Chapter 132: To heal a dragon.

The speed differential between a dungeon lord whose body was made of mist and a Level 200 officer who needed to aim was not even close.

Kai’s hand closed around her wrist before the artifact could discharge, and he squeezed.

Bones cracked.

The officer screamed.

The artifact’s charge dissipated as her concentration shattered, the golden light flickering and dying.

Kai ripped the artifact from her grip with his other hand and examined it for one second.

’Small. Dense. The mana inside it feels like compressed sunlight. This thing was designed to kill monsters. Specifically designed. The mana frequency is tuned to bypass non-human defenses.’

[Dragon Slayer Title — Resonance Detected.]

[First-Grade Artifact analyzed. Mana signature: Dragon-derived.]

Kai stared at the system notification.

’Dragon-derived. The mana powering this artifact was taken from a dragon. Harvested, compressed, and weaponized.’

He looked down at the artifact in his hand, then back at the officer who was clutching her broken wrist and staring at him with a mixture of agony and defiance.

“Where did this come from?” he asked, his voice carrying the cold authority of the Shadow of Victims.

She spat blood on the ground.

“Go to hell.”

“Been there. The commute is terrible.”

He dropped the artifact, crushed it under his heel, and turned toward the remaining soldiers.

There were perhaps eighty of them now, the ones who had made it out of the barracks before Verendel set the roof on fire.

They were forming up in the courtyard, shields raised, weapons ready, eyes flickering between the dragon on the southern ruins and the shadow standing in their courtyard.

Kai raised his voice.

“I am going to say this once. Drop your weapons and surrender, and you will leave this mountain alive. Continue fighting, and I will bury you under it.”

Silence.

Then one of the soldiers, a young man whose hands were shaking so badly his sword rattled against his shield, lowered his weapon and stepped back.

Then another.

Then a third.

Within thirty seconds, half the formation had broken ranks. Weapons clattered to the ground. Shields dropped.

Men and women who had been ready to fight a moment ago were now looking at the destroyed watchtowers, the burning barracks, and the True Dragon watching them with golden eyes, and deciding that their loyalty to the Empire had certain limits.

The officer on the ground pushed herself upright and screamed at them.

“Stand your ground! The Empire does not surrender to monsters!”

Kai looked at her.

“The Empire also does not tell its soldiers that the weapons they carry are powered by enslaved dragons. And yet, here we are.”

She went still.

“What did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

He turned away from her and walked toward the command building. The soldiers who had surrendered parted before him like water around a stone. The ones who had not surrendered looked at each other, then at Verendel, and then very quietly put down their weapons as well.

’I need to find the second personal artifact. One officer is down. The other one is either in the command building or fled underground. If they are underground near the dragon, things could get complicated.’

He kicked open the command building doors and stepped inside.

…

The interior of the command building was sparse and functional. Maps on the walls. A desk covered in reports. Oil lamps that flickered in the aftermath of the explosions outside.

And at the far end of the main hall, a reinforced metal door with the Empire’s seal stamped into its surface. Behind that door, a staircase descended into darkness.

Kai walked to the door and placed his hand on it.

’The mana signature from below is immense. Not just the dragon. There are binding runes carved into the walls of the tunnel. Containment wards. Suppression fields. They have the same kind of seal on this place that the royal families used to use on True Dragon nests before the purge.’

He pushed the door open.

The staircase went down. And down. And down.

The temperature dropped with every step, which should have been impossible given that they were inside a volcanic mountain. The cold was not natural. It was the byproduct of massive mana suppression, the same chill that radiated from dungeons whose cores had been drained.

’They are not just holding the dragon. They are draining it. Slowly. Methodically. Siphoning its mana and pumping it into artifacts and weapons and whatever else the Empire needs to fuel its war machine.’

Fanny appeared at the top of the staircase behind him. She had entered the building through a side entrance, her teddy bear clutched to her chest, her pale blue eyes wide in the dim light.

