Chapter 124: Bewitchment
The silent figure shrouded beneath the heavy folds of the black robes maintained an unbroken quiet across several dense seconds, before a faint, inscrutable smile wove behind her cowl, her tone emerging as completely un-fused as if zero disruption had fractured her parlor. "My intellect tracks a comprehensive outline regarding the martial height of your opponent, dear Sir Maxwell. Nevertheless... this layout comprises a catastrophic bottleneck that neither of our houses desired to log across the ledger. If your vessel had simply finalized the secondary Dragon Communion Ritual our circle provided prior to the drop of these tournament valves, would your shield not have effortlessly bypassed these immediate humiliations?"
Confronted by the cold precision of the query, Maxwell—whose iron-clad frame rose as robust and mountain-sized as a mature Rune Bear—fell into an unusually hollow, powerless silence. The cowled heretic clutched the absolute truth of the board. The primordial transformation surgery that had initial elevated his standing seven winters past had merely implanted the heart and vital essence of a mediocre, mid-tier drake into his human thoracic cavity. This cycle, however, the Duke had expended an immense fortune of silver runes and private legion bloodlines to hunt down a pristine, authentic Greater Drake to serve his feeding!
It was strictly because that captive dragon was recorded as exceptionally young and physically weak, having failed to unlock the high arcane mysteries required to morph its magnificent chassis into a human guise, that the Duke's underground smugglers had managed to snare its form within their mountain iron nets so easily. If the beast had not been birthed across the scattered, wind-torn ruins of the fallen Storm Dynasty but had instead matured inside the cloud-ringed spires of Farum Azula for over a decade, its talons would have undoubtedly commanded a world-shattering majesty that would have ruthlessly slaughtered any mortal outrider attempting to cross its perimeter.
In the final accounting, Maxwell simply harbored a deep-seated, systemic aversion regarding the execution of the Dragon Communion surgery. It was by no means that his soul pitied the captive dragon screaming behind the iron bars of the cellar; rather, his human mind found it an agonizing, un-bearable trauma to endure those alchemical operations that involved disemboweling his own chest walls, and his internal consciousness maintained an intense resistance toward the presence of these mystical, faceless sorcerers.
Whenever his memory replayed those dark days when his senses were entirely compromised by heavy alchemical narcotics, leaving his naked flesh stretched across the cold, hard stone of the surgery table at the absolute mercy of their knives, he felt exactly like a wild beast captured from the forests to undergo a sequence of bloody, un-monitored experiments.
Throughout the past year since Duke Duolis had successfully secured the dragon through the black-market shipping lanes, the knight's persistent alcoholism and un-bracketed debauchery had intentionally kept his biological vessel in a degraded, un-optimized state. His own intellect could fail to decode whether this physical neglect emerged from a fear-induced psychological drowsiness or operated as a calculated, defensive act of pure survival instinct.
After all, he no longer scored as that penniless, broken gladiator who possessed zero material assets beyond the immediate requirement to butcher for bread across the pits. He stood across the capital as a verified Dragon Feeder commanding a heroic tier of physical output—a celebrated Night Fighter whose pen had signed an exclusive, high-coin covenant with the house of the Duoris Family. Even if his evolution arrested its progress at this exact benchmark, his steel could still comfortably serve as the premier personal henchman protecting the Duke's scepter. If his own will registered a refusal, zero lords within the peerage possessed the legal leverage to forcefully drag his chassis back onto the cold stone table to function as a living test subject for the amusement of these hooded charlatans.
But on this night, Rolo's cleaver had violently shattered his delusions.
His highly decorated, prized Dragon Spear had scored as completely, absolute ineffective fronting the advance of his opponent—a monster who had cast out his human form entirely, yet possessed the capability to suppress the ancient dragon blood circulating within Maxwell's veins through the deployment of a solitary, bloodshot glare from his visor.
The traits of pure fear... absolute humility... and shivering cowardice—the collective mass of pathetic mortal emotions his pride simulated he had permanently abandoned seven winters past—had come rushing back across his nervous system on this watch, looking exactly like a pre-destined demon returning to comfortably devour everything his strength had reconstructed.
