When the Dragon goddess had claimed the highest peak for herself, she had taken the 9 Dragons of Destruction along with her despite their nature which could be considered anathema to her own.

Normally, a creature of creation and a creature of destruction would never be able to coexist in harmony, even if the Laws that they represented were as interlocked with each other as Yin and Yang. However, there were always outliers, and the relationship between the Dragon goddess of Creation and 9 Dragons of Destruction were one of them. Gaia adored her 9 Destructive siblings, especially the calm-as-lake Calmilla and ferocious-as-fire Aeshma, and she always treated them well.

Aeshma had grown over the years and wasn’t as reckless as he used to be, thanks to the careful guidance of Gaia herself alongside the continuous association with his twin sister Calmilla. And If things continued to go like this, then there was no doubt that Aeshma would become a powerful and respectable Dragon that bore a fierce loyalty to the Dragon goddess that had taken care of him. But as it seemed…

BOOOOM!

Fate had other plans for him.

A great mass of dark red light descended from the sky and flooded into the 2nd Peak’s cave with the force of a great avalanche, and before the giant sleeping Dragon within could even react, his crimson-scaled body had already been infiltrated.

Aeshma woke up with a frightened roar as the malevolent energy violently thrashed throughout his body, attacking his mind and causing his thoughts to blur. But as the knowledgeable would expect, there wasn’t much that it could do to resist as the Essence of Wrath began to make changes to his body.

His size, which was already 80 metres long, began to swell, his muscles beneath the scales increasing in density and efficiency in horrific fashion. On top of that, the area around his wings bulged about grotesquely as if something was growing underneath, this also occurred on his tail and the sides of his head and it was very strange to look at.

Soon enough, the roars of fright began to warp into deep bellows of rage.

“GOOOOOOOOWWWWRRRRRR!!!”

Chaotic lights of dark red (representing Wrath Essence) and bright red (representing Destruction Essence) swirled around the mutating Dragon in a violent manner. The transformation was so chaotic and blinding that it looked like the Dragon was undergoing the worst level of cultivation deviation, which meant that instead of becoming an abomination, he was directly going to blow up.

However, that didn’t seem to be happening. Though, in situations like these, one could never be certain. But in any case, the commotion that this caused did not go unnoticed. Yelled words and roars could be heard from outside the cave and they were increasing in number, but ultimately, there was nothing they could accomplish.

The chaotic energy within the cave prevented them from entering if they wanted their lives to remain intact, and the Dragon they were trying to call the attention of had long lost the ability to hear, talk less of respond.

Currently, Aeshma was screaming with agony and stimulated rage as the mutation- no evolution; this could no longer be called a mere mutation- began to enter the next stage.

His scales began to drop off, something that was already a painful experience; but soon enough, his reverse scale was also going to peel off, and when that happened, the word pain would not be enough to describe it. And if the tears, shaking eyes and whines of terror were anything to go by, the Dragon knew it.

However, before his scales could finish the process of falling off, the bulging things beneath his skin finally revealed themselves.

*SHICK!*

Aeshma’s flesh and skin were shredded as a second pair of wings erupted from his back, causing his current roar of pain to spike in intensity as shock and pain flooded his nerves. This second pair of wings were smaller in size and completely lacked scales unlike the first (although that was quickly changing), but they were still impressive to look at.

Unfortunately, before Aeshma could adjust to the new additions to his body, a second pair of horns erupted from the sides of his skull (black and surrounded by swirling red lights like the first pair of horns), joined by a row of spikes that matched the design of his horns appearing all over his tail.

Aeshma’s scream which had previously been sheer and desperate, had been abruptly cut off. Because the scream that he had attempted to achieve in that moment was not something that his throat was willing to withstand. But anybody who looked at the crazed pupils that were constricted to the point that they nearly disappeared would know that the pain Aeshma was feeling was not something they could imagine, and his reverse scale had not even fallen off yet.

Looking at the blood that was leaking out of the new additions to his body as if they were foreign objects that had pierced through his flesh to appear where they were, one might even pass out out of fear. But on the topic of those injuries, it had to be said that they were quite unnatural, because whilst it wasn’t uncommon for some evolutions to cause one to go crazy with pain, they were rarely ever this… violent.

This mostly occurred when a person tried to reject an evolution/mutation with all of their will. It provoked the evolution to be a bit more forceful with its transgressions if it wanted to succeed, and oftentimes caused a lot of injury. But the worst case scenario would be for everything to go haywire, causing the recipient of the evolution/mutation to die or become an abomination. That would be quite bad.

But whether that would happen to Aeshma or not was yet to be known. In the meantime, it was better to focus on the Dragon’s Mana Core where the Essence of Wrath had finally come into contact with the Essence of Destruction.

…Things were about to become troublesome.