Chapter 29: Blood and Fire
In the days that followed, Lucen and the others remained at the site to guard the young fire dragon’s carcass. The monster harvesters had begun their work disassembling the body, but progress was slow and grueling.
Their usual tools, blades enchanted to pierce hide and bone, struggled against the hardened scales and dense muscle of the dragon. What should have been routine became a monumental task. Even the best cutters among the harvesters found themselves helpless without aid.
It wasn’t until the Aura users and mages stepped in that they made any real progress. Blades wrapped in aura and spells designed for dissection allowed them to finally sever the limbs and carve into the thick hide. Even so, each strike required effort, and each part extracted was hard-earned.
The estimated two days for harvesting were turning into something that would take around a week.
Thankfully, Duke Vardon had anticipated complications. The rations provided were enough to feed everyone for at least two weeks.
The only stroke of luck was the eerie calm that followed the Frosthorn Alpha’s death. The monsters stopped attacking the area. Still, no one let their guard down, especially not with the suspicion that spies might still be watching from afar.
***
During this free time, Lucen and Robert turned to experimentation. They collected samples of the dragon’s blood and meat, but Lucen kept the greatest prize for himself: the dragon’s heart.
In the game, it was called the Heart of Embers, a powerful early game item known to grant a massive boost in mana and several stat increases. But the real thing was far different from the glowing inventory icon he remembered.
This was a massive organ, nearly the size of Lucen himself, and despite the dragon being long dead and dissected, the heart still pulsed faintly.
In-game, all you needed to do was click on it, and then it gave the mana increase and the stat increase, but it was never described how it was used. Was he supposed to eat it, or absorb it, or do something else entirely different?