Chapter 9
Chapter 9
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: Dragon Princess (3)
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From that day on, for three days, Azel joined the laborers in excavating the ruins.
The work was mostly grunt labor. The ruins' entrance had completely collapsed, making it impossible to enter. So they had been digging up the ground around the ruins and clearing the debris from the collapsed entrance for days now.
'Well, this is something. Now I see it was built purely to protect me.'
From piecing together what the other laborers had told him, the ruins' entrance had been completely sealed until just before Azel awoke a few days ago. It had been protected by powerful magic, and the mages had been racking their brains over how to open it.
But on the day Azel awoke, part of the magic protecting the ruins vanished, causing the entrance to collapse. It had probably happened the moment Azel woke up.
'Maybe I shouldn't have come out? Should've stayed inside?'
Maybe he shouldn't have forced his way to the surface. If the facility had been built from the start to protect him while he slept, there might have been something useful after he awoke...
But he was already out, so there was no helping it. He couldn't go back to where he first emerged and dig through the collapsed earth now, could he?
'That mana force was prepared for me too.'
Azel recalled the situation when he awoke. When he had gathered his strength to blow off the coffin lid, a massive influx of mana force had come from outside.
He had wondered why that happened, but now it seemed like Kallos's arrangement as well. Probably, the structure was set up so that when Azel awoke and generated mana force, the stockpiled mana force would flow in response. Kallos must have anticipated the state Azel would be in upon waking.
'That guy was always so meticulous.'
Azel thought of his friend's face and gave a wry smile.
While working as a laborer, Azel continued his Spirit Order training.
The excavation site operated only during the day, and the laborers rested at night. Aside from short spars with Zail once in the morning and once in the evening, he just lounged around the medical tent with Rick, so he had plenty of free time.
Suddenly, Rick asked,
"But Azel, why the hell are you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Why are you making mana force condensates and drinking them?"
Normal Spirit Order practitioners generated mana force through mana resonance and absorbed it through their pores. Azel's method of cupping the mana force condensate in his hands and drinking it from his mouth looked bizarre no matter how you sliced it.
Azel tilted his head.
"Who knows?"
"Who knows, my ass..."
"But I don't remember why, so what can I do? It just feels like this is how I learned it. So that's how I'm doing it."
"Man, that amnesia of yours is awfully convenient."
"I want to remember too."
Azel grumbled.
Of course, it was a fabricated attitude. He had a clear reason for using this method.
'It's far better for filling the spirit veins with mana force in a short time.'
The standard method Rick mentioned and the one Azel was using now weren't absolutely better than each other. It depended on the situation, and right now, this was better for Azel.
Standard Spirit Order practitioners absorbed mana force through pores across their entire body, activating and strengthening all their spirit veins simultaneously. But Azel's spirit veins weren't dysfunctional—they were just drained—so filling them with mana force was the priority.
And if the goal was simply increasing the amount of mana force, drinking a dense mana force condensate was far better than taking in dilute mana force across the whole body.
'Normally, the spirit veins couldn't handle it, and most would be wasted.'
That's why Azel had first created and drunk a mana force condensate to check the state of his spirit veins. If they were fully open, this method was far more effective.
Of course, he couldn't rely on it forever. Even if his spirit veins weren't clogged again, they had shrunk and weakened. Once he filled them to their current limit, he'd have to use the standard method alongside to strengthen them.
'Anyway... one down.'
After his efforts, Azel had formed a single complete Life Ring.
It was logically impossible. But Azel wasn't a Spirit Order novice—he had mastered it to the extreme heights—and with his spirit veins fully open as he recovered, it was possible.
Even just one Life Ring meant he could now properly utilize Spirit Order. But Azel wasn't satisfied.
'It'll take time, but since I'm at it, I should try Dual Banding.'
Dual Banding was the new realm of Spirit Order that Azel would have completed if not for Dragon Demon King Atein's curse.
The core of Spirit Order, the mana force crystal structure known as the Life Ring, wrapped around the heart at a fixed thickness. Increasing them one by one to resonate with more heartbeats was how Spirit Order practitioners amplified their power.
The Life Rings had a fixed thickness for a reason: it was the minimum required for mana force to stabilize in the form demanded by Spirit Order.
