Early Evening - Mid Spring : Home
"You have what?!" Mother was taken aback at my statement. "Are you.. sure?"
I responded with a bit of hesitation. "..Yeah.. there are definitely 7.."
She stared at me in shock for a moment before finally breaking the silence. "W..well where are they? What's your main attribute?"
-My main attribute node should be whatever node is closest to my breath gland.. but..- "Uhm.. I'm not sure.." I didn't know what to say.
"What do you mean?" She tilted her head, not understanding my response.
"Well.. the 6 known attribute nodes form a perfect circle around my gland.. and the 7th is in the middle.."
"WHAT?!" She was taken aback for a moment finding out that I was a multi-element dragon [1] of every attribute. "Haah.. my god what in the world did that cube do to you…" She took a moment to think before putting her thoughts aside. "Well.. whatever.. Let's just move on for now... I want you to do a basic breath now."
Putting stray thoughts aside, I quickly got prepared for her instructions.
"So let's start with something simple, you can simply pass mana through the fire node and into the gland, from there your instinct will take over. If you want to try something a little more practical and fun though, you can make a simple explosion in your gland as you use that as your breath, this will have far greater power than basic fire, but it's far more complicated and expensive." (expensive mana wise)
-Just using fire is boring so..- "How do I do.. an explosion?" I understood the general concept, but was confused at the details.
"You can do one of two things, put a bunch of mana into the fire attribute node, build up pressure then release it all at once, or, since you have the earth node, you can use it to create a fuel to cause the explosion. Most human mages use earth magic to create gunpowder as a fuel for explosion spells, but you can use whatever you can think of."
Her words made a lightbulb go off in my head. -Wait so I can just create chemicals with the earth node.. then blow them up in my breath gland?-
With this thought, I started to focus, pouring a huge amount of mana through my earth node.
It took an incredible amount of focus to figure out how exactly to do it, but I quickly found a way to manipulate matter with mana.
Using mana I could vaguely tell what each atom was and using my knowledge from earth, I could manipulate the atoms however I wanted. -As my control improves this should get easier too..-
Once I finally figured out how to do it with at least a tiny bit of efficiency, I used earth magic to create two very special types of elements, plutonium and uranium, albeit in an extremely small quantities since it took a mind boggling amount of mana and concentration to unnaturally form them. -I also don't want to blow my own head off.-
After creating an extremely small quantity of plutonium surrounded by a little uranium, my once vast mana reserve only had around 1/5th left.
After mentally preparing myself for a moment I walked over to the edge of the mountain, overlooking the ocean.
Seeing my smile, Mother looked at me questioningly.
"Mother please plug your ears and stand behind me.. also put a barrier around Ilios and use something to plug his ears. I don't know if this will be strong at all but I don't want to risk it."
Although the amount of plutonium and uranium was hardly anything (about 1 kg), I didn't know the specifics of how big the explosion was going to be or if I could even get it to explode, but I took some preparations to play it safe.
Overlooking the ocean I focused on my breath gland once again.
I quickly created an incredible amount of electricity using the lightning node and concentrated it into my gland and prepared a tungsten shell to clamp around the nuclear material.
My plan was to not only utilize my mana to make a nearly perfect neutron reflector, but also use the electricity and more earth mana to compress the sphere. (The pressure helps force critical mass)
Looking down the side of the mountain, I opened my mouth and aimed towards the ocean.
The glow between my scales and irises turned to a bright yellow as arcs of electricity bounced between my scales.
Just before slamming the huge mass of lightning into the plutonium and uranium, I slammed the tungsten shell around it.
I hastily braced myself for the huge explosion, flexing my legs and digging my claws into the ground.
*CRRRAACCKK*
There was a blinding white flash that engulfed everything in front of my mouth followed by a deafening explosion.
My entire body recoiled back from the explosion, sending me dragging my claws through the mountain top.
Once I finally stopped, I looked up and saw a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky.
As I crept back to the edge, I noticed that the entire side of the mountain had melted. There was even a faint sizzle that could be heard from liquid rock that was falling into the ocean.
Looking down at myself to make sure I was in one piece, I noticed that the ground I was standing had melted and that the glow between my scales was bright orange.
-Just what in the..- I slowly started realizing how stupid of an idea it was, but my insides were completely fine.
I didn't feel hot either, at most I felt warm which was incredibly odd considering the ambient heat coming off of me melted stone.
As I looked back up at the scene, I was completely stunned.