“I can feel it,” she whispered. “The dragon. It is in so much pain.”

“Stay behind me.”

They descended together.

The tunnel leveled out after roughly two hundred feet, opening into a massive cavern that had been carved from the volcanic rock. The walls were covered in runes, hundreds of them, each one glowing with a faint blue light that made the entire space look like the inside of a frozen star.

And at the center of the cavern, chained to the floor by links of enchanted iron that were each as thick as Kai’s torso, was a dragon.

It was smaller than Verendel but broader, its scales a deep, angry crimson that had faded to rust in the places where the chains made contact.

Its wings were folded tightly against its body, not by choice but by the chains that bound them. A massive iron collar encircled its neck, studded with the same blue-glowing runes that covered the walls.

Its eyes were closed. Its breathing was shallow. The mana that should have been flowing through its body like a river was instead being pulled outward through the chains and into the rune network, feeding the suppression field that kept the entire cavern locked in unnatural cold.

[Entity Detected.]

[Species: Storm Dragon — Captive.]

[Estimated Level: 440]

[Status: Bound. Drained. Critical Mana Depletion.]

[Dragon Slayer Title — Resonance Active.]

’Level 440. Stronger than Verendel. Stronger than the four Calamity Dragons I killed in Rambosa. And the Empire has it chained like livestock.’

Kai walked toward the dragon slowly.

As he approached, the system window flickered again.

[Warning: Containment wards detected. Proximity trigger in 10 meters.]

He stopped.

’Proximity trigger. If I get too close, the wards will activate. What happens then? An alarm? A defense mechanism? A kill switch?’

He looked at Fanny.

“Can you break the binding from here?”

Fanny studied the runes on the walls, her eyes flickering from symbol to symbol with a knowledge that went far deeper than her shy exterior suggested. After a long moment, she shook her head.

“These are not the same as the ancient binding. These are newer. Artificial. Made by human mages who studied the original spell but did not fully understand it. They compensated for their lack of understanding with brute force.”

She pointed at the chains.

“The runes on the chains are suppression types. They drain mana. The runes on the walls are containment types. They prevent the dragon from moving beyond a certain radius. And the collar…”

Her voice trailed off, and for a moment, real anger flickered across her face.

“The collar is a kill switch. If the dragon resists or if the containment field drops without the proper command word, the collar will discharge all of the stored mana back into the dragon’s body at once. It would kill it instantly.”

Kai stared at the collar.

’A kill switch. Of course. Because the Empire would never risk losing a power source. If the dragon cannot be controlled, it is destroyed. Standard operating procedure for an empire that treats living creatures as infrastructure.’

“Can you disable the collar?”

Fanny was quiet for a moment. Then the teddy bear spoke.

“She can. But she needs to touch it directly. And the proximity wards will trigger the moment she steps within ten meters.”

Kai looked at the ward line. Then at the runes. Then at the collar.

’If the wards trigger, the kill switch might activate automatically. Or it might alert whoever holds the command word. Either way, we need to disable the wards before Fanny can reach the collar.’

He turned his gaze to the rune-covered walls.

[Authority: All Shall Glitch]

The Authority pulsed outward from Kai’s body in a silent wave, washing over the cavern like a tide of dark mana.

’All Shall Glitch bypasses every status effect, nullification, artifact alignment, and any external source used by the enemy. The question is whether these wards count as an external source.’

The runes on the walls flickered.

Then stuttered.

Then, one by one, they went dark.

The suppression field collapsed. The temperature in the cavern spiked as the unnatural cold was replaced by the volcanic heat of the mountain. The blue light that had filled the space disappeared, plunging everything into near darkness before Kai’s own mana flared to compensate.

But the chains held. And the collar still glowed.

’The wards are down, but the physical restraints are separate systems. The chains are enchanted iron, not rune-based. And the collar is powered by its own internal mana source.’

“Fanny. Now.”

Fanny did not hesitate.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep