Chapter 66: 66. Understanding The Cage

“But there’s something else you need to understand about how the system came,” Dominus continued.

“Something about how the Will restructured reality after destroying the dragons.”

Owen had thought the revelations were over. He was wrong.

“After eliminating the major threats—Celestials deleted, Demons sealed, Dragons destroyed—the Will looked upon the wreckage of the world. Ninety percent of all mortal life gone. Civilizations collapsed. Entire continents depopulated. From a purely practical standpoint, it was a disaster.”

“Because dead mortals can’t produce more life force,” Owen guessed.

“Precisely. The Will had protected its immediate interests by removing threats, but in doing so, it had destroyed most of its long-term power source. The remaining mortals would take centuries to rebuild populations to pre-war levels.”

“So it decided to… what? Accelerate their recovery?”

“It decided to restructure the fundamental nature of how mortals gain power,” Chronara explained. “Before the Cataclysm, magic was difficult. Required years of study, innate talent, extensive resources. Most mortals never developed significant power because the path was simply too difficult.”

“And that limited the Will’s harvest,” Owen realized. “If most mortals died weak, their life force was barely worth collecting.”

“Exactly,” Dominus confirmed. “So the Will implemented something new. Something that would allow mortals to grow stronger, faster, more reliably. Something that would ensure a steady supply of powerful deaths to feed it.”

“The system,” Owen said.

“The system,” Dominus agreed. “Not the Dragon King System hiding in your soul, but the global system every awakened mortal you call hunters use. Levels. Skills. Stats. All of it was the Will’s solution to the livestock management problem.”

Chronara’s form pulsed with what might have been disgust.

“It’s brilliant, really. Give mortals a structured path to power. Make gaining strength feel like achievement, like earning rewards through effort. Create dungeons that provide experience points and items and a sense of progression.”

“And every level they gain, every skill they unlock, every increase in power makes them more valuable when they die,” Owen finished.

“The system is a growth accelerator,” Dominus said. “It ensures mortals reach their death at peak value. A level 100 S-rank hunter who dies produces exponentially more life force than a hundred level 1 F-ranks. The Will isn’t just farming mortals—it’s optimizing the harvest.”

Owen felt sick. Everything he’d thought of as cool, the miraculous system, was actually just a more efficient method of exploitation.*

“But the system does help mortals,” he protested weakly. “It gives them power to fight monsters, to defend themselves, to build better lives—”

“Of course it does,” Chronara said. “Healthy, successful livestock produces better yields than starving, diseased ones. The Will wants mortals to thrive—right up until they die and their accumulated power gets harvested.”

“Think about it,” Dominus added. “Why do dungeons exist? The Will could simply delete them like it deleted the Celestials. But it doesn’t, because dungeons serve a purpose.”

“They provide experience points,” Owen said slowly. “Challenge mortals to grow stronger. Create pressure that forces them to develop their abilities…”

“Dungeons are the Will’s training grounds,” Dominus confirmed. “Places where mortals are encouraged to risk their lives for rewards, to push themselves to higher levels, to optimize their builds and strategies. All of which makes them more valuable when they inevitably die.”

Owen thought about all the hunters he’d known. Lyra, Isaac, Felicity, Odessa, even Yuki before she’d met him. All of them dedicating their lives to clearing dungeons, ranking up, growing stronger.

All of them unwittingly participating in their own cultivation for eventual harvest.

“But wait,” Owen said, a new thought occurring. “Dungeons existed before the Will implemented the system, right? I mean, they appeared during the apocalypse, before the system manifested—”

“That’s the beautiful irony,” Chronara interrupted. “Dungeons weren’t created by the Will intentionally. They’re a side effect.”

“Side effect of what?”

“Of everything that came before,” Dominus explained. “The war between Celestials and Demons. My war with Vorthraxx. The Will’s restructuring of reality. All that power, all that reality manipulation, all those fundamental changes to existence—they created tears in the fabric of space-time.”

“Scars,” Chronara added. “Places where reality was wounded so badly it never fully healed. And through those scars, echoes of the past leak through. Fragments of what was, manifestations of historical events, pieces of erased civilizations finding their way back into existence.”

