After making his declaration, the dragon waited a few seconds to give the party time to respond. Thankfully, though the party was still in shock, one member managed to get out a few words.

  “W-we don’t know!” Lili yelled, hoping that her trembling answer would stall the dragon for a little longer; surely her guardian would intervene soon. Though she wasn’t sure who would win if the dragon and he fought. Of course, there was the possibility that her guardian might not be around and could be in the city, which would mean it would be a few minutes before he got there.

  “Not good enough! Now, die!” The dragon roared, rearing up while it inhaled.

  The party was going to die; a feeling of dread overtook them, letting them know exactly what the dragon was about to do.

  The dragon finished inhaling, and its head moved forward as it prepared to unleash its breath attack. In response, the party closed their eyes, waiting for death to come.

  But it never did.

  The first to open their eyes was Lili, and looking around, she found that the dragon was gone. She didn't know how or why, but it had simply disappeared. Even so, her heart was still beating in her chest as they had all just come face to face with death. Her entire body was trembling, and she couldn't help but finally collapse to the ground.

  “It's gone,” Lili finally said, her voice barely holding together.

  Hearing Lili and finding they were still there, the party opened their eyes one by one. They were all trembling, their hearts pounding in their chests; the fear was ingrained in their very bones. At the same time, and like they couldn't believe it themselves, their heads whipped about, checking the entire area around them to truly make sure that the beast was gone. Yet, even with the certainty of being relatively safe, no one spoke, all coming to grips with their mortality.

  Finally, after about 10 minutes of silence, Lili spoke up once again.

  “Guys, I think we need to get back to the city. We just came face-to-face with certain almost unavoidable death, and I don’t think we are up for any adventuring,” Lili’s words came with much more certainty, the elf having gotten a hold of herself thanks to her experience.

  The party nodded in agreement as they all got up and began their walk to the city. It was finally during their walk back that the rest of the party started opening up.

  “We almost died,” Rose stated with gravity.

  “Yes, and it is all thanks to Tesilim’s magic,” Arelion said distastefully.

  “Yes, but in my defense, how was I supposed to know it would make the dragon into a real thing?” Tesilim answered, trying to mount a defense.

  “Maybe by the fact that you have Drex?” Arelion replied, annoyed that he had to point out the fact that Tesilim now had a permanent companion due to empowering a summoning spell with his chaos magic.

  “I-I honestly did not think my magic could turn illusions real; that would be incredibly overpowered. As for Drex, well, I didn’t mean to make that happen either; it was more my subconscious's fault, and also, it's two different spells.”

  “This is why we need to keep testing things. Whenever you recover some more mana, let's try it again with another illusion to see if you can really make things out of illusions, especially at such a low rank,” Alyx spoke without much fright, his love for research overcoming the encounter at least for the moment.

  “Wait, so you can make things out of illusions?” Tesilim asked, the topic helping put the encounter aside for the moment.

  “Well, yeah, it's just hard and requires a lot of mana, or to switch the magic up with lots of practice and skill.”

  “Tesilim, I think we already discussed this; you might just not remember,” Lili added.

  “Really, when?”

  “Some time back, I think when you were first learning spells, remember the whole fireball turned to illusion thing?” Lili continued.

  Thinking about it for a second, Tesilim thought back and, after sifting through the memories, he recalled the conversation. They had talked about how a skilled mage could make an illusive fireball, then throw it and make it into a proper magical explosive fireball.

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  “Wait! So, it works with physical objects as well?”

  “Yes, you could, for example, make an illusion of a squirrel or paper, then tap into Conjuration Magic and more or less summon the illusion as a physical item,” Lili explained.

  “That’s freaking awesome! So, it is totally possible for someone to create a dragon!?” Tesilim asked, and Alyx responded, happy to explain that it could be done—just not by him.

  “High rankers could possibly create a dragon, and I guess maybe with your Chaos Mana you could, but that thing was A Rank, and a high quality A Rank.”

  “So, am I too weak?”

  “Exactly, too weak to actually create a proper dragon, and so far, your chaos magic has not truly boosted a spell that far past your rank. In fact, without that extra mana, your image would have failed, or at the very least shrunk and been of very low quality,” Alyx explained.

  “Which means, there is a chance the dragon was summoned exactly where my illusion was created,” Tesilim answered, more to himself than anything.

