Demonic Dragon: Harem System

The movement beneath the circular plate continued for three more cycles, each stronger than the last. The metal rose only a few centimeters, but the pressure required to move it made the locks vibrate against the floor and shook dust loose from the beams. Cassandra moved the soldiers away from the opening and ordered two of them to reinforce the main entrance, while Mercedes extended ice through the cracks in the ceiling to prevent the looser blocks from collapsing. Monica spread the observatory blueprint across a table and began comparing the recorded structure with the exact position of the vibrations, marking everything that did not match the imperial design.

"We are not opening this from above," she said, keeping her eyes on the map. "If there is a pressurized chamber below, lifting the cover may turn this room into the exit that thing is looking for."

Strax kept his palm against the metal. There was something large beneath them, but it was not the only presence. Between one movement and the next, he sensed dozens of smaller impulses scattered through the underground, like legs running through narrow tunnels or bodies pressing against stone walls. Most were distant, but some signals were slowly approaching the foundation.

"She is right. This is not one creature trying to get out. There is movement in several directions."

Frieren knelt beside the engraved sentence and removed the remaining dust with a light current of air. Beneath the words appeared a sequence of ancient runes, nearly erased, connected to the imperial symbol by thin lines. After examining them for several seconds, she concluded that it was not merely a lock, but a measuring seal created to record pressure, temperature, and mana density beneath the tower.

Monica asked whether the mechanism still worked, but Frieren shook her head.

"It no longer works, but it did not wear down naturally. It was broken from the inside out."

The answer made Cassandra tighten her grip on the sword and reposition her feet. The plate was not remaining closed because it could still contain something. It stayed in place only because whatever was below had not yet applied enough force to remove it.

Monica pointed toward the tower stairs and explained that the outpost should have a records room on the second level. Before investigating the underground, she wanted to know what the former observers had written. Cassandra would remain with half the group in the main room, and if the plate rose farther than the width of two fingers, everyone was to retreat and collapse the entrance without attempting to fight whatever emerged.

Strax, Frieren, Mercedes, and four soldiers followed Monica to the second level, where they found a circular room filled with shelves, maps, and boxes covered in dust. The main window offered an extensive view of the dry plain and, far beyond it, the first dunes of the desert. Monica searched for the shift logs while Frieren took the older volumes. The final book ended thirty-seven years earlier. The pages were stained but still readable. The first reports spoke of winds, sandstorms, and caravans. Then they began mentioning underground vibrations, weekly at first, later daily, until they became almost constant during the final months.

"They called it the Deep Breathing," Monica said, pulling the book toward the center of the table.

Frieren approached with another volume open and showed that the term had appeared years earlier. At first, the observers believed it was geological activity, but they noticed the vibrations grew stronger whenever large groups of animals approached.

Mercedes read the indicated line and understood the implication.

"As though something sensed food on the surface."

The final entries were worse. The commander reported disappearances, a sudden reduction in wildlife, and dark plates growing inside the underground reservoir. In one hastily written note, he described a shapeless mass that absorbed animal remains and retreated from intense cold.

Between the pages, Frieren found a personal message requesting the immediate evacuation of the outpost. The capital had denied the request because there was no evidence of a threat on the surface. On the back was an imperial order determining that the observatory remain active, but that all records concerning the underground be classified. Three weeks later, the entries ended.

Strax concluded that someone had removed the team, but Monica considered a less comfortable possibility.

"Or they were prevented from continuing to write."

A blow traveled through the tower and knocked several books from the shelves. Cassandra shouted from the lower floor that the plate had risen again. Strax descended first and found the soldiers retreating in a semicircle. A narrow gap had appeared around the cover, releasing hot air filled with dark dust. Filaments similar to the parasite removed from the animal crawled along the edge, searching for any living surface.

Frieren cast a barrier around the plate, but the filaments touched the magic, withdrew for an instant, and began spreading branches across the spell like roots searching for a weak point. The elf compressed the barrier before they could complete the process and crushed the organisms against the metal.

"They react to mana, not only to matter."

Monica consulted the blueprint again and asked whether there was another access point to the underground. Mercedes remembered the mention of the reservoir. If the mass had appeared there decades earlier, there was probably some connection to the lower chamber.

The storage room was in the eastern wing. Inside were empty barrels, broken shelves, and a stone tank covered by a smaller lid. A black line descended along the wall and disappeared behind the reservoir. Strax removed the cover and found a waterless shaft, deep enough to extend beyond the foundation, with iron steps coated in the same organic material as the shell.

"This passage is not on the blueprint," Monica observed. "Either it was built later or hidden from the beginning."

Strax descended first. The shaft ended about twenty meters below, in a corridor lined with stones far older than the observatory. Imperial markings existed only at the entrance. The rest belonged to another age. After confirming the path was clear, he called the others. Mercedes reinforced the damaged steps with ice, and the group descended, leaving soldiers to protect the exit.

The underground air was hot and heavy. Dark veins crossed the walls in every direction. They looked like burned roots, but they slowly contracted, carrying a thick substance toward some deeper point. Frieren placed the measuring crystal against one of the veins, and the dark light that appeared inside nearly shattered the surface of the instrument.

"It is a network. We are not inside a den, but something resembling a circulatory system."

When Monica asked how large it was, the elf answered that it extended far beyond the observatory and probably continued for kilometers beneath the region.

The corridor ended in a circular chamber. A black mass occupied the center, trapped between ancient pillars and stone tubes leading downward. It slowly expanded, drawing air and mana through the cracks, then contracted and pushed energy into the veins along the walls. It had no eyes, mouth, or limbs. It resembled a gigantic organ assembled from plates, muscles, and tissues from several species.

