Chapter 242 What Is A True Dragon?
Chapter 242 What Is A True Dragon?
When Abaddon awoke, the first thing that he felt was the reassuring presence of all of his wives in bed with him.
The familiar warmth of their bodies combined with this sense of overwhelming drowsiness was such a lethal combination that he did not even bother to open his eyes.
When was the last time that he had felt this tired?
At first thought, the only time that even came close was when he came back from the SnowScale territory as a child.
In his mind, he prepared to sleep this entire day away, until he realized that he could not recall going to bed the night before.
Finally his eyes fluttered open, and he realized that he was not in his bedroom.
Well he was, but he was back in his mother's castle in Antares.
His room was still just as neat and tidy as he remembered, and he couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic all of a sudden.
Abaddon glanced at his sleeping wives and smiled tenderly at their unguarded faces before noticing that they were much more beautiful than before.
Not only that, their connection had been strengthened yet again and he could now see what each of them were dreaming about just by looking at them.
After a few more moments, he realized that wasn't the only thing that changed.
His mind felt so... expansive.
He felt as if he was now capable of thinking about multiple entirely different things at one time while still performing other tasks.
'How strange...'
'E-Eh?! Master?'
'Tita? Is that you?'
'Eh, umm yes.'
Abaddon couldn't believe it.
It seemed like the range of his telepathy had been greatly increased, and he could now communicate freely with others no matter their location.
It turned out that the oldest of the triplets had been thinking of him a moment ago and their minds had connected off that alone.
'W-Well I should go, my lord! I-I have laundry to do!' She said hurriedly.
'Umm... alright?'
Abaddon cut the connection between their minds and put up a few barriers so as not to accidentally intrude upon the minds of anyone else under him.
After a few more moments, the dragon finally tried to sit up on his own and finally noticed his body's strange condition.
He was quite a bit thinner than usual, and his blood red hair had become white.
To make things even stranger, the tattoos across his body had been dyed a rich red color that was quite similar to his hair.
'What happened to me...?'
As soon as he had the thought, the information forced itself into his brain and caused him to release a small groan.
The gravity of everything that he had done hit him like a ton of bricks, but there were still a great many things that he did not understand.
What was that entity he had called?
Why did he fall into that trance after he bit the heart?
And what was all of that stuff about no longer being whole...?
"Mmh.."
There was finally movement in the bed with him, and Bekka woke up first out of all of his wives.
She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and flashed her husband her normal good morning smile before making a horrified expression once she saw his appearance.
"H-Husband, you..."
Abaddon opened his mouth to tell her he felt fine, but there was a slight hiccup in his execution.
"#%���$@." (I am fine, my love.)
Boom!
As soon as the strange language left his lips, there was a sort of sonic boom that cracked the ceiling, windows, floors, and even the wood on the bed frame.
"!"
Abaddon quickly covered his mouth to prevent any more incidents just as the rest of his wives began to wake up.
"G-Girls! Our husband got another freaky power!" Bekka warned.
Valerie: "Another one...?"
Eris: "It took me so long to get used to the eyes in his wings though..."
Lailah: "Are we going to get this one too?"
When their eyes landed on their husband and his sickly new appearance, each of them were overcome with horrible grief.
Audrina: "W-What happened to you?!"
Seras: "%#�$@!" (Are you alright?)
Lisa: "#���?��%!" (You look awful, honey!)
Boom!
Boom!
The scene from earlier repeated itself all over again, only this time Lisa and Seras were the culprits.
"What... the fuck... was that..." Valerie asked aloud.
Abaddon, Lisa, and Seras shrugged their shoulders as they covered their mouths in unison.
As the group sat in stunned silence, a small knock at the door cut through the tension, and Abaddon waved his hand to open it.
CRASH!
Abaddon sucked his teeth when he realized that his telekinetic abilities had seen a rather large boost, causing him to accidentally rip his door right off the hinges and send it flying.
Standing outside making an exhausted expression was Yara's head butler, Duke.
"The young master has been sleeping for three whole days and is now causing a ruckus as soon as he wakes up. It is practically like you never left."
Abaddon used his free hand to shoot his longtime caretaker a middle finger and received only a lighthearted chuckle in response.
'It is good to see you again, old man.' Abaddon said telepathically.
Duke seemed to be slightly surprised at first, but after a while he merely shook his head and smiled.
"I see you have picked up a great many new tricks in your time away. As someone who has watched you grow from a boy into a man, I assure you there is nothing that could make me happier."
Duke then gave a short courteous bow before announcing the reason for his visit.
"Now, if the young master and young ladies would please get dressed without destroying anything else, I can escort you to a visitor who has requested your presence."
-
Abaddon and his wives were led to a very familiar space, in Yara's castle.
