Chapter 473 – Impossible Possibility

A few minutes passed with Asterios and Noir dancing in circles and the ladies sarcastically cheering the Dragon girl on whenever she almost landed a blow. Some came quite close, but he noted that was most likely because of all the new power flowing into her, even without an intimate bond. Therefore, he allowed this game to last a little longer so she could use this opportunity to adapt to the changes.

Like all good things in life, though, it had to come to an end at some point.

“That’s enough.” Asterios watched another fist fly by his face. “If you want to face me seriously, issue a proper challenge with a date, place, theme, and referee. Picking something viable this time.”

“You are the one running away!” Noir huffed at him, not slowing down. “Afraid to get your fragile male ego hurt!”

Rolling his eyes, he evaded a few more swings rather effortlessly and created an obvious opening. Either because she was too angry, or as he was starting to suspect, this kind of violence was one of the few ways of demanding attention taught to her kin, she went after it without any serious thought.

Rotating his body, Asterios left his leg in its previous place and Noir ran into it from the side. Her waist bumped into his knee and she pitched forward, waving her arms for stability. That put her pert ass in clear view and he drew his hand back, bringing it down with a considerable amount of energy infused into his circuits.

A loud smack resonated through the air as his palm met her butt and she was launched forward. Her spine snapped straight as she yelped, her own fingers holding on to her burning behind while her feet skipped over the ground for a few steps. The look she threw him over her shoulder might have seemed like one full of rage and disbelief, but he could tell that the crimson over her cheeks was more from embarrassment.

Yet, that one slap made her stop, which was a success.

“We’ve wasted enough time already,” Asterios coldly stated, directing a light glare at the somewhat pouting draconic woman. “Let’s go through quick introductions so that you have actual names to use for my mates and move on to more important matters before returning home.”

At the word home, Noir stilled, her expression turning more composed, bearing just a hint of her cocky and prideful nature, her draconic tail swaying slowly in a showy fashion. Under his stern gaze, she walked back to everyone and faced the females.

“Here’s Miria, Selene, Tina, Silvia, Grea, Bryn, Althea, and Tia.” He gestured at every single one of his girls, who inclined their heads during their turns. “I don’t care what you think about my mating customs, and I don’t have to. Being the stronger one here, I can do whatever I want. You find fault with that, advance and try to beat me. Treat them with respect and they will do the same for you. Understood?”

She met his eyes defiantly, then moved on to the others and gave a slight nod. “Noir.”

“Nice to meet you!” Miria grinned cheerfully. “I hope we can get along! I just love Dragons! You have so many amazing stories! I’ve read almost every single one in our realm!”

“The two of us are beastfolk from one world,” Selene added. “She focuses on physical power, though that recently changed a bit, while I dabble in spiritual energy.”

“I’m a Summoner like Asterios but I prefer drawing my familiars’ abilities into my body while he is a kind of all-around type, and still manages to pull it all off,” Tina joined in. “I’m also a daughter of a noble household so my family can support him from the sidelines.”

“And while she and her family keep an eye on everything that’s happening around the realm, my royal bloodline helps deal with individuals of higher birth,” Silvia continued after her. “And I descend from a Primordial Spirit of Fire so flames are my specialty. Not as much as Ast’s, but he is aiding me in getting there.”

Asterios watched Noir as she listened to their brief presentations and was satisfied with seeing her properly take everyone’s words in, even though her facial ticks were still fairly rude and generally harsh.

“Let’s set a few things straight right from the start.” Grea cracked her knuckles. “I’m fully aware that I’m definitely the weakest link in his entourage, but he still fucks me as much and as hard as the others. Why’s that? Because of my brain and what it can do for him. Body second. So, while I applaud you for that earlier ploy, you gotta show off how useful your smarts are much better before getting a taste of that Dragon juice!”

The raven-haired girl snarled at her, crossing her arms under her ample chest. “I don’t need your permission. Asterios commands this retinue, not you.”

“Oh, really?” The demon lady smirked, then sauntered to Asterios, draping herself over his chest and brushing his cheek. “Darling, I don’t feel too comfortable seeing you with this bitch over there. It makes me sick when I think about you doing things to her. What should I do?”

Sighing internally at this obvious attempt at establishing a pecking order, he ultimately decided to play along, pulling her into a passionate kiss with his fingers sinking into the tender bun that was her soft buttcheek.

