Chapter 278
The harsh glow of noon bared down heavily from the clouded sky when the first stirrings began.
Not long after Adi’s quiet, shared moment with Vasiliki, the others within the modest house started to rouse.
From the shadowed doorway, Nikolaos, with a sleepy stretch that cracked his spine, emerged first.
Behind him, Dimitra gracefully stepped out, followed by Eleni, whose dark hair seemed to absorb the harsh light, and finally, Vasileios, his gaze sweeping the immediate surroundings with a protective instinct that hadn't dulled even with sleep.
They were swapping places with Michalis, Clair, and Vasiliki, who had kept vigil.
Michalis, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and Clair, stifling a yawn, were genuinely startled to see Adi standing there.
Their turn on watch had been quiet, perhaps too quiet, allowing them to drift into an unplanned slumber.
“Adi!” Michalis exclaimed, his voice a low, surprised rumble.
Clair offered a tired but warm smile.
However, there was little time for pleasantries or lingering reunions.
“We need proper rest,” Vasiliki urged softly, her voice carrying a hint of weariness.
“No one knows when the evilus could strike next.”
With a tired nod, the duo, accompanied by Vasiliki, headed inside, leaving Adi with the new watch.
As they left, Adi, decided to stay a while longer.
The cool noon air, crisp and fresh, invigorated her.
She wanted to catch up, especially with Vasileios.
It had been almost five days, yet it felt like an eternity since their last encounter.
Five days since he had pulled her from the jaws of peril during the brutal raid on the evilus base, his strength a bulwark against the chaos.
Since then, the image of his face, etched with a resolve, had become an unwelcome, yet undeniably persistent, guest in her mind.
It was a new and altogether jarring sensation for Adi, one that made her chest tighten.
‘Could it be the suspension bridge effect I’ve heard of?’ she mused internally, her fingers instinctively pressing against her pounding chest with her one good arm.
The movement, however, was enough to dislodge the loosely tied bandages around her other, injured limb.
They peeled away, revealing the raw, healing stump beneath, before fluttering to the ground.
Vasileios, whose eyes had been scanning the distant tree line, noticed Adi’s sudden distraction and the falling bandages.
He turned to her, his brow furrowed with concern.
“Are you alright? Have your injuries not healed well?” he asked, his voice gentle but firm.
Without waiting for a reply, he took a step closer, his hand reaching out.
Gently, he took the stump of her destroyed arm, his touch surprisingly tender, intending to inspect the wound and reapply the fallen bandage.
“Ah…!” Adi gasped, a startled cry escaping her lips.
His sudden touch, unexpected and intimate, sent a jolt through her.
Her breath hitched, and she instinctively pulled her arm away, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Vasileios looked up, his hand still suspended in the air.
Their eyes met, a silent question passing between them.
Why was Adi so jittery?
What had just transpired to make her react so acutely to his simple gesture of care?
Adi, mortified and overwhelmed by a rush of unfamiliar emotions, quickly covered her face with her good arm.
Her cheeks burned, a deep, crimson blush spreading across her features.
From a short distance away, Eleni watched the exchange, a slow, knowing smile spreading across her face.
“There is no way…” she muttered, a hint of playful disbelief in her tone as she observed their awkward, tell-tale reactions.
Dimitra, nodded sagely.
Her lips curved into a grin.
“Seems like we might be adding a new member to the family in the near future,” she commented, her gaze fixed on the blushing Adi.
Nikolaos, however, tilted his head, a confused expression clouding his face.
“Isn’t she a bit too old for Vasil…” he began, his innocent question about the age difference hanging in the air.
He didn't manage to finish his comment.
Before the last word could fully leave his lips, Eleni, with a swift and practiced motion, delivered a sharp, well-aimed punch to his liver.
At the same instant, Dimitra clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling his surprised yelp and ensuring his ill-timed remark wouldn't shatter the delicate, budding atmosphere between Adi and Vasileios.
Oblivious to the silent, comical commotion nearby, Adi and Vasileios continued their awkward moment.
The afternoon sun fell slowly, casting longer shadows from the west.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, the afternoon quickly melted away, paving the way for the deep, dark hues of the evening.
The sky outside the house bled from vibrant oranges to dusky purples, announcing the close of the day.
Having spent most of the day in the comforting, yet chaotic, company of the Bahamut familia, Adi finally made her reluctant farewells and went home.
Not long after she left, a figure soon appeared in the doorway of the Bahamut familia’s dwelling. Bahamut had returned from her meeting with the other deities.
“Welcome home!” the children greeted their goddess in unison, their voices filled with genuine affection.
All of them, now well-rested and alert, gathered around her, their faces reflecting relief and anticipation.
“I am home,” Bahamut replied, her smile soft and warm, a stark contrast to the weariness that still clung to her eyes from the arduous meeting.
She led them inside, the warmth of a shared home wrapping around them.
Then, her gaze fell upon the figure lying still on the mattress on the floor.
She took a seat beside Draco’s unconscious form, her earlier smile fading to a worried frown.
“Any changes in his health?” Bahamut asked, her voice hushed, her hand reaching out to gently brush a stray lock of hair from Draco’s forehead.
“No, Draco-nii has been asleep all day,” Dimitra answered, her voice laced with a quiet sadness that mirrored the heavy silence in the room.
Michalis, his expression somber, offered a grim assessment.
