Savage Awakening 523. Golden Dragon

Evan made tons of friends every time he saved a kingdom. His Power of Friendship boost had even skilled up. All that faith in him was giving him a pretty substantial buff. He went around with a little aura of joy in the Astral Plane.

“Hey, I also exist!” cried Avery. She waved a chicken wing. “I did stuff too!”

This was a valid point, Zane felt.

“What were you up to, dear?” said Reina. She made sure to set down her fork and give all her attention. She also bumped Zane with an elbow, who reluctantly put down his chicken wing.

“I’m starting to see results,” said Avery. She stifled a burp. “I’m all locked in! I just had to cultivate discipline.”

Avery claimed to be a rather lazy person by nature. If you gave her a deadline far in advance, she was very likely to do it in the last half-hour. This wouldn’t be great for her survival chances in the upcoming war, which she realized. “They’d beat the crap out of me,” she explained.

“That’s fair,” said Zane.

“Now I’ve made a system to keep myself accountable! I’ve made it so it’s impossible not to become really buff,” she claimed. “I’ve made to-do lists and schedules. I’m having a personal transformation and everything.”

She whipped out her chart again—the one with ‘power level’ on the y-axis and ‘time’ on the x-axis—and directed their attention to it. Her action plan was to get 1% better every week. Over the course of a century, this would compound substantially. Her starting point was about fifty years ago, at which point she had no Concepts, a Tier 6 Law, and was barely over Level 500.

The last time Zane saw her, he remembered she’d just started hitting the gym after spending two straight years lying on a beach eating ice cream. She’d been making solid progress.

She’d still been quite a long way away from maxing out Minor God in 100 years, though.

Still, whatever she was doing, it did seem to be working. “Now I’m here!” she said, pointing at a point about a third of the way up the curve.

“I’m Level 535,” she said proudly.

They checked. She did get to that level. “I also got a Concept.”

“Really?” said Reina, looking genuinely baffled.

“Mhm!”

Avery said she did it by waking up at 8 a.m. consistently for a morning run, eating a healthy, high-essence, high-protein diet, and lifting weights three times a week. She was doing a dumbbell routine and was also trying ice baths. The rest of her time was spent on quality leisure activities, such as playing old MMOs. There were surprisingly active galaxy-wide servers, mostly made up of old-Earth Faction members. She was into MapleStory at the moment.

“I’m turning my life around,” said Avery, nodding. “It’s about consistency over time! That’s how you see results.”

Zane recalled Reina telling him a few years ago that she thought Avery’s plan was far too slow and that it didn’t really make sense.

“It’s a start, and I really like that she’s trying!” Reina had hesitated. “But… 1% better a week for 100 years—that’s just a tagline. It’s a really nice thought, but it’s not realistic! It’d mean…” She blinked. A pause. It was the first time he’d heard her pause when doing math, which meant it was probably a lot of thinking. Her brow furrowed; she hunkered down for a bit.

“She’d get 2.96 × 1024 stronger,” she said after about six seconds.

“You just made that number up,” he informed her.

“It’s literally off her chart, Zane,” she said, ignoring him. “Even if she could get there, which isn’t physically possible, she’s certainly not going to do it by doing a bunch of hill sprints!”

But Avery had been set on it.

“You’re not doing anything else?” said present-day Reina.

Avery shook her head. He could almost see a gear grinding to a halt in the Reina. Her brow furrowed.

These days, Avery was getting all her meals from the best chefs in the Thousand Seas Tribe. That meant they were extremely essence-rich. Still, to be fair to Reina, essence-rich food alone shouldn’t have been anywhere near enough to fill thirty-five Minor God levels.

“When did you study for your Concept?” said Reina.

“I didn’t! I did all of that stuff in dreams.”

Avery had already been doing the bulk of her comprehension via dreaming and power-napping. Her sleep quality had gotten so good that she’d mastered her first Concept in just 15 years, she said.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” said Avery. “And by ‘they,’ I mean you, Miss Know-it-all.”

She directed that last bit at Reina, who was speechless for a moment.

“Excuse me?” said Reina.

“You’re excused.” Avery hopped off the bench and wandered away.

Not even the Grand Elders dared to speak to Reina that way.

“I think she’s just going through a rebellious phase,” Zane told Reina.

“I—” Reina reddened. She’d been doing a lot of reddening lately. “I was just trying to look out for her! I mean—Zane, that’s just a normal workout plan. It’s not even that intense! If she wants to make it to peak Minor God, like she says, she just can’t get there in time—”

“That’s what you think!” cried Avery, who had wandered back triumphantly. “But guess what? I proved the haters wrong once, and I’m gonna do it again.”

“I’m a hater, am I?” said Reina, leveling a look at Avery.

Avery hesitated. Zane could empathize—she was in a very dangerous, high-pressure position. Still, she scrounged up the bravery and barreled on ahead.

“That’s right!”

This made Reina’s mouth fall open.

Zane wasn’t really sure what was going on here, but he decided to stay out of it for now.

“Well, fine,” said Reina tightly. She crossed her arms. “You’ve got half a century to make up sixty-five Levels and three Concepts. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe you don’t know what’s best for me, ’cause you don’t know everything!” said Avery.

With that, Avery ran off to her room in their skyscraper. She seemed to have judged, wisely, that she’d pushed her luck as far as it’d go.

“She does have a point,” said Zane, after what he judged to be a safe amount of time had passed. Reina whirled on him, bewildered.

“You’re taking her side?”

“I just mean something’s clearly going right,” he said. “She has made some pretty solid progress.”

“Zane, how’s she going to make up that much ground? She just doesn’t know what she’s doing! Going with the flow might work when you’re hunting dungeons and it’s low-stakes—but when it’s a 100-year training plan, you’ve got to take it seriously.”

