Chapter 230

I screamed like I’d lost my mind and ran toward him.

Varen shot past me like the wind itself, and in the blink of an eye he had taken Morpha from the large man’s arms.

By the time I reached them, my legs nearly gave out at the sight of Morpha collapsed in Varen’s embrace. My mind went completely blank.

The dragon’s roars and the screaming crowds still thundered around us. Even so, all I could hear was Morpha’s faint breathing.

My trembling fist slammed uselessly into the ground.

“Haah, fuck... what kind of bastard did this?!”

Morpha looked as though he had fallen into the same trap as Kaldrok. There wasn’t a single untouched part of his body. He’d been hacked apart as if he’d been stabbed hundreds of times.

The rage nearly drove me insane. If the person responsible for this was standing in front of me right now, I felt like I could tear them apart with my bare hands.

Unlike me, Varen stayed calm as he checked Morpha’s condition. He pressed a palm against Morpha’s chest, a faint glow spilling from his hand as he immediately began pouring magic into him.

But Morpha’s body only jerked violently, like someone being electrocuted. He coughed harshly, and thick clotted blood burst from his mouth.

I grabbed Varen’s wrist on instinct and yanked his hand away. The external wounds were horrific enough already, but the internal injuries looked even worse.

If he forced magic into a body this weakened, there was no way Morpha could withstand it.

I hadn’t explained it aloud, but Varen must have realized the same thing. He immediately withdrew his hand. Instead, he brushed Morpha’s cheek and spoke in a voice strained with forced composure.

“Morpha, don’t lose consciousness. We’re getting out of here, so hold on.”

“...Kgh, khh...”

“That’s an order. Don’t die. If you die over something this trivial, who’s supposed to guard me?”

While we were distracted by Morpha’s critical condition, Crow collapsed heavily onto the ground beside Theo, gasping for breath.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and stared at Morpha.

“Haah... if that dragon hadn’t been there... we all would’ve died. Haah...”

Varen and I both looked at him at the same time. Crow couldn’t even meet our eyes. He kept his gaze fixed on Morpha instead.

Then another man stepped forward from behind him. There was another severely injured person strapped across his back.

A little boy with long brown hair, no older than ten.

The man carefully lowered the child beside Morpha.

“Trying to save this child...”

His bitter voice trailed off unfinished.

Even so, I understood exactly what he’d been trying to say.

I stared blankly at the little boy. There were no visible wounds, but even at a glance his body looked cold and lifeless.

“No way... this child is...”

No matter how hard I tried to stop them, tears kept spilling out and choking off my words.

Varen answered in my place when my voice broke apart.

“It’s Kaldrok’s child. Podric.”

“Ah... ah...”

I crawled toward Podric.

I wanted to examine him, but my hands hovered helplessly in the air, unable to touch him.

Inside my empty head, Ordin’s final words replayed over and over.

‘An innocent child who knows nothing will be sacrificed. Is there truly no way to save Kaldrok’s child...?’

Even while his own heart rotted away and killed him, Ordin had worried about this child. It had sounded exactly like a final plea left behind for me.

And in the end, Ordin had been right.

An innocent child who knew nothing had been sacrificed.

‘PODRIIIIC!!!’

Kaldrok’s desperate scream echoed through my head.

Varen stared at the howling copper dragon and spoke grimly.

“Kaldrok saw that Podric was dead and lost control. He knew perfectly well it was a trap, but he charged in anyway just to recover his child’s body.”

I sat there on my knees with both fists hanging limp at my sides. One horrifying shock after another kept crashing down on us.

Kaldrok had been captured alive after falling into a human trap. Morpha had returned with his entire body torn apart.

And the child Ordin worried about even while dying now lay cold before us.

Yet there was nothing I could do.

In the face of such overwhelming misery, my abilities felt pathetically insignificant.

I stared blankly at Podric.

Now that I finally knew his name, I realized he was even younger than I’d imagined.

His childish face looked as though he were merely asleep. His soft cheeks still carried baby fat.

Without thinking, I reached out and brushed Podric’s cheek.

The instant my skin touched his, a sharp pain shot through me like an electric shock.

Startled, I jerked my hand back. Even now my fingertips throbbed where I had touched him.

“...Wait.”

I hurriedly pressed my fingers against Podric’s neck to check for a pulse.

Nothing.

Next I moved my hand beneath his nose, but there was no breath there either.

There were no signs of life at all, and yet irrational hope surged through me anyway.

