Rein found himself floating in a completely white blank space. He knew not if he even still drew breath. After all, that outer advancer must have escaped with the knowledge of his origin magic. Soon enough, a multitude of forces would come hunt him down for their own nefarious purposes. Perhaps he had already been captured.
“Hahaha,” a deep guttural beastly chortle vibrated Rein’s eardrums, and he spun around to find an enormous dragon lazing behind him. The dragon’s scales were of an ugly gold color. It was ugly to Rein because the gold had more of an earth brown color rather than that of the pure metal valued in the mortal world.
“You…” It was obvious who this dragon was. “Remnant will? Remnant soul of the draconic metamorphose bead?”
“Just so.” The earth-brown gold-tinged dragon transformed in a flurry and shrunk into a humanoid form. This dragon’s humanoid form was also rather unappealing to Rein’s eyes. Rein had seen the appearance of Mystrygon after the incident at Wolf Syrup Town, and that served as a point of comparison.
This dragon had a rough and deep tan skin with two uneven vanilla-toned crooked horns. His messy mane was also of a dirty brown, closer to black in tone. The only feature that Rein appreciated of this dragon was his eyes. Now, those shone with a vibrant lion gold, majestic beyond compare.
“We’re not done yet, Rein,” the dragon’s coarse voice roughened Rein’s ears. “Your healing from the injury allowed the bead to fully meld with your body. Thus, this remnant will awakened… Sometimes when you’ve done your best, you might just catch a lucky break.”
“Now,” the dragon roared. “Become me!”
Rein stumbled backwards in fear. “You… you’re attempting to take over my body?!” He had expected that the draconic metamorphose bead might hold certain dangers. Yet now, he wasn’t quite ready to lose it all.
“Hah. Perhaps if I was younger, I might have attempted such an action.” The dragon-in-human form shook his head with his arms clenched behind his back. “But I am a failure. I was insufficient. ”
“No no no no no! You must become not just me, but a better me!” He declared as his golden lion eyes pierced deep into Rein’s soul as light poured out. That golden glow completely filled Rein’s sight and he found his surroundings a twisting storm of colors that transformed the scene.
His sight was now filled with a slightly washed out scene. It appeared that ‘he’ was sitting in a dark gray stone room, but not just any ordinary stone structure. The walls were completely smooth with no structural lines, and the table in front of his eyes seemed to be attached to the room, with no gap between the legs of the table and the ground that suggested it could be shifted around in the room.
The only reason this room could have such an unbroken surface was that someone had taken a humongous boulder the size of a small hill, and meticulously carved that whole interior from that single massive boulder.
‘He’ raised a hand forward, picking up a flower-patterned clay cup, bringing the tea within to his lips. His hand had long claws and his arm was layered in a dirty brownish-gold scales, and the tea itself reflected his similarly scaly and double crooked-horned head.
A gray stone door swung open and a dark-haired human male teen walked in. His hand held a flat stone with a carved rune that emitted a blazing yellow light that brightened the gray interior.
“You, too, were sent to these servants’ quarters?” The dark-haired boy gazed curiously at ‘him’.
‘He’ let out a few roars.
Rein had no idea what ‘his’ roars meant, but the dark-hair boy nodded with understanding.
“So, you’re the dragon that earned the favor of visiting this first heaven. One of the Gods was impressed with my intelligence and thus decided to bring me here as a… well… something. I’ll be staying in these servants’ quarters too. You… what were you brought here for? Surely not your looks? Forgive me for saying this, but I have to say… I don’t know what a good-looking dragon is supposed to look like, but you are one ugly thing.” The teen chortled as he, too, poured himself a cup of tea.
Rein found himself releasing a few low guttural roars again.
“Really? You’re a malformed dragon with only affinity to wood and lightning, yet somehow beat the shit out of your fellow dragons? Impressive… impressive!” The teen’s eyes were bright with amazement.
“What’s your name?” He asked the dragon that Rein seemed to be inhabiting, yet had no control over.
A few guttural roars emitted from ‘his’ mouth.
“You’ve yet to receive a name? Hmm.. I’ll just call you Gent for now then. You dragons look pretty scary. I’d like to think you’re a gentleman.”
The dark-hair teen laughed at his own naming methods, before introducing himself.