“She is, in her own way,” said Zane. In general, he felt you should do what you were made for. For him, it was fighting. Maybe for Avery, it was a moderately challenging fitness routine and Maplestory. “Thirty-five Levels and a Concept don’t happen by accident.”

“But she shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

“She has, right?”

That stopped her. Reina’s problem, in his view, was that she was thinking about it too hard. Some things in life are best not scrutinized too much.

Suddenly, she seemed uncertain. “I guess it might have something to do with her Signature Title,” she said, biting her lip. “If it’s having some kind of Fate influence… her Title does seem to have an effect on the rules of logic. I mean—if it’s working for her…”

“There you go.”

She winced. “…I’ll go apologize.”

She and Avery ended up making up later that afternoon.

Avery had also tried a 90-day ab routine but still had no abs, which was greatly disappointing to her.

Next up, she planned on trying this new workout she’d discovered from an old TV show: 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, and a 10-kilometer run.

“Now, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here,” she said slowly. “But if this ends up working as advertised… you people aren’t even ready!”

“You can do it,” cried Evan.

***

The Ritual was nearing completion, and the man within was destroyed and perfected at once.

Haxorax lay there suspended in blood, twitching. You could only see the whites of his eyes.

His physique had been carved into that of a dragon god.

The ideal of what a dragon should be. Every inch of him pristine, domineering, with clean, harsh lines, as though wrought by the Dragonforce itself.

His scales had been burned gold.

A certain gold that hadn’t been seen since the age of the First Ones, a gold that had only appeared twice more in the history of the galaxy’s dragonkind… a gold that hadn’t been seen since the dawn of the Chaos Cycle.

The color of an Emperor True Dragon.

An apex predator among apex predators.

Elder Kajax couldn’t even look at him.

He had known Haxorax since he was a boy. The First Prince of dragons had never been the sunny type. But he’d been serious, studious, and even as a little child he’d had an ironclad sense of right and wrong. It was a wonder with who his father was. It came from somewhere deep in the boy’s soul, Kajax thought, where character was truly made. Even the Patriarch could never shatter that nobility.

Now Kajax wasn’t so sure.

The Elder didn’t know what creature would rise from that pool.

Nothing he could say would fix the Prince now. Kajax suspected, with a sinking feeling, that no one else even saw the grotesquerie of it. He cast his eyes to the other elders, high on their plinths. There were only eager eyes gleaming with that gold light.

He gritted his teeth.

He’d objected to this wrecking of a fine dragon. And for that, the Patriarch had humiliated him before all his peers. Ever since, he’d had his mettle questioned over and over again. His fellow Elders, even some who’d never fought a day in the Great Wars! For six thousand years, Kajax had bled for his kind… that didn’t mean a thing, it seemed.

Patriarch Azure Flame grinned, all teeth. A mad, ferocious grin.

“Rise!” roared the Patriarch. He clenched his fist.

The blood pool went solid gold. Like a square of solid sun surface.

And an immense aura exploded out of the pool.

Every Elder on the plinth staggered, gasping, blood at their mouths. A few had to stumble, even sink to a half-knee.

That was the effect of the Bloodline suppression. Something few there had ever felt. Every one of them a full-blooded True Dragon, borne of the noblest lines, and yet…

Even half-lucid, the First Prince crushed them all.

The whole chamber began to shake.

Haxorax rose.

Out of the blood, his scales shone even brighter. You could almost see the pulses of the First Prince’s heart reflected in the waxing and waning of that light. Gold light poured off him like heat off a pyre.

Elder Jaxanar, an ancient moondragon, threw up a hurried divination spell.

That light collected above the Prince’s head and showed an ancient dragon symbol.

It made the symbol for four.

Kajax’s eyes squeezed shut.

T4 Universe potential… that was Galaxy-grade. They’d truly done it. The bastards.

“Are you surprised?” said the Patriarch. His gloating voice echoed down the chamber. “Don’t be! It was always meant to go this way! Gentlemen—”

Haxorax howled.

His eyes erupted with gold—two slashes of angry light.

The Prince’s jaw unhinged. A sphere of gold manifested, flickering madly.

Then it all screamed out.

A pillar of solid gold carved into the ceiling, blasting through dozens of feet of peak Divine marble in a split second, striking deep into space.

It wasn’t done.

That pillar split, and split again, and again, starting spinning wildly. The Elders had to dive for cover. Six spinning pillars of gold scythed madly, this cone of violent light…

In a heartbeat, it had wrecked the roof. The Grand Mural, the one showing the First Dragon subjugating every Beast King, was reduced to a lattice of smoldering ruin.

It halted at last. Haxorax stood there, breathing, thick locks still matted with blood.

His soul was bared for all to see. Immense. Shining with Creation, so much that Haxorax could already threaten most Ancestors… but his soul trembled. There was no control anymore. 

It was cracked down its length, and through those seams, Creation shone through.

He rasped just one word.

“Zane.”

“You will have your quarry soon,” said the Patriarch. He laughed, spreading his arms wide, and Kajax could hardly believe it. He must’ve heard the anguish in Haxorax’s howl. The Patriarch must’ve felt his son’s soul. Did that dragon have no regret? But there was no sign of it on his face….

The Patriarch’s grin only widened as the Prince waded out, dripping blood.

“This is what it feels like,” said the Patriarch, triumphant. “To seize the fullness of your destiny, boy. Enjoy it! Few in history have ever known that feeling—”

Haxorax attacked.

A slash so blindingly fast, thrown from so close, it was impossible to react in time—even for the Patriarch.

A massive claw of shining gold essence descended, backed by a Ten Million Year Bone. And made contact with the Patriarch’s chest.