Novel Full Chapter 502: Crowning of the dragon king
Looking at the two options floating before his eyes, the dragon frowned, and his gaze stopped on the first one.
‘Tricks are great and fun, but in the end, the raw power was always much more reliable.’
He always felt that basing his defenses on evasion or other trickery was too risky, ‘Avoiding attack by phasing to the fourth dimension feels great against mortals and unprepared, but can it help me resist divine-energy-infused attacks, or would they simply hit me.’
With his own eyes, he has witnessed the absoluteness of the divine energy-infused fire and how it burned even time and void when he willed it. There was no reason to hope and pray that it couldn’t burn him just because he was phasing.
No matter how he looked at it, it felt too flimsy, uncertain, and unreliable when compared to the terrifying defenses of the first option.
‘Nothing but tricks, great against weaker foes and stronger foes without power to counter, but if I ever meet an enemy that can deal with my tricks, I would be in trouble.’
Out of all the powers of the second evolution, only one made him consider it: the powerful clones and the power to overwhelm his enemies with sheer numbers.
He wishfully sighed, but ultimately, he refused to choose the second option.
‘It might be good and powerful, but the first path is much more predictable, and is already a continuation of my path.’ Vesuvius confirmed his choice.
The darkness around him deepened, swallowing light as if it were a starving beast, and the tiredness that once submerged him now vanished like a shadow at noon. The golden sigil on his chest erupted with searing heat, casting away all remnants of drowsiness.
In the next breath, Vesuvius found himself floating in a vast circular chamber, walls shimmering with the luster of pure gold, a grandeur that defied time itself.
The tall pillars and throne rose in the circular formation around him, each burning and shimmering with violent elemental energy, illuminating the golden hallway.
‘Something dragged my consciousness here…’ The realization struck him like a lightning bolt as his eyes, now aflame with golden fervor, grasped the implication.
“So, you are this close to rising to this high?” The familiar voice, regal and laden with searing heat, echoed through the expansive hall.
“Satanael…” The name escaped Vesuvius’s mouth in hushed veneration, addressing the imposing crimson-red burning sphere enthroned on a golden throne before him, cloaked in shadows.
Abruptly, a different voice, cool and unyielding like the depths of the ocean, cut through the charged air. “After all this time, you have yet to reunite my hoard and my body? As you stand on the threshold of coronation, remember it.”
“Jormundgandratius…” Surprise flickered in Vesuvius’s eyes at the sight of a golden soul flowing with golden water floating above one of the thrones, Jormundgandratius, a dragon king he believed to be deceased. The encounter was as unexpected as it was unsettling.
In a cascade of celestial light, the remaining thrones erupted, revealing the floating orbs of draconic souls above the remaining thrones. Their presence unleashed waves of formidable energy, washing over him in an attempt to erode his resolve.
Yet Vesuvius stood unyielding, like a tall mountain amidst the crushing force of the sea. ‘The dead dragon kings…,’ he mused, a mix of awe and surprise filling his thoughts. ‘Their souls are truly still active and conscious, even so long after their deaths.’
He would no longer bow to them, he was now almost equal to them, only a half step away from becoming king himself.
“Exemplary arrogance, befitting of a true dragon,” remarked another ethereal dragon soul, its voice a harmonious calamity, reminiscent of rain cascading upon a tumultuous sea.
Shenlongius, the storm incarnate, whose name resonated with Vesuvius, invoking images of ancient dragons from his inheritance. The chamber seemed to pulse with the power of their names carried by mortal myths: Tiamat, Oroboros, Orochi, and Typhon.
‘Even though slightly changed from the original draconic language, they are all etched in mythos.’
What brought dread to Vesuvius was that all of their myths involved their deaths at the hands of gods. Except for a few, they were all slain by his enemies.
It brought a sense of premonition to him, ‘They are all king and dead except for Satan; I will become a king… they died…’
“Why have you brought me here?” Not even for a moment would he think it would be as simple as wanting to congratulate him. The monsters before him were too ancient for such banalities.
The chamber, steeped in the silence of anticipation, awaited his inquiry.
“You stand at the precipice of a great step, yet you wander in the shadows of ignorance.” The storm dragon king broke the silence, his voice resounding with tiredness, “We will tell you what you need to know.”
“And the toll for this wisdom?” Vesuvius parried without a moment’s delay, his skepticism palpable. No matter how respected and ancient the dragons before him were, he refused to believe they would give him something for free. It was simply too unbefitting of dragons.
The response came from the soul of Jormundgandratius, “Seek out the scattered remnants of our legacies, our bodies, our surviving bloodlines, and our hoards. Gather them all.”
‘The souls of the dragon kings are active even after their deaths. Those old foxes! They want to be resurrected. No, if it were simple to resurrect them, then the dragon god or someone else would have done it already. Their bodies are long destroyed, so what if their souls are still active and conscious.’
“What is the advice?”
“Beware the slimy deity of knowledge,” Satanael spat out words filled with content and demonic wrath, “They always like to plot in the shadows, carrying their plans no matter the cost or collateral damage. Yet they always pathetically hid behind others, using them as tools.”
The word immediately piqued the dragon’s interest. Even he had to admit that he always had bad feelings about their constant planning, scheming, and methods they used.
‘They thrive in turmoil and chaos…’ he mused silently, a thread of apprehension weaving through his thoughts.
“The chaos they created,” declared a voice, ancient and fraying, yet laden with an authority that seemed to bend the very air, “Their move to bring void walkers we have expelled before back, and their moves and manipulation to create a new dragon king with powers and affinities that should not belong to dragons, breaking the balance.”
The air in the chamber thickened as another spectral entity added its voice to the somber chorus, its tone a mournful echo of a long-forgotten past. “This convergence of their acts, it heralds their ultimate ambition. They are orchestrating—”
Abruptly, the image of the golden throne room shattered, turning into quickly dissipating motes of golden light.
Vesuvius found himself adrift once more in the darkness of the black hole.
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