“Story Dungeons,” Owen breathed.

“Exactly. Story Dungeons are literal memories of the past, crystallized into physical space. The Tower of Royals where you trained? That was a real place once, where real dragons underwent real trials. The Shadowgrave where you fought cultists? An actual historical event, probably from the period when Vorthraxx’s followers were trying to summon Outer-Divinities to fuel their master’s power.”

“And the Will can’t control what appears in Dungeons,” Owen realized. “Because it didn’t create them. They’re unintended consequences of its actions.”

“It can perceive them,” Chronara corrected. “Can see that Story Dungeons exist. But it can’t look inside them, can’t monitor what happens within their boundaries, can’t prevent echoes of deleted Celestials or destroyed dragons from manifesting.”*

“Which is why I could meet you here” Owen said.

“Precisely,” Dominus confirmed. “Dungeons are blind spots. Places where the past can speak to the present without the Will eavesdropping.”

“So when you told me there would be two more Story Dungeons appearing soon…”

“Two more chances for you to meet fragments of my power,” Dominus finished. “Two more opportunities to integrate what I scattered across time. Two more pieces of the puzzle you’ll need to fully unlock Drak’thar’s potential.”

—

Owen’s consciousness returned fully to the present, his memory of the conversation complete.

He sat in the D-rank dungeon’s cave, processing everything he’d relived. The truth about the Will. The purpose of the system. The nature of dungeons. All of it combining into a picture so much darker than what mortals believed.

He pulled up his system interface one more time, looking at it with new understanding.

[Dragon King System]

Not the Will’s creation. Dominus’s legacy, wearing the Will’s skin as camouflage.

[Personal Pocket Dimension: Drak’thar]

A kingdom outside the Will’s reach. A place where true dragons could exist again without being subject to deletion.

[Authority: Tier 1]

Two more Story Dungeons. Two more fragments of Dominus’s power. Two more chances to strengthen himself before the Will awakened and recognized him as a threat.

Owen closed the interface and stood, his massive form filling the small cave.

He needed to tell Yuki. Needed to explain why they would be traveling to other continents, why Story Dungeons were crucial, why everything they had believed about the system was a lie.

But first, he needed to understand one more thing. Something Dominus had mentioned in passing, something that had lodged in Owen’s mind like a splinter.

“You should be extremely careful,” Dominus had warned. “The system monitors awakened mortals. If it notices something unusual about your growth, if it detects anomalies in your development, it might flag you for the Will’s attention.”

“How would I know if I’m being monitored?”

“You wouldn’t. That’s the point. The system is ubiquitous, invisible, accepted without question. The perfect surveillance tool precisely because no one thinks to question it.”

Owen had asked one more question before they had parted ways in the sky above the Shadowgrave.

“If the system is the Will’s creation, and I’m using a system that only pretends to be the same… how do I avoid detection? How do I grow stronger without triggering alerts?”

Dominus’s answer had been both simple and terrifying.

“You can’t. Not indefinitely. Eventually, the Will will notice. So the question isn’t how to avoid detection, it’s how fast you can grow before detection occurs, and how strong you’ll be when the inevitable confrontation happens.”

A race against an unknown timer. Growing powerful enough to matter before the Will awakened and decided he was a threat worth eliminating.

No pressure.

Owen transformed to his humanoid form and made his way back toward the dungeon’s entrance. He had learned what he needed to learn, confirmed that the truths told in the sky matched reality as experienced in this actual, physical dungeon.

Story Dungeons were real fragments of the past. The system was real surveillance infrastructure. And he was really walking a knife’s edge between salvation and extinction.

Time to prepare for the impossible task of rebuilding a dragon kingdom while hiding from a world-spirit that had already destroyed dragon-kind once before.

Owen reached the dungeon gate and paused, checking with his Mana Sense to ensure no hunters were visible on the other side.

Clear.

He activated Sovereignty of Space-Time one more time and stepped through the gate in the frozen moment between seconds.

Back into the real world. Back into the Will’s domain.

Back into the cage that didn’t realize it was holding a dragon who was planning to break free from it.

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