The Dragon Heir

[Quantum Devourer]

When the user devours a creature whole, there is a chance to engrave a Quantum Imprint of that creature’s complete existence.

A Quantum Imprint preserves the creature’s total form at the moment of consumption, allowing the user to later assume that form through shapeshifting.

Currently stored Imprints: 0/2

Slot 1: {Empty}

Slot 2: {Empty}

Even though I could no longer summon my system screen, it did not mean my access to my own power had been revoked. That much was obvious enough. More importantly, my memory had always been unforgivingly precise, and it still was. I remembered everything I had ever seen with brutal clarity, whether I wanted to or not.

And with that clarity came the realization that the final piece required for survival had never been external. It had always been lodged firmly within me. I had no idea whether it was fate or some cosmic joke with a taste for irony that granted me this exact skill, one that would be absurdly useful in my current predicament.

I would not be surprised if it was deliberate. Nor would I be shocked if this very skill was the reason I had ended up knee-deep in this miserable mess to begin with.

After all, the Colosseum was fair. Disgustingly so. The trials existed to judge, not to quietly execute participants without allowing them the courtesy of resistance.

I shook my head and dismissed the spiral. Overthinking was a luxury I could not afford, and indulgence had never kept anyone alive for long.

I focused instead, sinking into meditation to accelerate my mana regeneration, because Thalador himself would struggle to find enough mana for what I was about to attempt, and I was significantly less divine than he was. The first step, at least, was simple. I heard the screeches beyond the veil of fog well before their owners showed themselves.

The Curious clone nearly slammed herself out of the fog, bursting through the veil as wet, shrieking noises snapped closed behind her. She was in a sorry state, missing both arms, large portions of her torso, and generous chunks of her thighs. The clothing she had woven from ice was shattered beyond recognition, scattered like decorative debris.

And yet, she looked exhilarated as she glanced back, eyes bright with something dangerously close to satisfaction.

Judging by the noise she had stirred up, she had done her job.

A moment later, a massive maw of pitch-black darkness lunged after her, snapping forward like a predator finally done indulging prey that insisted on playing games. That description was not poetic exaggeration; within the fog, it was simply accurate.

However, this small circle of refuge was free of fog. And where the fog ended, the rules shifted. The instant that gaping maw crossed the threshold, the Terrorist clone was already waiting, vibrating with feral delight as she lunged forward and seized the eel by its mouth.

The creature did not even understand what had happened before she tore it apart at the source, ripping through its maw with savage efficiency and reducing it to a collapsing ruin of flesh before it could so much as register pain. What remained was promptly thrown inward.

I could not believe that even this worthless piece of trash had managed to give me trouble while inside the fog. A stupid fish, of all things. Disgraceful.

With that irritation simmering, I stood and turned my attention to the other prisoners. They had squeezed their eyes shut, bodies trembling as the wet, heavy thump echoed several meters away. Terror had rendered them perfectly still, as if ignorance might pass for protection.

Well, I could not blame them. Against the denizens of the fog, there was very little else they could do.

I bent down over the corpse, tore off a bite, and chewed with only half my attention on the act. Mmm. Not bad. It was not the sort of monster meat I usually preferred, but it was deceptively good, carrying a pleasantly warped undertone that lingered longer than expected. I found myself appreciating that part more than I should have.

After a few more feral mouthfuls, I decided to stop indulging and simply devour it whole. There was a distinction there. It was subtle but important. Eating something piece by piece still counted as devouring in the long run, at least as far as my own understanding went, since my draconic biology treated digestion as more of a suggestion than a process.

Anything that reached my stomach simply vanished, leaving no residue behind, as if there were a patient black hole nested inside me. Still, that disappearance was not instantaneous. The larger the meal, the longer it took, with size mattering far more than substance.

If I were to eat this massive eel monster normally, it would take nearly ten minutes for it to be fully “devoured” internally. And that, I suspected, was where the skill drew its line. It did not say eventually devour, or consume in parts. It very clearly said devour whole, which felt like something that needed to happen in a single, decisive moment rather than through a series of increasingly messy bites.

Fortunately, I had a solution, one I had started using only recently.

