Chapter 232: Another Dragon Awakened
"I might’ve overdone it," Adrian muttered as he looked at the results before him.
Everything had gone as he intended....hell, even better than he intended.
A day after his date with Renelle, Adrian found himself in front of Duke Ignis and his family.
They were currently in what looked like a private training area, and from the heat, Adrian realized that this part of the mansion was the deepest part of the volcano mountain that it was built on.
"You know there’re chances of this failing, right?" Adrian asked as he looked at the dark-skinned man before him.
Orion.
"I truly do not want to increase my chances of being selected as the grand duke," Orion said with a sigh, "but I also can’t allow my younger brother to leave me in the mud."
"I see," the butler nodded before adjusting his glasses and saying, "Come at me then."
BOOM!
Adrian didn’t get the chance to properly finish his words before a fist coated in blue flames was suddenly in front of his face.
The attack kicked up a cloud of dust, but Orion quickly turned around and crossed both arms, just in time to block the attack of something crashing into him.
Without being given the chance, heavy pressure fell on his body whilst he was mid-air, forcefully slamming him into the ground.
Adrian looked at his opponent, pinned on the ground by his clone’s gravity attack.
Slowly, he approached Orion before crouching before him and saying, "Your brother put up a performance that was leagues better than this."
The grand duke and his wives looked towards the two in surprise.
They knew this kid was strong, but not to the point that he didn’t even have to lift a finger to put Orion in that state.
Renelle and Darius, on the other hand, weren’t surprised in the least bit; after all, they completely expected the results before them.
Orion gritted his teeth as he tried pulling himself from the floor, but every attempt was met with an increase in the gravity pushing him down.
"Are you going to give up?" The butler’s condescending voice came again, and it was very clear that he was being mocked.
Gritting his teeth harder, Orion pushed himself off the ground, despite the weight on his shoulders increasing with every attempt he made.
Adrian watched as blue flames coated him, making it easier for him to defy gravity. Though the bull clone had deliberately lowered the light on his shoulders.
"Let’s properly get started," Orion said as he was completely off the ground and standing properly.
"As you wish," Adrian said with a smile, but instead of moving, the bull was the one that made its move.
The clone was suddenly coated in lightning as it launched itself towards the burning Orion.
Orion met it halfway, and their clash sent them both backwards, creating a massive crater where they met.
BOOM!
The two clashed again, the impact sending cracks through the floor beneath them.
Everyone could clearly tell that Orion was getting considerably faster with every exchange, and soon enough, he was properly reacting to the bull’s attacks.
Adrian silently observed this; there was still a small frown on his face... Unlike Darius, who was easy to agitate, Orion had better control over his emotions.
Adrian needed him to refuse to lose; he needed him to feel desperation and want to push through it, and the bull, as strong as it was, wasn’t doing a proper job at getting him to feel that.
"Let’s add a bit of change, shall we?" The butler muttered as his shadow extended.
Orion, on the other hand, unaware of what the butler was planning, remained completely focused on the opponent before him.
He laughed himself towards it again, certain that he would be able to take it down with his fists coated in flames.
But just before his fist could connect, Orion froze mid-attack.
He was then pulled back at disorienting speed before being slammed into the far wall of the arena.
BOOM!
The entire arena shook as his back hit the wall, and for a second, Orion’s vision went completely white.
He fell to the floor as he struggled to catch his breath.
Slowly, his vision returned to normal, and he lifted his head towards his attacker.
Orion’s eyes rested on the blank face of the clone that had possessed Marion’s body.
"Since you seem to be adapting," Adrian started, looking at the confused expression on Orion’s face, "I decided to increase the difficulty. "
***
It took a long while, but Orion was finally pushed into the corner Adrian had intended.
No matter what he tried against the clone, it would just end up shrugging off or dodging.
He, on the other hand, couldn’t do the same, hence the blood flowing down his head and his current exhausted stance.
But true to his name as a Lionheart, Orion had no intention of giving up.
Instead, the flames around him started burning brighter than they ever had.
The temperature in the volcanic training ground climbed several degrees despite the heat that was already present.
"There we go," Adrian muttered as he looked at the expression on Orion’s face.
"Come at me, you–" Orion started, only for him to suddenly freeze as he felt a pain in his chest.
Even the grand duchesses looked towards him with wide eyes.
The grand duke, on the other hand, had already been informed of the process that Adrian was going to use.
Still, he couldn’t help but frown.
"W-what..." was the last thing Orion let out as he saw a shadow spike going through his chest before darkness took him.
"Now then," Adrian muttered as he dismissed his shadows, "let’s see if you’ll awaken, shall we?"
Both Darius’s and Orion’s mothers had an expression of worry on their faces, but seeing that the grand duke hadn’t said anything, they decided to trust that butler for now.
***
Adrian didn’t have to wait for too long as the aura around Orion soon changed.
His glasses informed that even his mana had changed completely, which means his contract with his former spirit had been broken.
The cost for breaking a spirit contract usually costs the spirit mage a lot, with some even having their mana pathways permanently destroyed.
It was precisely because of that risk that almost nobody dared to forcefully sever a spirit contract.
After all, increasing your spirit’s rank through cores was a lot safer.
Though, as with everything, there were exceptions to this.
And that exception was spirits stronger than the spirit mage’s contracted spirit.
The moment such a spirit deemed a contractor worthy, the existing contract would simply become an obstacle.
An obstacle it would remove.
The spirits, on the other hand, didn’t suffer a complete loss from the contract being broken...
After all, depending on how long they were contracted to the spirit mage, there was a higher chance of them being naturally able to absorb mana.
But Adrian wasn’t focused on that; instead, his attention was completely on Orion’s, whose mana was getting stronger by the second.
«It seems he succeeded,» Noctis, who was now lying on Adrian’s head, muttered.
"Hmm," Adrian nodded in agreement.
«Unfortunately, it cannot be bestowed a name,» the cat added, «since it already seems to possess one.»
Adrian remained silent, his gaze never leaving Orion.
The blue flames surrounding the unconscious man gradually receded, no longer raging wildly as they had moments ago.
Instead, they flowed around him as though they had become an extension of his body.
BOOM!
Without warning, another wave of mana erupted from Orion, and this one felt quite oppressive, fitting for a dragon’s mana.
Grand Duke Boreas immediately realized that the awakening had succeeded, causing him to immediately let go of his previous doubts.
Slowly, Orion rose from the ground before muttering, "I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train."
He then looked around, noticing he was back in the arena, and his eyes immediately moved towards Adrian.
"You tried to kill me!" He let out his grievances.
After all, he had been so certain that he was dead, even when that elder dragon came to pick him up.
"That was necessary for your awakening," Adrian said with a shrug before offering a hand and asking, "What type of dragon did you contract?"
"This guy," Orion took his hand, stood up and made his dragon reveal itself, even though Adrian could still see it.
The dragon refused to take a smaller form, so its figure dwarfed them all as it looked towards Adrian with an expression of one looking at bugs.
That is, until it spotted the cat lazily resting on Adrian’s head before it stuttered out,
{L-lord C-Chaos?}