this 'we'? I'm the one flying here! And you're younger than Velgrynd, so I don't want to hear about her being the upstart!" Velzard began to lecture me as she picked up the pace.
"Don't mind the small stuff! You've still got half a country left to cover!" I said, ignoring her comment but putting up a magic barrier in front of Velzard to help block the air resistance.
Velzard sighed deeply at my comment, probably creating a localized snowstorm for the people below, before smirking and gaining more speed. In no time, we were gaining on Velgrynd who was supercruising at around Mach 10 ahead of us. She didn't seem to notice us at first, probably assuming she was so far ahead she could take it easy. The two of us were so in sync that, without even communicating, we both made an effort to suppress our presence as to not be detected before zooming past Velgrynd at a record pace.
"Wha..." Velgrynd started but I cut her off as we flew by.
"See you at the other side, sucker!" I yelled.
"Dear, you do realize she is faster than me, right?" Velzard asked with a bemused attitude.
"Impossible! My Velzard is the greatest Dragon, so that means she is the fastest!" I replied.
"I love you dear, but sometimes you act like such a child." She complained with a smile.
Velzard then dived towards the surface and began to weave through a canyon in the mountains below us. Velgrynd, in hot pursuit, was gaining fast. Despite Velzard having near-perfect control over her body and magic power, allowing her to avoid the many sheer cliff faces and take extremely tight turns in the canyon, it wouldn't be enough to assure us of victory. Especially when powers were involved. Velgrynd began to heat herself up with her magic and skills to the point where the air around her began to boil and her scales were glowing brightly.
She took a slightly sloppy right turn to catch up with us but clipped her wing. Normally this would end up in a painful lesson for her about being overconfident in herself as she hurtled towards a rocky landing, but because she was covering herself in such high-temperature cloak of magic power, she melted directly through the rockface like a hot knife through butter. She continued to accelerate towards us, and despite instantly turning the rockface she clipped into magma, she didn't slow down at all.
"Wow, such a cheat," I commented but Velgrynd shouted back at me with a smug tone.
"Using powers is plenty fair!" She called before converting much of her body into pure energy and shooting towards and then past us.
"She's gonna get away!" I yelled.
"Don't worry. If using powers is fair..." Velzard slyly said to me before opening up her mouth and releasing a powerful blast from her mouth, instantly decelerating Velgryn to a snail's pace.
Velzard gave, what I could only call a smug exhale as we passed Velgrynd who was struggling to stay airborne now that Velzard had bled all of her speed.
"Oy! You can use your powers but you can't attack me!" Velgrynd complained as we flew out of the canyon with the finish in sight.
"There it is! Go my love dragon!" I yelled.
Velzard twitched and I noticed that the scales around her snout were slightly red in embarrassment. She didn't reply but she did begin to slow down as we neared the large gate in front of the city. I hopped off as Velzard began to transform into her human form when we were only a dozen meters away from the ground.
Velzard landed gracefully as I made sure to go for a superhero landing. Unfortunately, as I was about to touch down, a red-hot meteor shot past me and below me away so that I was sent flying into the bushes nearby. A small explosion was heard nearby as Velgrynd landed in her human form. The ground boiled in hot magma where she stood but didn't affect her in the slightest.
"Damn! This was the first time I lost in a race to you, sister!" Velgrynd immediately began to complain.
I pooped my head out of the bushes and gave Velgrynd a glare which she ignored. "Do you mind?"
"What? I can accept Older Sister beating me in a race, but there is no way I'm letting a human say they got here first." She stated haughtily.
"I wasn't even a participant!" I yelled back in defiance.
"You totally would have said that you beat her though," Velzard answered by accusation.
"I've never been so offended by something so true in my life," I said, walking towards them and smacking the leaves and twigs away from my clothes.
As I approached, I felt a powerful presence appear nearby and begin walking toward us.
"Couldn't you all have sent a letter you were coming or at least arrived without causing such a stir?" Luminous commented as she walked down the road towards us. She was surrounded by vampire guards who all looked to be decently strong for a non-awakened person. They were about equal to Dagon or Dan in terms of how powerful they were.
"Ah. Sorry about that Luminous. We wanted to see Twilight. It's been a few years since we last spoke and I was curious about how the Tiefling population was doing." I explained to her.
That's right, we were currently on the outskirts of the Vampire Capital of Nightrose. I hadn't heard from the perverted Divine Ancestor in quite some time and even Veldanava said he hadn't seen him in years, which was odd. Feldway seemed to be conflicted on the matter.
On one hand, he was happy that Twilight wasn't around to get him into trouble, however on the other hand, he was furious that Twilight had seemingly abandoned the position that Veldanava so graciously gave him. Veldanava himself was busy at the moment, else he probably would have joined in our house call, but instead, he sent Noir to give us the order to check on him and Velgrynd tagged along out of boredom.
That's right. It appears that Veldanava was currently employing the demon who would be named Diablo in the future. It probably happened sometime around when Guy eventually woke up from the beating I gave him. It seems he went to fight Veldanava after he healed up but probably got one shot again. After that, all of the Primordials were summoned by Veldanava to use as subordinates, however, right now they were merely being used as minions.
"I see... Come along then. Twilight has been held up in the catacombs for the last few weeks, so if you want to talk with him, feel free." Luminous said as she waved most of the guards away and guided us through the gate.
