21 Making Connections

I turned 15 a week ago .

I kept my hair shot reaching till my eyebrows as I didn't like keeping my hair too long . My height became nearly 5'7 not bad for a fifteen year old.

I returned to the church in Hage after almost 5 years to celebrate my birthday . I bought a lot of food for everyone , we celebrated for the entire night , although I sent letters but meeting in real life was different. Father almost cried after seeing me. I never stopped hunting and earned a lot of money so I donated a part to the church and brought some gifts for everyone.

Fortunately Asta doesn't annoy sister Lily with marriage proposals . I the years I stayed in the Church ,I ensured to teach manners and common sense to Asta and Yuno . What Asta feels for Sister is appreciation and love as a maternal figure not romantic love ,I explained him these clearly when he was younger .

In these 3 years I mostly explored the common realms and sometimes visited the Black Bulls. Vanessa had settled completely and became the carefree Vanessa I knew from the series . Gauche joined the Black bulls a year ago leaving Marie in care of sister Theresa and Grey joined just after him .Gauche gave me death threats to stay away from Marie every time I went to the base sometime he even attacked me after I mentioned her name .

That aside after storming my brain and a lot of research I found a method that could unlock "mana presence" ,I asked Yami and sister to unleash it on me several times for research and gain some immunity and increase my mental strength . Though I had to pay Yami for that, that guy refuses to do anything without getting paid.

Although I could stay awake for half and hour under the pressure of sister Theresa but under Yami I fainted instantly control his pressure and woke up after two whole days , I only took half of the pressure but if that was full pressure it would have taken a longer time to wake up . After that I asked him to only release minuscule amount of his pressure . I knew that if I faced the full extent of his mana pressure my mind would be broken . I learned that people with mana pressure are valued a lot in the magic knights .

I noted that every time someone unleashed mana presence ,their aura represented an animal or concept, like sister's represented a leopard and Yami's something I can't comprehend yet . So I tried to shape to my aura. Until now my aura was wild and dispersed so I meditated a lot and practiced to shape my aura . I read a lot of books and visited museums to find something that suited my flame's characteristic the best. Few months I got I got completely immune to sister's mana pressure .

:Flashback :

"Sister can people's magic evolve?" I asked .

She replied " of course It can ,when people understand the meaning of their magic and add laws to them ,their magic evolve. Like mine were normal flames but my understanding of flames let me give consciousness to my flame animals who would do anything I command like the fire birds and leopards to see. "

As my mental strength increased , I started having weird dreams which had no meaning . The only thing I could infer was a black bird . This picked my curiosity . I confronted sister about it and she said that it means I was going in the right direction in shaping my aura . The bird I was seeing in my dreams was "a dark phoenix ", a lesser flame spirit which could absorb mana from other species through Its flames . Seeing the picture and reading felt gave me an unknown feeling of nostalgia . This bird has a large wingspan and tail and its entire body is black in color . It is said that it has never chosen a human to share its power and liked to live independently .

This bird is said to be a relative of the fire spirit salamander . Apparently there are not just 4 great spirits in this world but many lesser fire spirits like Salamander is the Great spirit and Phoenix was lesser spirit .

I reached a conclusion when I practiced all my flames type attacks ,I found the spell I wanted to make my law based on ,it was "flame devour". Out of all the spells I knew this one and phoenix robe gave me the most comfortable feeling while using . The flame devour flames had a property of absorption and corrosion which I wanted to accommodate in my magic attribute . More over I found that dark phoenix's flames could burn an opponent till it had mana . I combined the three things and started working on it .

My flames improved as my understanding improved. My mana pressure training was going in the right direction as I wanted . . I conducted one experiment in which I tried instructing people to try to create mana core but I found out that unlike me others can't move mana inside their body , even sister having so great mana control was only able to move it for sometime before loosing control , so no mana core for anyone . I guess that its something unique to me .