His mind could no longer afford to lounge within the beautiful, fragile dream his vanity had woven across the seasons. Operating under the letters patent of a contracted Night Fighter, his solitary operational purpose was to deploy his muscle to help the Duke secure the dividends of high-stakes wagers like the current tournament. Existing as a Dragon Feeder, his marrow sustained a profound, soul-crushing shame that the ancient dragon heart nested behind his ribs had almost suffered a total cardiac arrest from the sheer terror of Rolo's presence—and that the majestic dragon might which should have comfortably overwhelmed the parameters of any mortal enemy had completely evaporated due to his own cowardice.
Entirely beyond the active monitoring of his conscious thoughts, Maxwell's eyes gradually mutated into a brilliant, un-blinking crimson luminescence, and his respiration became increasingly violent, heavy, and sulfurous across the room. Thick patches of jagged, gray-black drake scales aggressively erupted and retracted along the skin covering the lateral columns of his neck and the base of his skull, transforming his physical silhouette into the likeness of an enraged beast straining every nerve to suppress an involuntary, total draconic reversion.
"My hand will execute the protocols formatting the secondary Dragon Communion Ritual... now, this instant watch of the clock!" he roared through his teeth, his calloused fists clenching as he manually suppressed his extremely volatile, exploding emotions.
However, the hooded shadow anchoring the opposing side of the desk remained completely serene, her posture displaying absolute zero disruption to her internal equilibrium; she simply monitored his biological acceleration with a cold, clinical interest, looking exactly like a master artisan auditing the precise reactions of an experimental subject that was executing according to the master equations.
"Sir Knight, does your memory archive the data sheets our circle hand-delivered to your station during the previous analysis? Evaluating the current degraded baseline of your physical vessel, and balancing that variable against the terrifying, un-diluted primordial power clutched within the veins of that noble-blooded Greater Drake... my tongue is conformed to remind your intellect that the mathematical probability of a stable surgical completion scores at most only a sixty percent margin."
"Turning our focus to the remaining forty percent of the calculus—a thirty percent fraction will result in immediate, catastrophic cellular death across the table, while the terminal ten percent will initiate an irreversible, monstrous mutation that will freeze your vessel into an abomination dwelling somewhere between the parameters of a human citizen and a rabid dragon. Navigating an operational failure of that density... for the safety protocols of our own network, our blades will record zero hesitation to execute an immediate liquidation of your life readouts."
"My steel requires zero reminders from your fraudulent tongue!" Maxwell hissed, his breath escaping his jaws in thick, whistling sheets of hot mist. "The power... simply drain the drake to grant my marrow the power!"
The faceless entity across the dark wood stared un-blinkingly at his frame for a sequence of silent seconds, before offering a faint, chilling smile, her hood delivering a minor nod of acquiescence. "Every solitary believer who devoutly pursues the acquisition of a world-shattering power deserves an institutional respect commensurate with the depth of their devotion... consequently—as your heart dictates."
Following the closure of the decree, her slender form rose from the shadows, her fingers executing a light, rhythmic pressure against the stone masonry behind her chair. Instantly, the thick limestone wall fractured open along a hidden axis, un-veiling a dark, steeply slanting tunnel that dropped straight into the absolute deep basements of the earth.
The figure flicked the heavy silk sleeves of her black robes—the hems intricately trimmed with dark red embroidery—gesturing for Maxwell to trace her slipstream. Deleting every secondary calculation from his mind, the lance knight, his bulky frame heavily encased beneath the shifting layers of drake scales, swayed his heavy shoulders and followed her boots, his massive silhouette vanishing into the absolute darkness of the descending shaft alongside her shadow.
Yet, what Maxwell's compromised cognitive networks completely failed to notice across the watch was the reality proving that within that deep subterranean chamber he had just cleared, a miniature bronze incense burner sat burning silently inside the hollow margins of the desk, continuously emitting faint, wisps of dark red aromatic smoke whose chemical properties were more than sufficient to thoroughly bewitch the internal mind of any mortal operator who drew a single breath of its vapor.
