Chapter 39: 39. The Prophecy

The first ten floors were straightforward combat trials.

Floor One: A pack of stone golems. Owen tore through them with [Dragon’s Breath] and [Piercing Dive].

Floor Two: Shadow wraiths that phased through physical attacks. Owen learned to infuse his claws with mana, making them tangible enough to strike spiritual entities.

Floor Three: A massive troll with regeneration. Owen used [Shockwave] to keep it off balance, then incinerated it completely, giving it no chance to heal.

Floors Four through Ten escalated in difficulty: stronger monsters, more complex battle scenarios, environmental hazards. But Owen adapted quickly. His combat instincts sharpened. His skills became more refined.

Ding—!

[Level Up!]

[Level: 19/20]

By Floor Fifteen, the trials shifted.

Instead of just combat, the tower began testing his mind.

Floor Fifteen presented him with a massive puzzle.

a room filled with floating platforms, each one inscribed with runes. He had to activate them in a specific sequence to proceed. It took him three hours of trial and error, using [Dragon’s Eyes] to analyze the mana patterns, before he finally solved it.

Floor Twenty was a maze that shifted every few minutes.

Owen had to rely on [Mana Sense] to detect the correct path forward, navigating by feel rather than sight. Several times he nearly walked into dead ends that would have sealed him in permanently, but his growing spatial awareness saved him at the last second.

Floor Twenty-Five forced him to endure a trial of willpower.

A chamber filled with illusions of his worst fears. He saw Yuki’s corpse, dull and lifeless, her eyes empty. He saw himself failing, being cast out of Drak’thar, hunted down and killed by dragons who saw him as a threat to the royal bloodline.

The illusions felt real. They smelled real. The grief was suffocating.

But Owen pushed through, reminding himself: These aren’t real. They’re just tests. Keep moving. He forced his eyes shut, steadied his breathing, and walked forward blind until the chamber finally released him.

By Floor Thirty, he’d grown stronger. Faster. Sharper.

[Sovereignty of Space-Time] mastery increased to 30% through constant use.

The difference was tangible now. He could feel time itself bending around him when he focused, like invisible threads he could pull and manipulate. His movements became preternaturally precise. His reactions, instantaneous.

And then, on Floor Thirty-One, something changed.

Owen stepped onto the thirty-first floor and found himself in a vast library.

Shelves stretched endlessly in every direction, filled with books, scrolls, and tablets that seemed to defy the laws of physics, existing in dimensions his eyes couldn’t quite process.

Then the tower’s voice spoke again.

[You have proven your strength. You have proven your mind. Now, you will learn the truth of what you are.]

A book floated down from one of the shelves, landing open before Owen.

The pages were blank at first. Then, slowly, words began to appear, written in draconic script that Owen somehow instinctively understood, as if the knowledge had always been sleeping in his blood.

[In the beginning, there was the World. Not the gods. Not the demons. The World itself—the living essence of reality. Endlessly vast and alive.]

[Above the World came new existences, the Divine Beings—gods, angels, celestial entities—They sought to impose their order, their light, their absolute law onto the world]

[Below the World another set of existences came to being, the Demonic Beings—devils, demons, abyssal horrors—they sought to consume, corrupt, and bring absolute chaos into the world.]

[The World was caught between them ambitions as A battleground and a prize to be claimed.]

[And so, the World did what it had never done before. It intentionally focused its will and created protectors. Not servants of the gods. Not slaves to the demons. But something new. Something powerful enough to stand against both.]

[It created Dragons.]

The book’s pages turned on their own as images of the story started flooding out of it.

[Dragons were not born of divine faith or demonic corruption. Dragons were born of the World’s desperation and its very essence of life. Its need for balance. For survival.]

[Dragons were given power beyond mortals. Strength to rival gods. Magic to defy demons. And one mandate: Protect the World. Keep the balance. Let neither light nor darkness consume all.]

Owen stared at the images displayed before him like a movie.

Everything he thought he knew about dragons was being rewritten. They weren’t just powerful monsters or proud warriors. They were the World’s immune system. Its last defense against cosmic forces that would tear reality apart.

The book continued.

[The first Dragon King rose to lead his kind. He established Drak’thar. He forged the covenant with the World itself. And for millennia, dragons fulfilled their purpose.]

[But power corrupts. And even dragons are not immune.]

The pages turned darker, the script shifting from gold to blood red.

[Some dragons forgot their purpose. Some sought to rule rather than protect. Some became tyrants. And one will nearlydestroy everything.]

At this point it began to sound like prophecy rather than a recount of history. Then an image appeared on the page, a massive black dragon with golden eyes, wreathed in flames of destruction.

“That’s… that’s not me, right?”

[Vorthraxx the Desecrator. The Tyrant King. The Dragon Who will seek to Become a God.]

