Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge – Part 1

Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge – Part 1

"My Lord?" Dokkan asks tentatively, and I snap back to reality.

"I'm indisposed. We'll continue later," I announce and walk out of the hall.

Yunia and Ciel excuse themselves from their meeting. Mimi's there, and she's capable enough to negotiate with Oritiki and the few other Chimera aristocrats who want to argue further.

Alissa grabs my hand, and that forces me to calm down since I need to keep some focus on padding the claws that she's tightly grasping onto. With just a simple probe into her thoughts, I immediately get a positive response. She wanted to see precisely this reaction from me. She knows me too well.

I take an [Eternal Gate] to our bedroom and walk out onto the balcony, then I grip the railing with my free hand and crush it.

Just a few moments later, the rest of the girls join us.

I stay silent so that I don't lash out, just waiting until the dragon stops roaring. Over the course of a minute, the boiling rage cools down into "a shower like this would burn my balls" temperature.

"You received both a 'Message' and a Gift. A normal humanoid couldn't have summoned you with that spell," Ciel explains before I even open my mouth.

I get a bit annoyed that they're reading my thoughts so thoroughly, but I can always punish their pussies later. Though, maybe not Hana's since she enjoys that a bit too much.

"He's thinking about sex; he's fine," Roxanne blurts out and giggles.

"I wouldn't recommend engaging in sexual activities right now," Ted suggests, her tone entirely neutral and clinical.

"Master might seriously hurt the more delicate women," Suzy adds with the same tone.

I get annoyed that I didn't notice the girls talking about me with the golems. The rage can be a bit too all-consuming with a dragon-Palpatine inside my head egging me on.

"You may use me as a rape toy. A soaped sponge will serve as a temporary replacement for a vagina," Jarn suddenly offers herself.

My restless tail immediately freezes in the air as I turn my head to stare at her. "'Rape'?" I ask, completely bewildered.

She nods diligently, and I swear that her tone has a hint of pride in it as she explains, "Some dragons are known to use rape as a stress relief mechanism, and master Wolf has already shown himself to enjoy such a flavor of roleplaying."

"Touché," I give up and look out into the distance again.

"Anyway... it was one of the Gods that brought you here; not even the emperor has the power to give Gifts," Ciel brings the conversation back on track.

"Gih," Gify assures me. The same goes for Gecynd.

"What about the heretics? They have enough power for a [Meteor]," Lina suggests. Her face is stern as she shares some of my anger. She's as protective of me as Alissa, though in a different way.

"If they did, we'd all be dead," Ciel retorts, and her argument kills all others about that.

Seeing that this topic has reached its end, Yunia broaches a different one, "This 'limitation' of your Gift, do you understand it?"

I frown in thought as I go through my memories. "No. Maybe..." I whisper and sigh tiredly. "The first time was after I prayed, asking for strength, and then the limit of my Gift was raised to thirty, allowing me to summon elementals. The second time, it was raised to forty after I met with Gecynd and we had visions of our future, which was when she mentioned the dungeon 'Legado.' And now, this is the third time that the limit has been raised."

"You can see spells up to level fifty, then?"

"Yes. I can add skills as high as my soul can tolerate, so only the spells are limited."

"There doesn't seem to be any predictable pattern to it," Ted observes.

"And since the Gods are thought to control the Gifts..." Suzy alludes.

"It's likely to be completely arbitrary. That is, subject to their judgment," Jarn concludes.

I've missed their synchronized manner of speech. I think it's cute, for some reason.

"And now that you've committed yourself to staying in this realm, the Gods might've deemed that it was time for you to see this spell," Yunia says out loud what we're all thinking.

"It'd have been a terrible temptation if I knew about it sooner," I bitterly admit.

"And what do you want to do, now that you know about it?" Alissa asks, her tone deadly serious with her orange eyes staring intensely at me. For once, none of the girls want to probe my thoughts.

"Nothing. I hate that it exists," I grumble. It's several marriage proposals too late to make me reconsider my life in this world.

"Why?"

Godsdamnit, Ciel is rubbing off on them.

I open my "Magic" tab and stare at the spell's "button" hatefully. "It's a Pandora's Box. There are too many unknowns and hidden dangers for me to even think about studying this spell, but I'm still very curious about it."

Roxanne suddenly chimes in, "[Summoning Magic] is an incomplete magic school, where nobody has even heard about this spell before, so maybe there's a reason why. It also happens quite often from what I was taught: the person who created this magic school died from their experimentation with it. This is clearly a dangerous spell."

"If you are the one saying it's dangerous..." Lina mumbles and leaves the thought in the air because nothing more needs to be said.

We chuckle softly, lightening the mood, then Alissa joins Roxanne and sternly cautions me, "Remember how much mana the Grim Giant took? If you tried to summon a Fay Leviathan, [Heal] might not be enough to save you from death. [Summoning Magic] is full of hidden dangers."

"I could interrupt it," Yunia suddenly proposes.