At the end of 3rd year I managed to produce a red flame that burned with enormous heat combined with a properly that would absorb the mana of opponent and keep burning but I could only produce them after focusing for sometime and they would disperse immediately .

Today sister was taking me to the 15th birthday party Leopold Vermilion , they invited sister and one more person so she took me along to introduce to them. I dressed nicely with the suit I brought and with my looks ,I didn't look much different than a Noble .

The place was quite far so we began out journey the previous evening .

"Be sure to make some friends in he party , you would need connections in the future " said sister .

On the way to the Vermilion base ,I checked my stats

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NAME : JULIAN

AGE:15

RACE :HUMAN

CORE: LIGHT ORANGE

MAGIC: FIRE ( BASIC LAW)

BODY POINTS: 85

MANA POINTS:180

SPELLS: FLAME CLAWS,FLAME BULLETS,FLAME LASER,FLAME BREATH,FLAME WAVE,FLAME WALL,PHOENIX ROBE, FLAME ARROW, etc

SKILLS: MANA REINFORCEMENT(INTERMEDIATE) , KI ( INTERMEDIATE) ,

=======================

My physical strength has increased with no extra muscles or fat. My mana has almost reached the level of royals with constant natural mana nourishing my cells.

When I reached there . I was amazed by the size of the base ,it was nothing less than a huge castle ,almost thrice the size of black bulls building . There were a lot of people from the Vermillion family with iconic reddish orange hair and a lot of Crimson lions squad member . I saw some member from house Silva with greyish white and house Kira with blond hair .

When sister introduced me , some royals and nobles were eyeing with hostility but no one approached me to make trouble for which I was relieved . I didn't find Fuegoelon and Mereoleona anywhere , I don't think they would miss his fifteenth birthday so they are most probably around . I didn't see any people around my age around .

After the crowd cleared to a degree I was able to meet Leopold . He politely greeted sister as he knew his siblings respect her a lot .

I gifted Leopold a locket made from the horn of geo rhino I hunted years ago with some extra modifications .

Surprisingly Leopold was happy to have someone of his age in the party . We started talking and became friends, me having fire magic and student of his sibling's teacher played a role too . He was loud and fun to be around . The was the opposite to the royals present here who gave me stingy eyes .

He introduced me to his cousin Mimosa ,she was a year younger than me and Leopold. Unlike Leopold who didn't seem to care about his bloodline ,she felt like she had that pride of the royal .

Apparently not all Vermillions had fire magic ,Leopold's side had fire magic and Mimosa's side had plant based magic. I saw Mimosa's brother praising his beauty in one corner like a narcist .

" I don't like that guy , he's too weird " said Leopold loud . I found a problem with this guy , he can no control over his mouth . He would blabber anything that came to his mouth without the sense of time and place . I am pretty sure Mimosa's bother heard Leopold's remark but decided to ignore it .

I could see Mimosa agreeing with Leopold . From them I got to know that there are currently three main royal house , the Kira , Silva and Vermillion with the Kira house taking the throne. The rest who call themselves royal are branch family bearing the last name . He asked me how I trained under sister but he shuddered hearing it as it matched mostly with what his brother told which he thought was a joke .

Leopold had decided to join his family's squad and succeed his brother as the leader in the future and Mimosa had received an offer from Golden Dawn for her healing magic and status so she agreed joining after getting her grimoire next year.

I had to take the exam normally as my identity was not special . I talked with Leopold a lot and promised to hangout later on.

The dinner was arranged in the space outside the base . I also got to know that Mimosa and Leopold eat a lot .

--

From a balcony 3 people were watching everything .

" Ho ! he is restraining his aura quite well ." said the orange haired woman

" I didn't expect sensei to take another student . Are you sure your health is fine ?" said orange haired man .

"Hmp! its too early to worry about me Fuego , Mereo . As as for him , he'll surpass you both if you laze around . " said Sister Theresa.