‘As for me? The God that brought me here gave me a name. I am Yirn. Nice to meet you, new friend.”
Then, the vision faded into nothingness.
Rein awoke to find himself on a white clothed stretcher. His chest was wrapped in bandages, and he found himself able to breathe again. A hand appeared directly in front of his nose, causing him to be cross-eyed, and Rein found himself choking down some disgusting foul liquid. A firm rough hand on his chin kept his mouth closed, forcing him to swallow the liquid.
“Ahahaha!” A man merrily laughed in joy.
Rein forced himself to sit up. Although he was on a stretcher, he had yet to be moved. As such, he was really sitting on the ground.
His eyes focused onto the laughing figure, the same man who had forced that foul liquid down his throat. It was a handsome man, with a chiseled jawline and stubble. He had short dark brown hair that spiked towards one side.
Most strikingly was the fact that he wore a custom armor set of the Hall-- a gold-plated armor consisting of interweaving thin plates that intersect each other. As per the Hall’s custom, a pearl white cloth peeked out from underneath the armor. This same pearl white cloth was also used to form a half-cape over the man’s right shoulder. Clearly, he was one of those figures floating in a stalemate in the sky during the battle!
Rein instinctively bowed his head at this realization. After all, this man had literally fed him medicine. He had no desire to make a bad impression on such a bigwig. In his eyes, this man must at least be an outer advancer if not higher, and truly had influence, unlike Beincen.
“No need, no need.” The man waved his hand. “Do you see this?”
Rein dared to unbow his head, coming face-to-face with the head of that burly plate-layered man that he had fought. Except, well, just the face. His head had been detached at the neck, and was now held up by this handsome halls elite by the hair.
“This is the picture of victory, my friend. A key promising elite of the Convergence Sect, slain. An annoying prideful fellow that would never let anything go. He was so weakened that with a single knife hand-strike, I punctured his skull and destroyed his brain! His head was already decapitated, I assume, by you two. Those sects are going to be occupied with each other with the shift in power!” Once again, the man burst out in an open joyous laughter while slapping Rein’s shoulder.
Rein nearly flinched to brace himself, but he did not feel the pain he thought he would from the shoulder slap. Did he already recover from his injury? Rein tentatively felt over the bandages in front of his chest. He felt no pain or soreness over his bones in any way.
“Oh, you’re completely healed. A young man like you deserves to walk back into the Halls tonight upright with a head held high. Not on a stretcher!” This unnamed Halls elite was certainly a degree too impassioned for the current Rein, who was still confused as to the current state of affairs.
At the very least, he felt relief that the burly man from this Convergence Sect had fallen. There would be no end to his troubles if somehow this Convergence Sect elite survived with knowledge of his origin skill.
The other question was if Xeeseir recognized Rein’s actions as well.
“You’ve awoken.” Speak of the devil.
Xeeseir had fully recovered before Rein. He approached, sipping some sort of liquid from a mug. He handed a second mug to Rein.
“We were quite lucky, weren’t we? That man idiotically prioritized me and failed to notice the other javelin that you had thrown through an indirect hidden flight path.” Xeeseir’s eyes twinkled as brightly as his balding head under the moonlit night.
The hall's elite shook his head. “Luck is made, my friends.” He briskly walked off, beckoning with his arm. “Come!”
Rein intentionally bowed his head again as he sipped the liquid in the mug. Frankly, he had no desire to attract attention by moving around with such a conspicuous Hall elite. However, it would not do well to reject such an important figure’s invitation. Thus, he had no choice but to follow.
As for the liquid in the mug, it was a thick and sweet type of alcohol. Clearly meant to celebrate the Hall’s victory. By now, based on the mood of the elite he was following, Rein knew that the Hall had more or less achieved their goals tonight. They must have successfully retrieved that chest layered with ancient runes.
Rein could tell that they were retracing their path back to the tunnel through which they had left the Hall of the Heroes’ underground maze.
A light breeze blew, thoroughly painting the elite in front of them in a majestic light. The pearl white half-cape danced in the wind as the thin golden plates shifted over the man’s sculpted body so smoothly that there was barely any sound of metal gliding over metal.
Rein had to shake himself to divert his eyes away from the figure under the platinum glow of the moon.
