Year 2, Day 2
We are getting closer and closer to the fateful moment.
Among all the young clan members, only 38 had already reached the pinnacle of body forging or above.
With my cultivation in the confirmed stage of foundation establishment and having a foot in the advanced stage, I am confident of making it to the top three.
However, I am not aiming for the podium but for first place.
Xuan Yao and Xuan Mei will be my two main opponents, but I just hope not to meet them too early.
Nevertheless, the elders are fair and have arranged it so that I won't encounter them before the semifinals.
There is one round per day, and I easily eliminated the two guys yesterday and today, qualifying among the top 9.
By luck, I was drawn and got a ticket to advance to the top 5. In two days, I will face the other four, and the ranking will be decided then!
…
"James, stop it, for heaven's sake!" Alice shouted, amplifying her voice with a spell.
However, James turned a deaf ear and kept ascending at full speed on his spear.
The two youths flew at full speed through the air.
Quickly, they broke through the black clouds and saw the sunlight again.
Looking up, they both saw a gigantic floating island, even larger than those above the capital.
Nevertheless, before they could climb higher, several terrifying auras suddenly burst from the island.
They both froze in fear, their minds blank. One lost control of his spear, and the other stopped casting her spell. Once their momentum faded, they plummeted straight toward the ground.
Before they plunged back into the clouds, they felt themselves land on a hard, smooth surface.
As the auras retracted, they both regained their senses and looked around.
"Don't ask unnecessary questions and wait until we get to the nest; you'll get your answers there!" said a deep, guttural voice.
The two youths swallowed their words and gulped as they sensed the oppressive aura of a pinnacle spirit beast.
Fortunately for them, the beast showed no hostility and didn't seem to want to harm them otherwise, they would have likely already been reduced to pools of blood after a fall of several kilometers.
"What the hell is this? I've never heard of such a powerful beast here! According to the map, there shouldn't be a single spirit beast within a hundred kilometers!" James kept complaining internally.
"Watch out kid. This island is far from simple. There's a magical beast over there and several dozen spirit beasts," said the old immortal.
(Magical beast = rank 5)
James was speechless for a moment.
"You… WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME EARLIER!!!" he roared at the artifact spirit.
"Calm down a bit," it replied calmly. "They had detected you from the beginning, and if they wanted to do something to you, they would have already attacked."
"That's not my problem, you -…"
While James and the old artifact spirit were engaged in a,… let's say, heated discussion, Alice was curiously observing everything around her, though she was still trembling a little just thinking about the monstrous auras she had felt earlier.
They were currently on the back of a gigantic dark green beast flying rapidly toward the island in front of them.
It had two long, powerful wings extending from its shoulder blades, and its scales gleamed with a brilliant metallic sheen.
At a glance, its body was about 70 meters long with a wingspan of nearly 130 meters.
It was simply the largest beast she had ever seen. Even Professor Lysalis, who was also a pinnacle rank 4 spirit beast, was slightly smaller.
After all, although a powerful beast wasn't necessarily large, a large beast was almost always very strong.
...
A few moments later, the beast ascended to the island's surface and flew over it, allowing the two youths to observe the beauty of this unknown floating island.
By the looks of it, it was probably about three or four kilometers in diameter.
The entire island was covered in thick jungle and mountains.
The high clouds mingled with the terrain, giving it a mysterious and dangerous appearance.
Although they didn't paid attention initially, there were about ten smaller islands around the main island, likely having detached over time.
The beast didn't seem moved by the scenery and led them to the highest of the mountains, proudly standing in the island's center and reaching over 2500 meters.
[PICTURE HERE]
"It's beautiful," Alice sighed.
James, however, was more focused on the few enormous silhouettes flying in the air.
"Wyverns?!"
James couldn't help but let out a cry of surprise internally.
"Yeah, and a bunch of them. From what I can see, they're the ones running everything on this island," said the old cultivator.
James couldn't help but observe even more attentively these majestic beasts descended from one of the most powerful bloodlines, the giant dragons.
He had learned about all sorts of beasts during his time at the academy, but he always thought that giant dragons, celestial dragons, kirins, griffons, and many other races were just legends.
Even though wyverns only had the bloodline of giant dragons, they still had the potential to elevate their bloodline and evolve into true giant dragons, despite the process being very hard.
Even so, their bloodline was much stronger than that of the red-moon Nagas.
It can be said that as long as it didn't die during growth, a wyvern was certain to reach the pinnacle of rank 4, possibly rank 5, though it might take years.
James gulped unconsciously, looking at the broad back he was also on.
"You're telling me there's a rank 5 wyvern here!"
This was simply beyond comprehension.
If this being had surpassed the advanced stage, it would likely be the strongest being in this world.
After all, few could fight dragons and their descendants on the same level.
Nevertheless, the wyvern didn't seem interested in his internal distress and continued its path to the central peak.
…
Halfway up, the wyvern suddenly stopped above a rocky outcrop and took human form, forcing the two youths to just barely cushion a hundred-meter fall.
It revealed a middle-aged man covered in beautiful dark green scales.
His arms ended by shape claws and were connected to its back by two large wings.
The man pointed to a tunnel carved into the side of the mountain.
"Enter right there and go straight ahead; the high priestess wants to have a talk with you," he said in a calm, indifferent voice.
Not even waiting for their response, he turned back and stood guard above the huge staircase winding down the mountain.
"Well, it's not like we have a choice," James laughed.
Since he knew from the old man that they had no ill intentions toward them, he took Alice's hand and led her inside.