Even though there was no pulse and no breathing, it felt as though something was telling me Podric was still alive.

I boldly cupped the child’s face in both hands.

Then I lowered my head and pressed my forehead against his.

I squeezed my eyes shut and focused every nerve entirely on Podric.

I still handled magic clumsily, but I desperately prayed that whatever power flowed through this blood would work.

“Please... please, please...”

Podric’s memories were so dark I could barely see them, and even those fragments kept cutting out.

I had to seize those fleeting afterimages somehow.

Sweat streamed from me as I concentrated, dripping onto the child’s cheeks.

Whenever I looked into another person’s memories, it usually felt like watching a film.

But Podric’s memories were different.

They were like scorched black-and-white photographs.

I searched through dozens of them before finally finding the child’s final moment.

Podric sprawled across the floor with his hands and feet bound.

A man smiling as he drove a thin rod into the center of the child’s chest.

White hair gone completely gray. A deeply wrinkled face. Eyes unnaturally sharp for his age. A smile twisted with madness.

I snapped my eyes open, and a horrifying name burst from my mouth.

“Horace?!”

He was the mage who had attacked Varen when we searched the Aylos family estate.

And the one who had completed death magic.

Why the hell was that bastard inside Podric’s final memory?

“Why him all of a sudden—”

Varen called out to me urgently.

Only then did I finally come back to myself.

“He’s alive! He’s not dead yet!”

I immediately overlapped my palms and began compressing the center of Podric’s chest.

He looked like a little child, but a dragon was still a dragon. Podric’s body was unbelievably solid beneath the soft appearance.

I had to use every ounce of strength I had just to perform CPR.

Eventually I climbed on top of him entirely, bouncing my hips to drive my full body weight downward.

“He didn’t die— ngh! His heart just stopped!”

That final black-and-white image.

Maybe it was because I already knew who Horace was, but only that single scene replayed clearly.

And Horace had definitely said this:

‘Even if the heart stops, it still won’t die? Heh heh.’

For a human, a stopped heart was practically synonymous with death.

But dragons were different.

The species with the greatest vitality in this world.

Right now, the only thing I could cling to was the fact that Podric was a dragon.

“A dragon... doesn’t die... from this! Aagh!!”

No matter how hard I slammed my weight downward, Podric’s heart didn’t react at all.

Left with no choice, I clenched both fists and started pounding rhythmically against his chest.

“Goddammit! Aagh! Why is this kid so freaking hard too?!”

Not as bad as Varen, but Podric’s body felt like solid stone.

Every strike made my own hands throb in pain instead.

But I couldn’t stop.

There wasn’t a mage here capable of breaking Horace’s magic, so the only option was to force the stopped heart to beat again.

“Ceryl, move!”

After watching me struggle, Varen gently laid Morpha down and strode over.

Then, just like I had, he raised a tightly clenched fist.

I grabbed his wrist before he could swing.

“Hey! If you hit him like that, you’ll kill him!”

My punches hadn’t even left a bruise.

But if an adult dragon—especially a Dravergh—hit Podric with his full strength, the child’s chest might cave in completely.

Then I suddenly remembered what Varen had tried to do to Morpha earlier.

I quickly guided his wrist down and placed his palm carefully against the child’s chest.

“Do what you tried on Morpha earlier!”

Without a second of hesitation, Varen poured magic into him.

A soft glow bloomed across his palm before fading weakly away.

Nothing changed.

“Ten percent stronger!”

“Ten percent? What does that even mean?”

“Ugh, just a little stronger! Try again! Not too much!”

Dravergh’s power would obviously be too overwhelming for a dying child like Podric.

But if Varen used too little magic, it wouldn’t work at all.

And if he used too much, the child’s body wouldn’t survive it.

Following my instructions, Varen concentrated with absolute focus.

Carefully controlling his magic, he repeated the process over and over.

Finally, the reaction we’d been waiting for came.

“Ugh...!”

Podric’s limp body suddenly jolted upward like a corpse springing to life.

Varen’s eyes widened, and he immediately poured the same amount of magic into him again.

Twice. Three times.

With each repetition, color slowly began returning to the child’s pale face.

I shoved Varen’s hand aside and pressed my ear against Podric’s chest.

Thud-thump. Thud-thump.

Faint, but unmistakable.

The exact same heartbeat as Varen’s.

Against all odds, the dragon defibrillator had successfully restarted his heart.