Chapter 146: Dark Dragonlord
The System gave two methods.
The first: warm the egg with fire, seven days as the term. The fire must be a natural or magical source, something like Flame.
Luke had Flame, so that part wasn’t hard.
The hard part was the time — seven days.
He already squandered so much time without even knowing the egg existed; how could he afford to wait any longer now?
The second method was instantaneous but thornier.
The second is Achieve Beast Exposure For Darkness.
Meaning the Beast must be steeped inside the field in question. Summoners commonly used fields like a Berserk field, an Intelligence-Boost Field, a Health field, even Aphrodisiac, which is a field.
All of them had their purpose for the beast.
For example, a Berserk field helps the beast go into a frenzy and increase attacks, while a Health field ensures constitution throughout a fight.
But the technique required a summoner with an A-Rank Soul to pull off.
Luke was only C-Rank Soul Summoner. No matter how exceptional he was otherwise, this technique was out of reach for him.
Out of reach — and that said something. This Dark Dragonlord’s origins were alarmingly great!
To hatch its egg, the Summoner had to be a genius among geniuses with Soul Rank at least A-Rank. Otherwise, the only option was the first path—which the summoner would have taken nevertheless.
"Waiting for a whole week is a time waste," Luke said. "Seraphina, you hatch it."
"Me? But I’m not the Master," Seraphina replied.
"Hatching an egg doesn’t work that way," Luke said. "Your Soul and Spirit run unfathomably deep. You’re more than capable of completing the Beast Exposure For Darkness for the Dark Dragonlord. Just hold the egg, and cultivate as you would normally, yet accordingly with the technique."
Seraphina was slightly surprised because she didn’t know she had this ability in her.
In matters of Soul and Spirit, she was unmatched. On that front, if she lent a hand, was there anything she couldn’t accomplish?
Her eyes began glowing, and her body began radiating.
Seraphina collected the egg and merged it with her Spirit. She’d cultivated for a thousand years and more, and this was the first time she’d ever used this technique, yet she adapted to the technique with ease.
The first thing she did was anchor the egg at the center of her Soul, like a fetus in a womb. Around that fetus is a pool of energy, Aeon. As an Empyreal Angel, her pool was thick and dense beyond measure, a perfect match for this technique.
Seraphina turned that pool over, transmuting it into an affinity force suited to the Dark Dragonlord.
Soon, the pool became something the System recognized as "Darkness." Thus, the hatching officially began.
In the meantime, the Insect World.
Luke arrived at the Workshop, unchanged since he’d left it.
Semi-finished pieces sat on the table, tools hung tidily in rows, and the Insect World’s scent hit him at once, along with that indescribable feeling that always came with it.
Seraphina, on her first visit, wandered around the Workshop, asking about this and that, looking at everything. All the while, she was still hatching that Dark Dragon King’s egg.
Since the Aeon in the Insect World was thin, Luke was worried that it wouldn’t be enough to sustain her. Fortunately, the egg hatched before any problem could arise.
"Master, my water broke!" Seraphina cried out.
The dragon had begun breaking through its shell, inside her very Spirit!
Luke didn’t know whether that outcome would be good or bad, but he didn’t give it any chances.
"Set it on the table." He rushed over, staring at the cracking egg.
〖Congratulations! You’ve Awakened a Nascent Beast!〗
〖Beast Name: Dark Dragonlord〗
〖Stage Name: Primordial Twin Form〗
Huh?
Correction — dragons, plural.
Luke didn’t see a two-headed dragon. Nor did he see any Dragon King. What he saw were two little dragon hatchlings, one head each. Unbearably cute, already the size of a bucket.
They should have been "Dark Dragons". But somehow, they weren’t dark or shadowy or obsidian because they had color: One red, one blue. And strangest of all — they were Dragonkin, not pure-blooded Dragon Beasts.
Being Dragonkin, Luke could tell at a glance that one was female, one was male.
The red one male, the blue one female.
Dazed, newly arrived, these little creatures searched around to anchor themselves to the nearest beings, mistaking Luke and Seraphina for their father and mother as expected of beasts.
Claws long, black, and sharp, bellies steaming with heat, wings restless and unsettled.
