Chapter 1613 Innocence [3]
?Damien wasn't even the one who suggested it.
It seemed that August had glimpsed the benefits of power once he'd unlocked his dragon form, because the instant they got home that night, August practically begged for Damien to train him.
"Dad, you're strong, right?"
He didn't really understand before. He didn't know anyone other than his father, so he didn't have a way to compare the things he'd seen to the norm.
Damien wasn't shy about using his power around August. Whenever it was useful for their daily convenience, he'd do whatever he needed to do.
However, those conveniences were mundane impossibilities.
Normal people couldn't just create animals whenever they wanted to. They couldn't take people from one place to another in an instant like Damien could.
When August saw the ancestral dragons, he was awestruck, sure, but not nearly as much as he was when he witnessed Damien's dragon form.
Whether it was coincidence or fate, the aura radiating from Damien was exactly what August envisioned when he imagined the strongest in the world.
Despite the fact that those ancestral dragons were extremely strong and domineering, despite everything they'd done before Damien transformed, the second he flew to the skies, they all froze in shock.
That was when August realized just how great the man he called "father" really was.
And it wasn't like Damien was going to disappoint his expectations.
"Of course!"
His answer was simple.
"Your dad is the strongest man in the world!"
What else could a young child hope for?
August instantly jumped up and climbed onto Damien, asking incessantly for him to teach him.
Since that was the goal from the start, there was no need to say anything more.
"It's going to be hard. Do you think you can tough it out?"
The only thing left was to test his resolve.
This path was a difficult one, and it was just as punishing as it was rewarding.
But…the child was innocent. He could learn of the viciousness of society at a later time.
For now, letting him learn as he pleased was more than enough.
August still didn't know anything. Unlike Damien's worries, his ancestral memories had yet to appear.
Damien also hadn't gone out of his way to tell August anything about the heir wars or what he'd been born for.
Now that a few years had passed, it was hard for Damien to see August as someone else's child. He made some mistakes by instinctively trying to raise him like a human, but now that he'd realized his mistake, he was confident in his choices and his parenting.
Eventually, August would come to know these things.
But that was a story for another time, when details about his origins slowly began trickling into his mind.
The training for now was simple.
Damien had August do foundational mana training exercises as usual, but he added a bit of physical training into the schedule as well.
He was still learning about how to properly teach him the techniques of his clan, since they were still revealing themselves to him, so Damien didn't rush past the basics faster than he had to.
'I know he's a dragon, but he's still a four-year-old.'
No matter what, he'd have to introduce August to the true struggle of a practitioner within the next two or three years, but he wanted to put it off for as long as possible.
Be it selfishness or compassion, Damien didn't believe August needed to lose his innocence yet.
Rather, he just didn't want it to happen.
Even now–
'That's…'
Damien's eyes narrowed.
He suddenly caught wind of a strange aura.
'It's still far away, but I'm certain of it. Those are people from the Liqua Clan.'
The distinctive aura of an Azure Dragon.
'No, it's the aura of a couple of posers.'
The Liqua Clan was not the true Azure Dragon's clan.
That man, Qinglong, had formed his own clan when he became a Holy Dragon, and the Liqua Clan could be considered a branch of it.
For it to now be regarded as the Azure Dragon Clan itself…
'Hmph. Even if they're grunts, they should have some useful information.'
It hadn't yet come time for August to interact with those of the Holy Dragon Clans. It also wasn't the time for them to notice Damien's presence in their kingdom.
Unfortunately, this little scouting party would need to be slightly inconvenienced.
Though, wasn't it a bit more than that?
There were five people in that party. All of them were just slightly over a hundred years old, geniuses that were technically from Damien's generation.
They were those who had just barely missed the cut to participate in the heir wars. They couldn't be used for that anymore, but they would still become valuable assets in the future.
As such, excursions such as those meant to find treasure like this one were usually left to them.
In another reality, perhaps they could've become stars that shocked the entire world. Regrettably, they lived in an era where Damein Void existed. They were fated to remain nameless and mundane despite all of their power and training.
"What are we even looking for?"
There were two women among them. One of them, Alexis Liqua, was the one who asked the question.
"None of us really know," Gabriel Liqua, the man who led the group, answered.
"Apparently, this order comes from the Matriarch herself. We are to find the traces of that aura they showed us earlier and investigate it."
They'd been given the "scent" to chase and were let loose to find it. Their search had led them to the outskirts of the kingdom, to a random field in the middle of nowhere, and frankly, it didn't seem like they'd find anything here at all.
Still, since it was an order from the Matriarch, they couldn't half-ass their search. They'd come here maintaining the slight hope that there would really be something amazing for them to discover here.
And there was.
But it was not for them to discover.
For it had already discovered them.
Damien hovered in the sky above the five young dragons with none the wiser to his presence.
He watched them as they spoke about their mission, and he paid attention to their auras.
The Azure Dragon's legacy inside of him reacted with unbridled disgust when he got close to them, and though Damien didn't have any particular grudges against them…
'Well, at the end of the day, they're competition.'
He flicked his hand out, and from a distance of over a hundred kilometers, his Existence touched the souls of those five dragons.
Memories they had would become his. Techniques they knew would become his. And the things in their possession…well, while they wouldn't become his, they wouldn't be theirs either.
To put that less confusingly…
'I'm going to twist the shit out of their existences.'
It could be considered a boon for them in a certain sense.
After all, since Damien was about to formulate an entirely fake experience for them, where they discovered a tomb and unveiled a number of treasures from the last era…
'…I have to give them the rewards to make it real, no?'
It felt a bit like cheating to win at a competition and then giving the losers $5 as a consolation prize.
And though that was quite the vile feeling on paper, Damien had to admit it, at least to himself.
In this specific scenario…it really didn't feel bad in the slightest.
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