The Dragon Heir

Even though everything was proceeding smoothly, Alexei couldn’t shake the feeling of unease lodged in his chest. He didn’t know whether it was paranoia or the lingering dread from last night’s encounter, but he refused to believe things would go this cleanly, that they would reach the center of the crater with barely any injuries and without facing a truly powerful monster.

Then again, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.

So he accepted whatever was happening as good luck. And if it wasn’t luck— if it was the opposite— what was he even supposed to do about it? What could anyone do against an entity where merely observing it left psychic whiplashes across the mind. Even the phantom sensation of it made him shudder.

After a few minor skirmishes with weak monsters, they finally arrived.

And then Alexei realized what had been bothering him.

They hadn’t seen any body parts of the fog leviathan. No scattered remains, no torn flesh, no fragments of whatever had clashed here. The reason became apparent as the ice thinned the closer they got to the center.

“Bloody hell,” Maksim muttered as he looked down.

Alexei shared the sentiment.

They had been standing on it the entire time.

The body was encased beneath the ice, vast and unmistakable, and the cold around them was intensifying with every step. The corpse of a Gold Core leviathan was still exerting its will even in death, already reshaping the environment around it. Portions of its massive form still jutted above the ice, frozen solid where it had fallen.

Maksim grinned.

Everyone else looked horrified by the sheer scale of it, but that didn’t stop greed from creeping into their expressions. A powerful leviathan’s body parts were a blessing in their own right. A corpse capable of terraforming the ground it died in was undeniably powerful, and the uses for it— to ensure their survival, to arm their brethren— were far more valuable than any fear it inspired. Not to mention the potential of its blood for ritualistic magic.

They didn’t waste time.

The weak scavengers were eliminated quickly, which once again baffled Alexei. None of the powerful Red Core monsters had sensed this massive feast waiting for them. He shook his head and pushed the thought aside.

Teams were assigned to keep watch and flush out any remaining scavengers, and work began immediately. They started with the portions above the ice, tearing free scales and usable material.

But the moment they tried to move deeper, a problem arose.

Something was wrong.

“There are no organs within…”

The Leviathan’s body was a hollow husk. At least the portion above the ice was. They didn’t have the power to excavate the rest of it from beneath the frozen mass, and if it had been ordinary ice they might have managed with some clever methods. But this ice still carried the Leviathan’s will, and they didn’t have the luxury of waiting for that presence to weaken enough to harvest it safely.

Still… the missing organs bothered him.

“Maybe whatever defeated it… ate the organs?” Alexei offered, though even as he said it, the explanation felt wrong.

“But it feels surgical,” Maksim said, voicing the thought that had been gnawing at him. “Like it wasn’t killed by another monster at all, but instead…”

Alexei understood without him finishing the sentence.

Monsters were messy. Even when they favored organs over flesh, there were always signs of savagery— torn muscle, shattered bone, indiscriminate damage. But this body showed nothing of the sort. It was disturbingly intact. Whatever had killed the Leviathan had targeted its weak points with precision.

And yet, those explosions last night had sounded anything but precise.

The more Alexei thought about it, the less it made sense.

He added it to the growing list of things he couldn’t explain, a list that was expanding far too quickly for his liking. In these lands, uncertainty was dangerous. He had the uncomfortable feeling that they would either die horribly by the end of this expedition or become the safest Waryns alive.

Alexei fervently hoped it was the latter.

Whatever was protecting them, he just hoped it wasn’t merely playing with them.

They extracted what they could, which was still a great deal. Scales, bones, frozen blue blood, fins. Even without the organs, it was a massive haul and worth more than enough to justify the risk.

With that done, they continued deeper.

They wouldn’t be able to carry everything back. The Leviathan’s body was simply too massive. They could return later with better equipment to strip the rest of the corpse, but for now they were nearing their limit. Soon enough, they were packed full, and even those assigned to watch duty were called in to help carry the spoils. Some cargo had to be discarded from the carts, but to Alexei, it felt like a fair trade.

Then he finally saw it.

Stolen novel; please report.

The glow he’d noticed from the edge of the crater burned brightly at the center. A golden sphere hovered nearly a meter above the ground, roughly the size of a small cart.

As he approached, the sight became clearer, and Alexei felt his eyes widen in disbelief.

“A remnant.”

Even Maksim fell silent, staring at the golden sphere with barely restrained awe— and unmistakable greed.

But even in the face of greed, none of them moved closer to the golden sphere.

“This doesn’t feel right…” Maksim muttered.

Alexei almost found the situation laughable. “Since yesterday, when has anything felt right at all? But out of all the bizarre things we’ve seen, I think I finally know which one is the most bizarre.”

And it was lying right in front of them.

A remnant was easy enough to understand, at least in definition. It was something the system could bestow upon someone who had slain a monster. Alexei’s staff was one such remnant, something he had lucked into after killing a treant.

A remnant usually took the form of equipment shaped by the properties of the slain monster. A weapon, armor, or something more exquisite—artifacts being the rarest of them all. Even then, obtaining a remnant was never guaranteed. You didn’t get one from killing monsters left and right. It only happened when the system deemed your actions worthy of a reward.

But there was a rule.

It never happened to monsters.

Monsters did not receive remnants from killing their own kind. Remnants only appeared when a person killed a monster. Now that they were staring at a remnant resting upon the corpse of a Leviathan, it could only mean one thing.