"What an exceptionally clumsy, pathetic trick of the weak!"
A dozen kilometers removed across the labyrinth of the central aqueducts, Rolo violently swung his twin horn-ribbed Omen cleavers—weapons that now scored as nothing more than light short-blades within the expanded grasp of his mutated hands—ruthlessly tearing the absolute terminal Icefield Trolls blocking his advance into jagged ribbons of dead meat. Scattered across the flags anchoring his boots lay the mangled carcasses of dozens of giant-blooded Mountain Demons, their blood transforming the drainage channel into a rushing red river.
While the captive Icefield Trolls who successfully broke through the golden Erdtree roots were undeniably terrifying opponents for common infantry, even when organizing a procession numbering thousands of units, their un-guided lines had historically been crushed to dust by the elite, disciplined armored knights led by Duke Duolis abroad. Under those parameters, what specific danger could a mindless pack of beasts ever present fronting the vanguard of an operator like Rolo—an entity whose vessel had completely, systematically mastered the primordial arousal of the Omenization?
He ran a thick, leather-clad palm along his cleaver faces to wipe the heavy glaze of giant blood from the iron, his bulging, crimson eyeballs staring grimly into the dark corridor where Carlyle's shattered warband had executed their flight. Although his internal strategy had permanently maintained a layer of hyper-vigilant caution regarding Duke Duolis's highly anomalous behavior of packing the sewer sectors with an immense volume of giant prey, his intellect had still failed to predict that the young heir clutched the precise liturgical keys to manually control the cognitive loops of these Mountain Demons.
A localized cluster numbering dozens of trolls might lack the raw kinetic voltage to present a fatal threat to his immediate life readouts, but the scout files verified there manifested thousands of identical giant abominations actively patrolling the underground metropolis. If Duolis's proxy retainers successfully deployed the temporary watches while his cleaver was held back by these meat walls to gather a wider procession of the monsters, even if their combined muscle still lacked the capability to liquidate his line, their banner could at least effortlessly maintain an absolute, un-assailable baseline that would freeze the tournament scores.
An administrative outcome of that nature was entirely, absolute unacceptable to both Rolo's private honor and the survival of Marquis Osarion's grand strategy behind the curtain.
Rolo's intellect possessed a flawless comprehension of the reality proving that following the closure of the recent skirmish, his sub-human, horn-choked physical presentation had inevitably been captured by the scrying crystal feeds—exposing his mutation directly to the high lords of the Sovereign Capital Arena Association and the conservative peers who backed the executive council.
The exact watch that sensitive data wove its lines further across the public assemblies, the aristocratic citizens of Leyndell would record zero care regarding what specific alchemical rationale had driven his forge to seek the transformation. Those foolish, small-minded civilians would simply evaluate his silhouette as an entity as inherently filthy, accursed, and defiled as those standard Omen outcasts dwelling behind the grates, before systematically pouring the identical, bottomless hatred and religious resentment they had broadcasted toward the Shunning-Grounds straight onto his own head.
At that terminal checkpoint down the timeline, there would preserve absolute zero sanctuary for his name to draw a single breath of air across the entire capital ring.
However, if his focus restricted its calculus strictly to the matrix of this immediate gladiatorial gamble... he and the Marquis would undeniably be caught red-handed by the ministries because of this mutation, but Duke Duolis deployment of a forbidden heretical incantation to manually fracture the sacred imperial seal to seize command of the Icefield Trolls constituted a completely equal, treasonous crime against the state.
This defined a high-stakes chess match separating two of the absolute top peerage houses of the empire. Alternate neutral nobles, by ancient aristocratic convention, would mathematically never lunge their own banners to interfere across a private feud of this density. Consequently, so long as the Duolis and Osarion factions maintained an absolute, mutually assured structural checkmate against one another, his own position would remain perfectly insulated from an imperial execution decree.
Of course, the absolute totality of this survival blueprint was anchored to the non-negotiable premise that his cleaver successfully helps the Marquis secure the undisputed crown of this bet. If his steel logs a defeat across the sand, his name will naturally mutate into the solitary, disposable pawn sacrificed across the board to satisfy the court.