Chapter 283

The Cosmic War (II)

Cain stood someplace between the dimensions, in a strange warp beyond his ability to describe; colors were everywhere yet nowhere, time was fast yet still, words were sounds yet were also thoughts. It felt as though he was stuck in a partial drunken haze… yet still had absolute clarity, at the same time. Two contradictions forming the reality to the best of their abilities.

Within such reality, two figures stood some several miles apart from one another. One was an ebony-scaled Dragon whose eyes shimmered even here, in the warped world, and the other was an ante-Human. It was a woman, Cain concluded, some six feet tall, her skin ash-colored, her eyes as black as the Dragon’s scales. She wore a simple, loose robes and had a long polearm strapped to her back, the tempered, silver-colored blade sticking out at the top like a wasp’s stinger.

The two stood in resolute silence for what felt like an eternity, and yet Cain knew only a few seconds had passed. The experience was mind-numbing, not unlike the lifetimes he spent within the Trial. It was also then that the silence was broken, namely by the woman.

“I must do this,” she said. “Else my kind will keel in yours’ shadow.”

“You mustn’t do anything, Illeya,” he said. “You wish to.”

“Of course I don’t!” she retaliated swiftly. “I don’t want to fight you! I don’t want to fight anyone! If you would just instruct other Dragons to give in, they’d listen! Please—”

“Why would they listen to me, Illeya? I am merely one of my kind. Unlike yours, we swear no allegiances to any one Dragon, no matter how strong they may be. If anything, if I suggest a surrender, I’d either be mocked and exiled or killed on the spot. This war… this war will go on until my kind is either enslaved or extinct or you… you just leave us alone. Your Creator did not assign you to your Heralded Throne so you may exterminate the cosmos.”

“… how dare you presume intentions of the One? That is unforgivable.” The woman’s countenance shifted rapidly to a cold and deadly one.

“I dare not,” the Dragon replied. “But it is within your creed, Illeya. ‘Illuminate the Darkest Corners, Siphon the Hollowed, and let the shining light be a Beacon for the rest’.”

“How… how do you know that?!! Only Asher and I should know that!”

“Inevitably, just like us, your kind will perish,” he said. “And in that glum, in the emptiness, no one would have become a victor. You have started this war, and you have persisted in this war, and though you may eventually win this war, there will be many more afterward. But… that is the distant future. Today… today I must kill you, Illeya. Though they hide it deeply, many of our Young do not wish to fight and instead wish to surrender. I need to reignite the fire within them, to show them that even the strongest of those blessed by the Touch are perishable.”

“Kill me? Hah,” the woman scoffed. “Even if there were the ten of you, you couldn’t kill me, you old fool!”

“Your conceit never failed to surprise me, even after all this time,” the world suddenly erupted, not in explosions or anything as such, but in the surge of Mana that literally caused Cain to stop breathing—and he was merely witnessing a memory. The sheer quantity was enough to wipe the entire solar system out of existence… about a billion times over. “It wasn’t because we were uncertain of victory that we never faced you before, o’ the Hallowed One. But it was out of the respect for your Creator. Right now, however… I am certain he would condone.”

“AGAIN?!! HOW DARE YOU?!!” the woman exploded in anger, causing Mana within her to begin glowing red. However… there was something strange about it. She realized it quickly as well—she couldn’t wilt away the control. Every ounce of Mana within the broken dimension… belonged to him. She, in fact, couldn’t wrestle away even a single iota of it. As the realization dawned upon her, a look of pure, unfiltered terror emerged on her face. Though she was still so strong that Cain couldn’t even comprehend it, it wasn’t him that she was fighting—but a being as equally terrifying as her. “No… no… stop this—this is impossible! We made Mana! It is of Us! Not you! How can you?! How can you control it?! How can you DENY ME?!! IMPOSSIBLE! IMPOSSIBLE!!!

“YOU LIE! YOU LIE!” she began violently thrashing about, her physical strength more than enough to cause spacetime around her to repeatedly implode unto itself. “MANA IS MINE! IT’S MINE! I CONTROL IT! I CREATE IT! I SUFFUSE IT! YOU ARE JUST A BEAST! AN ANIMAL! HOW DARE AN ANIMAL BEST ME?! LET GO! LET GO OF IT! IT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU—”

“That is the core of their conceit,” while the woman slowly continued losing her marbles, the tall man appeared next to Cain again and spoke out. “The belief that they created Mana.”

“Belief?” Cain immediately picked up on the underlying meaning and asked.

“Can something like Mana be created by an artificial hand?” the tall man asked back instead of answering.

“Uh… no?”

“It can.”

“Oh.”

“It is just another way in which energy and matter manifest,” the man explained. “In fact, you should have already experienced its alternate.”

“E—eh? What?” Cain asked, confused.

“You have a tiniest of traces—but it’s certainly there—of Anti-Mana. Well, really, it should be the other way around.”

“…” by now, Cain’s mind was blank. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand anything—he understood quite a bit—but it was the implications that had shaven years off his life.

