Side chapter 3: Safyr, the Guardian

AN: Showing a little bit of Safyrs history as well as revealing a few key details that Aly has yet to learn.

Safyr flew high in the skies, scanning the ocean below. Up at this height, the mana currents brought mana to the nexus. The elves had gotten unusually annoying, especially those new three-eyed elves their progenitor fathered.

The constant wars the growing population of annoying, arrogant lesser beings not knowing their place in the world. The few lesser beings who thought they could slay a dragon. Safyr just wanted a peaceful place void of annoyances. She had her phase of battling elementals and destroying a few arrogant kingdoms, perhaps the elves need a lesson too, especially those three-eyed ones thinking they're so great just because their father had an heirloom race and cultivated a strong identifying skill.

Their father died, of course, the vast majority of heirloom progenitors bite off more than they can chew and die before passing on their race, good thing too.

Waves of mana spread out in the distance, fire mana by the looks of it though it's hard to tell from this height. A volcano island steeped in flames and fire mana. A call reaches Safyrs ears. A dragonling's cry for help. A long and powerful roar the echoes far and wide, heard only by dragonkin. The call would circle the entire world.

A young one causing trouble. Safyr thought with a mental sigh. She would of course answer her kin's call, dragons should look out for the dragonlings, few are born or spawned after all and the dragonlings are most vulnerable.

Safyr roared deep and strong, prideful and full of magic. She dived to the volcano island seeing a small fire dragonling surrounded by two fire elementals.

Safyr landed in front of the dragonling with a torrent of water rushing over the land, and roared a challenge against the hated foes. A surge of mana and flames erupted from the two elementals instantly vaporizing the water and land, the volcano melting into a puddle. Flames grew and grew and grew, enveloping all. It was like being inside a sun. The flames compressed the mana becoming more and more solid as fire gems formed around them.

The mana output still impresses Safyr to this day, but the beings are still no match for water! Just as the mana compressed into something akin to a metal Safyr unleashed her empower skill [All Consuming Wave] a sphere of water burst forth from Safyr, expanding outwards and turning all it touches into water. The mana the elementals produced turned against them. The sun burst fourth as water, a tidal wave chasing after the fleeing elementals.

The elementals formed beams of pure liquid mana in hopes of blasting away the wall of water but it only fed the consuming waters. The spell would quickly run its course, however, being unable to catch the elementals, but no matter. With a deep growl, Safyr charged up her [Water Cannon] and blasted one of the elementals. The Bond skill being fully empowered by a dedicated class consumed the elemental but didn't destroy it. A small ember survived and quickly grew into a raging inferno the size of a mountain.

The second elemental has already formed a ball of liquid fire mana. The heat and light given off feel more like the sun and Safyr felt flares of plasma burst forth from it.

This is why Safyr hated elementals. If even a single speck of the element remains they can do something like this in just a few seconds.

Safyr checked on the dragonling, it is alive, floating on the water's surface with awe.

Never seen a battle between a dragon and an elemental? This is only the beginning.

"Leave, you'll die here," Safyr said as the suns grew and compressed. The liquid mana bursting forth and eruptions of plasma and mana assaulted the dragons. The dragonling nodded and flew away.

Safyr sighed with annoyance, this was going to take several hours at least.

Ting! A great being, Fire Elemental, had been slain by Safyr the dragon.
Ting! A great being, Fire Elemental, had been slain by Safyr the dragon.

Ting! You have obtained a legendary skill point, Slain a Fire Elemental.
Ting! You have obtained a legendary skill point, Slain a Fire Elemental.

Ting! Your Bond has obtained level 10042

The foolish dragonling had not left and gone its own way, instead, it watched the fight from afar.

"What part of 'leave' did you not understand?" Safyr chastised, watching two elemental cores form from the residual magic the beings had. A wave of water caught the cores and brought them to Safyr, more for her collection, a testament to her power. Killing beings closest to what can be called gods, the beings that bring the matter into reality, creators, are always something to revel in.

She didn't know why but once mana is compressed enough it forms physical matter. Fire air, fire stone, fire metal, and fire water all seeped into the ocean below from the aftermath of the battle. As are the water variants of those materials, dragons are just as capable of that as elementals are, just not at the same absurdity.

"Teach me!" The dragonling purred, flying close. Safyr batted the infant away with her tail.

"Leave me alone, you're spawned, right? You're not a hatchling so you're on your own, just as i was."

Dragons, like monsters and most being in the world, can be created by magic. Some process that has to do with mana and magic can create beings but knowledge of it still eludes even the most studious of dragons. The other way dragons can come about is through birth, it's even rarer than spawning. Spawns are born with instincts and classes, with levels and intuitive knowledge and understanding of their skills. Hatchlings don't have this, they are born weaker but have the option to evolve in their element. All spawns are born with elemental Bonds, never essence Bonds, and the already rare event of essence Bonds means that a dragon with an essence Bond is extraordinarily rare. Safyr knows of only one such dragon. Volmar, the gold dragon.

"Teach me!" The dragonling said again, flying back.

"Persistent Annoyance!" Safyr slapped the young one and sent him tumbling in the air until he splashed in the water below.

"Teach me!" The dragonling flew back up with eyes full of hope.

"You're spawned! You already know how to survive, you just need to work on your skills and levels"

"Train me!" The little dragon flew by Safyr's side again.