“Nothing. I simply won’t do anything with her. Ever. No need to feel anxious.” Asterios placed a peck on top of her head.

Grea was looking right at Noir, rubbing the whole thing in with a victorious expression. The other woman was grinding her teeth silently. He already knew those two would be trouble. His beloved professor could sense how territorial the Dragon was and she wasn’t going to stop poking at it with a stick.

His stick.

“I take care of healing and rejuvenation,” Bryn began her introduction after Grea stepped away. “If you would like to raise the intensity of your usual training, let me know and I’ll help you push your body to its limits. I’ll also be overseeing all the duels in case you get hurt. Master needs it less than you do currently.”

“Weren’t you the one who didn’t like me?” Noir wrinkled her nose at the angelic lady.

“I trust in Master. He is a better judge of character than I am. My beliefs won’t stop me from fulfilling my duty. You are now one of us, partially, and I will do whatever I can to tend to you too,” the Valkyrie announced.

Then came Althea’s turn and the two locked eyes, the disdain much more visible in the True Dragon’s gaze.

“I’m glad you were able to join us. As Asterios’ Mentor, I’ve been teaching him whatever I could on the topics of our species, but it is clear that I’m lacking in direct and validated knowledge. He would appreciate the information coming from someone living amongst True Dragons as he needs to understand as much about the culture as he can to grow into his full potential.” The Lesser Dragon made a polite bow. “I’m looking forward to us working together towards that goal.”

As much as Noir might have wanted to detest Althea, she had just been given a hint of how to possibly insert herself into their dynamic and be of actual use to her new master. Her entire figure perked up a tad and she forced herself to incline her head.

“Likewise,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

Well, that was an improvement, Asterios observed.

“And then, there’s me.” Tia giggled impishly as her misty form floated around the daring girl. “The Arch Dryad. My body is gone, but Asterios saved me and welcomed me into one of his sources. I can’t do much more than to offer him what most True Dragons desire, a Dryad’s essence of life. But, you already know that.”

“Under normal circumstances, if he were to display and prove the feat of conquering you, he would have been treated like a powerful figure amongst the clans, but from what I gathered, he might not be the person to do that,” Noir said observantly.

“You are correct.” The person in question agreed with her evaluation. “I’d rather keep my mates safe than boast. Plus, the more the enemy underestimates you, the better.”

“That I can stand behind.” The draconic girl smirked approvingly.

“I thought most True Dragons are too high and mighty to hide their power from others?” Miria tapped her cheek.

“A lot of us are like that, yes. Even amongst the dark lines. Our people tend to boast about their smarts and cunning instead. The stupidest mistake is getting to give unnecessarily long speeches about our convoluted schemes that led to the crucial moment of the fight,” Noir replied, explaining things of her own volition.

“Master’s black version did seem to like monologuing.” Selene hummed quietly.

“Now that we took care of this, let’s get a bit serious.” Asterios turned to his new companion. “Noir, how much of a problem is your mother going to be?”

“Huh?” The fierce female tilted a head at him.

“You said she is in seclusion, but it also feels like you are able to see her, which wouldn’t be surprising considering you are her daughter, so I’m wondering if she keeps a close eye on you and how hard it’s going to be for you to accompany us,” he summed his thoughts up, mindful of the details she had revealed to him during their mental chat.

Noir mulled over her response while her eyes wandered from person to person. After a moment, she let out a small sigh.

“If you are worried about me leading her to you by accident, I can’t completely exclude that possibility, but it’s not like she put some mystical tracker on me, so she wouldn’t know where I am, what I’m doing, or how I got there,” the stormy Dragon girl replied. “There’s also a precedent of her finding my attempts at leaving our homeworld amusing. Whenever I figure out a possible way to escape from our domain, it always turns out to be her sophisticated grand design with me just following the breadcrumbs she left in place until I fall into a spatial trap, having to claw my way out of a fabricated pocket dimension that doesn’t vary much from our lands. She’s quite used to me disappearing for weeks into those.”

The ladies exchanged a few glances. As much as they teased and fought back against the taunts of the sassy lass, they could tell life wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows for her. And they had somewhat expected that, knowing what they did about True Dragons and seeing how Red had done things with Asterios. Perhaps they would be willing to give her a teensy bit of leeway now and then, excusing her disrespectful behavior.

In the end, that was what she had been taught from a young age, just like Asterios had from Kindra and the other residents of Kraedorion.

