Mystical Journey

Ka-chak!

Countless cracks appeared and spread across the statue.

Boom!!

Rays of golden light pierced through the black mud and the hoard of monsters, and a golden figure shot into the air from the black tide.

Countless divine runes surrounded him like silk ribbons, floating around him. Many fresh flowers carvings, mountains and oceans, precious stones and metals– all of these scenes flashed past him at high speeds, as though he was being wrapped up in an endless translucent screen.

“Blasphemer!!”

There was a stern roar of fury.

Psst!! Roar!!

Golden flames seemed to envelop the person, and like a sword, both pierced into the Thousand-Armed Giant’s forehead at lightning speed.

Agare roared out in pain.

The golden flames on the surface of the silhouette abruptly formed a human face.

A white pillar of light fell from the sky abruptly, and amidst the ceaseless golden sunlight, the white pillar looked particularly conspicuous, just nicely covering the face made of golden flames.

All of a sudden, the human face turned around and faced the airship levitating in mid-air. This airship was very close to it, and yet it had, quite eerily, taken no damage whatsoever.

“Fehra… So this is the authority of the Three Great Major Gods? It’s truly impressive…” On the airship, a woman grinned and looked at the face of golden flames from afar.

“Then we’ll end it here for now…”

Swoosh.

She instantly vanished from the spot, as though she had never been there.

There was a barroom, and the airship simply exploded. Within a few blinks of the eye, it had turned into white ash that scattered and rain down.

***************************

On the lush green plains, there stood many giant white-grey stones that looked like Ganoderma* (TN: a precious and expensive fungus shaped like an upside-down umbrella known in traditional Chinese medicine for its powerful medicinal properties).

These stones were narrow at the bottom and thick at the top, and looked like so many grey-white ganodermic staffs* (TN: lingzhi ruyi, an ornament originating from a fancy backscratcher shaped like a Ganoderma herb), growing up from the ground.

The blurry grey rain continued to fall endlessly over the sky and the earth.

On one of these giant Ganoderma, several Young White Dragons flew down abreast and landed on the stone surface. Pulling back their wings, they all looked at the White Dragon at the front of the line in unison.

“We’ve arrived at the Jumo Plains.” The Young White Dragon at the helm looked at his surroundings through the curtain of rain. Since he was standing on a grey-white rock almost a thousand meters tall, he could clearly see into the far distance across the plains.

“Garen, this is our first time on a quest, so if we get caught in a battle, you have to be careful.” The young dragon leader turned around and looked at a white dragon in the team whose scales were much cleaner and brighter than the rest.

This wd seemed to be about the same size as the Young Dragons, but his dragon horns were just some very short stubble, so he was clearly still a Dragon Whelp. Yet, here he was, out on a quest with the Young Dragons. There was only one Dragon Whelp that powerful among the entire Deladia White Dragon Clan, and that was Garen.

Garen nodded calmly.

“Don’t worry, Gamu, I’m here to train, not to make mischief.”

It had been more than five years since the last time he received news from the Mother Stream.

To the dragons, a mere five years was equivalent to one human year, and they passed in the blink of an eye.

But to Garen, he had changed rather considerably in these past five years.

Five years. His growth rate had already been obviously abnormal, to the point that he could be resistant to Level Seven Spellcraft even though he was just a Dragon Whelp. Such a terrifying physical body was so much stronger than even Black Dragons of the same age and level. That was why, in order to attract less attention from the gods, he chose to temporarily store his Potential Points, and grew only according to what was natural of his body in the past five years. At the same time, he would occasionally use some of the Potential Points on his Draconic Aura and Arcane Art.

He had as many as three hundred Potential Points, and only used about a hundred on his Draconic Aura and Arcane Art, until he had reached the upgrade limit for his Draconic Aura and Arcane Art.

After Garen found an extremely hot place, he had quickly increased his Draconic Aura up to Level Seven, and then it refused to go any higher. The Potential Points needed to progress from Level Six to Level Seven also greatly exceeded the total number of points he had spent on the prior levels, causing Garen considerable heartache. And it seemed that Level Eight required even more Potential Points. Garen had yet to encounter any bottlenecks in his understanding of this power, so maybe he needed to fulfill another special condition to progress.

