Novel Full Chapter 913: Lessons from a Dragon
Chapter 913: Chapter 913: Lessons from a Dragon
Kain stayed perfectly still.
Seeing that the human in front of him still wasn’t responding, the humanoid reptile wearing the boy’s body cocked its head in a jerky, uneven motion—still clearly adjusting to muscles and joints that weren’t its own.
Then an expression slid across the boy’s face, subtle and calculating in a way that felt immediately wrong. The boy, with the mind of a five-year-old, had never once worn an expression that cunning. It stretched oddly across his features, too focused, too deliberate—like a mask that didn’t quite fit.
Its eyes, now a pure and predatory violet, studied him.
A strange silence draped the chamber like a second skin.
Still no response from Kain. Thankfully, the abyssal still did not question that Kain was a potential ’ally’…or a ’competitor’.
’Is plunderer not a term his kind uses…?’
’Plunderer… perhaps the word is foreign to him? No. That’s unlikely. Perhaps he doesn’t like the term. It is common, after all. Common and insulting.’
’The weaklings from the planets that are afraid of having their divine energy stolen love their insults. ’Scourge.’ ’Parasite.’ ’Leech.’ As if any of those words could be used to describe the Great Mother. To compare ’Mother’—powerful, beautiful, gracious, benevolent—to some mindless vermin? Insolent wretches. Only the weak, those lacking strength or heart, dare cling to such childish labels as a final solace to condemn those they dare not confront directly!’
’We are not parasites. We are harvesters.’
’The seed grows and the world nourishes it—sun, water, soil. But the world cannot use its full potential. After all, the sun has no way to make full use of the seed. That task belongs to the harvester. And yet nobody disparages the harvester for stealing the sun and water’s efforts! So too with planets.’
’This world’s guardian deity is absent. Weak. Dead, perhaps. Or hiding. Or uninterested in the fate of her own realm. Pathetic.’
’The strongest beings here crawl in ignorance, unable to channel divine energy properly due to lack of guidance. They sit atop a feast they cannot eat—fish upon a chopping block, waiting for the Great Mother to claim what they waste.’
’This world’s fate and luck… better offered to Great Mother than left to rot.’
’The boy opposite me—his god must think similarly. No wonder he wouldn’t respond to ’plunderer’.’
The reptile-possessed boy leaned slightly forward.
“Are you a… harvester?”
The word vibrated strangely in the air, like it wanted to crawl under Kain’s skin.
Kain blinked.
’…What is that?’
He didn’t dare say that aloud. But internally? Oh, absolutely.
Still, he forced himself to maintain a calm expression. He’d never in his life had an abyssal sit still and talk, rather than try to ’eat’ him. If this thing was unusually chatty, he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
He nodded.
“Sure,” he said lightly. “Let’s go with that.”
The dragon’s eyes gleamed with smug satisfaction at being proven ’right’. Of course, the brilliant him would see through the other easily! Among all the abyssals under the Great Mother, he was among the smartest of their kind.
“Thought so.”
Then its gaze sharpened. Amusement dripped across the boy’s stolen features.
“You attempted to mobilize divine energy earlier when trying to heal yourself. From a planet I do not recognize, meaning you can’t be a native of this planet. Your ability to wield it is quite sloppy—childish, even. But informative.”
Kain kept his features impassive as he took in the information.
The ’divine energy’ should be what he calls ’source energy’. As for the unfamiliar planet…most likely it is talking about Pangea.
The dragon continued, tone swelling with pride.
“And then—” Its grin widened as it continued to share its ’brilliant’ deductions like an evil mastermind sharing its plans. “—some of my underlings outside had their abyssal energy stolen. Absorbed and, I’m assuming, refined into divine energy. You wear the smell of a despicable thief!”
Kain resisted the urge to twitch his facial muscles as this alien invader actually tried to call him the thief…
“Great. Thank you.”
“Fortunately, as a fellow of the ’same career’ I don’t take offense to your actions,” the dragon purred. “Although I am surprised by your capabilities…Your so weak, creatures rarely wield divine energy at your stage. Mid-grade creatures—such as yourself—can usually only acquire scraps of divine essence by devouring souls.”
It tapped the boy’s chin thoughtfully with a newly scaled, talon-tipped finger. The rest of the boy’s body was protected by black dragon armour, but his face was still human—and far too soft. The talon sliced his chin open the moment it made contact.
But the abyssal demigod didn’t even seem to notice the blood dripping from its chin from the wound that closed mere seconds later.
“Usually, those at your level can only absorb the soul, then purify it. A pitiful method, but superior to the ants at the bottom who scrape at flesh and blood for the faintest divine residue.”
Kain’s eyebrow twitched.
The dragon smirked.
“Be proud. You are clearly among the most talented of your species.”
Kain did not point out that being compared favorably to abyssals was… not comforting.
Still, he absorbed every word carefully, and many aspects about the abyssals finally snapped into place.
He’d long realized that the colour of the abyssals’ eyes was the easiest way to tell their level of strength without sensing the actual energy they emit.
Those with red eyes are the common abyssals. Blood and flesh eaters. Their attempt to absorb source energy from flesh and blood must be horribly inefficient—Kain himself had never detected source energy in the flesh of anything he’d killed, meaning that the amount must be so minuscule it never even registered to him.
As they grow stronger and begin to try other ’food groups’, flecks of gold appear in their eyes, until gold becomes the dominant colour. Once their eyes are fully gold, this represents that they are mid-grade.
Gold eyes must represent a shift to consuming souls only—disdaining the ’low nutritional content’ of flesh and blood. Which, according to the dragon, souls have far more source energy.