Chapter 316: The Stairway of Progress

Waves of magic shimmered along Sieg's body, the power flowing seamlessly through the circuits etched into the Living Dragon Armor as though they had grown from his very flesh.

Unlike artificial mana circuits, which required deliberate mental control, these channels responded purely to instinct. For the first time, Sieg experienced what it meant to be whole.

Joy. Awe. A quiet, reverent wonder. A blend of emotions welled within him, but if he had to choose a single word to sum it up, it would be exhilaration.

He exhaled slowly, steadying the surging elation in his heart. The experience forged from a long life kept his joy from overflowing.

Yet even so, the Seed of Eden felt cramped. It was still rather limited in space relative to Sieg's current size—and with alchemical apparatuses filling most of it, there was little room remaining for Sieg's full draconic form. He had to curl awkwardly in a corner, his massive wings and limbs awkwardly tucked in.

Gradually, his body began to shrink. His armor shrank with it, seamlessly retracting its extruded growths back into its core structure. By the time Sieg returned to human shape, the armor had returned to skeletal form, now hidden once more beneath his clothing.

"All higher-order lifeforms have access to pocket dimensions of their own, huh," Wang Yu observed. He watched as the mismatched, oversized protrusions of the armor vanished effortlessly back into Sieg's frame.

"Did it try to seize control?" Avia adjusted the Perfect Fractal lens over her right eye, peering at the armor now lying dormant beneath Sieg's shirt.

"Based on previous tests, this armor always attempted to usurp the wearer once it regained a fraction of its power. But with you, Professor... it appears compliant."

"Not at all," Sieg replied, touching his chest thoughtfully. "It has a will, however simple—and what I felt from it was satisfaction, even submission. I suspect we may have misunderstood its nature."

He paused. His expression grew contemplative.

"I see..." Avia murmured, realization dawning. "Then the armor's creator must've set the required threshold far higher than we assumed."

In hindsight, she may have misjudged it.

The armor didn't attempt to control its wearer in order to obtain a body for itself. No—it rebelled when the bearer was too weak, as though to say, "You're not worthy. Let me handle this myself."

But when worn by a true dragon like Sieg, the Living Dragon Armor had not only submitted, but even seemed genuinely pleased.

"With this transformation," Sieg continued, "my connection to mana has evolved. My command of it is far superior to before. I believe it's time to revisit some of my half-formed hypotheses.

"About hypermagic, in particular... If I can articulate it in terms of a coherent framework, it could accelerate the Council of the Arcane's experimental progress by leaps and bounds."

He spoke of what he'd begun to theorize in the library, drawing from its vast collection and his evolving grasp of magic. There was a potential link between hypermagic and draconic magic, one that would have far-reaching implications if confirmed.

"It's a compelling hypothesis." Avia nodded. "But Professor, are you truly prepared to spread draconic magic more widely? The dragons consider it a sacred and guarded legacy, don't they?"

Sieg smiled faintly. "Progress always builds upon the stairway laid by what came before. Without a solid foundation, we'll never reach the heights above. In my view, hypermagic is the future of all spellcraft. As for draconic magic—let it become one more step upon that ascent."

To Sieg, knowledge was never something to hoard. If sharing it would help others climb farther, reach higher, then he would never hesitate.

Besides, did the dragons of today even have the time or strength to concern themselves with such things?

Meanwhile, back in the undead plane, a barren, lifeless world, dimly lit by a sunless halo of smoldering flame...

Within this bleak domain, the undead clashed in endless, senseless conflict. Only when new souls from the material plane emerged did this realm stir with any semblance of vitality.

Far from the basin where Old Bones resided, in a stretch of flat plains, a rare commotion stirred—a phenomenon unseen for ages.

A spatial rift had opened. From within, black-robed figures emerged one after another. Yet no sooner had they begun to exit than did something within the portal's threshold shred them to pieces. Flesh, bone, and viscera splattered the ground in steaming ruin.