“I would love to give Black the benefit of the doubt here, reasoning that she might be trying to do it for your own good, like keeping you safe or training you through those encounters, but knowing what I know, it’s more likely that she just selfishly wants to keep you near as her last direct child since you mentioned the others already having passed away.” Althea regarded her with a cordial look. “I hope I’m mistaken here, but she might be holding you back until she finds a suitable mate for you, intent on picking the strongest candidate to bolster your line. I apologize for peering into this detail, but the lack of a life companion was somewhat apparent in your aura after all of us connected.”

She got quite close to her guess as it aligned with what Asterios knew, and it would kind of explain the strict requirements Black had set for Noir’s entourage. Those might be even worse for her mate or mates. If she even had any say in who she wanted to be with.

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Noir just shrugged, but he caught her glancing aside. “And no, I don’t have a mate. Being the daughter of someone called the Allterror and known as the strongest Onyx Dragon scares most suitors away.”

That was a decent deflection, not too far from the truth either.

“Then, there’s no real way to freely enter or leave your home, but at the same time, she doesn’t just govern all existing traffic, monitoring every single move,” Asterios decided to save her any further discomfort and brought them back onto the main topic.

“Our citadel is just a speck in the grand matters of the realm so it’s not like she keeps it wholely under her wraps, even if she would love to achieve that.” She snickered in amusement, then faced him again. “Although, there’s a way to leave. Unfortunately, it’s through her, so it’s not really an option for me. She can go wherever she wants by tearing through the fabric of dimensions. Answering a lucky summoning call reaching us was risky, and I was right to doubt it, albeit in a different way than I initially imagined, but it ultimately offered a rare new chance. At a steep price.”

“Learning the ability from her is not a possibility, I suppose.” He grunted to himself, frowning in pondering. “And it sounds like figuring it out on your own isn’t on the table either.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Noir threw her arms into the air, sneering at him bitterly. “It’s impossible! I have read entire libraries of specialized material and every single manual touching upon it like twenty times front to back, spending decades on both theory and practice! I scratched through the walls of my bedroom perfecting the motions with no substantial result! And she just kept smirking at me when we saw each other! Just confirming that she knew what I was doing! Acting like it was some entertainment for her!”

With Noir stomping his way in irritation, trying to furiously drill holes in his eyes, he had to place his hands on her shoulders to keep the short but spunky girl in place, his words accidentally hitting a sore spot.

“I didn’t mean to belittle your efforts or struggles, unaware if you are able to—”

“You think it’s so easy?! That every Dragon can do it just like that?!” She pushed her face into his, then poked him in the chest forcibly. “Why don’t you try yourself, huh?! Maybe I’ll get some good laughs from watching a pathetic whelp flounder around helplessly while figuring it out on his own! Ha!”

Althea cleared her throat. “I have already introduced Asterios to—”

“Fuck off, worm!” Noir snapped at her viciously. “This is not about you!”

The other girls began to glare at her, but Asterios signaled at them to leave it to him. Grabbing Noir’s fist, he had to put actual strength into his movement to pull it away from his torso, making her attention flick back to him. She had gotten so emotional that she wasn’t pulling her punches now, confronting him with real might behind her actions.

Nevertheless, he rose to the challenge and held her knuckles in a crushing grip, just not hard enough to make her bones hurt, but tight enough to still secure the upper hand. With a swift swing, he threw it aside, meeting her incensed glare with one of his own as it allowed her to practically press her forehead into his.

“And what if I succeed on my first try?” Asterios said in a low tone, his voice dripping with unspoken threats.

“I’ll do anything you want, fucker!” Noir growled at him, her firm lips twisted bestially.

He maintained their tense stand-off for a moment before giving her a little push. She scowled at him but didn’t make any moves to thrust herself back into his personal space. Unhurriedly rolling up his sleeve while staring at her, he transformed his arm up to his elbow. Her pupils narrowed as they switched between his face and his claws, her mouth pursing with scorn.

Taking a calming breath, Asterios chose a safe faraway spot somewhere in Bryn’s realm as his target and invoked the technique. His mana condensed around his fingertip, turning it spiritually sharp enough for what he was about to do. Displaying an astonishing level of precision and control, he stabbed into thin air.

Noir froze the moment his talon disappeared into nothingness. When ferocious energy flowed out of that point, appearing alongside a minuscule crimson scar, she shivered from head to toe. And the second Asterios widened it by slicing with his claw downwards, drawing an arm-long tear in space, all her previous reactions and expressions evaporated, replaced by sheer bafflement.

