Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
It was as though everything returned to the state when he first entered here.
Garen completely lost consciousness.
As for the Suffering Knight behind him, his entire body armor exploded like an expensive crystal gla.s.s shattering into millions of pieces. Countless black characters and symbols attempted to escape like tadpoles but were frozen by a vast Draconic Aura. Bam!
All the characters once again exploded into finer pieces. This time, they disappeared into the most basic negative energy flow into the air.
“Lord…!” The Suffering Knight's last voice echoed into the abyss before nothing could be heard again.
Everything returned to peace. The Draconic Aura subsided and as just it was in the beginning, as though it never appeared.
A school of black smoke with human faces encircled Garen. They attempted to creep into Garen's skin and ears. Every one of them wanted to occupy Garen, this young dragon's body.
However, there was a thin layer of light over Garen's body that prevented him from any harm.
As time slowly pa.s.sed, it was a permanent darkness into the abyss without being able to tell between the night and day.
An unknown time had pa.s.sed until Garen slowly regained consciousness.
His compact surroundings of black smoke with human faces dispersed like scared little fishes. At the time same, Garen, who was levitating as a result of being cupped by them, took a sharp fall.
He immediately fluttered his wings, struggling to stay afloat.
Seeing the darkness everywhere, Garen recalled the earlier situation.
“What just happened?” He felt a splitting headache.
The Suffering Knight who pursued after him was gone. He suddenly remembered.
“Could he be killed by the earlier Draconic Aura?”
He was most pleasantly surprised by the Soul Rings that he detonated remaining intact. It was a miracle.
He clearly remembered that at the final crucial moment, he blew up all his Soul Ring to obtain the upper limit of the strength. Who would have thought that all his Soul Rings remained in one piece?
“How funny!” Garen muttered in his heart. Although he didn't understand what happened, it was obvious someone had saved him.
He drifted in the darkness and stared beneath him. He saw a colorless light source not near away from him.
He flew downwards. It seemed that this unknown existence saved him. As he has been rescued, he should head down to thank it face to face.
As he flew down and closed in, Garen landed at the edge of this huge light source.
The light source was small, only at a diameter of over ten meters. It was pale white within that light source; the insides could be seen indistinctly.
He circled around this light. The bottom of the abyss was flat, as though someone had polished a smooth surface as there was no staggering when on foot.
This wasn't a small palace.
Garen went around the place and sensed indistinctly.
He found a stone tablet in the surrounding.
The pitch black stone tablet was half-rooted on the ground with the other half on the surface. There were words engraved on the side. It was the Draconic language with which he was familiar, yet the semantics were somewhat ancient.
Garen carefully read the words with the little light.
“Guilty of heinous crime… All-Devouring Dragon… Earth's Core Capital…”
The content after that was m.u.f.fled, as though it had been scratched all over.
Garen couldn't restore it despite carefully studying it long. He tried to claw at the stone tablet.
Shhh.
His claws instead were ground into a layer of powder.
The durability of the stone tablet was so hard that even his sharp dragon claw left no mark. This left Garen in surprise.
He spun around the light source again in the darkness and found the same stone tablet at another two areas. There were similar handwritings engraved on them respectively.
One of the stone tablets read “Forbidden Zone.”
While the other stone tablet was “Slumber, Do Not Disturb, Disaster.”
The remaining writings were too blurred. Many of the sentences in the middle could not be made out.
Garen looked through the stone tablets and investigated around once more.
The odd thing was that this was the center of the abyss, yet none of these black smoke with human faces dared approach it. They seemed to be afraid of something.
Garen gave it a thought before walking to the outer area.
Walking along the surface of the abyss, he went about and around.
He finally got a hold of the structure here.
The entire abyss was the size of several soccer fields. It was circular in shape. The light source protecting the stone tablets was just located just right in the middle.
It was soon when Garen found a sticky black thing in an empty area. He felt the presence of this thing to be similar to the Suffering Knight who had gone after him. So he captured it.
This thing was soft like a sticky rubber ball. There was a large symbol beaming in dark red. It looked like the letter Y, but with a twist.
The moment he held it in his hands, he felt a breeze of Soul Power aura leaking from within the rubber ball.
“Soul Power!” Garen was delighted and swiftly retrieved the ball and held within his claws.
Strangely, looking at the light source from afar, Garen could clearly see what was within it.
It was a golden round object of a dragon's eye. In a dim light glow, it wasn't clear. However, it could be distinguished that it was a dragon's eye with a golden vertical iris.
Garen was shocked.
If this was in some other world of the large beasts, it would be understandable. However, for this world of dragons to have birthed such a large eyeball, its body must have been quite the size.
In this world, such a large dragon definitely wouldn't be a n.o.body.
