Jinryong (4)
Rumble…
A thick cloud of dust rose into the air. It marked the spot where the massive dragon had fallen.
Standing before the dust cloud, Dalen spat out the blood pooling in his mouth.
Sizzle—
The air distorted around the crimson liquid, reminiscent of molten metal dripping onto the ground.
“This isn’t a human body anymore.”
He had long since shed the limitations of a normal human form, but now he was something beyond even that.
As he pondered this strange sensation, something shot through the dust cloud with incredible speed.
Crack!
Dozens of blue crystals streaked through the air, trailing icy coldness like a comet’s tail.
Dalen calmly raised his sword. The blade, wreathed in dark red flames, sliced through the air, intercepting the crystals’ path.
Boom!
The clash of heat and cold resulted in an explosion, clearing the dust cloud in an instant.
Whoosh!
Dalen, engulfed in flames, charged through the aftermath of the explosion, colliding with the dragon.
Crash!
A light sword strike. A heavy blaze.
The dragon’s battered body was struck again, scales and muscles tearing from the clash of mystical forces.
The dragon, Qinglin, narrowed its eyes, trying to fend off the attack with its two pairs of wings.
[――――!]
From its bloodied maw, a dragon’s incantation spilled forth, and a blue-gray light flickered in its eyes.
One of the many powers etched into the blood of a true dragon, a curse that could freeze anything it gazed upon.
The air froze. The rapid freezing left a white trail in the sky, like an explosion of vapor.
This wasn’t magic-induced cold.
“A curse.”
A power that drew a piece of a frozen hell into reality, using the alien will of a transcendent being.
Faced with a curse that could freeze everything in its sight, Dalen didn’t hesitate.
Boom!
Black flames erupted from beneath his feet. His body, cloaked in the curse, broke the sound barrier.
In an instant, he swept past the dragon’s massive form, his holy sword painting a great arc with its dark red flames.
Thud. Thud!
The dragon’s two wings, caught in the arc’s path, fell to the ground simultaneously, and the wingless dragon let out a belated, fierce scream.
[How can you ignore the curse! How can you be unaffected by the cold of hell!]
Its eyes flashed blue again, and the curse in its gaze froze the air once more.
With reckless use of its power, the breath gathered in its maw was unleashed alongside the curse.
Roar!
Dalen responded simply.
He cleaved the breath with his flaming sword, ignoring the curse that battered his body.
[Ugh. Gah. Ugh…]
The demon, having devoured the hellish curse twice, patted its bloated belly in satisfaction.
The wounded and aged dragon’s eyes widened in shock.
[How can you…!]
[Don’t you know me?]
[…Of course I do. I heard you fell in Enaxagus’s cauldron, but I didn’t expect this. The curse you cast is the root of all this, how could I forget that day…]
The dragon, roaring in anger, suddenly flinched and retreated.
An instinctive movement. A tingling sensation crept up its neck.
[Ugh! Gah…]
“Where do you think you’re looking?”
Dalen grinned. Along the blade of his holy sword, pale blue blood, chilled to the extreme, trickled down.
The dragon retreated hastily, but it was no more than a four-legged lizard now.
Its damaged heart throbbed painfully with every breath, making even spatial teleportation impossible.
With one wing from each pair severed, flying away was out of the question.
[You’ll regret this! Do you think you can handle the immortal dragon’s blood with a mortal body!]
Qinglin shouted with a twisted face. Dalen raised an eyebrow, lowering his sword slightly as he asked.
“That’s my problem. If I spare you, will you help me?”
[…A dragon knows its body best.]
“Heh.”
A dragon begging for its life. How amusing. Dalen chuckled and shook his head.
“After experiencing mortal life, you’ve become no different from a human.”
[What do you mean…!]
“Enough. I’ll ask someone else for a solution.”
Whoosh.
The blazing flames condensed, layering over the holy sword with a dark red blade.
Realizing his intent, Qinglin hastily gathered its breath, but Dalen’s form had already vanished.
Boom!
A leap into the sky, flames soaring high.