"Day-old little shit, what's your defect that you must annoy me?!" Safyr swatted the dragonling again but he came back again and again and again until he dodges Safyr's strike for the first time.

With a sigh Safyr struck again with a lightning-fast movement from her tail, battering the young one.

"Your name is Erandur, now leave me alone!"

Safyr awoke, feeling small and young presences approach. It had been a long time ago since that time, a fond memory now. Erandur has continued hunting elementals, perhaps in emulation or maybe out of fear from being attacked on the day of his spawning, or maybe to rid the lands of the dangerous beings.

A pair of pets and their infant walked up to Safyr and bowed with respect.

"Little ones, what have you come to me for? Do you seek wisdom? Guidance, from your superiors? Don't be shy, ask me what you so desperately seek" Safyr said with a gentle but commanding tone, the pets must know that these lands are hers and thus that she is in charge.

"You are very generous Guardian, I am sorry to disturb your rest," The female pet said with a deep bow. Her mate followed suit.

Safyr found it interesting how the pets evolved hermaphrodity, their struggles with starvation forced them down this path, however, their race needing more females demanded it. Safyr wondered if this was how the Sorroth became an all-female race, or if they were always that way.

"It is our child, guardian, something ails her, something no healer has been able to figure out. Please, we don't ask for healing, we just need to know what's wrong with our child." The hermaphrodite said, still bowed.

Safyr looked at the child. A female, eyes closed. A particular amount of beauty essence, curious. Still, the child is healthy, full vitality even if the mana toxicity is starting to seep in the body.

"Hmm, I sense nothing wrong with your child, little one. No illness, no defect. The only thing strange is how unnaturally healthy she is?" Safyr said. She left out the part of beauty essence, by the looks of it, it's from her Bond which, in closer inspection seems to be light aligned, probably a beauty essence, it can be hard to tell sometimes. The longer Safyr looked the more confident that she became that the infant does indeed have a beauty essence Bond.

"Every time she opens her eyes she screams in pain. I fear it might be a cursed skill"

Safyr is reminded of that one elf who had a cursed skill that caused pain whenever he spoke, this is likely the cause, but she would have to check anyway.

Safyr used her [Sense Soul]. The two adult pets' soul was fine, but the infant's however, the infant's soul was... pure, it was strange. The soul bares no imprints of magic, this was an impossibility unless the soul was created without the presence of magic at all which cannot happen, magic spans through all realms and even the void between.

Ting! Sense Soul has met the requirements for a breakthrough. Sense Soul will now continue leveling past level 200!

20th Breakthrough: You have sensed a primordial soul, this will help you understand the history of souls.

That explains it. This is a legacy soul, perhaps the oldest legacy soul.

The class framework has been laid upon the soul, however. With a soul so pure magic would have an easy time applying new skills and classes, no clutter to slow the magic's progress, no blemishes from the soul reformation during reincarnation.

Laying before even the stat framework lies two blessings from the great spirits, Beauty, and learning. The class framework bears two scares where skills had grown like a tumor, Ectoplasm surrounded the skills like a scab. The ectoplasm appears dark and inky, a way for the soul to contain the curse from spreading. The cursed skills aren't attached to the classes or race that dig even deeper into the soul and she would have to be taught not to do so; the curse will spread throughout the class framework and reach deeper into the soul and could spread before the ectoplasm contains the curse.

There have been many attempts in curing the curse but it's hard to clean the skill framework, something about magic going out of bounds introduces a type of side effect. Dirty magic as it's theorized by proficient soul mages and hex witches. They use ectoplasm to contain 'dirty magic' and spread that to curse something. It's easy enough to remove if you have the right skills but curses granted by magic itself is not.

Still, this is a great opportunity to study cursed skills. As well as this strange and pure soul. It doesn't even have all of the soul components. Safyr would have thought those components plucked out if she did know that no soul mage is among the pets. The only ones capable would be the great spirits but they have no reason to, better to study the soul instead and the soul bears no mark of such actions.

Plus it's all different, it's as if the components were recently grown, the soul itself is mostly dormant but the new components are fully active. The mind and memory components are attached like two bubbles, these must be the old components, they are far larger and seem more natural, older, and barely active.

This soul is old, very old, perhaps pre-dating magic itself. This would explain many things, once in the presence of magic it would place a class framework upon the soul. It would also force new components to grow, like the mana core, and vitality converter, something that souls may not have had back then.

The level-up notifications on her new breakthrough pleased Safyr, she hadn't gotten anything like this for thousands of years.

Safyr suddenly realized she has been muttering some thoughts. "Forgive my ramblings, little ones. You may retreat and recover" Embarrassed Safyr dismissed the pets who quickly ran out to recover from the mana toxicity building up within them.

"Thank you, Guardian," The pets said.

"One cannot remove an expansion of their soul, little one," Safyr informed them. "Those skills cannot be removed." Magic certainly does not like being removed, only altered, which is why the framework exists, it's magic that can be altered, have things added and taken away but if one were to try to add more to it, well, it doesn't like being removed.

"Thank you, Guardian! We are in your debt." the pets bowed again.

"Yes, you are. One you can repay" Safyr said, pleased with her gains and hungry for more.

"What do you ask of us, Guardian?" the female asked

"Bring your child back to me in a year's time, and every year thereafter so I may examine the irregularity of her soul, It's not detrimental in the least, but I've never once in thirty thousand years seen a soul like hers"

Safyr returned to her rest, happy with the day's events.