Chapter 35: The Southern Range [2]
The fire was doing good work.
Sheep meat over open flame in the middle of a snowy mountain night turned out to be exactly what five cold, tired people needed, and Leon had somehow made it taste considerably better than the circumstances warranted.
Roselle took a bite and her expression shifted.
"This is actually really good." She looked at Leon with genuine surprise. "I didn’t know you could cook."
Leon scratched the back of his head, trying not to look too pleased with himself and failing completely. "This is nothing, sis. I can do way more than just cook."
Seris, who had been sitting with her usual composed expression, let the corner of her lips move upward.
"Is that so." She tilted her head. "In that case, I’ll have to mention your talents to Prince Augustus."
Leon froze.
"He does enjoy good meals," she continued, in exactly the same unbothered tone. "Perhaps he’ll bring you on as his personal chef."
Leon’s proud expression collapsed entirely. "Vice-President, please don’t."
Nicholas laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "This is what you get for bragging."
"Sometimes it’s better to just stay quiet," Leon muttered.
Roselle giggled. "Exactly. Stop acting like you’re good at everything, okay?"
"Hey, I don’t—"
Roselle stopped mid-smile.
Her head turned slowly toward the cliff above the campsite, and whatever had been in her expression a second ago was gone.
Nicholas straightened. "What is it?"
"Something’s up there." Her eyes stayed fixed on the darkness above. "Something large. And there’s a significant amount of mana coming from it."
Leon was on his feet immediately. "What?! Like a giant rock?"
Nicholas smacked the back of his head, not hard.
"She said something’s up there, not something fell up there."
"OW! I was just asking."
Roselle kept looking up. "No, it’s a Bea—"
"Arctic fox."
Everyone turned.
Alden was still sitting by the fire. Still eating his meat. He hadn’t moved or looked up.
Roselle stared at him.
"How can you just say something without actually seeing it? I sensed an enormous mana output from up there. It can’t be some arctic fox." Her eyes narrowed. "My mana sensitivity is not average."
Alden took another bite. "And my visual ability is not average."
"Not this again." Roselle’s expression tightened. "I already explained that Mana Eyes have limits. You can’t just say your vision reaches everywhere and leave it at that."
"Awoooooo!"
A howl came down from the cliffs, sharp and clear through the cold air.
Everyone looked up.
Leon blinked at the darkness. "...That was an Arctic fox?"
Roselle’s mouth was still slightly open. "But it’s completely dark. And we’re this far away. How did you—"
"This is my third time explaining this." Alden finished chewing and wiped his mouth. "My vision works in darkness. Clear distinction of objects more than a mile out." He looked sideways at Leon. "Can I have another piece?"
Leon handed it over automatically. "Y-yeah."
Roselle wasn’t done. "What about the mana surge? An Arctic fox shouldn’t be putting out that kind of output."
Alden accepted the meat. "Some of them release accumulated mana in the final stage of their life. The one you sensed was probably passing overhead when it happened. If your sensitivity is as strong as you say, you should’ve felt it moving through the air, not coming from a fixed point."
Roselle sat with that for a moment.
"...I see."
She sat back down.
Seris, who hadn’t contributed anything to the last several exchanges, glanced at Alden once.
He continued eating like none of it had happened.
They set up a watch rotation before turning in.
One person awake, four asleep, switch after a set interval. Nicholas took the first shift.
He sat with his sword across his knees and watched the treeline.
After a while, he became aware of someone else still awake.
He looked at Leon.
Leon looked back and shrugged. "Don’t ask me."
Nicholas followed their eyes to where Alden sat on one of the logs, upright, not sleeping, his gaze moving slowly across the dark landscape.
’Does he not trust any of us to actually watch properly?’ Nicholas said nothing. He turned back to the treeline.
Alden, for his part, wasn’t thinking about watch duty.
Something had just hit him.
’The Dragon.’
He’d extracted its soul in the underground chamber. He’d watched the Blueprint tick to ten percent. And then he’d been bleeding and carrying Claire and dealing with everything above ground, and he hadn’t opened the library since.
’Open Soul Library.’
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SOUL LIBRARY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Wolf — Fragments ×29
Giant Spider — Fragments ×16
Firefly — Fragments ×47
Owl — Fragments ×102
Dragon — Fragments ×1
Polar Bear — Fragments ×5
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He selected Dragon immediately. The Polar Bear could wait.
A-Rank by Soul Rendering’s classification. S-Rank by the standard system. He wanted to check the rewards the dragon had left behind.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SOUL LIBRARY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Species: Dragon
Rank: A
Fragment ×1
Blueprint Progress: 10%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Known Concepts
✔ Breath [Unlocked]
Unknown Concepts
??? [Requires 20%]
??? [Requires 40%]
??? [Requires 60%]
??? [Requires 75%]
Supreme Concepts
??? [Requires 90%]
??? [Requires 100%]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Alden stared at it.
’Seven.’
Most of his extracted beasts had three or four.
Seven Concepts in a Dragon Blueprint. Including four regular ones he hadn’t unlocked yet.
And then his eyes found the bottom section.
’Two Supreme Concepts?!’
He’d known the Giant Spider had one Supreme Concept at a hundred percent, but he doesn’t know what it is since he didn’t complete it. But a Dragon had two. Two separate Supreme Concepts sitting at ninety and one hundred percent completion respectively.
A grin started forming on his face that had nowhere to stop.
’What’s in there.’
His thoughts started moving fast with running possibilities. Breath was already a Concept, which meant basic dragon fire wasn’t even considered Supreme by the system’s standards. So what was? What could a creature that breathed fire an S-Rank classification consider its supreme ability?
What was above Breath?
’There are two of them. Just what could they be—?’
"ALDEN!"
He jolted so hard he nearly came off the log.
"Huh?!" He turned his head.
Seris was standing right beside him, close enough to reach.
"Seris?"