Since no dragon was guiding Garen, he also did not dare to ask what special conditions Level Eight might need, lest he created too many shockwaves within the community.

His physical fitness could be attributed to unnatural talent, but that would not be able to explain away his Draconic Aura and Arcane Art. For example, to reach Level Six Draconic Aura, one would need to have truly experienced the aura of a battlefield. Garen understood it without ever stepping into a battlefield, wouldn’t that be proof enough to the other creatures that he was a soul from another world?

As for Ann, he tried asking once, but Ann ignored him completely, saying that he would reach it when he reached it.

So Garen resisted. He left two hundred more points available and threw the rest onto the Arcane Art. Or rather, onto Intelligence and Arcane Art.

Arcane Art required a lot from one’s Intelligence, and the actual progressing of one’s Arcane Art can be accomplished through the accumulative training of one’s meditation and spirit power to increase one’s Intelligence. Simultaneously, the increase in Intelligence would play a crucial part in affecting the most critical areas of the Arcane Art. Out of these, the most prominent was Spell Slots.

Garen had increased his Arcane Art to Level Five, and even that took up a hundred points from what he had left. He had also consecutively borrowed a few standardized Weave archives about Necromancy Spells from Ann.

The fact that he could reach Level Five Arcane Art only proved to show that he could use his hand gestures, chants, and materials to unleash all of the Spells they had learned in Level Five.

Of course, the precondition was that he knew them, meaning that he had learned them before.

Once you reached Level Five and above, however, some crucial level-ups would require a special environment and some special research.

After Garen familiarized himself with the Spellcraft information, he ended up rather disinterested in further research. All he was interested in was the research Undead Masters had done into the soul. As for those Spells?

Those skeletons, zombies, or vampires that they summoned? One dragon’s breath could wipe off so many of them. As for those so-called negative state Spells, he would simply use a Level Seven Immunity Spell. Only Level Eight fighters would be able to cause him some damage, so to him, these Spells were not particularly useful.

The only exception would be if he reached Level Eight and managed to learn the most critical Spell in Necromancy, Deathfinger. Although the chances of an instant death move like that working on him were extremely minuscule, that still depended on what level the powerhouse who unleashed it.

That was why he had only learned a handful of Spells in case of any emergencies. Everything else, he poured into the structure of his power system.

Although he did not take the weakness of the low-level Necromancy Spells seriously, Garen placed great importance in the research of the soul and the body.

It would also be extremely helpful to the usage and training of his training wheels as well.

At the very least, he had discovered a way for him to absorb the core of the Suffering Knight into his Soul Rings.

This was what he had been doing all this time, and the remaining two hundred points were to be put aside for now.

Be it his Arcane Art or his Draconic Aura, both had reached a bottleneck, and his physical fitness could not be too powerful either, so he chose to go out on quests in order to understand the general situation of this world better. At first, he wanted to go out through a summon quest, but something seemed to up with the Wizard over there. After he summoned Garen last time, he never called him again, almost as though he had forgotten about Garen. If it were not for the fact that the Wizard would still contact him occasionally through long-distance communication with their wills, Garen would have assumed that this guy had already died in battle.

After some applications, Garen received a patrol quest.

Led by the captain of the Young Dragon Team, Gamu, they patrolled the borders of the Deladia Empire’s southern plains, vigilant of the Central Empire’s movements.

The rain seemed to be growing heavier.

Gamu looked around.

“There is a patrol supply point nearby, let’s go rest there for now and stock up on some food before we get going again.”

“Captain, this is already a border city very close to the Central Empire, so there will probably be many priests from the Church. How should we deal with that?” asked one White Dragon softly.

Outside of the Deladia Empire, the White Dragon Clan was not welcome in any other territory by the races there. Part of this was because the reputation of White Dragon Mountain was too bad, and part of it was due to the White Dragons’ selfish nature, so there were always rumors about them betraying their other comrades in battle. They even tended to attack human trader convoys in order to steal their riches.