…
The walls were straight and smooth, with small yellow stones attached to the ceiling every five meters, emitting a soft light that illuminated the beautiful murals.
At the beginning, the right mural depicted a gigantic shadow standing in the void. It raised its hand, and a small piece of land formed, protected by a beautiful blue light.
At some point, several small beings covered in fine blue and black scales appeared in this world: the Novarians.
On the left mural, there was a terrifying battle between two beings, severely damaging the origin of a low tier plane residing nearby.
On the right, God was patient. He slowly taught them how to fight and build a society.
Battle after battle, the tribe slowly grew.
On the left, he intervened between the two existences and calmed them.
"This plane is probably already dead!" said the old artifact spirit in James's mind.
The young man frowned internally.
"Why do you say that? The spatial barrier usually regenerates," he said in an annoyed voice.
The old man just chuckled.
"Don't pretend to know everything when you know nothing, kid. Do you see that stone there?" he said, pointing to the painting of a pretty gray stone filled with cracks and fragments.
James nodded but said nothing.
"It's called an origin stone," the old man continued. "It's both the heart and brain of a world. Once it's destroyed, it's over. The entire plane will eventually collapse. Even if it can take several hundred years for the damage to become apparent, towards the end, the spatial barrier no longer closes, and the void energy eventually destroys everything. It's particularly violent in the last years."
James widened his eyes but was interrupted by Alice's voice.
"James, are you going to stay planted there much longer?" she said, already fifty meters ahead.
"Huh?... Yeah… I'm coming." James set aside his thoughts and resumed his walk, still observing the beautiful murals.
On the right mural, he saw a "gigantic" battle between the Novarian tribe and several waves of monsters.
As the Novarians were about to be devoured, God intervened in person and ended the conflict again.
On the left mural, he saw many red-moon Nagas standing on a hill, heads held high as they witnessed the end of their world, while several young Nagas passed through a portal.
At that moment, the two murals joined together by the ceiling, showing how the two races coexisted, then cooperated to invade another world, where they met strange beings with violet scales gifted with a monstrous talent for magic: the Valyrs.
"This… This is the history of our world!" Alice stammered.
Unconsciously, she took James's hand as she watched the three races develop a powerful civilization and invade other worlds one after another.
At some point, part of the mural seemed to detach from the overall story.
An invasion troop entered a large cave and discovered about fifteen enormous eggs.
There were red, green, blue, purple, and black ones; each nearly a meter high. They seemed guarded by the skeleton of a terrifying winged beast nearly eighty meters long.
Its bones were broken in several places, but the patrol recovered all those that seemed intact and left with the eggs.
Back in their world, they returned to the capital and set the eggs aside, waiting to reuse them later.
However, before they could do anything, the entire world began to tremble, and the eggs were thrown into the ocean.
Several decades after the awakening of spiritual energy, the eggs finally hatched, and the newborns all surfaced.
Even though they had different natures, they still belonged to the same race and, given their weakness, decided to stay together.
Sensing dangerous presences on one of the continents, they consulted and chose to go to the other.
On one side, civilization developed rapidly, and on the other, the wyverns grew quickly.
At some point, they decided to establish a common nest on the largest of the floating islands, which then measured less than a kilometer.
Over time, the wyverns, as good descendants of dragons, gathered thousands of precious rocks and resources and piled them in the island's center.
Strangely, all the wyverns were very close and shared a common treasure.
One day, the island began to change. Protrusions slowly rose from the ground, and the island rapidly expanded.
At the same time, the wyverns discovered something incredible.
Under their gigantic pile of treasure, a strange vein of magnificent blue had emerged.
"It's a strange coincidence," the old man said. "These wyverns pillaged an entire continent for a hundred years and piled a whole lot of precious materials in one place, which eventually resonated with the fluxorium in the rocks and created a source stone."
"Hold on, you're telling me they replicated the sanctuary vein?!" Liam said, eyes widening.
"Yes, though it's still much smaller, but it can still grow."
James's eyes suddenly sparkled as he thought of a possibility.
"So it would be possible to do the same on our continent?" he said excitedly.
"Well, theoretically yes, but only the islands of the capital should be rich enough in fluxorium to reproduce such a feat. Even then, it would take a tremendous amount of resources, and the three races are much more consumptive than the wyverns. It would probably take thousands of years before it happens again," instantly crushing the young naga's hopes.
Hand in hand with Alice, he continued his path, watching the civilization develop and the wyverns dominate a continent.
Finally, they reached the end of the corridor, which opened into a large hall resembling a church carved into the rock.
Even the benches were made of stone.
However, the church was very small, and barely a hundred people could enter at once.
At the end of the central aisle, kneeling before the altar, was a tall woman dressed in white.
Parts of her body, like her face and part of her chest, seemed very human, while the rest of her body was covered in red scales, highlighting her long tail resting on the ground.
Unlike the wyvern-man who had brought them, her wings were not fused to her arms but extended majestically from her shoulder blades.
Upon closer inspection, her scales were more beautiful, smaller, and more refined.
She even had a small crown of pointed horns emerging from her head.
Alice and James widened their eyes, having never seen such a beautiful woman.
The woman seemed to sense their gaze and stood up, straightening her white garments and making them feel a sense of oppression that only the headmaster and the high pontiff could evoke: the one of a being who had surpassed the limit of this world.
[PICTURE HERE]
PS: James was previously a humanoid. Even though he has fully adapted to his new identity, his tastes in women haven't changed much, so don't find it too strange that he is attracted to another race.