Chapter 200
Chapter 200
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 200
Chapter Title: The Dragon's True Legacy
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In the shadows far from the black market.
Leyzon sat quietly, watching the situation through Leon's eyes.
Beside him, the Bloodless Sovereign watched with weary eyes.
"You must never turn him into an enemy."
The Bloodless Sovereign wiped the blood from her lips with her finger.
Nermakadia's oracle. The revelation.
Leyzon had employed several methods to counter this revelation.
First: only Leon would face Nermakadia.
Leyzon had used fusion magic to disguise Leon as himself.
Nermakadia had confronted Leyzon directly only once.
He had no idea of Leyzon's true power or capabilities.
Thus, even if Leon masqueraded as Leyzon, Nermakadia couldn't see through the deception.
Second: Nermakadia's voice would be heard through the prepared straw dolls.
For this, he had used Eden's straw dolls.
The dolls would hear the sound and relay it through their own mouths.
Dozens had been prepared as a precaution.
Granfin had even been inserted into the relay process midway.
This was to test whether the revelation's influence could extend through the dolls' voices.
Granfin had protested, but there was no defying Leyzon's orders.
Leyzon had adhered strictly to these two principles right up to the end.
As a result, the revelation never reached him.
The Bloodless Sovereign could only click her tongue at his meticulousness.
She keenly felt just how agonizing it would be for any opponent who faced him like this.
"This is what a necromancer should be."
The epitome of a necromancer—or so Leyzon claimed.
Yet the Bloodless Sovereign disagreed.
"Every necromancer I've seen was nothing like that. Isn't this just the Abyss? Your personality shining through?"
"You're giving me too much credit."
A bashful smile crept across his face.
The Bloodless Sovereign decided to hold her tongue.
Leyzon was the type to interpret everything as praise anyway.
"Peep!"
At that moment, a baby dragon burst from the Bloodless Sovereign's bosom.
Wings had sprouted from its back, and its stubby tail fluttered about.
The baby dragon was growing by leaps and bounds with each passing day.
Soon, it would soar freely through the skies.
"How long do you plan on raising that thing?"
"Beats me."
The Bloodless Sovereign shoved the baby dragon's head back inside.
"Peep! Pip!"
The baby dragon flailed wildly, but it stood no chance in a contest of strength.
It was forced back in all the same.
"It's turning into a real headache."
Her expression was complicated for any number of reasons.
The baby dragon was a being born from devouring dragonkin.
To her, it embodied the dragonkin grudge.
She had no idea how long she could carry that burden.
"And yet you're basically its parent at this point."
"Don't turn an unmarried maiden like me into some unwed mother. If you're gonna talk like that, at least marry me."
"Sorry. Gotta pass."
As the Bloodless Sovereign grumbled, Leon moved on the other side of the shadow screen.
Leon hoisted Nermakadia up.
"Abyss, what do you plan to do with the young dragon?"
"I made a promise with someone."
Even if Leyzon explained, she wouldn't be convinced.
Nermakadia harbored a grudge against Leyzon.
To Leyzon, Nermakadia was simply a fascinating entity wielding the power of revelation.
And that was all.
"The chance I give Nermakadia is one and only one."
Mercy came but once.
No more, no less.
"I don't give second chances. Not even to your nephew."
His words were utterly frigid.
"Fine by me. I don't care either way."
Even so, the Bloodless Sovereign could sympathize.
"My entire family died that day anyway."
She flashed a casual smile.
The depth of sorrow hidden in that smile was beyond imagining.
Family had become a distant memory for her long ago.
"Bloodless Sovereign."
She had once punished heteromorphic races who came to rescue their enslaved kin.
Perhaps that had been the rampage of a shattered Bloodless Sovereign.
After all, she hadn't been able to save a single member of her own family.
Leyzon felt no particular pity for her.
Circumstances or no, what she'd done wasn't right.
But one thing was certain.
An unresolved grudge only begets more grudges.
"When you talk to Nermakadia, you go too."
At the very least, he'd give the two of them a chance to speak as blood kin.
Nermakadia had no family left in this world either.
The Bloodless Sovereign and Nermakadia weren't so different.
"Meet him."
At that moment, Hanok Wilbria pierced through her hesitation and spoke up.
Hanok had once been enslaved by the Bloodless Sovereign.
But no one understood the pain of losing family better than he did.
Leyzon patted Hanok's head.
He'd grown into a fine adult now.
"...Fine. Whatever."
Even if she pretended otherwise, some things were impossible to ignore.
Whether this would untangle the knots weighing on the Bloodless Sovereign remained to be seen.
And Leyzon had no obligation to fix them for her.
He was simply giving her a chance to try.
"Syria, bring Silea."
"Yes!"
Time for a pleasant conversation.
Time flowed even within the shadows.
The same went for Nermakadia, captured by Leon.
His consciousness slowly returned.
Nermakadia blinked his eyes twice.
A motion to regain his vision.
His body wouldn't move.
Shadows constricted him tightly.
He could feel the unyielding will that permitted no resistance whatsoever.
Wariness crept up alongside it.
The place he'd been brought to was the Abyss's front yard.
There was no telling what might befall him here.
'The Abyss...'
Nermakadia's breathing echoed quietly through the shadows.