Whatever had hunted this creature wasn’t another monster.

It was someone like them.

And worse still, a remnant was automatically accepted into one’s inventory unless it was explicitly rejected.

That thought sent a chill straight down Alexei’s spine.

There was a Gold Core among them?

The idea made no sense. If a Gold Core could freely enter this frozen hell, then they wouldn’t have been trapped here for a decade. Their clans would have intervened long ago and sent help from outside. And even if someone had done it, why would they reject a remnant from such a powerful Gold Core Leviathan?

The second possibility was even more unsettling.

Someone inside had ascended to Gold.

That was absurd. You couldn’t ascend to Gold that easily. And from everyone Alexei had ever considered promising enough to keep an eye on, none of them were anywhere close to that level.

His thoughts drifted back to yesterday, to the drakkari-shaped figure he had glimpsed behind him. He’d dismissed it at the time as acknowledging the presence of some monstrous guardian watching over them. But now, in hindsight, that dismissal felt far too quick.

It made no sense for him to have brushed it off so easily.

Paranoia crept in, carving deeper with every passing second. Something felt wrong in his head. As if there was a voice there that didn’t belong to him at all, whispering thoughts that weren’t entirely his own.

Now that he had noticed it, Alexei immediately went on alert. Any moment now… the voice would come. It always did. Whenever suspicion crept in, it arrived to soothe it, to sand the edges down and make everything feel reasonable again.

But this time… there was nothing.

No whisper. No reassurance.

Was he just paranoid?

Alexei couldn’t tell anymore. But one thing was clear: there was someone powerful among them. Either someone from outside had discovered some kind of loophole to enter this frozen hell of a prison— which made little sense, because such a person would have no reason to hide— or someone within had ascended.

And that option made just as little sense.

If someone inside had reached Gold, they would have revealed themselves unless they were hostile. And if a hostile Gold was present, they would all already be dead.

Alexei grabbed Maksim by the arm and dragged him aside. They would bring this up with their Waryn brethren later, once they were certain. As things stood, speaking openly would only spread fear of the unknown, the worst possible outcome for an already tense group of warriors. Alexei couldn’t carry the thought alone either, and he knew Maksim was already circling the same conclusions.

The moment they were alone, Alexei spilled everything. Every inconsistency, every thought, every nagging detail he couldn’t reconcile. Maksim listened, then slowly nodded.

“About that voice,” Maksim said quietly. “I felt it too. It wasn’t obvious, just a slight mismatch. It aligned with what I was already thinking, gave me no reason to raise any alarms. But hearing it laid out like this… yeah. It feels like something is fucking with us.”

He grabbed his head and winced. “I almost heard it again before you pulled me away. It told me to question your anxiety, to soothe it because of the situation we were in. And the worst part is, it felt right. My head accepted it naturally. But now that I think about it, that’s how a reasonable person would think, and I am very far from reasonable my—”

Alexei cut him off instantly, silencing him with magic.

They had to be careful.

Vines erupted from the ground between them, twisting into symbols. Language.

It might already be listening to us, Alexei formed carefully. I’ve noticed something. The whispers only came when we expressed our thoughts out loud. It can’t read our minds.

As the vines finished forming, he opened his mouth. “That more or less confirms it. Something is fucking with our heads. And it’s the same thing that dulled our suspicions just enough to lure us down here in the first place.”

The vines shifted again.

I think it’s someone among the prisoners. You can speak freely, but don’t mention that we know it’s one of them.

Maksim’s eyes widened in horror, but he didn’t question it.

The symbols moved once more.

I know what you’re about to ask. I think I have an inkling of who it might be. And we don’t confront it until we make it back home. If we ever do. We deal with this when we have more options.

Maksim swallowed hard, then nodded.

"There are no whispers now. It probably withdrew once it realized we were onto it. Which means it can’t directly harm us like this. It can only influence our thoughts to a certain extent.”

Alexei nodded in agreement.

“Just… be alert,” he said quietly. “If you hear anything that doesn’t feel like it came from you, even if it sounds reasonable.”

Maksim let out an angry grunt and stomped his boot into the ice, then nodded again.

“Alright. Back to the remnant,” he said. “Do you think it was left behind by the same entity?”

“That’s what I’m struggling with,” Alexei replied. “So far, everything lines up with what we’ve seen. But something still feels off.”

The vines formed again.

All prisoners were accounted for every time, even when we descended into the crater. That means whoever it is either has an ability that allows them to exist in two places at once, or they aren’t alone.

“So… there might be two separate variables,” Maksim said slowly.

“No idea for now,” Alexei admitted. “And judging by this remnant, it feels like whatever killed the Leviathan deliberately left it for us. Cleared the area ahead of time, made sure we could reach it.”

He hesitated before continuing. “Either there’s a group trying to help us, which is ridiculous to even consider because no one helps for free, or we’re caught between two powerful entities playing their own games. One manipulating us, the other… helping us.”

Maksim clutched his head. “I feel completely lost. There are too many questions.”

Alexei rested a hand on his shoulder with a rare gesture of empathy. “I feel the same.”

“So we might have a guardian and a devil,” Maksim muttered. “And from the whispers I heard, the ones fueling my greed… they both wanted us down here.”

“We might already be in a trap,” Alexei said.

The words had barely left his mouth when a thunderous crack echoed through the crater. Ice shattered, followed by a scream.

It came from the direction they had come from.