Forgetting she was even angry at him in the first place, she hovered closer, her wide eyes focused solely on the glowing and swirling breach. He raised a brow at her as she pushed herself into his side, peering even more into the gap between dimensions, she was oblivious to everything else. Otherwise, she definitely wouldn’t have grasped his arm around his elbow and squeezed it securely as if to ground herself in reality.

Afraid she was going to stick her nose into the violent passage, Asterios stopped feeding it mana, and the scar healed up. Noir reached towards it as if wishing to catch the rupture before it was gone, but she was too slow and the red spot blinked out of existence. She blinked too, quite a lot, before sluggishly turning her face towards him with a stricken expression.

“How?” Barely a whisper left her lips.

He smiled warmly. “As much as I would like to take all the credit, it’s Althea who taught me how to achieve this. Well, she and some frogs. Creepy little bastards.”

Her confusion was almost comedic.

What had frogs even to do with it?

“I only offered a morsel of knowledge seasoned with a pinch of personal insight,” the emerald Lesser Dragon chimed in softly. “If we compared what I told you with what Noir had read about, I’m sure it would be like night and day. So, don’t discredit yourself that much, Asterios. We only gave you a small push near the end. It was your realizations that allowed you to succeed.”

“I’m not going to argue.” Asterios shrugged, then looked down into Noir’s charming dark gray eyes. “Doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t my actual first try, so the bet is off. Apologies for leading you on.”

She blinked even more at him, not sure what he was talking about, until she remembered what had triggered this entire situation. Shuffling around a bit, she became aware of something holding her in place and noticed how Ast’s arm was lodged in her cleavage, surrounded by her perky breasts while she clung onto him. He watched a massive rosy blush bloom on her elegant cheeks before she pushed herself off with a snarl, staring daggers at him, just daring Asterios to comment on it.

The way the girls on the sidelines chuckled and smiled roguishly at their interaction unquestionally grated on her nerves and she continued to growl at them threateningly. But, he still caught her gaze slipping back to him, that shrewd mind of hers working hard under the guise of annoyance. And he had a decent idea what was its focus.

~Everything alright?~ Asterios messaged her mentally, gesturing with his head at his mates to hint at their behavior.

Noir flinched, and as expected, the clever girl saw right through his obfuscation. That wasn’t why he was reaching out to her. He had noticed her thoughts or at the very least predicted them.

~Would you… teach me?~ she inquired reluctantly. ~If I make it to Aide… Maybe…~

He gave himself a moment to think. ~Would your mother notice?~

She also didn’t answer immediately. ~I don’t think she would presume I found myself a teacher. But, I can just keep acting like I’m failing back home. It’s not like I’m giving that hope too many chances anymore. If I ever only do it outside of my homeworld, it should be alright.~

Asterios peered deep into her intrigued, fascinated, and perhaps just a smidgen pleading eyes, and she peered back, holding his gaze.

~I’ll show you what I can when we have some free time.~ He nodded.

Her face brightened for a second, then returned to sneering at the females beside them. Especially Grea, who had snuck behind the shorter woman and was starting to wave her hand in front of Noir’s nose.

“Hello? Nethernight Realm to Noir?” The playful demon snickered. “Stop staring at my boyfriend’s face so hard lest you get any ideas again. You are not getting anywhere close to that without my blessing, remember?”

“You inferior slut!” The Dragon girl whipped around at her with a savage growl.

Grea whooped as she was swung at, then played on her nose, showing her tongue. Noir’s eye twitched and she lunged after the red lady. For once, someone other than Asterios was under the assault of her fists. Yet, just like him, his scarlet-skinned lover displayed no issues at avoiding the blows, taunting her opponent even more with each pass.

“Shall we return, my Lord?” Selene slinked to his left while Miria stole his right, rubbing herself into his arm.

It kind of looked like she was trying to get rid of the other female’s scent, which evoked a chuckle from him.

“Yes, we shall. We’ve overstayed our welcome here. Let’s head back before Abyss decides to drop by. Noir is nowhere ready for that yet.” Asterios snorted.

His mates snickered along and they turned to watch the game of tag taking place before them. Hopefully, the duo didn’t take too long to sort out their quarrel.

But, with a beautiful girl in each of his arms and even more gathering by his sides, Asterios could perhaps give them a minute or two more.