Chapter 34 : Chapter 34
Chapter 34. The Frozen City
The stone gate slowly opened, and an ancient aura mixed with dust and the passage of time rushed toward them.
What appeared before the group was not the cave or tomb they had expected.
It was a city.
A city sealed completely in ice.
Enormous crystalline ice structures interwove overhead, forming a vast dome that stretched across the horizon and filtered the faint outside light into a dreamlike deep blue glow.
Beneath that dome, broad streets, towering halls, and spires extended all the way to the edge of sight, every last thing perfectly preserved within eternal frost.
On the streets, they could even see the skeletons of dragons.
Some were curled up as though asleep.
Others had their jaws spread wide in soundless roars, their massive frames frozen solid, transformed into monuments within this dead city.
The Aether in the air was pure and immense, so dense it nearly felt tangible.
When it brushed against their skin, it even produced a faint tingling sensation.
Alice’s mouth fell open into a perfect “O,” and she completely lost the ability to speak.
Every magical wonder she had ever seen now looked like a child’s trick in front of this frozen dragon city.
Alectos stood beside her, his body trembling slightly.
His gaze was fixed upon those dragon remains, and a sorrow and reverence rising from the depths of his bloodline turned his face pale.
This was the grief of a descendant witnessing the burial ground of his ancestors with his own eyes.
“So many…”
He muttered hoarsely under his breath.
Lilith was trembling too, though not only because of the cold.
Her eyes swept wildly across the frozen layers, searching for the weapons, armor, and all those ornaments that looked immensely valuable.
Her mind was calculating at frantic speed.
This was not a city.
This was a treasure vault beyond measure.
Logaris, however, reacted entirely differently.
There was no shock in his eyes, and no sorrow.
There was only an almost fanatical scholarly light.
Like an archaeologist discovering a new continent, he quickly walked to an icy wall covered in dragon-language runes and took out a blank Recording Crystal.
“A perfect energy circulation system.”
He recorded while muttering to himself, unable to suppress the excitement in his voice.
“It uses the geothermal flow beneath the mountains and the extreme cold from the summit to create an eternal temperature differential.”
“The cold is used for preservation and defense, while the heat flow is guided to provide energy for the city’s internal rune arrays.”
He pointed at the crystal dome overhead.
“A gigantic Aether lens that automatically gathers, filters, and distributes free Aether.”
“A completely sealed energy network capable of sustaining itself.”
“A brilliant design.”
After recovering from their initial shock, the group continued deeper into the city.
The scale of the buildings here had clearly been designed for dragons.
An ordinary doorway was more than ten men high, and a single plaza was as large as a small plain.
At the very center, in the most magnificent plaza of all, stood a gigantic black stone wall.
The wall was a hundred meters tall and completely black, as though it could absorb all light.
Only the countless dragon-language runes engraved across its surface emitted a gentle silver radiance.
It was the only thing in the entire city not covered in frost or snow.
“The core of the ruins.”
Feeling the pull of his bloodline, Alectos began walking toward it almost involuntarily.
“What does it say?”
Alice asked curiously.
“Is it the history of the dragons?”
Logaris had already walked up to the stone wall.
He did not need to decipher it.
To him, ancient dragon language was as natural as his mother tongue.
He lifted his head and translated the inscription line by line.
“When the stars fell, the gods betrayed their oath.”
His voice echoed across the empty plaza, and every word carried the weight of history.
“The sky wailed, and the earth wept.”
“When mortals pry into the secrets of Aether, dragons too shall open their eyes from slumber and pass judgment upon the insects who play with fire.”
When Logaris read the words “the secrets of Aether,” his voice paused ever so slightly, and behind his lenses, a faint trace of emotion flickered by unnoticed.
Then he read the final line.
“In the cycle of worlds, only bloodline and knowledge endure.”
The moment his voice fell, every rune on the black stone wall erupted with blinding light.
“Ah!”
Alectos cried out in pain.
An invisible force lifted him from the ground and dragged him uncontrollably toward the wall.
His whole body convulsed violently.
Golden dragon scales flashed wildly across his skin, appearing and vanishing over and over, and each flicker deepened the pain on his face.
“Hey! Golden Scales!”
Alice let out a startled cry as she watched Alectos get pulled off the ground and dragged toward the stone wall by that unseen force.
Curious, she tried to go closer and take a better look, only to be gently pushed back by an invisible barrier.
“Tch, pretty overbearing, aren’t you.”
She curled her lips and stopped.
“There is no need to worry.”
Logaris' calm voice rang out.
He made no move to stop Alice, because she clearly had no intention of risking her life either.
“This is not an attack.”
“It is a bloodline selection and awakening ritual.”
Logaris' expression did not change in the slightest, and his eyes remained locked on Alectos and the stone wall.
“He will either transform within it, or be devoured by this power until nothing remains.”
“This is an opportunity he must face alone.”
Then, under Alice’s gaze, which mixed surprise with a very obvious sense of “there is actually something this good,” he took out the Recording Crystal and a strangely shaped analysis device.
“How interesting.”
“This is not merely a simple energy infusion.”
“It seems to be using an extremely advanced form of Magitech to forcibly reorganize his bloodline factors at the particle level.”
“He will either endure it and complete an evolution, or his body will collapse because it cannot bear the process.”
As Logaris spoke, he recorded the rapidly changing data on the analyzer with keen interest.
The light from the stone wall grew brighter and brighter, until it finally condensed into a pure mass of radiance that completely swallowed Alectos.
His scream cut off abruptly.
In the next instant, a doorway made of light split open before the wall.
Alectos' figure was entirely drawn inside.
The gate of light then vanished, and the runes on the stone wall rapidly dimmed.
Everything returned to silence, as though nothing had happened at all.
Only a deathly stillness remained in the plaza.
“So Golden Scales just went in like that?”
Alice walked over to Logaris' side.
“If he cannot come back out, then all those expensive alchemical materials I used on him will have gone completely to waste.”
Logaris put away his recording tools and said to her, “All right.”
“His life signs have disappeared from this set of spatial coordinates.”
“Now all we need to do is wait for the result and see whether he was teleported somewhere else, or broken down into basic particles.”
Alice exaggeratedly shivered.
“Broken down into basic particles?”
“That really would mean not even any ashes left behind.”
“Well, let us hope his luck is good.”
Logaris ignored her joking remark.
His gaze had already turned toward the opposite side of the plaza, where a magnificent side hall radiating the aura of knowledge and long years stood in silence.
“Until he comes back out, the ‘library’ of this place should be open to us.”
He stepped forward and walked straight toward that enormous building.
“We should find something to do, should we not?”