We all turn to her, and she tries to hide how delightfully smug she feels at our surprise.

"[Disruption Field] could interrupt any spell that isn't instant," she adds, and I hum in wonder.

Alissa sighs and grumbles. Now she understands very well what "Pandora's Box" truly means.

My reservations start to wash away as my researcher's curiosity starts to blossom, and I start to deliberate, "Even if it's an instant-cast spell, I can hold it back for a short time before releasing it, and spells with a high MP cost always take some time to prepare."

"Alright, but why would you even try to cast that spell if you hate it so much?" Hana interjects.

"I want to understand what it does, but..." -my heart suddenly tightens, making me frown confusedly- "but I still feel like it's 'evil,' somehow."

Ciel narrows her eyes in suspicion and asks, "How did you get the idea to raise your [Summoning Magic], specifically, to level fifty?"

"I felt..." I start to think back on it, but then it all strikes me as extremely suspicious. I suddenly had a nearly irresistible "itch" to do something very specific that revealed a mind-blowing spell.

The "itch" didn't seem to come from either my draconic or human side, and now that I think about it, I feel like it was "foreign."

"Did the Gods fuck with my head?" I ask Ciel concernedly.

She smiles proudly but feels a little awkward since the Goddess was decidedly not subtle with the way she "guided me." "You have a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge, and it kind of fits that she'd 'guide' you towards this spell," she speculates.

"She might've been frustrated that you hadn't noticed it yet and decided to 'help' you," Alissa adds with a wry smile.

Ciel nods in agreement. "You have a rather high 'Piety,' and that makes it easier for the Gods to reach you."

The "evil" feeling suddenly flares up within my heart, so I get Hana to massage my horns because my head is starting to hurt. "Okay, I'm feeling very conflicted about this spell now. I want to study it, but I'm also becoming increasingly fearful about it, and I'm not sure why."

Ciel takes a step forward and caresses my cheek as she gently advises me, "Focus on the feeling that you don't understand and try to find out where it comes from. The influence from the God of Order and Destruction sometimes makes it difficult for the average commoner to interact with the Humanoid Gods when they don't have enough 'Piety.'"

Okay, so the Goddess is fucking with my mind. She really just can't not make a mess, so I guess I can't entirely blame her.

I groan tiredly and start trying to calm my heart. [Bind] makes itself useful again with the girls reaching through it to comfort me. Their vivid memories flourish in my soul space, and they make me melt under Ciel's and Hana's caring touch.

The sight of our beds makes her start to seize up from the anxiety, so we get her to talk about heraldry again to help her relax.

I'm kind of miffed that it won't actually make sense for us to put in a wolf somewhere. The fucking Gods just had to make me into a fucking dragon instead of a fucking werewolf, but I guess "Ryder" can still be referenced.

We want to show the influence from all of the girls in our heraldry, so we look at the quirks that the heraldry from other races tend to have.

Imperial Lords like to write their achievements in murals and draw extremely detailed borders, while dwarven Lords enjoy depicting their achievements with epic carvings, so we might go for the dwarven style while keeping the imperial borders.

While we can dedicate a corridor to making murals about our achievements, we don't have much in that department yet, so they won't be too extensive for now.

Werefox Lords enjoy adding cute little drawings into all elements of their heraldry, making their tapestries the most beautiful you can find by far, so we'll put ours in the main hall, replacing the huge family portrait above the door to the Hub Room. They also like to carve their pillars with these drawings, and that's something that our Nature mages might love doing all over the castle.

Dragonkin Lords love spiky rally standards, so ours will be in that style. They'll be carried by our troops into battle, making them one of the first things that the enemy sees when they face our front line, so their design must be menacing to intimidate them.

Rabanarian Lords are very reserved, so there isn't much influence from Ciel's background in that regard. If we consider her as Sommerlande instead, then we could use vibrant colors, but that's still a "meh" reference.

Since she's a priestess before being a Rabanarian, we could add a religious motto to our seal as a reference to her.

Elven Lords love their family trees, which is clearly evident from all the statues of past Lords in the main hall of the castle, though they're more concerned with achieving celebrity status among the commoners by plastering their faces on the Shell for all to see. For the depiction of the lineage tapestry, we could use an actual (drawn) tree where the leaves are the faces of our ancestors, though it will be mostly empty for now.

Succubi Lords have a tendency to prominently display the "body count" (i.e. how many people they've fucked) of their Lords, which might be something we do just for me. They also love phallic imagery, so I'm sure that we can add some of those in somewhere, like in our composition.

Tista loosens up and lets out high-pitched giggles as we talk about all the different motifs we want to add to our heraldry. The idea of having a literal penis as a rallying banner sends her into a fit of laughter, and she relaxes so much that she starts to play with my scales as we discuss draconic motifs.

Alissa and I share a look. The seasoning is complete, and it's just about time for my meal. Ciel and Yunia are still stuck in their meeting, so we have some time to burn.

Announcement

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Kristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.