Chapter 26: Core Bearer [1]
The dragon thrashed through the air. Twisting, rolling, and slamming its back against stone columns. Anything to get Alden off.
He held on.
Threads of webbing bound him tight to the scales. No matter how violently the beast moved, no matter how many times it scraped against the ceiling or drove itself into the walls, the thread didn’t snap and he didn’t let go.
His left leg had caught the cavern wall at one point. The pain hit immediately and he filed it somewhere he could deal with later and kept his palm pressed flat against the scales.
Black smoke kept flowing.
’Come on. Just keep going.’
Pyrion was everywhere. Every time the dragon turned to deal with the weight on its back, the white wolf appeared from another angle — flaming claws across the wounded eye, a strike to the jaw, a hit to the same spot over and over because Prediction kept telling it exactly where the next attack was coming from a half-second before it arrived.
The dragon couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t catch it. Couldn’t focus on anything else.
It slammed into a stone pillar.
BOOOOM.
Rock exploded everywhere. Pyrion kicked off the pillar and was back on the dragon’s neck before the dust cleared. Alden took a chunk of ceiling on his shoulder and kept his hand exactly where it was.
Blood from somewhere above his eye reached his cheek and kept going.
’I’m not letting go.’
The dragon hit the ceiling next. Dragged its own back across jagged stone trying to crush him. The webbing strained and held.
’I’m not letting go.’
Gradually the thrashing lost some of its force. Each wingbeat a little weaker. Each collision carrying a little less.
The dragon was fading.
’It’s working. Its soul is weakening. Just a few more seconds—’
The dragon stopped.
Hung in the air.
Then its neck twisted further than Alden expected, further than it should have been able to, and he realized too late what was happening.
Its jaws opened. Mana gathered in its throat in a tight sphere, compressed and glowing.
Alden’s eyes went wide.
’When did it—?’
From below, Leon’s face went pale. "That thing still has mana?! How strong and smart IS it?!"
Legion stared upward. "How stubborn can one monster be—"
The sphere released.
Crimson fire came out in a torrent, straight at Alden, no distance between them, no room to dodge, no time for Thread to do anything useful.
He kept his palm against the scales.
’Just a little longer—’ He shut his eyes.
The heat hit him, but pain didn’t.
He opened his eyes and saw white fur.
Pyrion had jumped in front of him, body blazing white-orange, standing between Alden and the dragon’s breath attack with its feet planted.
The fire hit the wolf and bent.
It curved like it had struck a wall of mirrors, and poured it straight back the way it had come.
BOOOOOOM!
The dragon’s own fire hit its own face.
The roar that came out of it cracked the ceiling. Its wings folded and body tilted. The enormous frame that had been fighting all four of them for this entire brutal stretch of tunnel combat went sideways and fell.
BOOOOOOM.
The chamber floor took the impact and sent cracks running in every direction. Dust billowed outward in a wave.
Alden grabbed Pyrion around the neck and jumped clear, rolling across the ground together, the wolf’s flaming tail leaving a brief burning trail across the stone.
They came to a stop.
The dragon’s body didn’t move.
Alden lay there next to Pyrion and stared at the ceiling and breathed.
’Glow,’ he thought, as the adrenaline started finding somewhere to go. ’It came from the Firefly Blueprint. Not just light, but reflective properties. Fire-resistant and redirects fire attacks back at the source.’
He’d chosen it mostly because the compatibility was good. He was very glad he had.
[DING!]
[Soul Successfully Extracted!]
[Beast: Dragon — Rank A]
[Obtained: Dragon Soul Fragment ×1]
[Dragon Blueprint: 0% → 10%]
He frowned at the screen.
’Rank A?’ Wait is it because this is different?’ A smile crossed his face.
The world’s system and Soul Rendering used different scales. To everyone else, that was an S-Rank monster. To Soul Rendering, which apparently had its own classification entirely separate from the world’s standard, it ranked out at A.
Which meant the ceiling Soul Rendering was working toward was higher than he’d thought.
He looked over at Seris.
"Seris."
She looked at him.
"What rank did your system show the dragon as?"
"S. Why?"
"Nothing." He smiled. "Just checking."
’Just as I thought.’
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
High-Rank Soul Assimilated
Exceptional growth achieved.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+5,500 EXP
Level Up! ×4
Level: 15 → 19
EXP: 14,540 / 14,600
Combat Power: 39 → 70
Rank: F → D+
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Alden stared at the notification.
’...Four levels?!’
The exhaustion that had been sitting on every part of him since the wall impact simply... lifted. Not completely, not the injuries, but the bone-deep tired weight of running on empty was gone. His body felt like something had been refilled.
’Four levels from one dragon.’
Something warm pressed against his side.
Pyrion had walked over and was nudging him with its head, tail swaying, making a sound somewhere between a rumble and a greeting.
Alden looked at it.
Then he crouched down and scratched behind its ears, right where the flames flickered at the tips.
"You did good," he said.
Pyrion leaned into his hand.
"I couldn’t have held on without you."
The tail wagged harder, white flames danced at the end of it, swaying back and forth.
Footsteps crossed the ruined chamber.
Leon stopped in front of Alden and held out his hand.
"...You actually did it. I owe you one."
Alden looked at it for a second. Then grabbed it.
Leon pulled him upright. "I genuinely didn’t think you’d survive that," he said, and there was nothing performative about it. "Let alone win."
Alden dusted debris off his shoulder. "...Thanks."
Legion was looking at the dragon’s enormous body lying across the chamber floor.
"That thing isn’t getting back up. Right?" He pointed at it carefully. "We’re sure?"
Alden looked over his shoulder.
The dragon hadn’t moved. Its remaining eye was closed.
"It’s gone forever."
"Good." Legion let out a long breath and sat down on a piece of rubble. "Because I have nothing left."
Seris hadn’t moved from where she’d been standing. Her crimson eyes shifted from the dragon to the far end of the chamber, where the golden sphere was still turning slowly in the air, its light casting everything around it in warm orange.
The figure inside it hadn’t moved the whole fight.
"Shall we stop wasting time," she said, resting the scythe on her shoulder, "and find out who started all of this?"
Leon’s jaw set.
"I’ve been wanting to know that since we got down here."
The four of them crossed the chamber together.
The golden mana of the sphere churned around the unconscious figure, shifting in slow spirals, the Helion Core pulsing somewhere at the center of it.
Seris stepped forward.
"Stand back."
She raised the scythe and swung once.
SHRRRK.
The blade cut through the outer shell of the sphere and cracks spread immediately, golden light fracturing through every gap before the whole thing broke apart in a shower of glowing fragments.
The figure inside dropped and hit the ground.
Nobody spoke.
Leon’s voice came out very quiet. "...What?"
Legion’s pupils had gone small. "...No way."
Even Seris was looking at the person on the ground with an expression that hadn’t existed on her face at any point in this chamber until right now.
"...Impossible."
Alden looked at the face. His mind went blank. His breathing stopped.
’Why,’ he thought, staring at someone he recognized, ’are you here?’