Waiting at the wooden table in the center of the garden was the golden dragon himself, and sitting next to him with a small teacup in his hand was his new son in law, Asmodeus.
Without Yara acting as a mediator between the two, they were forced to sit together in an awkward silence as they admired the blissful scenery.
"...Fine day today."
"Shut up."
As the two continued to sit in silence, they soon sensed several incoming presences and their mood seemed to improve significantly now that they weren't alone.
Abaddon walked through the clearing, trailed by all seven of his wives who were still giving him concerned looks.
They all took a seat at the handcrafted wooden table without saying a word and the two men were immediately able to piece together the reason why.
Looking at Seras, Lisa, and then Abaddon, Helios felt a sense of kinship that he had not felt in thousands of years.
It was almost enough to make him emotional.
"I'm glad you all are alright. I must admit that I was a bit worried when you all still did not awake after two days." Asmodeus said warmly.
"We're aware that you must have a great many questions." Helios began. "And after combining through events with this fool next to me for the past few days, I believe that we may have a surface level understanding of what has transpired."
The group sat quietly with their ears open, indicating that they wanted to know everything without missing a single detail.
Asmodeus started the conversation off by retelling the story of how Abaddon decided to absorb the sin of gluttony.
When he told the wives how dangerous it was, they were visibly upset and started glaring at their husband intensely.
The dragon simply said a silent prayer, and acted as if he was noticing how beautiful this garden was for the very first time.
When Asmodeus got to the part of the story about his son's ramblings, the energy in the air became much more serious.
He described how Abaddon was going on and on about his lost true gluttony, and he had somehow ended up calling something monstrous to their world.
"The being he summoned is called Ouroboros." Helios explained. "She is the mother and creator of all dragons, and she is... so much more than your run of the mill goddess."
He still couldn't believe it.
Whatever his grandson really was, whoever he used to be... it was somehow greater than the serpent of infinity.
It was so insane it was almost blasphemous.
"The two of them fused together, and... by some miracle he did not die from housing such a powerful deity within his body."
Asmodeus decided to keep the creator's direct interference to himself for now.
He had told Helios earlier but... the golden dragon had forgotten about it in the next second.
For some reason, that information was great enough that even a demigod like him could not retain it.
'So why do I alone remember...?' Asmodeus wondered before quickly shaking off the thought.
For now, such a thing did not matter nearly as much in the grand scheme of things.
"A-Anyway, the entity seems to have been sealed inside of your body after some initial difficulty, which is why you haven't accidentally broken this world with your power and your tattoos have become that dark red color."
'Why have I lost weight? Why is my hair white? Why can I and my wives not speak properly?' Abaddon asked telepathically.
"We'll get to your language issues later, but as far as your sickly new look, your body was almost destroyed from holding such a powerful being, son.
Luckily, you bear the sin of lust and what I can only assume is gluttony or a more advanced version of it. A copious amount of either food or sex should help you regenerate your body's tissues and return you back to normal."
Instinctively, all of Abaddon's wives smirked and gave their husband provocative glances, to which he returned in kind.
He would have buns in his mouth later, but they certainly wouldn't come from a bakery.
'Degenerates.' Helios rolled his eyes in contempt as he tried to steer the conversation back to important matters.
"As far as your language problems go..." Helios began. "I'm sure that you all noticed that you felt considerably stronger when you woke up this morning."
Truthfully, they hadn't.
The girls were so worried about the state of Abaddon, they hadn't even noticed how great they felt when they woke up.
It was as if they were filled with an indescribable new power and energy.
Asmodeus: "When Ouroboros fused with Abaddon, she appears to have forced a process called transmutation. To simplify things, she has elevated him from a run of the mill dragon to something called a true dragon."
"True dragon?" Valerie asked.
Helios: "We are living incarnations of the word power. To list the power and potential lurking inside of you now would take too long to describe. Even our language is not meant to be spoken so casually, and it would be a simple task to kill a lesser being just by speaking."
The girls recalled the scene from this morning where Abaddon, Seras, and Lisa had destroyed the room just by speaking in some foreign dialect.
But as strange as that was... they could all understand each other just fine and were unaffected by the power of their words.
Asmodeus: "Because you girls are marked by the sin of lust, your souls are literally intertwined with Abaddon's and as such, you were able to reap large benefits as well."
Helios: "Even though some of you could not become true dragons alongside him, it would seem that none of you are above or below one another when it comes to potential."
As a response, the girls all smiled at each other and smiled happily.
It was a great thing to know that all of their power had increased, and now they could rest a bit easier knowing that they were more capable of protecting each other and everything that they held dear.
Helios prepared to continue his explanation, when a familiar visitor suddenly joined them in the garden.
"Father! Mothers!"