About every ten seconds or so, a new figure would attempt the crossing—only to be minced into a pulpy, twitching mass and dumped unceremoniously into an ever-growing mound of carnage.

Above this mountain of flesh wavered a host of flickering spirits. In the undead plane, corpses and carcasses swiftly fell under the realm's corrupting influence. Those with intact remains might reanimate as skeletons or zombies. Those reduced to pulp, however, became only the weakest of specters.

If there were enough such deaths, and if the remains were sufficiently dense, it might even birth a rare horror: a Bloodspawn Wriggler.

But such a transformation would not come to pass. The stench of fresh blood had already attracted something worse. An Abomination, a lumbering, ever-hungry monster, had found its way to the steaming flesh.

With gurgling delight, the Abomination drove its cleaver deep into the hill of flesh, scooping up rotting gore into its slavering maw. It devoured the corpses with savage ecstasy, growing larger and more bloated with each bite.

A rusted iron hook lashed out, somehow catching one of the newly-formed ghosts by the skull. With a shriek, it was pulled inward and swallowed whole, nourishing the creature's corrupted soulfire.

It was an endless banquet, and the Abomination could feel its power growing with every bite it consumed.

The 178th, the 179th... The death toll had long since passed a hundred. Still, they came. Still, they died. No one could say why these black-robed cultists kept throwing themselves into the maw of death.

Until, finally, the 180th cultist emerged. For a moment, nothing happened. He stood whole, untouched. His eyes widened in disbelief, then raised his arms to speak—only for a cleaver to fall from above, bisecting him from crown to groin. He was dead before he could even scream out loud.

The gargantuan Abomination, now many times larger than most of its kind, was waiting, hungry. It scooped up half the man's twitching body and chewed contentedly. The remaining half fell, revealing a scattering of broken scales beneath the skin. This was a member of the Church of Dragonkind.

The monster reached for the other half of the cultist's body, only to be interrupted. Out of the portal stepped another figure. She saw the towering Abomination. Her eyes narrowed.

She lifted a single finger. Black energy gathered at its tip. A beam of death streaked out toward the Abomination, piercing its soulfire. Its massive form toppled backward, crashing to the ground in a spray of blood and dust.

"That silver dragon managed to hide her traces well, as usual—and she even managed to integrate spatial turbulence into her spatial rifts. All who attempted to follow her would be rent into mincemeat.

"A hundred cultists, dead to this simple trap... I'd have given up myself if not for the curio pointing the way toward the remaining dragons. No matter where she hides, it's pointless."

Only a superior undead could terrify an Abomination—and the female who had emerged from the rift was just that. She was a lich, pallid and regal. The spell she had used, Death's Finger, was the signature spell of a lich.

And not only that, as the vice-Archbishop of the Church of Dragonkind, Varma was a dragon-lich, combining the astonishing spellcasting ability of ordinary liches and the incredible physical resilience of dragons. She could even transform into a bone dragon.

From the void, she withdrew a sculpted artifact and laid it in her palm.

This was the curio Crimson Mark. It took the form of a simple statue: a headless hunter, bow drawn, loosing an arrow toward the heavens. Around his feet lay a heap of shapeless, rotting things.

Varma opened her spatial pouch, withdrew a still-beating heart, and crushed it above the curio.

Blood soaked the sculpture. The hunter's arrow began to turn red and glow faintly. The formless heap beside him shifted and took shape, becoming a cluster of dragons, their features writhing into clarity.

Then, without warning, the hunter moved. The arrow flew. To Varma's eyes, it became a scarlet ribbon that pointed toward a distant location.

"There you are," she whispered. "Every drop of dragon blood carries Its trace. No matter how you try to hide, you cannot escape."

Her lips curled into a cold, stiff smile. With that, Varma dissolved into black mist and soared toward the direction revealed by the Crimson Mark.