  “You got it right, especially since we have proof that you can summon higher rank creatures like the griffon. Of course, if the dragon had been real, as in we could touch it, but only a D Rank creature, it might be believed that you created it, but you felt it. That thing wasn’t D Rank.”

  “Hmm, okay, we definitely need to test this out more,” Tesilim said, finally agreeing with the gnome.

  “Yeah, but when you do, make sure it's very far away from me,” Arelion said, speaking up after listening to the trio's back and forth.

  “We will, sorry about this, I know you didn’t want to come,” Tesilim told the half-elf, feeling bad for convincing him to come, and deciding that in the end, it was his fault the dragon appeared and put Arelion in danger. However, the twin said nothing, and neither did Tesilim. He knew that everyone needed more time to calm down, and Tesilim hoped he hadn’t just caused them to lose a party member. So, instead, he turned to Drex via their link.

  “Hey, bud, you doing okay?”

  “Yes! I mean, I was scared, but not anymore!”

  “Good to hear. Let me know if you want to talk about it.”

  “I do.”

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “You think I will ever become a true dragon?” Drex asked a question that Tesilim was not expecting.

  “Maybe, we would have to ask Alyx, at least after we see if we can make you a proper soul,” Tesilim responded, trying to give his drake some hope.

  “Great! Looking forward to it!” Drex replied, ending the conversation.

  Arelion was pissed, both at himself for peeing in his pants and at Tesilim for putting him in such danger. The entire situation made him question whether it was worth traveling with the elf. After all, he and his sister were already in plenty of danger running away from a cult and a church, so the last thing they needed was a random dragon showing up and killing them.

  Of course, and it also went without saying that they couldn't just leave the party since Alyx was sticking with the elf. So far, the gnome had been very good to them, and it seemed like their only hope to actually get somewhere with their condition. However, Arelion questioned whether it was possible to convince the gnome to send them to the empire and have somebody else take a look at them. The problem with that course of events was that Arelion did not trust anyone else. He had come to begrudgingly trust the gnome, even if he hadn’t had much of a choice at first.

  It also helped that the gnome was a fellow D Ranker, which meant that they could, at the very least, escape if they wanted to, but that did not matter since the contract was in place.

  Also important was the protection the gnome provided. As the son of one of the literal rulers of the empire, there were not many people who could go against him, and thus the party.

  Finally, the last barrier to leaving the party was his sister. She saw the entire thing as a learning experience and just generally enjoyed the mess Tesilim created. From her point of view, it was a way to enjoy the world, and she had pointed out many times that they could truly run into a dragon or any other high-ranking creature at any point and die the same way. So even if he was pissed at the moment, he knew it was only a matter of time before it passed. And though he couldn't admit it out loud, he was also secretly interested in seeing something truly outrageous happen, like he had just then.

  Having a real face-to-face with death brought some things into perspective for Rose. It was something she had already been considering after her latest goodbye to Jasmine, and maybe ever since the two found each other again. The fact was, she hadn't been treating Arelion well. Not like he seemed to care, but it simply wasn't like her, and she only did it because he felt like a barrier between her and Jasmine. And in actuality, when she thought about it, he was. However, she didn't think that was reason enough to keep him at arm's length; after all, it wasn’t his fault.

  If anything, she should start looking into spending more time with the twin because, in a way, time spent with him was technically time spent with Jasmine, considering they shared their memories. So that’s when the latest and truest close-to-death experience came in. It made her look back and think about her treatment of Arelion and question whether he deserved that treatment. Not that she wanted anything special with the twin, but in the end, they both wanted the same thing, in their own ways. Which was weird when Rose thought about it, after all, when had she come to be so possessive of Jasmine?

  Back at the orphanage, they had been best friends and almost inseparable, but she did not remember feeling like she did now. Thinking about things, it was definitely something to do with their separation, both as they drifted apart, but mainly when she was forcibly taken from Rose. Furthermore, Rose suspected that, even though those blessed by Sol generally needed to protect, they sometimes developed an obsession with a specific thing. As such, it was totally possible that Rose truly saw Jasmine as hers to protect beyond anything else.

  Of course, Rose also couldn’t deny the other feelings she was beginning to develop for her friend. They were feelings she kept pushing down with fear that it might cause some sort of rift between them, even if it seemed like Jasmine might be feeling the same way. Honestly, Rose was annoyed as she walked back to the city in silence. The redhead missed when things were simpler, when she was young and only had to worry about pulling pranks and having fun with Jasmine.