Velzard and Velgrynd began to have small talk while we walked which left Luminous and I with nothing to do, so I opted to speak to her. To be honest, despite having met her several times during my training before, I didn't really know her all that well. She wasn't a subordinate of Veldanava and kind of did her own thing, so I thought about getting to know her better while we strolled.
"So Twilight freeloads in your place huh?" I asked.
Luminous sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as we walked. "Yes. He is so annoying! He's always trying to get together with the maids in the castle and his experiments seem to know no end! Just the other day, one of his concoctions blew a hole inside of the castle wall that took all night for the Surmounters to patch up!"
I noticed as we walked, that a large number of Vampires had surrounded us and were hiding in the shadows following us. They were probably Luminous' secret guards that were hiding in wait to strike if we made a move against their Queen. Velzard and Velgrynd seemed to have noticed them as well but were unconcerned about enemies of this level, so I continued our conversation without worry.
"I'm sorry to hear that... Why don't you just kick him out?' I asked.
"I wish I could, but he is sanctioned by Veldanava, and doing so would impede his work. Feldway would probably start whining at me about it if I did, especially since he would just relocate to the Heavenly Star Palace. Besides... technically he set up shop here before I did. I just build Nightrose and my nation on top of his workshop since he wasn't using the perfectly good land he was sitting on." Luminous said, confiding in me a bit.
"You seem to have quite a bit on your plate..." I gave Luminous a bit of my pity just in time for us to arrive at the castle's main entrance. We didn't enter the main building itself but instead went to a small building in an inconspicuous spot in the grounds. If one didn't know any better, it would appear to be a small stone mausoleum of some kind or perhaps a garden tool workshop or small storage space. Luminous led us to the door of the building which was covered in magic seals and spells to keep unauthorized persons from entering.
With a flick of her wrist, the door opened and a long flight of stairs was revealed to us. It felt a bit ominous and the aura coming from beneath us was a bit sinister. Small whiffs of mist exited the door as it was left open. Instinctively I put myself on guard against possible attack despite knowing none would come. I felt the hairs on my back stand up and I felt like something bad would happen if I descended the steps. The words Luminous said next only added to the feeling of anxiety that was washing over me.
"I don't know why he acts like that around you but... Twilight isn't as nice a person as you are probably thinking. There is a reason none of us like him and the only one who did, turned out to be my maniac brother." Luminous warned.
Velzard and Velgrynd looked at each other seemingly knowingly before looking back toward her. Luminous gave us another sidelong glance before walking away without another word. All of the shadows which surrounded us also left with her, as though they too didn't want to enter with us either, even if it meant not being able to keep an eye on us.
With the mood suddenly super serious, the two True dragon sisters and I began to descend the stairs, entering the winding tunnel system which would eventually lead to Twilight's lab.
"What do you two think about Twilight? Other than him being a perv, I always thought he was a halfway decent guy..." I had to trail off at the end as I said 'halfway decent' due to the painful looks Velzard and Velgrynd gave me.
After sighing, Velzard answered. "I don't like him much. He is seemingly obsessed with his research and the way he treats fairies isn't great. He does seem to behave a bit differently with you around so hopefully, you've been a good influence on him." She answered honestly.
Velgrynd shivered a bit as we walked along. "He once asked me to make a child with him to see what would happen... I was going to burn him to cinders at that time but he insisted that it was a joke and kept backpedaling to avoid me killing him. Big Brother even scolded him harshly the whole thing after he found out. I'm not so sure about whether he was actually serious at the time or not since I didn't and don't often interact with him but all I can say is that I really don't like him."
I was taken aback by their responses. It seemed that since I had a mildly good relationship with him, I assumed he was harmless, but it seems that I was wrong.
I pondered on just how well I knew Twilight while we explored the labyrinthian maze. Thankfully, with all of us here, we were able to navigate it quite easily until we made it to a large door. In front of it was a powerful monster that looked similar to a Hydra. I assumed it was supposed to act as the guard for the door, however, after spotting Velzard and Velgrynd, it huddled up into a ball in the corner in fear, allowing us to pass easily. I felt a bit bad for it, however, I was also sure that Twilight wouldn't like me blowing up that creature either.
As I raised my hand to push the door open, it suddenly swung back towards me. I stepped back in time in order to avoid being hit in the face by the metal door, but in doing so I was at the perfect spot to intercept the pathway of a small humanoid creature as it ran into me.
It had devil-like horns and a tail ending at a point like an anime devil but the creature was clearly a child. It wore dirty brown rags which were stained with filth and dried blood. It was also extremely thin and its breathing was labored and it smelled terrible.
I didn't have any words to say about this situation as I was caught completely off guard. I opened my mouth and was about to speak when I felt wetness my shirt. The creature looked up at me with tears in its eyes and I saw the face of a cute young girl no older than ten stare back at me.
"Please... Help me," She croaked through labored breath.
.~.~.~.
Lore Bit: So I re-read a bit of Volume 14 and discovered that Twilight Valentine was considered a total psycho who did various experiments on his own creations (Children). Eventually Luminous killed him, but considering how I set up things in this timeline, we've ended up with a twist that he isn't such a goofy fun character as we were expecting him to be. It will be explained later as to WHY he is so obsessed with the MC in the next chapter and why he went to such lengths to become get to know the MC personally.
I've also decided that the Tiefling survivor will become an important person later on in the story. If the MC wasn't there, then she would have been consumed by the Hyrda-like creature and that would be her end. I think I'll name her Lilith but shoot me some other names below.