Staring from afar, he could somewhat make out a woman in a black dress standing afloat within the dragon's eye.
“If this was a seal that could seal the person inside, that must be one h.e.l.l of a power.” He was struck by this idea.
Looking at the dragon's eye, he thought about it before shouting out loud.
“Thank you, Lord, for rescuing me. I am Garen, a warming of White Dragon Clan.”
His voice echoed in the darkness, but it received no response.
It was silent. The woman inside the round light source remained still as though she didn't hear his screams.
“Thank you, Lord, for saving me!” Garen shouted out once more. This time, even louder.
Yet, there was still no response. It was still silent at the bottom of the abyss.
Garen was hesitant but remembered the content on the stone tablets. Could the woman within be in deep slumber? Could it be that she rescued him unconsciously? Impossible!
Even with an unconscious defense, he himself wouldn't be about to leave unscathed at this rate unless the other party specifically protected him.
“This is not a place that you should come to. You should leave.” Suddenly, a cold male voice was heard from the light source.
The moment Garen heard this voice, he felt the Soul Power quaver and resonate. It was as though the other person's faint noise was enough to break his Soul Rings.
His blood rushed as his heartbeat raced. He only calmed down moments later and that was when he realized that the curse on him was lifted.
Taking a few deep breaths, he gave one last stare at the woman in the center of the light source.
Garen fluttered his wings and flew upward, exiting the abyss.
It was as though he had the will of the woman in the light source this time, as the black clouds with human faces gathered beneath him in tides, swiftly holding him up and tossing him out to the outer world.
Garen took one last look below as the light source reached further and further out of sight, dimmer and dimmer until it disappeared from plain view.
“Once out, do not mention to anybody about here. Remember!” That clear male voice shot through the distance and snuck into his head.
Garen wasn't puzzled that although the person was a woman, she carried a male voice. These major existences had various peculiarities, so this was not something out of the norm.
He only felt odd that the person rescued him for no reason at all. A Level Seven Suffering Knight was easily crushed like an ant by her, let alone Garen who was weaker.
With such a doubt hanging over him, Garen was fired by the black smoke out of the rift of the Snow Mountain. It wasn't long before he was flying back to the blizzard on the other side of a lake of ravaging snowstorm.
Within the abyss.
The woman within the light source made a motion, stretching her arms slightly.
“White Dragons have always been selfish. Their souls are as dirty as black dirt. Who would have thought there'd be an odd one out here. His soul is as clear as crystal…” The male voice echoed within the light source.
“Odd one… Hehe… Striving huh… Such an interesting little white dragon.”
It reminded her of herself in the beginning. An oddball within the dragon race, going against the nature of their race all the same.
A sense of fatigue crept within her as she fell back into slumber, or perhaps delved back into practice.
Once Garen was about to find his way back to the clan in a struggle, over a month has pa.s.sed.
After he returned to the family, all the dragon whelps thought he was dead and didn't think he would actually return. The dragon whelps of the nurturing center, especially the dragon whelps that lived from s.n.a.t.c.hing ice stalagmites, stared at Garen in a displeased manner. He s.n.a.t.c.hed away the trophy, the largest ice stalagmites after all. It was a good thing there were several Level Five and Level Four Crystal Cores shared by all. Otherwise, their hatred towards Garen would have deepened.
Upon returning, Garen explained what happened to Satwo, Sathree, and Safour, saying he lost his way in the blizzard and lost the ice stalagmite with no hope of bringing it back. He finally made it home with much difficulty.
Originally, the few siblings did not believe it, but seeing the wounds on Garen's body as well as his lack of strengths, they took his word for it.
Garen had yet to attend any cla.s.ses during his return when Saszt, Boris and the lot arrived at his residence to ask about the situation.
“What! You lost the ice stalagmite!?” Boris's mouth was wide open in disbelief.
Saszt, who was beside, was clearly distressed.
“How did you lose it? If I knew you were going to lose it, I would have gone ahead and given a few bites!”
Leona was more concerned about Garen's body.
“What's the news on your injury? Why are there this many wounds?”
“Wounded by Giant Iguanas…” Garen helplessly replied, “I lost my way halfway and encountered a few Giant Iguanas of high levels. I could only scatter about but was caught by a Level Five Giant Iguana. After a round of being beaten up, good luck allowed me to find my way home.”
“Blame your greediness!” Leona said with contempt.
“I was prepared to s.n.a.t.c.h it away and bring it back to share within us secretly. Who would have thought…” Garen made an aggrieved face.
“Really?” Leona was dubious. It was easy to win over little girls.
“Of course it's true. We are a team!” Garen said out loud. Of course, he wouldn't dare mention that he planned to pocket it at a time like this.
