Chapter 467: Beast World
Damian stood in the snow-covered courtyard, his mind still catching up with what had just happened.
’Who the hell pulls up a dragon for a fucking prank?!’
He took a deep breath, forcing his scattered awareness to settle.
Then he focused on the teenage girl who was still laughing, taking in details his panic-scrambled mind had missed before.
Black hair falling past her shoulders.
A single obsidian scale beneath the corner of each eye, gleaming faintly in the starlight.
’So... she’s from the Beast World.’
His mind shifted, pulling up the knowledge the old beggar had shared.
****
Beyond the portals existed a very large world called the Beast World, larger than Earth by orders of magnitude.
It was said that many eons ago, the Beast World had been the center of the universe, home to legendary beasts and countless races that had dominated reality itself.
But something catastrophic had occurred, an event so devastating it eradicated almost all of them.
Some of those mythical beasts remained, but most of the ancient bloodlines had been lost to whatever calamity had reshaped that world.
The current Beast World was inhabited by their descendants, people who carried bloodlines originating from those beasts of old.
All of them bore features of the creatures they’d descended from, physical markers that proclaimed their heritage.
They could transform into humanoid mixtures or complete beasts depending on their bloodline purity and mastery.
Power among them was determined by two factors: how pure the bloodline remained after generations of dilution, and how old the individual had grown.
There were thousands of clans scattered across that world, but four reigned supreme above all others.
The Dragon clan, the Phoenix clan, the Tiger clan and the Tortoise clan.
Due to the bloodline of these four clans being very pure, it was rumoured that all of them possessed real legendary beasts within their clans.
But whether such creatures truly existed or not remained uncertain to those outside the clans themselves.
****
Damian looked at Lily again, at the ease with which she’d transformed, at the power that had radiated from her dragon form.
’She’s not just any member of the Dragon clan with a watered-down bloodline... She’s probably–’
"Are you from the Primordial Dragon clan?"
The question left his mouth before he could second-guess it.
Lily tilted her head, her expression shifting to something like confusion.
"Hm? My dear nephew~ I don’t know what you’re talking about." Her voice came out light and unconcerned. "My name is Lily Onyx."
’Nephew?’
Damian looked weirdly at the teenage girl calling him nephew, his mind automatically doing the math.
’She’s probably decades older than she looks, maybe centuries... Dragons age differently than humans.’
But something about the way she interacted with Agatha suggested otherwise.
’For her to call that woman mother, she can’t be centuries old. She’s practically a newborn by dragon standards.’
Agatha’s voice cut through his thoughts.
"When my husband was busy chasing power and climbing ranks, I couldn’t endure the loneliness of an empty house anymore. So I started travelling..."
She paused, looking at Lily with something like maternal affection.
"I picked her up from the Eternal Horizon Mountain Range."
Damian’s head snapped toward Agatha, his eyes going wide.
’Picked her up?’
His mind struggled with the casual statement.
’She just... picked up a pure-blooded dragon?’
His mouth opened to ask how that was even possible, what circumstances would lead to a Primordial Dragon clan member being "picked up" by a human.
But before he could form the words, Agatha continued.
"Speaking of that mountain range..."
She looked at Lily, her expression shifting to something more serious.
"Lily, I mainly called you to take us there... To Mount Aeon."
****
Wind rushed past Damian’s face as they flew through the night sky.
He stood on Lily’s back, her dragon form massive beneath his feet, scales warm despite the freezing air.
Agatha stood beside him, her walking stick somehow planted firmly on Lily’s back despite the movement, her black hair whipping in the wind.
Snow fell around them in lazy drifts, reflecting starlight.
Below, the landscape spread out in shadows and patches of white, forests and settlements and low-ranked portals marked by distant lights.
Damian’s mind drifted, replaying the sequence of events that had led to this moment.
’This day just doesn’t seem to end.’
He’d arrived at the Northern Military Training Center what felt like a lifetime ago.
Broke through to A- rank under the pressure of Senior General Icarus, completed the survival test and pushed himself to breakthrough in his body control.
Then the Mind Tower assessment, enduring pressure that had fractured bones and pushed his Will stat to heights he hadn’t thought possible.
Marshal Lysander Eckhart had appeared personally, tested him, tried to harm him and gave him a skill as compensation.
Felix Onyx had brought him to the family estate, gotten drunk, and told him things that should have remained buried.
His ’Grandma’ had shown up, kind but apparently mad enough to unleash a dragon on him as a prank.
And now he was riding what was probably a member of the Primordial Dragon clan toward one of the largest mountain ranges on Earth.
’And I still have no idea why.’
Agatha turned to look at him, her voice carrying clearly despite the wind.
"My dear grandson, How much do you know about the Eternal Horizon Mountain Range?"
Damian pulled his attention from the landscape below, meeting her eyes.
"I don’t know much beyond what everyone’s taught."
He paused, searching his memory for what little he’d heard.
"It’s the mountain range that divides the entire north horizontally. It runs east to west across the whole region, separating the safer areas from the worst portal concentrations."
Agatha shook her head slowly, something like sadness crossing her face.
"So no one in the younger generation is taught about this anymore." Her voice came out quiet, almost lost in the wind. "How tragic... that we’ve let the truth fade into obscurity just because it’s inconvenient to remember."
She turned to look at him directly.
"You do know how portals work, correct? The basic mechanics of rank limitations and dimensional barriers?"
Damian nodded.
"When the first portal opened in our world, it was C rank."
Agatha’s voice took on the tone of someone explaining something that should have been common knowledge.
"Meaning the enemies who could enter our world were limited to C rank maximum... This is a kind of natural protection that exists for every world when it first awakens, to give the inhabitants a chance at survival."
The wind picked up, carrying snow across Lily’s back.
"Since the strongest enemies were only C rank, they weren’t able to slaughter us completely at the start. Humans had time to adapt, to awaken their own powers, to learn how to fight back."
Her voice became harder.
"Over the next few months, continents merged into a supercontinent as portals kept opening and reality kept restructuring. The ranks of the portals increased as well, letting stronger enemies through. And humans... started getting pushed back more and more."
Damian kept on listening without interrupting.
"In the northern region, where most of the high-ranked portals concentrated, people paid the price in blood."
Agatha’s voice became grim.
"There was no corner left where monsters weren’t slaughtering humans daily. Villages wiped out overnight, cities falling despite every defense... The death count climbed so high that eventually people stopped trying to count."
She paused, looking out at the darkness ahead.
"The strongest of humanity gathered and noticed the anomaly... The strongest portals were forming only in the north, concentrating in one region while the others remained relatively safe."
Her voice dropped.
"So... they decided that the north was a lost cause and made plans to fortify the borders of the western, central, and eastern regions instead."