Due to the physical space they occupied, there was a clear limit to how many Life Rings could encircle the heart. Thus, the theoretical pinnacle for Spirit Order practitioners was considered Decuple Master (10 Life Rings).
No one in reality had reached it. Even Azel, when he defeated Dragon Demon King Atein, had been Octuple Master (8 Life Rings), and the strongest Azel knew had been Nonuple Master (9 Life Rings).
But Azel had devised a radical way to change that.
He placed a second, wider-diameter Life Ring obliquely around the outside of one Life Ring. Azel named this method Dual Banding.
Kallos believed that with this, even the same number of Life Rings would yield far greater power.
The two had run magic simulations for verification and built similar models using animals as test subjects, gaining confidence in the method. However, Azel had ultimately fallen into a long sleep without testing it on himself.
'This might actually be the perfect opportunity.'
Back then, with 8 Life Rings, Azel had struggled to make more. Maintaining that much mana force crystal structure in the body was extremely difficult.
But now, Azel had to rebuild his Life Rings from scratch. That made attempting Dual Banding much easier.
'I have plenty of indirect experimental data, but no guarantee it'll work on my body. Still, if it succeeds... I can aim beyond my previous realm.'
In fact, Azel had thought that after 220 years, the Spirit Order practitioners of this era might be using it. But seeing Zail, that wasn't the case.
It seemed no one had developed it after Azel fell asleep without revealing it, or if they had, they kept it as a secret technique without spreading it widely.
Suddenly, Azel asked,
"By the way, Rick, what about healing arts practitioners?"
"What do you mean? You learn healing arts to become one, obviously."
"No, I mean... aren't healing arts something temple priests use?"
"That was back in the day."
"Back in the day?"
"Sure, temple priests still use it now too... but these days, the Medical Association trains healing arts practitioners."
The Medical Association was an organization formed by healing arts practitioners and alchemists banding together. Since alchemists produced the potions fundamental to healing arts, it was inevitable.
"Originally, the temples kept the potion recipes for healing arts secret. But about 60 years ago? Sage Biyan succeeded in producing them independently, and things changed."
It wasn't certain, but Biyan was said to harbor resentment toward the temples' monopoly on healing arts. Probably because he lost someone precious because of it.
Azel marveled at the explanation.
"I see. That man Biyan changed the world."
It was unimaginable in Azel's era.
Healing arts had been a key tool for temples to wield influence. Since it controlled human lives, even the powerful hesitated to cross them and fawned over the temples. In nations where certain church orders were strong, the temples grew corrupt, breeding all sorts of ills.
Biyan had put an end to that long-standing state of affairs.
Azel felt an odd sense of wonder that such a massive change had occurred while he slept. He had truly woken up to a changed world.
Rick said,
"Well, thanks to him, guys like me can get healing arts qualifications and make a living. I'm grateful."
"Is being a healing arts practitioner just a way to make a living?"
"You bet. Did you think I became one for some noble reason like saving lives?"
"Of course not."
Azel chuckled, realizing how values had shifted.
Then Rick said,
"But Azel."
"Yeah?"
"You still don't have abs, do you?"
"Well..."
"You said in a few days you'd show off some ripped abs, but nope."
"..."
As Rick had said, Azel hadn't yet developed defined muscles. In just a few days, his body had become remarkably more human, and flexing made angles appear in his arms, but that was it.
"Ugh."
Azel frowned at Rick's knowing snort.
5
Dragon Princess.
In the Lurein Kingdom, it was a title held by only one per generation.
A being not purely human: a half-human inheriting the blood of the cursed Dragonkin, the Dragon Demon Hybrids.
Among them, only one was called the Dragon Princess by the royal family of Lurein. The news that the kingdom's most famous such being would visit the excavation site of the Balan Forest Ruins elicited a reaction from Azel that exceeded Rick's wildest imagination.
"Dragon Princess? What's that? Did the Dragon Demon Hybrids build a kingdom or something?"
And so he received a look from Rick as if he were the most ignorant fool on earth. Azel bristled.
"My memories are fuzzy, so I might not know."
"Even so. How do you not know the Dragon Princess?"
"I really don't... even if you tell me, it doesn't ring a bell."
"Unbelievable."
Rick clicked his tongue and explained about the Dragon Princess.
"Surely you know about the Dragon Emperor War, right?"