The dragon’s breath engulfed the empty space where Dalen had been.
Qinglin’s gaze, spewing breath into the void, finally caught sight of the warrior who had circled to its side.
[――!]
As it desperately tried to muster a dragon’s incantation, the dark red sword descended vertically.
Crack—
It wasn’t the sound of breaking.
The result of the clash between the tattered blue scales and the dark red blade was a massive explosion.
A flash of light, visible even from the valley’s entrance where a ship was docked, followed by a tremendous storm sweeping through the area.
Thud.
The blue dragon’s head fell to the ground.
Dalen extracted Qinglin’s heart and stored it in a subspace.
Unlike the heart of a lesser dragon, which was the sole crystallization of its mystique, a true dragon’s entire body was a product of mystery.
However, no matter how greedy he was, there wasn’t enough space in Arvor’s subspace to fit a hundred-meter-long body.
Moreover, processing and handling such a massive corpse was a hassle for an individual like him.
“I’ll hand it over to the commander and clear a debt.”
Rather than a giant lizard’s corpse he couldn’t fully utilize, clearing a debt with someone like the leader of the Holy Knights was a much better deal.
And since the heart was the core organ where the dragon’s mysteries converged and circulated, he had secured the most valuable part.
[Whoa! What’s this!]
The demon exclaimed in surprise at the large heart that had appeared in its domain.
Dalen chuckled softly, flicking the blood off his sword.
In truth, there wasn’t a clear way for a mortal to properly use a true dragon’s heart, even in his mind.
Yet he had taken the heart because he knew his own condition better than anyone, as Qinglin had mentioned.
He was precariously perched on the boundary of transcendence, but the instability created by being only at the tip of that boundary wasn’t something easily resolved.
[Ugh. It’s cold. It’s not even this cold beyond the Frost Plateau…]
Ignoring the demon’s grumbling about the cold emanating from Qinglin’s heart, Dalen returned to the place where he had first confronted Qinglin.
It wasn’t long before he saw two people.
An old wizard with a scruffy gray-brown beard, and a young man kneeling beside him, tears streaming down his face.
Dalen walked over and stopped beside the boy and the old man. The old man sat quietly, eyes closed, leaning against a rock.
His body was growing cold, unmoving.
He looked as if he had just died.
Dalen gazed at the face for a moment before crouching down. He planted his holy sword roughly into the ground and set down the axe he had picked up beside it.
He spoke.
“Is he dead?”
”…Not yet, tsk. Such impudence.”
“Seems like he’s close to it. His tongue’s gotten sharp.”
The old man struggled to lift the corners of his mouth. He placed a trembling hand on his disciple’s golden hair.
“I’ve passed on my domain’s power to this child. With only one successor, it might not be much of a tower, but I’m honored to be the founder of a spell.”
”…”
“Take good care of this warrior, Tommy. He’s someone who has strived for eternity to save the continent.”
The boy remained silent. His nodding head caused tears to fall from his eyelashes.
Watching this, Dalen scratched the edge of his eyebrow. Felber, chuckling softly, turned his head toward him.
“It’s time to say goodbye. Let me tell you one last thing.”
“What is it?”
“A young one from the dragon’s lair will follow you. It might have been your nemesis once, and I can’t ask you to forget that grudge. But I ask you, take in the young one.”
The hand scratching his eyebrow paused. Felber nodded slightly.
“Yes. I know it’s a difficult task. But it’s my last request. That child will play a crucial role in your victory in this battle.”
Hoo.
The old man exhaled slowly. His body grew colder, the warmth of his breath lukewarm.
The increasingly labored breathing signaled the imminent end of a life.
Felber, taking short, interrupted breaths, continued with his remaining words.
“Heh heh. Truth be told, I’ve got a lot of questions. How did you endure all those endless years? How do you stand here now, unbroken? It’s been an honor to know you at the end of my life. I’ll be watching your exploits among the stars, Dalen.”
The old man closed his eyes, and his magical aura slowly faded away.
