The Perfectly Preserved Corpse
Of course, I knew the old man was dead. I couldn't see his soul, after all.
Yet the elder looked so lifelike, as if he'd only just drifted off to sleep. His identity was all too clear. He had to be the first head of the Prisoner Baron family. The mage obsessed with preservation magic had ultimately preserved even his own corpse.
But the truly astonishing part was that no mana could be felt here either. The same went for every item in the basement. They all seemed clearly enchanted with preservation magic, yet not a trace of mana registered.
A research journal, apparently penned by the first Prisoner Baron himself, still sat untouched on the table. I began reading it slowly from the beginning, and about halfway through, I let out a sigh.
Ah, so that's how it is.
The Prisoner Baron had never completed the preservation magic he'd researched his entire life. More precisely, he could never cast it on himself. The Ether Heart Method I'd created used magic without relying on mana. It drew directly on the raw power of the natural world. That was the key to perfecting the preservation magic the Prisoner Baron had devoted his life to. Realizing that mana imposed hard limits, he'd grasped the clue to harnessing natural energy—and spent the rest of his days trying to make it work. He never invented something like the Ether Heart Method, and in the end, he failed. But he did succeed in applying it through magic circles, not human casters, to preserve specific spaces or objects. This mansion and basement were the result.
His descendants had studied the journal too, but they couldn't succeed where the founder had failed after a lifetime of effort. The instructions for using the magic circles were incredibly complex. Installing the ones maintaining the mansion and basement alone demanded hundreds of thousands of gold and over twenty years. Directly researching it was daunting, and setting up more circles to turn a profit felt like too great a burden for a rural barony like this. Selling the journal's contents wouldn't fetch much anyway. And so, 150 years later, it had all been left as is.
Of course, I was different. I'd created the Ether Heart Method from scratch, after all. A bit of study, and I could wield this Prisoner-style preservation magic myself. The magic circles he'd devised were downright crude, too. With a few years of refinement, I could probably shrink those formulas to a tenth their size. If mass production worked, it would change the world. Logistics, storage, transport—a total revolution.
Still, I decided to hold off on telling Ether for now. Massive change meant massive chaos.
Mastering the full extent of the Prisoner Baron's research took a few weeks. Memorizing it was quick, but absorbing and improving it simultaneously dragged things out.
As I left the basement, I pulled out about 100,000 gold and left it behind. That ought to cover the "tuition" for stealing their magic from his descendants.
My next destination: the Dragon Mountains. Alongside the Great Forest, they were the West Continent's two great forbidden zones. The name came simply from the legends of dragons dwelling there. Sure, some dismissed dragons as mere myths, but history featured them too often for that. They popped up roughly once every few centuries. Black dragons, red dragons, blue dragons—a variety of kinds. No one knew where they lived or why they appeared in the human world. What was certain: every sighting brought disaster for humanity. Old records weren't precise, but tales told of cities vanishing without a trace from a single dragon breath. Before meeting the Ma-su Wang, I might've doubted those accounts. Now? I believed. I'd learned monsters like that could exist in droves. And I suspected those dragons, too, were beings touched by divine interference, just like me.
With that in mind, I set off for the Dragon Mountains in search of one.
The range lay in the southern West Continent—near the three southern kingdoms where I'd last visited amid their grinding war of attrition. Crossing from northwest to south meant traversing the continent. A slight detour could take me through the Venus palace. I stopped by to check on Ether and the kids; everything seemed fine, so I skipped the letter this time and headed straight south.
Cutting through the Great Forest would've been faster, but it scrambled your sense of direction—you'd end up more lost. So I looped around via the sea. Skimming over waves and ocean depths was fun. The undersea world remained largely unexplored. Someday, maybe I'd catalog its creatures and write a book. Who'd be the author then? History's first soul-authored tome?
I crossed the sea and entered the Neos Kingdom, one of the southern trio. New territory, so I took it slow, lingering here and there to pick up local specialties and techniques.