Using alchemical transfiguration, I compressed the entire eel into a small, violently unstable chunk of bite-sized meat. A shame, really. I would not be able to savor it properly this way, and I genuinely resented that. Still, I was confident I would have plenty of opportunities to taste everything properly once I had control over my situation again. I hated leaving things to fate, after all. That bastard had a clear grudge against me, and I saw no reason to keep trusting it.

The moment the condensed chunk hit my stomach, it vanished completely, devoured in an instant. I waited a few seconds, paying close attention to myself, following the familiar internal sensation I used whenever I activated a skill, trying to feel whether Quantum Devourer had responded.

Nothing.

I let out a slow sigh. Well, it had said there was a chance. No point sulking over it. Besides, these eels seemed particularly abundant within the fog, which meant I would not be lacking in future attempts.

I replenished my mana back to full, even though I already had more than enough to summon clones again. Keeping the tank topped off simply felt correct under the circumstances. You never knew when something unexpected would crawl out of the dark, and the last drop of mana might be the difference between walking away and becoming scenery. I had not encountered anything like that recently, but that was exactly how fate liked to operate.

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And I had no intention of getting caught sitting around like a complacent dragon.

This time, I sent both Terrorist and Curious out together to lure two more eels in one sweep, while Lazy and I stayed behind to wait for their arrival. Lazy was not thrilled about this arrangement in the slightest, but a firm bonk to the head solved that problem well enough. Good gods. Why do I even have a lazy aspect? If there was one thing I had never been accused of, it was laziness… right?

Eh. Whatever.

On that note, maybe I should actually name my clones properly. Calling them Lazy, Curious, and Terrorist felt increasingly wrong in a way I could not fully articulate. Perhaps Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald would work better. If I was Jade, then it made sense that my fragments would be gemstones too, each cut differently. I decided I would think about it later, preferably after I escaped this place and stopped flirting with death every few minutes.

The night dragged on. Even after devouring nearly a dozen eel monsters, I felt no meaningful change, to the point where I started questioning whether this skill even worked at all. How low were the damned chances, exactly? As if that were not enough, there were far worse predators lurking within the fog.

There was the leviathan that swallowed me whole and crushed me beneath its building sized teeth. There were deceptively small, seaweed-like fish that used spatial magic to compress their prey alive before eating what remained. There were massive shark-like monsters that manipulated the fog itself, binding victims in place before shredding them apart with absurdly large teeth.

Even these eels were dangerous in their own right. They hunted prey larger than themselves using poisonous auras and corrosive attacks. Unfortunately for them, I was immune to their toxins, which made them ideal bait to lure into the clearing. Most of the other denizens of the fog simply killed my clones before they could lure anything at all. Experiencing death repeatedly, in an impressive variety of unpleasant ways, had humbled even me. That alone said a great deal about the fog.

Still, it seemed my frustrated internal rant was finally heard at eel number fifteen. The moment I devoured it, I felt a shift. A clear one.

I smiled, already knowing the answer. It had finally worked.

I collapsed onto the snow with a soft sigh. Finally! That said, there was no time to rest. This was only the beginning of taking control back, and I still had one last thing to confirm.

I carefully discarded the rags I was wearing and got to work.

When I reached for the ability, I felt a subtle nudge deep within my chest. Instinct took over, and I followed that sensation as my mana began to drain. My body started to change. My legs fused together, bone and flesh reshaping seamlessly as my neck extended forward. A massive maw unfurled, lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth, opening like a grotesque flower. Fins formed, slimy scales spread across my skin, and my body stretched into a long, sinuous shape.

The entire transformation took less than ten seconds. The mana cost was surprisingly manageable, which only made the grin return wider than before.

As for my senses… they were nothing like my usual ones.

Everything felt wrong. And interesting.

Vision dulled first. My eyesight flattened, colors bleeding out of one another until the world degraded into a soft, useless gradient of light and shadow. Were these eels blind? It did not feel like that. This was not the absence of sight, but rather its demotion. Vision still existed, it simply no longer mattered.

I shifted against the snow, producing wet, unpleasant thumps as I properly slid into the fog. The effect was immediate. My mobility improved sharply, the resistance I had grown accustomed to simply vanishing. If I had a face capable of grinning, I would have worn one proudly. Whatever law of the fog had been freezing my body no longer applied. In this form, the fog recognized me as kin.

I had harbored doubts for a fleeting moment. They evaporated instantly.