“I’ve already notified the others about what had happened,” Xeeseir told Rein. “Initially, we spread out to try to search for you. Luckily, my sixth sense guided me to the right place.”
Rein nodded. Indeed, Xeeseir was the only one who could take a proper attack from that outer advancer. This outer advancer was truly significantly more powerful compared to the corpse-man that Rein had once faced. He distinctly remembered how simply Chenhr had dealt with that foe.
“You probably know how my ability works by now…” Xeeseir mused.
Once again, Rein nodded. In the battle, the burly man had ceased using any direct magical abilities on Xeeseir, and had resorted to simply transforming the ground, and throwing daggers that carried no magical spell with them. Rein easily drew the conclusion that Xeeseir’s ability very much depended on whether the opponent was activating an advancer art to go along with their attack.
He had one question though. “How did you defeat those bandits that attacked your travel carriage then?” Rein recalled that this was the reason Xeeseir gave as to how his origin skill got revealed. The bandits should be of the inner realm, with limited magical ability. Xeeseir should, in theory, struggle against a group of such foes.
“Once you take down the biggest wolf, the rest follows.” Xeeseir’s reply was really the only reasonable answer. The head bandit must have had inscripted armaments, and once Xeeseir defeated said leader, the others must have sought to escape.
As he gazed at his soak staff, which was probably recovered for him by Xeeseir after he fainted in the battle, Rein now understood why most simply called weapons such as his soak staff, armaments. Perhaps, in a time long past, this soak staff might be considered a ‘Spear of Heaven’. Now, only something crafted at the level as those javelins he had thrown could be considered as such.
The sense of desperation during the earlier battle did not give him time to consider the strength of these javelins. Following the Hall elite back down the uniform white-walled tunnel down to the Hall of Heroes underground labyrinth, Rein could not help but mull over these javelins.
That stocky Halls javelin distributor had said that it was a special metal alloy. Rein’s analysis? Since there were no power crystals attached to the javelin to unleash the advancer spells, the source of power could only be imbued within the metal alloy itself.
His conclusion only demonstrated the depths of the Hall’s strength. It was likely that many other powers across the realms had extremely limited quantities of such weapons. Or perhaps they were unable to even produce the unique metal alloy itself.
It was increasingly clear to him why Master Yirn had wanted Rein to involve himself with the Hall of Heroes, and why Baejenh had wanted him to leak information to her of any unusual events in the Hall.
Soon enough, they reached a luxurious underground cave. One might think that vegetation would struggle to grow in such conditions, yet there was a healthy yard in front of the cave entrance that contained a pond with some type of carp blowing bubbles to the surface. The garden had many vibrant strange-looking plants that Rein had never seen before. Naturally, all of this was only possible with the use of magical inscriptions that were camouflaged and difficult to see through the decoration.
“My personal quarters. If any of you keep delivering results, one day, you too shall have such a domain.” The Hall elite ejected a blast of aurae from his palm, which harmlessly scattered upon striking the circular stone door to the cave. The hidden inscriptions flashed in recognition of the aura signature and momentarily became visible as the door rolled open.
Rein found himself inside a war room study. There was a rectangular maloewood table with maps of various landscapes strewn over the top, and many of these maps had wooden sculptures representing different forces.
Surrounding this middle table were maloewood shelves filled to the brim of books and scrolls. Of the titles Rein had the opportunity to scan past, he identified that most of these books are on battle tactics, inscriptions, history of various topics, different advancer arts, magic origins and more. He was slightly surprised by this-- the hall elite did not seem like the type to hoard knowledge within his personal space.
“Now, let’s get to business,” The man said as he waved his arm to indicate that all should sit down onto the extravagant maloewood seat stumps.
“First off, I am Supreme Jensure. Oh. I’m also fully aware of the two of you, so there’s no need to introduce yourselves.”
“Say. I’ve always favored those who deliver results. Under my name, you would have significantly more access to certain resources. Naturally, there may occasionally be a bit of…” His eyebrows gave a few twitches. “Mild disagreement with some members among the other major players within the hall. Nothing that would even come close to destabilizing the Hall’s strength, mind you. But I’m ever so honest when inviting those such as yourselves. So, the choice is yours.”