Bit by bit, I pushed on into the Ktolari Viscountcy. Nestled near the Dragon Mountains, it wasn't a border holding but wielded the might of a frontier county all the same. Like the Great Forest's guardians, the Ktolari controlled far stronger monsters than average beasts, keeping them from spilling out—and earned special privileges from the center in return. Their private army, the Dragon Mountains Rangers, famed as the continent's strongest unit, proved it.
The Ktolari lands stood out from other domains. They evoked the fortress city of Regisline at the Great Forest's edge—not a full fortress town, but with plenty of common folk living normally.
After touring the territory, I headed to the lord's castle for a final look. The moment I spotted the current head, Count Mais Ktolari, I thought I'd seen wrong.
He's not human?
Count Mais Ktolari's soul was... off. Its size and shape didn't match a human's at all. Sure, some humans had abnormally large souls—like once-in-a-generation geniuses such as Fortega or Inklonius. Even accounting for that, the count's dwarfed them. And the shape? Humans had near-spherical souls. Rare variants deviated a bit, but never far from round. The count's? A long, thin thread. Snake-like at best, worm-like at worst. No human—or even monster—soul looked like that.
Is the count a dragon in disguise?
The Ma-su Wang had sought a polymorph-capable beast. He'd vanished into the Great Forest after finding one. Couldn't a dragon pull the same trick, living among humans? It'd explain the sudden rampages every few centuries.
Hello? Can you hear me? I sidled up and tried speaking—just in case. No dice, as expected. Up close, though, the count looked utterly exhausted. Elderly, yes, but his body seemed hale. Mental strain from too many worries, maybe.
Intrigued, I shadowed him. His routine didn't differ much from other noble heads'. The territory's demands were heavy, but his capable retainers handled most, leaving him little direct work. One oddity: periodic reports from an intel network. Not unusual for a great noble. But the content? Mundane to a fault. "Miller Hans's wife birthed a healthy son." "Serf so-and-so's boy turned seven." Stuff no intel op needed to relay.
One evening after dinner, the count dismissed the servants and quietly activated a hidden mechanism behind his bedroom. A wall slid open, revealing a passage. He entered; the wall sealed seamlessly.
I'd known about the passage—and even scouted the underground it led to. But it stretched absurdly long, so I'd turned back midway. Figured he'd use it eventually, but no way he'd traverse that marathon tunnel unchanged.
Yet here he was, doing exactly that.
How deep did it go? The endless stairs felt like a descent to hell. By my estimate, we'd dropped over 300 meters already. The engineering was staggering. No coal mine delved this far. They lacked the tech.
The count didn't rush. At his steady pace, hours passed before we hit bottom. Kilometers down? As we neared what felt like bedrock, an urge to flee gripped me. Something unknowable emanated from the depths below—pulsing upward.
But I couldn't bolt. It wasn't physical force pulling me; more like mind control, drawing me in of my own volition.
The chamber at the end was vast—palace-sized, easy. From the far shadows, something enormous slithered forth, filling the space: a colossal what?
The count prostrated himself flat, head bowed.
"I come before my great master."
So the count wasn't the dragon. That thing approaching, then? But no—it wasn't any dragon I knew.
An octopus?
It resembled a massive octopus. Not quite—even octopuses had only eight legs. This had hundreds? Thousands? And far larger. An octopus-mimic monster?
My reflexive mutter enraged it.
[Insolent wretch!]
Its roar warped space visibly—raw power. But another force struck too, slamming my soul like poison mist. My body shook, strength fled; I crumpled like a deflated balloon.
"Master?"
The count, still prone, lifted his head in confusion—untouched.
[Not for you. You've brought a fly on your tail?]
He startled, scanning around. No sign of me, of course.
[I'll swat the fly. Make your report.]
"Yes, master."
He bowed again and spoke without hesitation.
"I've chosen my successor. He's fourteen now; I'll adopt him and pass the territory. After training, in about three years."
[No regrets?]
"Unlike you, great one, this lowly human has learned how crushing time's weight can be. Over two centuries lived—I've no regrets left."
[Very well. I permit you to pass your duty.]
"My thanks, master."
I lay paralyzed on the floor, but their words pieced it together. I understood how this all worked now.