Chapter 272 - Nourishment
59th of Season of Earth, Year 16 AL
Newt entered the council room, already aware of what was waiting for him. Instead of two unfamiliar faces, there were four, three wearing the imperial green and gold. The atmosphere, however, was nowhere near as tense.
“Ah, you must be the Salamandra youth. I remember your ancestor quite well. A slayer full of potential, yet he fled, leaving his burden for the younger generation to carry.” The wrinkled old man in a gold uniform with only a single green dragon embroidered in it squinted at Newt. “Under normal circumstances, I would flag such behavior as cowardly, but faced with the results, I must call it better foresight than my own.”
Newt offered the polite bow due to the living fossil, then turned towards Patriarch Swordpeak, the informal head of the council.
“You asked to see me, Lord Swordpeak.”
“Yes, Newstar,” the exalt seemed torn even as he spoke, as if he still hadn’t decided whether the situation he found himself in was good or bad. “After your latest contribution, you and Lady Dewdrop are exempt from missions for two centuries. That is all.”
Newt bowed, taking the words as a dismissal, but the Grand Scholar wasn’t done with him yet.
“You are the most powerful seventh realm combatant I have ever seen, saurians included. Your mana is rich and incredibly pure for your realm. Do you mind telling me how you pulled it off?”
Newt looked at him, taking in the rest of the chamber and its exalts, some appalled by the breach of decorum, others listening with obvious interest.
Why not?
“I will show you in fifty-six years.” With that, he turned around and left.
45th of Season of Fire, Year 72 AL
Newt stood atop the mountain boasting the greatest concentration of earth mana he could find in the human territory. Magminion, Maelstrom, his master, and eighteen curious human exalts stood a mile away, waiting for noon to arrive.
The time approached, the air shimmered, heat rising. Mana sang, and Newt listened. The words were scrambled, unclear, but someone or something was trying to speak with him. Then, the light of the sun and stars descended. A beam as thick as an ancient oak smashed into him, and Newt drew it all in. From the ground, earth energy surged into him in response, the two blending and purifying his cores, his body, and his realm.
The world embraced him, and he returned the warm feeling. Then, a blink later, it was over. He stood atop the mountain, not a bit of moss or lichen on the rocks had dried, let alone got singed from the outburst of fiery energy. Newt’s body had absorbed all of it with the greed of parched land blessed by rainfall.
The exalts flew over. Magminion persisted a few extra moments, then left, probably to report to his mother.
“And that’s my secret.” Newt looked the Grand Scholar in the eye. “Is anyone in the imperial family practicing anything similar?”
The old man shook his head slowly. “Never seen anything like it. You have absorbed a huge amount of mana, a full attack by an exalt, maybe more, but your aura only changed a little.”
He stared at Newt, frowning and analyzing whatever he could see of Newt’s mana flow.
“You still feel like a peak eighth-realm, despite being at the peak of the seventh. Truly marvelous.” The man was silent for a moment. “You do know the dragons are fattening you up so they could eat you.”
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The other exalts had varying degrees of reactions, and Maelstrom went pale, but Newt merely chuckled. “I do.”
“Do you need help?” the Grand Scholar asked.
“No. They only respect raw power, and while we can slay them by teaming up, we would never win them over that way.” Newt then bowed lightly. “But thank you for your care.”
Newt and Magmin had already discussed the best approach to achieving their goals. Magmin’s daughter had delegated all tasks related to humans to Magminion, including observing Newt, gathering tribute, and even settling disputes from the saurian side.
The dragon exalt hadn’t even laid her eyes on Newt once in the past seven decades. That meant the one Newt had to deal with wasn’t the exalt, but Magminion. And that made things easier and a lot more complicated at the same time.
***
“I couldn’t believe it,” Magminion said, standing before the volcano that was his mother, “but despite absorbing as much energy as you could unleash in an attack, his aura barely changed.”
“How much?” the dragon exalt asked.
Magminion considered the question for a moment before answering. “A pittance. As if he had spent a decade or two guarding an eighth realm treasure and absorbing the energy it had emitted passively.”
The dragon exalt was silent, her mind estimating the energies Magminion spoke of, then translating them to how much they would expand a peak eighth-realm saurian’s realm. The energy of her full attack was around one one-thousandth of her free mana, which itself was less than a tenth of the energy bound in her realm.
Magminion knew his mother’s thoughts, despite not having the ability to read them. She concluded that the energy from the unusual event should have pushed Newt considerably ahead, perhaps even to the threshold leading to his ninth realm.
“Where did the energy go? What do you think?” She asked a dangerous question. Answering correctly was just as dangerous as speaking nonsense, and he had to speak the truth, since the exalt would know if he was lying.
“Deposited inside his body,” Magminion said after choosing the words properly. “If this is an event that happens from time to time, it would make him a walking treasure. Each time the sun strikes him, it would increase his value and potency.”
“Are you thinking of eating him yourself?” A dangerous note skulked between her hisses, a viper ready to strike at the wrong answer.
“Never,” and that was the truth. “I had never even considered consuming him to advance my realm.”
The silence grew tense. Humans might try to appeal to their mother’s better nature, but the thought never crossed Magminion’s mind, which he kept purposefully empty. He waited patiently, his life in the hands of another.
“You will fetch him for me to inspect personally,” she said eventually. Whether she delayed the answer to check Magminion’s willpower or because she was contemplating her next steps, he had no way of knowing.
“Do you wish to see him now, or at a later date?” Magminion asked, never assuming what his superior planned or wanted.
“Have the invaders shown any signs of betrayal? Are they abiding by the pact?”
“They seem genuine,” Magminion was long used to her changes of topic, which served to keep minions on their toes. “I hadn’t noticed a single outward show of aggression in the last two years since my last report. They are strict with their own who break the rules, nearly as unforgiving as we are.”
“And when do you think they will betray us?” the dragon exalt hissed, adding a note of curiosity Magminion knew she didn’t feel.
“They have enough forces here to threaten us, but I have sent scouts into the lands the invaders had stolen from our kind. There appears to be great chaos there, so it could be possible that they are genuine in their desire to seclude themselves or even fight their kind later, once they grow strong enough.”
The air changed, and Magminion added with haste, “Not that I would let them grow that strong. We are benefitting from their skills and tributes, but they will need to leave before becoming a tangible threat.”
“And when would that be?” The dragon exalt asked with amusement. She wanted to know how Magminion would estimate the threat level of those beyond his realm.
“I am open to suggestions,” he said. “My initial estimate was that twenty-two exalts were the tipping point. They have nineteen, but no resources to raise more.”
“Except one of them grows from the sun’s blessings.”
“Except one of them grows from the sun’s blessings,” Magminion agreed. “But even if we take that one into account and even if he becomes an exalt, they are two short.”
“Magminion,” the dragon exalt hissed tenderly, and he shuddered. “My most talented spawn, you know I will devour the invader as soon as my sire’s spirit in his realm reaches the level of an exalt. There is no better nourishment for me than to devour my origin. You know it, my sire’s ghost knows it, and the invader knows it; why dance around it? We will go to war with them the moment my father’s ghost in that invader’s realm reaches the level of an exalt.”
Magminion remained perfectly still, perfectly non-threatening. Another source of nourishment for his mother was her failed spawn, and if one of them reached the tenth realm, it was more likely than not that it would result in a battle to the death.