Chapter 56: Corrupting the Bloodline

"Roaaar!"

Karolith had hauled the poor earth dragon all the way back to the Abyss on her chain, and it immediately began to howl in agony.

The journey had already worn it out completely. But the moment it truly stepped into the Abyss, the creature, which had long since lost any will to fight back, fell...

Entirely into extreme terror!

This was the Abyss. A land thick with sin, where every negative emotion gathered. The home of demons, and the final resting place of evil and chaotic souls.

In such a place, a creature from an ordinary realm was bound to feel fear. Even if it could not see its surroundings, the low, heavy air of the Abyss alone made it deeply sick.

And sadly, against the Abyss, all its struggling was in vain.

"Throw it into the Bloodline Corruption Chamber."

Koda, seated on the Abyssal Throne, gave the order.

"As you command, great lord."

Karolith answered at once, and threw the dragon she had been dragging behind her into a huge structure, long since prepared, that glowed an eerie red.

The Bloodline Corruption Chamber.

Koda had only been able to build it after the Dominion Seed grew to its fifth stage. Its shape was striking. Its shell was round, and inside it was filled with an unknown evil red liquid. Around the liquid were thousands upon thousands of black tentacles carved with abyssal runes.

But unlike the other structures of the Abyss, which had long since started working and helping Koda, this one had never been used since it was built.

It was not that Koda did not want to use it. He could not!

The chamber’s power was to corrupt a living creature of a suitable bloodline into the abyssal creature that matched that bloodline.

A suitable bloodline.

Those two words alone had nearly driven Koda mad.

At first he had not cared about the word "suitable." In his mind, the Abyss should not be picky. Any living thing should be remade by it.

But cold reality had slapped him in the face.

When he truly began to try, he was shocked to find that every living creature he had met on the continent failed the chamber’s requirements!

Goblins, centaur warriors, fishmen, naga, the goblins and gnomes stolen from near Garrick’s land, the captured dwarves, orcs and others, none of them met what the chamber needed.

He was sure of it because he had watched with his own eyes. Every creature thrown in lasted barely two seconds before it dissolved into a puddle of blood!

Koda did not understand how the chamber worked, since he had never paid close attention to such things. But after many inhumane experiments, he had reached a guess.

What the chamber needed was probably some kind of strong, rare bloodline.

For example, a highland falcon he had thrown in, with a very faint trace of beast blood, had lasted longer than dwarves and the rest, and had even shown signs of being successfully remade.

That was why Koda had been so excited the moment he saw the earth dragons, creatures carrying dragon blood.

He had been willing to abandon the half-finished assault on the kingdom’s tunnel, at any cost, just to capture this one.

Because he clearly remembered what the throne’s knowledge had taught him. Earth dragons appeared in countless realms, and they really did carry a good deal of dragon blood.

He had not been listening closely when that knowledge poured into him, so he honestly could not recall which kind of dragon’s blood it was. But in short, any dragon would do!

After all, dragons were beasts of legend with special bodies and a special essence, famed across countless realms for the strength of their blood.

He remembered that part very well.

* * *

"Aaargh!"

The earth dragon struggled with all its strength, but Koda, expressionless, had his servants throw it in anyway.

The moment it went in, the chamber boiled.

Countless thin tentacles drove into its smooth, scaleless skin from every direction.

And the tips of those tentacles kept splitting into more tentacles, without end.

From the outside, no one could tell what the tentacles were doing. But in truth, after splitting almost without limit, they had become tiny surgical blades, cutting into the dragon’s very life essence.

Through War Sight and his link to the chamber, Koda could see it all. The vital essence had been drawn out. Only four point two three percent of its important core remained intact, and it could be refined no further.

And that was only the first step of the corruption. Not even the first step.

The real corruption was only just beginning!

As the dragon screamed and howled, countless streams of abyssal air, nothing like the darkness that had eaten Koda’s eyes, were poured into its body.

In a moment, the earth dragon began to twist and warp.

Next, its four limbs turned into pale white tentacles, and deformed mouths and slanted eyeballs began to grow around its belly.

Then, as the warping went on, all those features disappeared. In their place came a creature with a shell, something like a turtle, but its shell was covered in bone plates with barbed spikes.

Then, once again, everything started over...

When the corruption finished, the chamber waited for him to choose. Run it again?

Each time, after looking over the creature’s strength, Koda decisively chose to run it again.

So the poor dragon kept changing shape before Koda’s eyes, until at last it became a creature with two rows of tiny eyes, a body black and tough enough to last.

Its head had almost nothing left in common with a dragon’s.

Its mouth was shaped like flower petals, and the inside was crowded with deformed teeth. When it opened its mouth, a fleshy nozzle, grown from its tongue, rose up. And beneath the nozzle was a huge warped organ that held a special gas.

It was strange, but it was what Koda wanted.

Because after countless mutations, this earth dragon had finally regained the same power it had before.

Spitting fire.

Only, it was different from the dragonfire that earth dragons once breathed. The fire it spat now was a strongly corrosive abyssal flame, alive in its own way!

"At last!"

Koda looked at the monster before him, and the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.