Owen sighed in relief, though the image still sent chills down his spine.

The book showed scenes of devastation, cities burning, not with normal fire but with reality-warping flames that erased matter from existence.

Armies crushed beneath claws the size of mountains. Entire kingdoms erased, their names forgotten, their histories consumed.

Vorthraxx had turned against the World’s mandate, seeking to dominate rather than protect, believing his power made him superior to the very force that created dragons.

[It will take the combined might of all dragons, all mortal kingdoms, and even a temporary alliance with divine forces to defeat him. The cost will be immeasurable. Dragons will be driven to extinction. The World itself will be wounded. The scars will remain for millions of years.]

The book closed with a sound like thunder.

[This is your heritage, young one. This is what it means to carry the Blood of Kings. You are not just a dragon. You are a guardian. A protector. A keeper of balance.]

[So the question remains: Will you uphold the mandate? Or will you fall to the same corruption that consumes Vorthraxx?]

Owen stood in silence, processing everything. His claws unconsciously dug into the stone floor beneath him.

“I… I guess I’m not just some reincarnated guy with a cool system. This is way too much responsibility. I… I really am the protagonist, huh?”

He looked up at the endless library, at the infinite knowledge contained in these shelves.

“I’ll protect it. The World that inhabits Yuki is worth my Protection. I won’t become like this Vorthraxx guy.” His voice grew stronger as he spoke, conviction replacing uncertainty. “I didn’t ask for this, but I’m not going to run from it either.”

The voice seemed to approve.

[Then continue, heir of kings. Prove it.]

The library dissolved around him.

The next twenty floors were brutal.

The tower tested not just his combat ability but his application of the knowledge he’d gained. Every floor seemed designed to push him toward the edge, to see if he’d break, if he’d compromise his newfound understanding for the sake of power or survival.

Floor Forty: He faced a divine construct, an angel of pure light that attacked with holy fire. Owen had to fight something theoretically “good” something that claimed to represent order and righteousness.

The angel spoke in a voice like crystal bells, proclaiming the supremacy of divine law, insisting that all dragons were abominations that defied heaven’s hierarchy.

But Owen saw through it now. The angel sought to dominate, to impose its will on the World rather than serve it.

Owen defeated it, understanding now how even divine beings could threaten the balance. The angel’s screams echoed in his mind long after it shattered into light.

Floor Fifty: A demonic entity from the abyss, writhing with miasma and chaos. It took the form of a serpent made of living shadow, whispering promises in his ear.

It tried to tempt him, offering power, freedom from responsibility, the ability to live however he wanted without the burden of protecting others.

Owen incinerated it without hesitation, though part of him wondered if that made him stronger or just more afraid of what he might become if he listened.

Floor Sixty: He fought a projection of what was announced to be a version of Vorthraxx himself, not the real thing, but a manifestation of 5% of the Tyrant King’s power at his peak. It was the hardest battle yet. The projection was an impeccable force of pure destruction.

Owen was forced to use [Sovereignty of Destruction] for the first time in the tower.

His vision went red. His power skyrocketed. His attacks became overwhelming, each strike carrying the weight of annihilation. He felt invincible, unstoppable, like he could tear through reality itself.

But unlike before, he maintained a thread of control. He’d been training his mind, his willpower, forcing himself to stay sane even as the rage consumed him.

When the berserk state threatened to consume him entirely, when the defeated Vorthraxx’s projection laughed and told him he was no different from the Tyrant King, Owen forcibly ended it. He gasped, drained, bleeding from a dozen wounds, but victorious.

[Sovereignty of Destruction – Mastery: 5%]

He pushed forward.

By Floor Seventy, [Sovereignty of Space-Time] had reached 40% mastery.

He could slow time for nearly thirty seconds now. He could move almost freely within it, watching enemies frozen mid-strike while he repositioned, analyzed, and struck from angles that should have been impossible.

Floor Eighty tested his [Dragon’s Aura], forcing him to dominate a horde of lesser drakes through sheer presence alone.

He couldn’t harm them, that was against the rules of this floor.

He had to make them submit, recognize him as their superior, without drawing blood.

It took everything he had to project that level of authority, to channel the weight of his bloodline into raw, oppressive aura force.

By the end, the drakes bowed, and Owen felt something shift inside him, some fundamental understanding of what it meant to be a king.

Floor Ninety pushed him to combine all his skills simultaneously, [Space-Time], [Momentum Shift], [Dragon’s Breath], [Piercing Dive], all used in perfect harmony.

The enemy was a construct that adapted to whatever he threw at it, forcing him to think three steps ahead, to weave his abilities together in combinations he’d never attempted.

His brain felt like it was on fire from the strain of managing everything at once, but when he finally landed the killing blow, it felt like music, like every part of him was finally working in sync.

And then, finally, he reached Floor Ninety-Nine.

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