The Dragon of Dreams

Chapter 427: Biological Paradoxes

Early Evening - Mid Winter : The Coast of Eastern Bahamut

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*WooooOOSH* Zipping over huge masses of golden clouds as the sun set on the horizon, I did nearly everything I could to muffle my flight and hide my presence. As I got within a few hundred kilometers of the small estate Hera and I bought to hide and treat Krystallo, I needed to be sneaky in case she was still sleeping.

And sure enough, she was.

But while I could keep myself invisible to her, there was one person whose eyes weren't so easily fooled. "That took longer than expected." Hera, gently stoking the flames in the fireplace next to Krystallo with a slow, but heavy breath, used wind magic to speak to me as soon as I got inside her aura.

"Well, I ended up having to do some troublesome things. Anyway, has Krystallo woken up yet?"

Gently nodding, Hera slowly lifted her head out of the fireplace and made her way back to one of the larger cushions a bit farther away. "It wasn't for very long, but yes. Unlike your worries, she seemed quite mentally acute, if a bit down."

"Phew..." Letting out a breath of relief, my nerves eased greatly. "She wasn't in too much pain?"

"When she moved it really hit her, but she had no issue falling back to sleep."

"So what was the consensus?"

Starting to slow down, I finally dove into the dark, snow-filled clouds. "Well, neither Mother, nor Father cared about her scale colors, especially so after I told them about how she would have to stick to my hip for the foreseeable future. But I'm not going to just give her my elixir raw like I did Leif."

"Hm.. is that why you're flying back instead of coming through the void?"

"Yep." Looking down at the bright white orb floating right under my chest, being held with my aura as gently as the finest of glass ornaments, my eyes drifted to my chest where I watched unfathomably cold ice continue to crystallize.

Even though I was surrounded by plasma that was tens of thousands of degrees, the frost coming off the orb was cold enough to not only maintain ice on my chest, but lower my typically blazing body temperature considerably.

And as I slowed down more, it only got worse. By the time I actually landed, the ice had spread along my entire underside, and coated my legs in their entirety.

"~What the hell is that..?~" Speaking with her divinity as she came out to see me land in the tiny estate's courtyard, I did everything I could to direct the cold away from the estate, leaving the snowy forest behind me to slowly be engulfed by growing masses of ice.

"~That is a truly wonderful question...~" *CrAcKLE* Looking over at it while I broke off the ice covering my body, I started making my way inside while continuing to hold it up in the courtyard with my aura. "~Grandmother said it's an old relic of the Ragnarok family, from before our family was actually formed.~"

"~Oh? Asimi was in Atlas?~"

"~Supposedly she was investigating something there, I didn't ask.~" *Tap* *Tap* *Tap* Continuing inside, I did what I could to keep the non-space-mana part of my aura off Krystallo before making sure her condition hadn't worsened. "~Anyway, Grandmother said, on top of blending some space mana into the elixir like I originally planned, I should blend some mana from that core into it.~"

Hera's gaze turned skeptical in an instant. "~What? Is she insane?~" Turning back to look out at the core as it turned the beautiful, snowy landscape into an icy hell, the rhythmic sway in her tail slowed. "~Won't that kind of cold just kill her?~"

"~I would think so... I mean, shit.. if I ate that core, it'd essentially atomize me. The temperature of that core's shell is so close to absolute zero that it's genuinely concerning...~"

"~So why'd you bring it here?~" Finally closing the front door and coming back to the living room, Hera's worried face was quickly lit with the warm glow of the fire. "~That thing is way too dangerous for her... She's barely twenty, Vasilias...~"

"~I know...~" Sitting down next to her, I quickly snipped a bit of my horn off before it lost its shape and turned liquid. "~But I actually don't think this will be as bad as we think...~"

Watching as I continued making the elixir with my horn, taking out large sections of matter at a time, Hera looked at me like I was insane. "~You better have a damn good reason for that... You better not say it's just because you're here...~"

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"~I'm not going to give her something I can't control. If things go south, I have ways of handling it.~" Speaking rather coldly, my gaze drifted toward Krystallo's crown. "~But I think it will work without my intervention... According to Grandmother, our family is especially well-equipped for low body temperatures because of our cold attributed aura. When we pass Ancient stage, the cold part of our aura grows so strong we start sprouting some rather unique feathers.~" In my case, the feathers were replaced with fur, but regardless, they acted the same. "~Because the feathers are made of the same compounds our scales are, they act like a far more efficient radiator to dissipate or collect heat.~"