The gentle golden glow vanished, and even his breath grew faint.
In front of him, Dalen scratched his chin and muttered, “I’m afraid that’s a bit of a problem.”
”…What?”
The question came not from the old man, who had lost consciousness, but from his tear-streaked apprentice.
Dalen chuckled softly and lifted his head.
His slit-like eyes gazed skyward, seeing far beyond the ordinary.
The sunlight poured down, and beyond it, stars shimmered. Two streams of the Milky Way.
He had long known that the stars of this land were not the same as the gas giants of his distant home.
They weren’t mere lifeless objects bound by gravity and other unknown physical laws, but rather, crystallizations of some alien rules imbued with the gaze of gods.
Yet, as always, the dragon’s eyes that looked upon those stars recalled the blue star of his homeland, somewhere out there in the universe.
It was both a memory and a regret, a longing and a weariness.
Days spent sacrificing much for his own comfort. A society where such things were taken for granted, even encouraged. People who didn’t care for one another. Groups that proclaimed their own interests as justice.
Born as just one among billions, he couldn’t help but bow to those countless voices.
He chose himself over others. He preferred the comfort of solitude over relationships that demanded sacrifice.
Or so he thought.
Until he opened his eyes on this continent.
‘A relationship where I can sacrifice myself…’
Once, he thought it was loneliness.
Just a feeling born from the solitude of a stranger in a foreign land.
Perhaps, holding power he had never possessed in life, he momentarily forgot that he was just a human struggling to take care of himself.
”…”
But standing before the old man who had burned the last of his life for him, Dalen felt he might finally understand a bit of the answer to his long-standing question.
Someone he had known for only a few months, essentially a stranger.
Yet, a relationship of self-sacrifice he couldn’t find in the thirty years of the pot-bellied man’s life.
In a world made of zeros and ones, perhaps the reason he couldn’t prevent the end wasn’t just a lack of in-game purchases.
The bigger reason was that he had no reason to protect the world on the screen.
So where could he find that reason?
In himself? Or in someone else?
He chuckled.
Dalen let out a dry laugh. It was a question that had dragged on unnecessarily.
He lowered his gaze to the old man. A body losing its vitality. Tightly shut eyelids.
Before the old man, who could no longer see or hear, Dalen spoke clearly, infusing his words with magic so they might reach the last remnants of the old man’s senses.
“You asked me for a favor first, so I’ll ask one of you, old man. Please endure just a little longer.”
Fwoosh.
Flames ignited in his palm.
Dark crimson fire. At its core was a viscous mass.
Since acquiring the complete dragon’s blood as a skill, countless powers contained within the dragon’s blood had been imprinted in his mind.
It was his first A-rank skill, and even with his current intelligence, there were many parts he couldn’t fully decipher.
Among the few powers he had painstakingly understood, Dalen found something about followers.
‘A dragon bestows a portion of its power to those who follow it.’
The followers of the Azure Scales, whom he had fought dozens, if not hundreds of times beyond the monitor, and had crossed swords with just recently.
The mark engraved upon them not only signified their allegiance but also served as proof that the true dragon had bestowed a part of its power and immortality upon them.
To bear the power of a transcendent being, one had to be of a certain level to receive the mark of a follower.
Felber had more than enough capability. If a grand mage who had achieved a great domain couldn’t, then who could?
So, only one thing remained.
His own will.
As consciousness faded, leaving only the deep-seated true intentions of the unconscious.
Would the heart of the elder mage, standing at the brink of life, willingly accept a life belonging to someone else?
Personal reasons didn’t matter. What was needed now was simply a yes or no.
Feeling a part of the power he had accumulated over time slipping away from the depths of his mind, Dalen placed his hand, imbued with that power, on the old man’s head.
Fwoosh…
The flames seeped into the old man as if they had been waiting.
And for a while, an anxious silence followed.
How long did the tear-streaked apprentice gaze at his master’s seemingly lifeless face?
Fwoosh!
Suddenly, color returned to the old man’s forehead, and a dark crimson mark blazed vividly.