162. The Dream of the Sinner (5)
The dragon and the person looked at the same place simultaneously. The air shook violently. What was approaching from the front was certainly unusual.
A chill.
A terrifying aura spreading rapidly in all directions.
Rustle! Crack!
The tranquility of the forest was momentary.
Something emerged from the underbrush, stepping on branches and occasionally making clattering noises. There were also sounds that were difficult to distinguish—whether they were breath or wind. It seemed like breath. Breathing. Breathing. The grass rustled. The squelching sound of heavy breathing.
It was coming from the direction of the mentor's grave.
Gradually, it got closer.
'Could it be?'
The ominous energy encountered here.
'Could it be?'
Unfortunately, or fortunately, there was some hint.
He felt a conflicting impulse to both crush his suspicions and cling to them.
The outline gradually became clear. The slowly moving figure was quite large. As the clouds shifted, moonlight shattered across its back. The light and dark of the forest reversed.
The moment the familiar scent of blood struck his nose.
It finally revealed its full form.
"...You."
A reptile with a familiar appearance emerged from the foliage.
It was the dragon he had been searching for all this time.
However, it was not in the 'state' he had anticipated.
"Grrrr!"
Adkiel bared his teeth. The guide dragon was not one to show such a demeanor to another dragon. It was beyond the threat to drive away a troublesome dragon; it was ready to tear apart at a moment's notice if commanded.
The dragon also sensed it.
He stared at the heart of the newly appeared dragon. He could not sense any life force. Yet, it had made it this far. Mimicking breathing, it walked while dead. It acted while dead.
As if it were alive.
He questioned himself amidst the confusion.
'Has it grown during that time? But this is not the direction I intended...'
Also, the dragon's eye sockets were hollowed out. Black something writhed in those holes.
Flare!
It looked like an extremely dense shadow... or pure darkness.
"Grrrr."
The mouth of the dead dragon opened. Black energy wriggled like tentacles, seeping out. He was certain that the dragon was completely consumed. At the same time, he thought he understood the identity of the entity controlling the dragon.
Yes, he had seen it before.
A very long time ago.
At that time, it had been just a speck of dust compared to now.
"...!"
He prepared an incantation. He needed to capture it. He needed to get his hands on it...!
Flare!
At that moment, shadows erupted from the entire body of the dead dragon. They spread out, thrashing around like a living creature. He immediately instructed the guide dragon to flee to the barn...
"No!"
"Kyaaaaaa!"
A desperate scream of his friend echoed.
The gold dragon, entangled in the darkness, was flailing like a fish caught in a net. The guide dragon's face turned to one of terror. Bound and immobile, the shadow's claws slowly dug into the gaps of the golden scales.
The dragon keeper rushed out without a moment's thought. Before his eyes, his fifty-sixth Adkiel, which he had named himself, was being devoured alive.
Screech!
Snap!
In an instant, the wings of the gold dragon were torn, starting from the root. A red line appeared between the body and wings, and blood gushed out.
He roared with the face of a ghost.
"Adkieel!"
Collision.
The roiling darkness created sharp textures and swirled. It then attempted to push him away.
The dragon keeper chanted the incantation repeatedly. To save the dragon from the swirling shadows. But the darkness only absorbed the golden dragon like a swamp. His friend was being gradually pulled into the black fog.
He could not afford to let it go like this.
That dragon was his.
"...!"
As he struggled through the darkness, he soon found the answer.
It was both a way to save his friend and a way to control the monster.
He realized what the monster was seeking as it devoured the lost dragon and even aimed to swallow his friend.
It became clear as he observed what the monster did to the dead and dying dragons.
'Life force!'
The monster was craving life force.
The dynamic power that moves living creatures. The freshness of it.
He clenched his teeth and raised his right hand. The blunt fingernails sharpened into points. And then...
Screech!
The dragon keeper slashed his left arm with the sharp nails. Blood poured out.
At that moment, the turbulence enveloping the golden dragon stopped. Even though the dragon's blood scent was already strong there, the dense shadow monster sought a more appetizing target.
Much more intense life force... rich blood.
"Look here! How about it? Something far more tempting than dragon's blood is right here!"
This was a far superior prey, and the monster could not misjudge its priority.
It was obvious. Because it was not the first time the monster tasted the dragon keeper's blood.
Flare!
Shadows, like those from the abyss, converged and surged toward the dragon keeper's left arm wound.
He did not resist.
The dragon, Adkiel, opened its eyes.
"Kiiing?"
His vision wavered and gradually cleared. A familiar face appeared in his retina. The worried expression of his master.
"Kiiing! Kiiing!"
The gold dragon lunged toward him. This time, the master did not fall over from the weight. Without time to wonder about this fact, the dragon burrowed into his master's embrace. Despite knowing there was no space to squeeze in further, it rubbed its body against him.
The dragon understood the concept of death. Just moments ago, it really thought it was dying.
What was that dark monster?
It was clear that it was not the dragon meant to guide. It was different from a dragon... from a more fundamental level.
No, not different—wrong.
"Yes, yes. Good."
Feeling the hand stroking its head, Adkiel calmed its shocked heart. Only then did it have time to look around.
The monster?
The surroundings were in a state of devastation. The dragon had seen a landscape like this only once before. When moving the barn, it had passed through a land where not a single tree grew, just like now.
At that time, the master had referred to that land as... Ah, yes. It was called 'desert.'
But this was clearly a forest.
The area that should have been covered by the dragon's flight for about a minute, faster than any dragon, was completely stripped away and turned into a lifeless wasteland.