“Their Creator did, in a way, create ‘Mana’—by taking the already-existing element and simplifying it. They should pride themselves on it—well, not they, they did nothing, but still. Thanks to him, every species in the universe has a chance to use it and manipulate it, the energy that makes the impossible possible.”

“Ah,” a lightbulb lit up inside Cain’s head as he connected the dots. “The reason you wrestled the control so easily… was because you were using Anti-Mana?”

“Hm,” the tall man nodded. “But it came at a great expense. Nobody was meant to use the original Mana. It belonged to whatever gravitas you wish to ascribe to the nature of things. It was beyond us. But… certain species had the potential. Dragons, Worldeaters, Wereworms, Gatekeepers… we were all able to perceive it and, in some cases, even interact with it. Well, by ‘interact’ I mean that if we touched it, we just disintegrated. But the potential was there. And, among all those species, came the unassuming one, one that we have all dismissed. He took Anti-Mana… and he simplified it. That is also why we would never attempt complete extermination.

“It is partly of fear and reservation, but his actions have bought enough goodwill to last for all eternity. After all… he didn’t hoard his new creation. In fact, he taught it to anyone who asked.”

“…”

“During the peak of the war,” the man continued while Cain absorbed everything, realizing he was learning things that he likely shouldn’t have learned… probably ever. “While battles were happening everywhere virtually every second, I sent him a direct inquiry. Dragons, inherently, don’t use Mana to fight; we use a completely different form of energy, but I wanted to learn. And so, I asked him. I asked him to teach me how to perceive and utilize Mana. And he did.”

“…”

“He taught one of the strongest Dragons, who were all currently waging war with what was technically his Empire, means of using Mana without any reservation.”

“You met him?” Cain blurted out.

“No,” the Dragon shook his head. “But, enough about that. This was my glory; I only wrestled away a minute amount of Anti-Mana but it was enough to control the exact quantity of Mana you are perceiving. As I said, though I killed her, it came at a great cost. Ever since then, the amount of Mana I can control at any particular point has been diminishing. My inherent pool is all but dry at this point. In fact, if we kept fighting, and if you somehow managed to survive a few of my attacks, I’d have become a target practice for you.”

“Yeah, key point there being ‘survive’,” Cain scoffed at the idea. “How’d you end up in a Tower anyway?” he asked a question that has been bothering him ever since he learned about the war. If the Divines are that against the Dragons, how come one of them—and not just any ol’ Dragon, but the one who killed one of the strongest Divines ever—was hiding in a Tower?

“I didn’t think I was,” the Dragon explained, glancing at Cain with a strange look in his eyes. “Divine hand intervened to ensure our meeting, I’m assuming. Nonetheless, meet we did. Since you’ve listened to me so far, I’ll give you a Quest. You can entirely ignore the quest if you see it fit, and live on your life however you want, completely forgetting about me. You can also elect to chase the Quest, though bone-breaking it may be. All the same, since you have a Breath of my Own on you, I shall award you slightly, whatever your choice. You should leave now and close the gate between the two worlds, tiny one. I suspect that whoever opened it spent considerable resources, the likes of which a million lifetimes aren’t enough to repay. Good luck on your journey; whatever your choice for the future may be, tiny one, I only pray you choose it of your own heart and nothing else.”

[You have received a Quest: Rekindling the Dragonfire]

Rekindling the Dragonfire

Difficulty: N/A

Timeframe: N/A

Requirements: Dragon’s Touch, Hero, Conqueror Cain Gregory

Content: a mysterious Dragon had shared with you tales of a past long gone, expanding your horizons. Within that tale, you have noted the downfall of the majestic Dragons—but all is not lost. Though Dragons, like any other creature, are born of another two, there is another way for a Dragon to exist—the same way that the first ever Dragon was born. You must collect a breadth of Anti-Mana, bones of a Life Dragon, and a quasi-cosmic quantity of Mana. Then, find a massive star on the verge of death and collapse it into a core, suffusing it with Mana, creating Heart of the Dragon. Set the heart within the bones and infuse the tender link with the breadth of Anti-Mana. Protect the fetus for quarter of a Cycle, repeatedly infusing it with Mana to feed on.

Rewards: the created Dragon will be bonded with you for life

[You have received a Skill: Dragon’s Forbearance]

[Dragon’s Forbearance (SSS+)]

Passive: set ALL Elemental Resistances to ignore 80% of the Damage received (works only on enemies within 15 levels of you)

Passive: each [Fire] Skill will additionally have a trace of Dragon’s Will, increasing its raw damage by 15% in addition to having a chance to lock down the target (the greater the level gap the lower the chance, starting at 100% for enemies at your level)

Active[Dragon’s Forbearance]—temporarily unseal the Dragon’s Will within you, explosively increasing ALL of your stats by 600%, gaining 240,000 Health, 160,000 Shield, and 80,000 Mana. Additionally, [Fire] becomes [Dragonfire] for the duration. Lastly, if a Skill successfully strikes a target, restore the Skill’s entire Mana Cost and halve the cooldown (if it has one)/or fire off the Skill free of charge again.