A pitch-black void where not even an inch ahead was visible.
The sheer fact pressed down on him like a physical weight.
"Awake, are we?"
A voice rang out at that moment.
He remembered it well.
He'd heard it so many times it was already grating.
"Abyss!"
A voice thick with venomous grudge echoed desperately.
Blood erupted in its wake, dripping steadily.
The price for having his entire snout torn off by Leon.
Belated agony drilled into his brain.
Yet Nermakadia's eyes gleamed a vivid crimson.
A single straw doll lay before him.
An ominously crafted thing.
Revulsion washed over Nermakadia.
The straw doll was undoubtedly a safeguard against the revelation.
Even in total subjugation, it had been handled with extreme caution.
He couldn't fathom why the man was so riddled with suspicion.
"A good, deep sleep ought to put you in a better mood, right?"
"It's the foulest mood imaginable."
His teeth ground together.
Sadly for him, sleep was no stress reliever.
Leyzon couldn't care less.
"Yeah, I figured you and I wouldn't be having any real conversation. Not that you want one."
This was nothing like the Sword Saint, whose grudge had faded with time.
Time wasn't a cure-all, but it dulled everything eventually.
Nermakadia's grudge, however, was fresh.
It burned at its fiercest.
No chance of dialogue there.
"But there's someone who does want to talk to you."
"Bullshit."
Just as fury threatened to erupt anew, footsteps echoed.
His gaze instinctively followed the sound.
And there, in its path, stood an unexpected figure.
Nermakadia's eyes widened slowly.
"...Silea?"
Silver hair fluttered in the darkness.
His dark-adapted vision picked out a single girl.
"Nermakadia."
His name slipped from her rose-colored lips.
The one named shook in his eyes.
He'd never imagined Silea appearing here.
"Shall we talk?"
Nermakadia fell silent.
Their bond wasn't deep.
No romance between them. No profound friendship.
He had granted her request purely as an extension of his own grudge.
Nermakadia had mourned the elder dragon's death.
Thus, he'd impulsively aided her revenge.
Unable to claim his own vengeance, it had simply been an outlet.
He knew that much himself.
That's why he'd fled immediately after setting the World Forest ablaze.
His face burned with shame at the thought of facing her.
"I don't really..."
"No."
Silea smoothed her skirt and knelt gracefully before him.
Her straight-backed posture bespoke her very outlook on life.
"Just as I poured out everything to you that day, you have words weighing on your heart too."
The one who had avenged her in her stead.
To him, Silea confessed.
"I know your promise to avenge me that day wasn't born of pity alone."
Emotions bursting uncontrollably were impossible to miss.
"..."
Nermakadia's lips refused to part easily.
A storm of turmoil swirled in his eyes.
Before long, a warm hand rested atop his head.
"Nermakadia. Let's talk."
Silea cradled his head gently.
"Even if it's long. Give it a try."
"I..."
At last, lips that had seemed glued shut came apart.
"...was defective."
Nermakadia spilled a tale he'd never shared before.
The young dragon Nermakadia.
He had never been meant to hatch from his egg.
Dragonkin were born with two hearts.
One to generate blood.
The other to generate mana.
Nermakadia lacked the mana heart.
As a dragon, he was incomplete.
Dragonkin custom dictated shattering eggs with defects.
Nermakadia had been fated never to be born.
But at the time of his hatching, dragonkin society lay in ruins.
The evil dragon had devoured most of them.
A lone remaining egg.
Fated never to see the light of day.
The one who hatched it was the elder dragon, Jerome Makira.
"Grandfather begged him to craft a mana heart for me."
One of the two beating hearts within him.
That heart had been made by the Creeping Ossuary.
"I was born thanks to Grandfather."
Nermakadia buried his head against the floor.
"To me, Grandfather is my parents."
Even if he'd had biological parents, his fate had been nonexistence.
Jerome Makira had saved him from that fate, making him his true parent.
"And those parents of mine are dead."
A shattered smile and tears etched across his face.
"I have to finish this revenge. Carry on Grandfather's legacy."
A torrent of searing grudge poured from his eyes.
Silea bit her lip as she faced it.
"...And what will you have left once it's over?"
"Not even a handful of ashes."
His tears had become blood tears by now.
"But I've got nothing left anyway."
A life barren of all but flames.
All Nermakadia knew was to burn.
"Spouting 'I've seen it all' nonsense like some angsty teen."
The straw doll spoke up then, as it listened.
Beyond it, Leyzon reacted with utter exasperation.
"Bloodless Sovereign. How long are you just gonna watch?"
He requested she wrap things up.
A sigh echoed from beyond the darkness.
Footsteps soon followed.
"That old coot would spit blood and holler if he knew."
The Bloodless Sovereign strode in, her red hair swaying.
She let out a deep sigh.
"Look closely at that 'legacy' of his. Figure out where your legacy lies."
The Bloodless Sovereign undid the front of her garb.
Moments later, a small baby dragon dangled from her hand.
The black hatchling let out a long yawn and went limp.
"Kid."
She addressed him, who clearly didn't grasp the situation.
"This is the dragonkin legacy that damn old man protected to his last breath."
There lay a new horizon for Nermakadia's life.