The power was far beyond what I expected from the miniscule amount of plutonium and uranium (1 kg to a 23 meter tall dragon is barely anything). [2]
Mother ended up breaking the silence that followed the extremely loud explosion. Her voice was excessively shaky. "A..are you o..okay.. V..Vasilias?" She sounded horrified.
I looked over with a nervous expression. "I'm okay Mother.. I think.." I responded with a bit of hesitation since I wasn't super sure myself.
Father quickly sped up the mountain after the explosion and landed next to Mother in a state of panic. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!"
"T..that was.. V..Vasilias's f..first breath.. he used s..some kind of explosion magic.." Her voice was still shaky but she had finally started to calm down some after seeing that I was okay.
I felt awful having scared her so badly, but at the same time I had an indescribable feeling of power, it simply felt incredible.. addictive... It reminded me of my last 'dream'. [3]
Snapping back to my senses, I shook the thought out of my head and looked over towards Mother with my head held low. "I'm sorry for scaring you mother.. I got.. a little ahead of myself..."
My words weren't lies, if I was thinking rationally I wouldn't have done it since if I wasn't such a freak of nature I would have blown up, not just myself, but also Mother and Ilios. Speaking of him, the shockwave knocked Ilios over the side of the mountain but he was fine.
That aside, I was still astonished that the inside of my gland felt fine, there wasn't any damage from the heat or the shockwave.. -I guess my insides are abnormal too..-
While I was thinking to myself, Father tried to walk over to the edge by me, but wasn't able to get too close because of the heat. "What in god's name..."
He was completely stunned, but instead of looking afraid like mother, he looked at me with a prideful smile. "My son must be Bahamut's incarnation! But I need to set a rule first.." He glanced down the side of the mountain before looking me in the eyes with a serious expression. "Vasilias, be careful with that.. that kind of firepower could cause harm to not only you, but also your friends if you aren't careful."
It was my first life lesson from Father, even if it was common sense. "Yes Father.. I promise to be more careful in the future." I gave him a forced smile before I turned back to Mother.
At this point the heat finally started to subside and the glow between my scales returned to its usual blue and purple along with my irises.
I quickly made my way over to Mother to try and comfort her before I sat down next to her to apologize again. "I'm sorry for scaring you, Mother.." My guilt had finally started overtaking my shock.
She was quick to respond seeing my guilt though. "No, no.. I wasn't scared.. I was worried that you blew up your breath gland with that.. how damaged is it?" Her voice was far less shaky now but she now spoke with deep concern.
"Well.. it doesn't seem damaged at all actually.." No matter how thoroughly I looked at it with mana, I couldn't see even the slightest damage to it.
She looked at me in shock for a moment before lightly shaking her head. "Oh, well.. thank the heavens you're safe… Just promise me that you won't use that power recklessly.." She looked up at me with a motherly concern.
I felt a wave of relief after seeing that she wasn't actually scared of me. -Oh thank goodness..- "Of course mother, that kind of power is meant to be kept away anyways.."
As awesome as it felt, nuclear power was not something that could be used casually.
What I used here was far from even partially optimal in terms of explosive power. Compared to even moderately optimal nuclear reactions, it was like a hand grenade.
Slightly more optimized explosions could cause massive climate shifts and cause massive radioactive fallout. [4]
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that I would be able to wipe out entire nations in a single shot once I got bigger and could handle larger, more optimized explosions.
In this case, I got lucky since the way the explosion was aimed and where it was fired sent nearly all of the radiation into the ocean.
-What was I thinking..- I felt an extremely heavy wave of guilt again as I thought about what could've happened if I wasn't as lucky. -I need to be.. far more careful with that..-
-Hm?- Feeling Mothers hand lightly rubbing my head, I looked back up at her with a guilty look.
She looked down at me with a warm, proud smile. "Let's go ahead and go back down the mountain.. I think it's time I take you hunting."
As if my guilt was a facade, a child-like joy welled within me. -I can go hunting!-
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[1] - A 'multi-element' dragon is one with more than one equidistant attribute node (2 or more are the same distance from the breath gland)
[2] - Going nuclear might sound super OP (which it is) but the amount of mana he used to create it was a ridiculous amount, more details on his stupidly large mana reserve is coming in a few chapters.
[3] - When he slapped the 'creature' in Chapter 15
[4] - Radiation and radioactive fallout are not remotely as dangerous in this world because of mana! ('why' will be explained much later)