Another point was their disgustingly powerful breeding powers. To the other Dragon Clans, the White Dragons bred exceptionally easily, but at the same time, this put a large burden on the clan. Each of them took up a lot of supplies, and once there were too many of them, without a self-sustained source of food, all they could do was migrate after a certain amount of time. When they moved, all they left behind in their wake were patches of destroyed natural habitats and ecosystems. So it was not surprising that they were known as the representatives of Evil Dragons.

“The churches of both Mother Nature and Lord of Light and Fire have ordered our exile, but right now, we have a different identity now, we are the Deladia Empire’s patrol warrior. Now that we have this identity, they probably would not be so quick to attack…”

Gamu said softly.

“If they dare challenge us, we’ll kill them!” said a White Dragon angrily.

“They’re just a bunch of ants. As long we don’t meet a Silver-Striped Knight or higher, seeing how strong this team is, what else is there to fear?” The White Dragons clearly were not worried.

Garen stood among them, slowly resting and readjusting his breath. He now had Level Seven Draconic Aura and Level Seven physical fitness, so he was already a proper Level Seven apex creature. Even if they did encounter a Silver-Striped Knight, he was not afraid.

Closing his eyes slowly, he began to gradually bring out some of the Soul Energy from the Suffering Knight’s core.

He had already absorbed more than half of the core and only needed to absorb another third or so before he would have drained it completely. But even so, Garen could already clearly see that his Soul Ring had fully perfected the fourth Soul Seed and was beginning to condense the fifth.

The Soul Rings had five levels and leveled up once with every five Seeds.

According to Garen’s estimates, once he finished absorbing the Suffering Core, he would be able to enter the Second Color Phase.

The levels of a Demon Lord were divided into seven color phases, and entering the Second Color meant that he was truly making his way toward becoming an upper-grade Demon Lord.

When he reached the peak of the Seven Color Levels, that would be when he achieved True Soul status.

And the way he saw it, judging by how he had progressed so far in this world, Garen felt that it was quite likely he could achieve True Soul. This world had far too many resources…

After resting for some time, the White Dragons began to fly toward supply point Gamu had mentioned as well.

As he flew, Garen organized his corresponding level boundaries.

Not long later, two groups of humans, fighting against each other, suddenly appeared in the distance ahead of them.

One side was dressed in an array of colors and came from an unknown faction, whereas the other was dressed completely in white robes embroidered with a detailed red fire emblem. Some of these even wore silver helmets and shoulder armor that were carved with complicated divine runes. It was the Priests and Holy Warriors of the Light and Fire Church raiding another unknown group.

“We sure are lucky…” Gamu said helplessly. “We just said that we might encounter Priests, and then we bump into them straight away.”

The five dragons stopped advancing, flying slowly in the air as they watched the battle from afar.

“Just let me eat them!” said a Young Dragon nonchalantly. “They’re just a group of Level Two and Three ants.”

“It’ll be easy to eat them, but the trouble we’d attract later won’t be so simple.” Gamu shook his head. “Let’s just fly over them, ignore them.”

“I’m really hungry now.” That Young Dragon was not very pleased.

“Gedd, now’s not the time to be stubborn,” warned Gamu. His expression grew stern, and the Young Dragon named Gedd quickly hid away his displeasure.

He looked around at the other dragons as well and noticed that another White Dragon was staring wide-eyed at the bright, sparkling things those humans had.

“O Dragon Goddess above, my eyes aren’t deceiving me, right? Those are Soul Gems! How could they be Soul Gems??” This White Dragon kept muttering. As though he realized Gedd was staring at him, he lowered his head quickly, but his expression grew greedier and greedier.

The two dragons exchanged a glance, and read the same intention in each other’s eyes.

This was in the middle of nowhere, so if they acted fast enough, even if they killed these Priests and took away their stuff, those weaklings would not be able to contact the Church in time at their level, so no one would be any the wiser as long as they got rid of the evidence.

Only those who are Level Nine and above would be able to use a Time Reversal Spell, but who would use such a resource-intensive Level Nine Spell on a couple of Level Two and Three Priests?

Garen watched all of this unfold before him.