“At least he’s not screaming. That means either the pain has eased enough to not interrupt his sleep, or his body just can’t express it in a visible way anymore.”
“Sigh, enough with all the negativity,” Nikolaos interjected, though his usual energy was noticeably subdued.
He managed a brittle smile.
“Our big brother is alive. That is enough.”
It was an attempt to inject some hope into the heavy atmosphere.
“That aside, how did the meeting go?” Vasiliki asked, her voice carefully neutral as she turned her attention to Bahamut, seeking details about the wider world's reaction to their recent crisis.
Bahamut sighed, a deep, weary sound.
“Not as bad as I was expecting,” she admitted, her expression morphing into a tight frown as she recalled the infuriating details of the meeting.
‘That bitch Freya,’ Bahamut thought, her fist clenching more in annoyance than outright rage.
The memory of the other goddess's subtle provocations still grated on her.
Upon her arrival at the meeting hall, the other gods had, to Bahamut’s surprise, gotten straight to the point.
This was a rare occurrence; usually, these divine gathering began with hours of trivial small talk, thinly veiled bragging about their respective familias, and endless pontification before ever tackling a major issue.
This time, however, the urgency of the situation had evidently overridden their usual indulgences.
First, they had collectively inquired about the details surrounding the skill Draco had used.
Bahamut had naturally not provided the full intricacies of the skill.
She offered only enough information for them to grasp a general outline.
She could feel the probing gazes, the unspoken demands for more, but she held firm.
Then, the meeting had transitioned into a heated debate: should such a terrifying skill be sealed with divine power, making it utterly unusable, or merely banned without any strict, supernatural enforcement?
This topic alone had consumed a significant portion of the meeting, with gods on both sides presenting passionate arguments.
The implications were vast, touching upon the very balance of power and the safety of Orario.
Finally, after much deliberation and thinly veiled political maneuvering, the gods settled on a compromise: banning the use of the skill on the surface, as well as the upper and middle floors of the dungeon.
This meant Draco could only unleash the skill in the deep, perilous floors, effectively rendering his most devastating ability useless in any area where it could most directly impact the city or its immediate ventures.
In a way, it was a complete ban.
Next, the meeting had moved to the grim topic of the damages inflicted upon the factory district.
Draco’s uncontrolled rampage had not just damaged it; it had, in essence, erased the entire district.
His breath attack had vaporized structures, incinerated the bodies of the deceased into nothingness, and left an immense, gaping hole at the center of the devastation.
This chasm ran from the very surface down to the dungeon’s second floor, an exposed wound on the city landscape.
The hole itself was a big risk.
Dungeon monsters, attracted by the exposed passage, could crawl to the surface.
Of course, the dungeon would eventually repair itself, its natural processes slowly mending the breach.
But that would take considerable time, and even then, the structural integrity of the surrounding area would be compromised, and the chasm, though no longer reaching into the dungeon, would still remain, a scar on the earth.
Filling and fixing such a colossal void would cost an unimaginable fortune in resources and manpower, a burden that loomed large.
Beyond the physical wreckage, there was the more insidious damage: the public sentiment towards the deceased.
News had somehow spread, sparking outrage and grief.
Many citizens could not bring themselves to understand, let alone accept, that Draco had utterly erased the bodies of their loved ones.
The absence of remains, of anything to mourn over, fueled a terrifying void of uncertainty.
Some even speculated, in hushed, fearful tones, that he might have been the cause of their deaths in the first place, rather than just an unintended consequence of his battle with a monstrous foe.
Things were not looking good for the Bahamut familia; their reputation hung by a thread, shrouded in a cloud of public suspicion and sorrow.
In the end, after many heated arguments and weary debates, a resolution was finally reached regarding the damages.
The Bahamut familia, though not solely responsible for the initial attack that provoked Draco, was to bear a fraction of the immense repair costs.
This monumental sum was to be slowly paid after the ongoing war with the evilus concluded.
This decision, Bahamut knew, couldn't be negotiated further down; the sheer scale of the destruction Draco had wrought was simply too catastrophic.
With the immediate issues surrounding Draco tentatively resolved, the focus of the meeting shifted, inexorably, to Bahamut herself.
The astonishing fact that she was going to engage in a battle with another dragon god, even if the confrontation was planned outside the city’s walls, was a monumental event.
Many of the other gods were secretly thrilled, viewing the impending clash as a spectacle of divine proportions.
If they weren’t currently embroiled in a dire war with the evilus, Bahamut knew, they would have been eager spectators, albeit from a safe, distant vantage point.
Many gods had descended to the mortal world seeking novel experiences, and watching two ancient dragons locked in a titanic struggle was indeed an enticing, once-in-an-epoch event.
However, this initial flicker of excitement soon gave way to a chilling, undeniable concern.
As the reality of the situation slowly dawned on them, many began to realize the dire implications: if Bahamut were to lose, her powerful opponent would then be free to attack Orario, joining forces with the already powerful evilus army.
There was no way for them to intervene and help her without using their arcanum, their divine powers, which was strictly forbidden in the mortal world.
The gravity of the situation slowly, sunk in, plunging the entire meeting into a tense silence.
By the evening, the gods, their faces etched with a mix of apprehension and grim determination, split up, each heading to their respective familia’s.
There was a lot to think about, weighty decisions to be made, and a looming battle that held the fate of Orario in its balance.
Bahamut, back amongst her children, closed her eyes, the weight of the coming storm pressing down upon her weary soul.
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