Around it were smaller structures attached to the floor. Some were empty, opened like broken cocoons. Others remained closed and pulsed at the same rhythm. Cassandra counted twenty before realizing part of the chamber continued behind the pillars.

"So this is where they are formed," Cassandra said, keeping the sword close to her body.

Strax examined the open cocoons and noticed their size matched the creature they had faced the day before.

"Not all of them. This is only one growth point."

Monica approached the base of the pillars and found imperial inscriptions composed of numbers, dates, and designations. Frieren located artificial channels connecting the reservoir to the central mass. Inside them were petrified remains of flesh, bones, and mana crystals.

That made it clear the former people responsible for the place had not merely observed the phenomenon. At some point, they had deliberately fed it.

"It was not only an observatory," Frieren concluded. "They turned this place into a research facility."

The central mass contracted more forcefully. Every cocoon responded, and one of them tore open from top to bottom. A pale arm emerged through the opening, followed by a head without eyes and an incomplete body covered in thin plates. The creature fell to the ground, supported itself on four limbs, and turned its smooth face toward them.

No one attacked.

Monica maintained the expedition’s order while Frieren prepared a barrier, Mercedes spread ice across the floor, and Cassandra repositioned the soldiers behind Strax.

The creature touched the floor and then the wall, as though recognizing its surroundings. When it noticed their presence, the plates along its neck began to reorganize. Small cavities opened where eyes should have been, and transparent membranes grew over them. The creature observed Strax, then Mercedes, Frieren, and the soldiers.

It showed no immediate aggression.

It was building the senses it needed.

"It was born without a final form," Frieren said quietly. "Every part of its body can still be modified according to the environment."

A soldier’s mana fluctuated from nervousness. The creature turned immediately, compressed its body against the ground, and advanced with a speed it had not possessed seconds earlier. Cassandra intercepted the attack with her shield and deflected its head to the side while Mercedes froze the hind legs.

The ice held for an instant.

The plates opened, released heat, and shattered the frozen layer before it attacked again. Strax seized it by the neck and threw it against one of the pillars without using enough force to kill it. The creature struck the stone, cracked two plates, and fell, but before it had even risen, it was already thickening the muscles in its neck and widening the supports of its legs.

"It is copying the direction of the force," Cassandra warned.

Monica responded immediately, ordering everyone to change the type of impact and avoid repeating attacks. Frieren cast a lateral wave of gravity, Mercedes froze only the air around the joints, and Cassandra struck the tendons with the flat of her sword. The soldiers alternated between spears, chains, and low-powered shots.

No strike came from the same angle or produced the same result.

The creature began to hesitate, unable to reorganize its body quickly enough to respond to different threats.

Strax used the opening and pressed his hand against its chest. Instead of fire or ice, he released a raw wave of draconic energy into the organism. The creature convulsed, the plates opened in several directions, and the adaptation lost coherence. Frieren enclosed the body in a containment matrix that isolated mana, heat, and movement.

It remained alive inside the seal, struggling and attempting to produce new structures, but it could no longer complete the changes.

Monica waited until Frieren confirmed the stability before asking whether they could take the specimen. The elf answered that they could, but only for a few hours, since the seal would require constant maintenance. Monica ordered them to collect samples and leave before the other cocoons opened.

The central mass accelerated at the same instant.

The sealed structures began pulsing out of synchronization, some expanding far too quickly. A deep sound traveled through the tunnels, not like a roar, but like a response transmitted across the entire underground network.

Strax felt the movement spread far beyond the chamber.

"It is warning the others."

Monica ordered the retreat. Frieren isolated a sample from the core, Cassandra ordered the soldiers to carry the sealed creature, and Mercedes froze the artificial channels to slow the flow. As they returned through the corridor, the black veins contracted around them, cracking the stone and attempting to close the passage.

They reached the shaft as part of the chamber collapsed. Everyone climbed quickly, and Strax was the last to leave the reservoir. As soon as he reached the storage room, a violent pressure struck the circular plate in the main hall. The metal was thrown into the ceiling, broke through wood and stone, and landed outside.

A column of hot air and black dust exploded through the hole, followed by dozens of filaments spreading across the floor in search of living bodies. Mercedes froze the eastern wing, Frieren raised a barrier, and Strax released White Fire over the filaments. They burned immediately, but the flash revealed something worse inside the opening.

Dozens of newly formed eyes watched from underground, all different sizes and connected to the same dark mass.

Monica confirmed that it was not a single organism and ordered everyone to abandon the structure. The group descended the elevation while the observatory cracked over its foundation, until the tower tilted and stopped, held in place by Mercedes’s ice.

Frieren removed the map found in the records room. The underground heat had revealed hidden markings on the parchment: points forming a large circle around the desert.

The observatory was only one of them.

There were eleven more, all connected by lines converging toward an area at the center of the dunes.

Monica analyzed the positions and noticed one point stood near the Western Coast, exactly where the second white creature had been found. Another was almost directly over the route of one of the largest migrations recorded in recent months.

Strax looked at the map and then at the horizon, understanding they were not searching for an isolated nest.

They were facing an entire incubation network built around something buried in the heart of the desert.

Behind them, the mass beneath the observatory began breathing again. This time, other pulses answered in the distance, one after another, traveling through the ground in every direction. Monica counted the vibrations while the map trembled between her fingers.

There were eleven responses, one for every point marked around the dunes.

All eleven outposts had awakened at the same time.