I turned inward then, focusing on my senses, letting the instincts of this body take over as I began to swim through the fog. It was clumsy at first, like learning to move with unfamiliar limbs, but the rhythm came quickly. Through these new eyes of mine, the fog felt thicker, denser, almost tangible.

Sight was replaced by pressure.

My skin felt alive in a way that bordered on obscene. Every movement within the fog registered as ripples across my body, vibrations traveling along my length with intimate clarity. I could feel the sluggish churn of the fog itself, its unnatural currents sliding past me.

My head snapped sideways when pressure suddenly built along one flank. After it happened a few more times, the realization clicked. Any movement within the fog, no matter how subtle, sang through me as a disturbance.

Sound was no longer something I heard. It was something I felt. It traveled through my entire body at once. The distant shifting of predators, the grinding displacement of massive forms far beyond sight, the faint flutter of smaller creatures desperately attempting to remain unnoticed, all of it arrived as layered pressure changes stacking atop one another in a constant hum.

It should have driven me insane. It probably would have, if I did not already have experience with my air sense, which had long since evolved into full spatial perception. Compared to that, this was crude and dull, lacking finesse, but the sheer range was absurd. I quickly realized this was likely the eel’s innate ability.

That realization also explained why these eels were always the first to detect my clones the moment they stepped into the fog.

I was pleased to find that the fog not only allowed me to exist in this form, but did not interfere with my perception either. Not that these were truly my senses, but the distinction felt academic at best. The sensation itself was intoxicating. I no longer perceived the world from a single point tucked behind my eyes. Instead, I perceived it along my entire body at once. Every inch of me contributed to awareness.

I stopped moving and simply felt for a while, letting my mind strain to parse the flood of information pouring in from every direction.

Adjustment came first. Control would follow. I could not use my own abilities in this form, but the eel’s natural toolkit was more than sufficient to keep me satisfied. Complaining would have been ungrateful.

After nearly half an hour of acclimating, I returned to the fogless clearing. I shed the form, pulled my rags back on, and sat down with a long breath. Then I pushed all three clones out at once and issued my commands. Observer’s Mark followed, then Suggestion.

They shifted smoothly into eels and moved together as one, flowing through the fog like a ravenous pack that had finally learned coordination.

It was time to hunt a gold-core leviathan.

***

“Calm down. Calm down. Do not let it show.”

Avena had made a catastrophic mistake today. There had been exactly one rule drilled into her head since the moment the fog swallowed them: do not open your eyes, no matter what you sensed moving around you. And that rule applied doubly to her, because her eyes were wrong to begin with. Even the village head, the most knowledgeable and wisest person she had ever known, did not understand what afflicted them.

They were not normal eyes. With focus alone, they allowed her to see with perfect clarity even in perpetual darkness. With mana, they pierced stealth and illusions alike. She had no mana now, thanks to her peculiar circumstances, but even so, the swirling darkness of the fog did not blind her. She could not see through the fog itself, of course, but she could clearly see what was happening within it.

And what she saw made her stomach twist.

That priestess was wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

Oh sacred Ancestors. Oh divine spirits. They had been right to warn her.

She had seen it. She had seen the priestess break shackles that were meant to bind mana and drain cores alike. She had seen her multiply herself. If Avena had mana, she might have been able to confirm whether those doubles were illusions, but they did not feel like illusions. Not even remotely.

She had watched those copies stumble out of the fog, torn apart, missing arms and chunks of flesh, bodies barely holding together. Then she had seen them lure the fog dwellers closer. And once those monsters crossed the boundary…

They were torn apart with bare hands.

Not even the Waryns possessed such raw, obscene strength. And none of them understood just how dangerous this priestess of the tyrant War Dragon truly was.

Avena had watched her feast on the corpses afterward, tearing into them with feral delight, smiling as she ate. As if that were not horrifying enough, she had then watched the priestess become a fog dweller herself.

Avena struggled to reconcile what her eyes were telling her. A cold, dreadful pit settled deep in her stomach as the priestess sat beside her now, smiling pleasantly, her illusion intact. Harmless. Gentle. Ordinary. Tragic.

She wanted to close her eyes and convince herself it was all a dream.

But terror had seized her heart, hammering it against her ribs like a war drum.

And so she couldn’t.

She didn’t dare.