The forest had vanished as if eaten away.
It was a scene that could not even be attributed to a fire. With Adkiel's intelligence and knowledge, he could not understand this phenomenon. He merely guessed that his master had done something.
The monster was nowhere to be seen. Could it be that the master had eaten it? If it had swallowed something recklessly, it might cause a stomachache. The dragon genuinely worried about him.
Once free from the fear, the dragon initially focused on worrying about its master.
"Kiiing?"
It soon shifted its attention to itself.
And was extremely bewildered.
Flap!
Its two wings were moving perfectly.
The dragon felt intense confusion due to the discrepancy with its memory.
Just a moment ago, when it was caught by that dark monster, its left wing had been completely torn and fallen off, hadn't it?
The memory of the sharp pain was as strong as ever. It couldn't have been a delusion.
Even the small wound on its neck had disappeared.
"Is it okay? Can you move well?"
"Grrr!"
Adkiel purred as if in agreement. The dragon's worries didn't last long. After all, as long as it was fine, that was all that mattered. There were many things in the world that dragons could not understand.
For example, the dead kin sprawled over there.
"Sniff, sniff!"
It smelled the remains of the fire dragon, which had turned into a rag-like mess. And it confirmed that the dragon heart inside had disappeared. At that moment, Adkiel lost interest in the dragon's corpse.
Meanwhile, the man's gaze, which had confirmed that his friend was fine, was marked by an uncomfortable stain. The shadow-like monster was partially fused with the dragon's corpse, and it seemed that during the process of tearing it apart, some of the flesh and shadow had splashed into his eyes. Although he cleaned off the substance from his body, he couldn't purify his eyes from the burning sensation.
"Wait here for a moment."
It clung stubbornly to the surface of the cornea and wouldn't come off easily. Even blinking several times didn't help.
"Kiiing?"
The dragon, feeling anxious, tried to follow, but he sternly commanded.
"Wait!"
"Kiiing..."
The dragon dared not approach further due to the force in his tone.
It was necessary. It wouldn't be good for the dragon to witness what was about to happen next. Also, leaving the dragon alone here was not dangerous. The master's grave no longer existed here.
He moved instantly. When he opened his eyes, the surroundings were back to a normal forest. Dense trees, the sounds of wild animals, and the babbling of a small spring could be heard.
Approaching the water's edge, he inserted his fingers into the socket and removed his left eye. The surface was covered with black, sticky stains. He washed it clean in the water. Then...
Flare!
From the socket where the eye had been removed, black flames burst forth.
'Adkiel would be distressed seeing this.'
The disciple who lamented the master's death.
He couldn't just let the master go like this. He believed that someday their kin would overcome even death. It seemed like holding on a little longer would have worked... but the master, who lived much longer than he did, could not endure beyond that.
He wondered if he could postpone everything just a little bit more.
In the end, after the master's death, the disciple broke the master's will.
Thus, he considers himself a sinner.
Let me go... let me go... let me go to where I should... let it flow naturally... let me go...!
The magic he prepared for a long time was something no one in history had attempted.
The disciple succeeded in keeping the master's soul here instead of sending it to the spirit world.
An incantation to forcibly bind the separated soul and body.
It seemed that if he could just hold on a little longer after the initial attachment, a perfect immortality system could be established. The master could wait dead for a while. Because if her soul were allowed to flow away like this, it would never be found again. That had to be prevented.
No... ah...!
But the magic was not perfect. To confine the spirit in the cold body, he poured his overflowing life force into the corpse. Such magic had never existed before. He was the first to attempt it and the first to succeed.
A spell that creates miracles by offering one's own life force as a sacrifice.
However, it was not a perfect success, nor a perfect miracle.
Crack! Crunch!
He tried to block it, but the master's soul and body twisted into a grotesque form as they merged. The malformed fusion of soul and body became neither a physical object nor a spiritual entity.
After shrinking and withering, she evaporated most of what constituted her being, leaving only a speck of black dust.
Too weak and grotesque. It couldn't be resurrected in this state.
Since even that small speck was likely to evaporate if left alone, he trapped the remnants of what had once been the master within a barrier.
And since then, he had never visited the grave. He had avoided it in despair. He barely erased his emotions and memories.
Flare!
And after a long time, today he reunited with her in an unexpected form.
After a fierce battle, he subdued her, who had become even larger and denser with darkness, and succeeded in trapping her life force within his own body.
Though the master had already lost her mind and turned into a monster, he could no longer ignore it. He decided to face it now.
'Perhaps I can perfectly complement the half-success.'
Compared to the past, when she seemed likely to evaporate easily, the master had become much stronger.
It might even be a prime opportunity.
It could be reversed.
'Just wait a little longer inside me... Until the day perfect immortality becomes possible, I will resurrect you in a complete state. Just endure until then.'
In a state of unity with him.
'But... I'm still anxious about the current state.'
Under the premise of confining her within his body, more secure measures were needed.
Otherwise, she might devour him during a lapse in vigilance.
'It would be better to use my body as a prison for her, creating a separate dimensional layer within the physical body to separate her. Like a spiritual world overlapping with the material world.'
A space solely for the purpose of holding her.
It might be considered a kind of higher-dimensional void. A separate dimensional layer that no one could open without his permission.
As he made this resolution, he looked at the left eyeball he held in his hand. The reflection of the man's face in the pupil. The dragon keeper, with a strange energy flickering where his left eye used to be, was there. His hair was a dark black, similar to shadows. The perfectly intact eye on the opposite side was radiating a very weary light.
And that face...
The sinner awoke from the nightmare.