Magma Dragon's Heir

Chapter 249 - The Secret of Salamandras

17th of Season of Earth, 216th year of the 32nd cycleNewt left the mine in a staggeringly good mood. successfully summoning Magmin. The attempt drained his mana mercilessly. Then again, he had summoned Magmin at around half his strength. Magmin as he was at the initial stages of the eighth realm, meaning, a peak seventh realm combatant.

He had never heard of a technique to summon a creature, not even the legends had such fantastical ideas, and yet there Newt was, defying common sense and making history. What’s more, he knew how to further refine his mana, as his baptisms purified his body and mana alike.

It was quite possible the dragon could make a permanent appearance, assuming enough years passed and Newt poured enough energy into him.

“Lord Salamandra,” the airship pilot greeted Newt when he had arrived. “We have stayed longer than expected. When do you think we can leave?”

Newt could sense the unspoken disapproval behind the man’s neutral question, but he couldn’t really blame him. They were supposed to stay for three days.

“We shall depart this time tomorrow, I had taken much longer than expected to comprehend something.” With that, Newt left the man alone and headed to check out the seventh realm tomes of his family’s fire arts. The words written were almost certainly useless for him, since he had an exalt to personally guide and instruct him on supreme techniques, but still…

Those tomes contained his legacy and the arts practiced by his ancestors.

Newt started with the seventh realm version of Confuse Senses and found himself pleasantly surprised. The seventh realm variant, besides the same effect of blinding and deafening anyone unguarded in a large area, also had the effect of scrambling mana sense. A very useful addition and something Newt didn’t find in any techniques he had the privilege to browse through.

The others were more disappointing. Salamandra’s Skin, Breath, Touch, and Flight were on par or slightly inferior to techniques Newt had learned from Gatemaster Greenthorn.

Salamandra’s Regeneration was the thickest tome. Based on its size, Newt had expected some marvel of fiery self-healing - body diagrams, flow charts, and explanations on how to circulate mana to heal different sorts of injuries.

Newt found none of it. The self-healing technique was quite subpar, and Newt’s earthen healing power outstripped its power by an order of magnitude. Disappointed, Newt flipped a third of the way through the tome, which was where the technique’s manual ended, but the text continued.

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Newt stopped reading and focused on bringing Magmin into his body.

not

Magmin snickered.

Newt and Magmin continued reading the tome. Newt’s ancestor painted himself like a hero from a story, a youth from a common family, who had by lucky coincidence survived an onslaught that had eradicated his entire village. He was fifteen when he dug his way out of his family’s ruined home.

There he had found two saurians that had slaughtered each other, one gutted, with its core still fresh and visible. Blaze touched it and awakened.

The pact worked, both sides following through with the deal. Blaze had reached the third realm by twenty-five, decent, but not the speed of a genius. He laid out in detail what his adoptive parents had spent on him, and what he had bought for them, insisting that he had fulfilled his filial duty.

Based on how he had written it, Newt could only assume his adoptive parents hadn’t agreed, but if Blaze wasn’t fabricating things, he had paid them back ten times over, which was more than fair for a business deal.

Newt stopped his reading, wondering whether he had paid back his parents for what they had invested in him. In all honesty, just the airship trip from Explorer’s Island to Dragon’s Rest cost more than what a mortal man would spend in a lifetime, so Newt had probably settled that score, but he couldn’t guess what his parents would have to say to that.

Newt continued his reading. His ancestor had been a guild man through and through, spending a bit of his time on spell seals, but he was mostly a dabbler, capable of setting up traps which made hunting easier, as well as basic comfort seals to make his life less miserable.

He was on the road for centuries, pushing slowly until he had reached the sixth realm.

Newt read as the story of freedom and adventure suddenly became one of who would offer the best conditions, the loosest leash, the greatest reward or bonus. Newt could see that the choice pained his ancestor for some reason, and Newt couldn’t even imagine why.

He had spent the majority of his life as a member of a large order. He could see them sending countless people to their deaths, but it was with the hope that at least some of them would survive and grow and advance the order.

Eventually, Newstar’s ancestor had decided on a backer - the imperial family. He enlisted with the royal bodyguards. It seemed like a vanity position, watching those stronger than yourself, but Blaze soon discovered there were countless princes, princelings, and their children’s children, people who weren’t powerful at all.

But, it did give him access to the third prince’s imperial palace.