Cute as they were, thrilling as it was to have new beasts, Luke couldn’t shake the feeling that the System had shortchanged him.
He’d been waiting for that Dark Dragon King, the one he’d forged a chestplate and wing-guards for, the Dragon King with a Combat IQ of five hundred thousand percent! Or was it that Amigo had overstated the dragon?
"System, did you screw something up?" Luke asked. "Why’d my Dark Dragonlord come out as hatchlings? One, I could accept. But two? Huh?"
"Master, why is it that one, you could accept, but two, you can’t?" Seraphina asked as she scooped up one of the little dragons, cooing at it. "Having two dragons beats having one, doesn’t it?"
"By the numbers, you’re right," Luke said. "But the Dark Dragonlord is one being. If this were one hatchling, I could wrap my head around it that I would have to grow the hatchling. But two? I’m lost."
"But Master, didn’t I tell you, this Beast has to go through Transmogrification," Seraphina said. "I know of the Dark Dragon King, Bellisunder, of the Yggrin era. Trust me, the System giving you two Dragonkin hatchlings, that’s no mistake..."
"Really?" Luke asked. "Then tell me the details. Sounds like you’re quite familiar with the Dark Dragonlord."
"Not exactly," Seraphina replied. "As an Empyreal Angel Agel, I’m bound to know the Pillars of Order. The Dark Dragon King is one of them. A War Beast fated to become a god, even to surpass one. At first, it was just a Dark Dragon. But after a great war where gods fell, one god bestowed a blessing upon it, granting it two heads— one head governing Mortal Fire, the other governing Immortal Fire.
Now, starting over from the beginning, it can’t leap to such Fortitude at once, so it has to first begin as two separate Beasts, each governing one fire, evolving step by step, until the two merge into one. That’s where the Primordial Twin Form comes into place."
"So you’re saying these two little things, they’re the Dark Dragonlord?" Luke asked.
"Believe it or not," Seraphina said. "We need to raise them with great care until they reach adulthood. Especially the blue one, Lan. She’s the last source of Immortal Fire in this world, and in the entire cosmos, even."
"What did you call her?" Luke asked.
"Lan," Seraphina said. "They’re called Bo and Lan, Bellisunder’s Primordial Twin Form. Master, you were planning to name them yourself, weren’t you?"
"Of course," Luke said, scooping up Bo.
Bo, the red one, already looked every bit the troublemaker. Talons black-tipped and razor-fine, scales like a blood Moon, and his wings most restless.
As a child, Luke dreamed that when he grew up, he’d awaken a dragon and make his family look at him differently.
He was so fixated on dragons because his blessing, Flame of Innovation, hinted at that possibility. But when the day of Awakening came, what he Awakened was a Gauntlet. He’d been laughed at plenty over it.
No one could have guessed that, in the end, he’d still get his hands on a dragon.
Through forging Beast Armor, of all things.
Hatchlings or not, adults or not — he had two Mythic-rank dragons in hand now, and together, they were the most important dragon in the whole of history. If Seraphina’s account was true, then Luke received both a privilege and a responsibility.
One of the responsibilities is completing the metamorphosis and raising a true Dark Dragonlord.
Taking two hatchlings into a fight was too risky when he had to safeguard one of the Pillars of Order.
Because if you lose either Bo or Lan, then the Dark Dragonlord was gone.
These hatchlings were currently vulnerable.
After fiddling around for a while, Luke discovered each of them had its own separate system.
But weren’t they the same being?
Yes, but it made sense.
Bo governed Mortal Fire, Lan governed Immortal Fire, so this means they’d need to be raised differently because those two elements are not the same.
And something was telling Luke that Lan would be a headache because of Immortal Fire.
Luke checked Bo’s panel first.
〖Dominion: Mortal Fire〗
〖Age: Hatchling〗
〖Age Tier: 1〗
〖Vitality: 5〗
〖Requirement for Tier 2: Have the Beast drink seven buckets of water〗
He went to check Lan’s panel next, to see if it differed.
Thankfully, it was the same.
Perhaps that meant Mortal Fire and Immortal Fire, at the outset, still shared something in common.