But Hera wasn't so sure. "~So you're telling me, you think a girl who's not even adult stage is going to sprout those feathers?~"

"~Assuming they are a reactionary measure to a burst of cold or plummeting body temperature during a dragon sleep or something similar, yes.~" -But regardless of whether she does.. I have an idea on how to contain the cold...-

Silence filled the room in an instant. "~You know.. sometimes I can't tell if what you're doing is really smart or really stupid...~"

"Hah..." Letting out a bit of a chuckle, I glanced at her with a hint of uncertainty contaminating my gaze. "~I wish I could tell you which it was.~"

But, it wasn't like I was doing something dumb with no safety measures in place.

Knowing a little too much of the cold mana could kill her, I planned to be very stingy with how I put in the elixir, opting to drip the majority of the mana to her like an IV so her body could find the limit itself. Worst case scenario, I'd stop giving her the mana and would forcefully remove some from her system with space mana until her body found a balance it could handle.

Unlike with Father, Krystallo's life wasn't in the balance so I didn't need to take any risks. -All I have to do is give her however much she can handle without side effects.

So, I got to work, keeping her asleep while concocting one of the most dangerous substances I had ever made. -Geez...-

Unsurprisingly, the hyper-cold mana from the core actually meshed really well with my space mana, but oddly enough it seemed to make the cold worse. By the time I actually finished the elixir, it had the consistency of a non-Newtonian fluid, and was so cold the blazing fireplace next to us could only barely keep it in check.

"How exactly.. are you planning on giving that to her..?" Speaking softly, Hera's eyes never left the elixir flowing around in the air.

"I'll guide it to her breath gland and set it down. Her body will handle it from there." Finally getting the elixir to an appropriate state, I used my aura to open up Krystallo's mouth before slowly guiding the elixir in. -Alright.. well...- "Here goes nothing..." *plop*

Dropping the viscous liquid in her breath gland, it almost instantly crystallized the surrounding area before strings of ice started seeping into her body, weaving through mana channels toward her reserve like the flows of a river.

But the moment it finally reached the reserve, the river widened several-fold, and the elixir was sucked through the gland's walls, leading the concoction toward her reserve before her body devoured it like a starved wolf. *VWOOM*

In the span of a single second, her aura grew by several magnitudes, and the warmth of the room was extinguished. -It's looking good...-

Now, it was time to start giving her some of the mana directly from the core.

Bringing her out into the frozen courtyard, just before the mountain of all-consuming ice spikes, I gently set her down on the snow and started ever-so-slowly siphoning some of the mana from the core to her, starting as slow as I could control.

But like a black hole, as soon as her reserve got a grip on the tether, it did everything in its power to pull every drop of mana through the tether as it could, attempting to expand the tether in the process.

Of course, the suction was nowhere near strong enough to force the tether to expand under my control, but while I stayed focused on Krystallo and her reserve, there were things I was missing.

After a few hours of siphoning small amount of mana into her, letting her reserve absorb all it could while her rampaging aura started spreading the influence of the elixir around her body, the pressure trying to expand the tether settled. -Is she done?-

By the looks of things, her reserve was full, now focusing on 'digesting' the frigid mana it just absorbed while her body processed the elixir itself and started her 'metamorphosis'.

But the moment I relaxed, something changed.

In the blink of an eye, the freakishly cold aura radiating from the core stopped... -What the...-

"How.. did it do that..?" Even Hera had to filter her head with concern.

We were both stumped.. until slowly but surely, we noticed that the mana in the reserve had stopped circulating before changing directions. -It's.. matching the flow of her reserve..?- Almost immediately, I turned to Hera with a look of uncertainty. "Did she just.. take control of it?"

"That's not how reserves work... That shouldn't be possible."

But there was no denying it, watching both reserves start to slow, completely in sync, Hera and I could only watch on in awe.

At least until the reserves stopped flowing entirely, and the flow of mana through the tether resumed. -Huh?-

"What are they.. doing..?"

Tilting my head, I stared into the frosty mana core, using the world of strings from my aura to try and figure out what was happening.

But.. it was something that even after seeing, made me scratch my head. "She's.. taking the mana from the core's shell directly.. and replacing her own with it..?"

"W..why though..?"

Tilting both our heads at the same time we simply stared at what could only be considered a mana core shell transfusion while questioning not only how, but why.

Little did we know then, it was something that would answer a paradoxical question dragons had asked for eons.

'What if a dragon had two of the same attribute node?'

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