Chương 50: Nascent Dragon Slayer

He had been in many unpleasant situations before. This wasn't the worst by far — not even by a long shot — but it brought back certain distasteful memories he would rather forget. The burning pain against his skin, the pitch-black darkness, the deadly cold seeping into his bones… He was back in Hell's tunnels again — a Godless slave, lost from all hope and trapped in a land far from anything sane or holy. It was fine, however. He dug his way out before. He would do it again.

This time, his sword was the pickaxe, slashing away at walls of flesh rather than smashing aside rock. Chunks of icy meat and gallons of acidic blood washed over him as he advanced. He moved ever deeper down the blood-filled gullet, crawling and slicing his way in even as his surroundings flipped, turned, and rolled. The wyrm was panicking. It was trying to get him out. Draconic bodily fluids sloshed everywhere, drenching him, seeping past his armour or flooding into his mouth.

Past the disgusting stench or the corrosive burns upon his tongue, he tasted something familiar. Divinity. He was literally bathing and dying in divine blood. [Acid Resistance has improved to 29] The sanguine shroud protected him as best it could, but the power of a Grandmaster was severe. Though Alcyr might be past the fangs or the ice glands that spat concentrated frost magic, he was moving towards a source of far greater power. The frost wyrm's draconic heart. Just a little more. Mortal Defiance activated.

He was closer to death than he realised. His movements were slowing. His skin and muscles were melting, frozen blood replacing the flesh that was slogging off his bones. The reason why he didn't notice sooner was because the cold had completely numbed his senses. He could hear the heart's powerful and frantic beats, but it was still far away. His wounds were already too much, pulling him towards death. But he had one last trump card to play. Now.

Channelling upon his reserves of blood echoes, Alcyr activated the sanguine shroud's healing properties. His body surged with a profane energy, a tainted lifeforce that was equal parts vile and invigorating. Such was the flood of defiled vitality flooding through him that his wounds were healed instantly — the frozen flesh forced aside as new muscles took their place. His body was steaming, accelerated healing fighting against the effects of the bone-chilling cold.

The blood echo count — the accumulation of nearly three hundred loops — began rapidly depleting as each second devoured thousands of echoes just to keep him alive. Keep going! Advance! His silverite blade kept slashing, carving him a path forward. The temperature dropped further, to the point where it should have been instant death for anything less than a Master. The acid's bite was hideously strong, melting flesh instantly, even with all his elemental protection. The blood echo count reached its last thousand.

Just a bit more! He could hear it now: a frantic beat pulsating through the body, so strong he could feel its reverberations through him, threatening to shatter his bones. [Blood Echoes depleted.] His sanguine cloak remained active for its final minute, fuelled by empty dregs. One more slash, severing the mucus-like membrane before him, and Alcyr saw it. The beating heart of a dragon. It was enormous — roughly half the size of his torso, and glowing a faint, icy blue.

The power radiating from it was felt beyond his means to adequately describe — an engine driven by nascent divinity, a nucleus of unstoppable energy. It was not merely the heart of a creature within the Grandmaster tier. There was something clearly otherworldly to it. It was a heart crafted by the Second Saint, moulded with draconic flesh. The primal urge to fall to his knees before such a holy wonder was not negligible.

He remained on his feet, his expression steady even as he felt his body die in the face of the heart's raw power. A legacy of the Sky Dragons and the Second Saint. Two divine powers married to birth a creature that would one day eclipse the lesser realms. What will it be like, I wonder, to kill a God? He was about to find out. Sensation abandoned him. He could no longer feel the blood on his skin or even blink.

Every liquid outside him had already frozen, and the ones inside were seconds away from turning into slurry. In the light of the pulsating dragon core, he could see the bone of his arms. If he looked down, he might even see his own exposed organs. Lifting arms that felt like lead, Alcyr aimed his silverite sword for the heart. He activated Grand Hunt's End — the first time he had activated it against the wyrm in this loop — and thrust the blade deep. There was an explosion of blood.

He heard the screams of the wyrm outside, even as its lifeforce poured all over him. He thought of cutting his way out, but his limbs were unresponsive. His sight was gone, as were most of his senses. Trapped inside the body of the wyrm, he started to drown as its heart-blood flooded his mouth and lungs. It was strange. There was no fear, not even pain. He felt as if he were cocooned in a body of perfect darkness and cold. The heart of the frost wyrm beat its last, just as Alcyr's heart ceased.

Stolen story; please report. A notification appeared. [Your legacy deepens.] [New Title: The Shedding Heart of Hoarfrost] The words failed to register as his mind shut down. Alcyr, entombed in the blood of foetal divinity, died. Scales and ice grew upon his flesh, and his skin began to peel.

Outside, the workshop continued to burn. The frost wyrm — a legendary monster of the north; a royal fiend of ridiculous size, power, and legacies — lay in an undignified pile, its eyes wide with terror, its body twitching as a flood of young divine blood poured from its maw. A certain onlooker, who had watched Alcyr's desperate battle from start to finish, sighed in irritation.

"Why did you have to go ahead and die?" Ural complained.

"Normally, I'd call this a good death. Dragonkilling's a staple for fables, after all! But you had so much more potential. What a waste…" The mutant soldier made sure to stay out of sight — a feat somehow achieved despite his size. The quartermaster and his assistants were currently busy putting out the fire. While the damage from the explosion was severe, much of the workshop still remained salvageable. The freezing aura of the frost wyrm corpse was also doing much to counter the spread of the fire.

Ural was still stunned that his latest 'protagonist' actually managed to kill it. Heroes performing impossible feats were always par for the course, obviously, but a mere soldier killing a Grandmaster? And it wasn't exactly a weak Grandmaster, either. That damned monster was the Immortal Pale, a terror feared by both Northmen and Regulars alike.

The number of men it had killed since its birth must number in the tens of thousands: crushed by its mighty bulk, devoured by its horrifying fangs, or simply driven to famine by the deadly blizzards it conjured sporadically without a thought for lesser creatures. It also possessed a legendary lineage. Most people didn't know the serpent's true origin, but Ural — or rather, the thing inside Ural — knew many things others didn't. The wyrm had a legendary birthright.

Its blood hadn't just contained a pure draconic heritage that rivalled the few remaining Dragon Knights that roam the Hundred Worlds. The Second Saint herself — the Saint of Creation — had blessed that creature when it was still in its egg, and quite heavily too. Its ridiculous healing Mystery — tied to the shedding of its skin — was a clear sign of that.

Had it another millennium to grow, or even just a few more centuries, the Immortal Pale's power might have rivalled even the blighted Corpse Gods infesting the Hells — those puppet deities of the Ninth Saint, crawling their way up from the lower worlds to destroy the Godless Heavens. A shame it died here, and for no gain either, Ural tsked. The Puremother must be pissed that her hefty investment is now gone. It would have a worthy weapon in the war against the Unnamable One. But alas, it died to a 'mere' peasant.

It was such a laughably indignified end that Ural could feel the mad touch of his patron deity scrapping against his mind.

"Thirteen lives to spare, and it still went down in an instant to that fool," Ural huffed, shaking his head.

"Just what the hell is he?" The contacts in his information network — both mundane or otherwise — couldn't pinpoint exactly where the enigma named 'Alcyr Rivers' came from. It was as if the man simply popped up in the capital of the Morwyn Kingdom one day, laid low for a few years as a mere mercenary of no renown, and then suddenly went nuts with his growth after the Battle of the Red Rime. There was nothing else that could be found on the man — not in 'this' world, at least.

Ural had considered extending his search to the other realms of the Hundred Worlds, but there was no point now. Alcyr Rivers's story had ended, and while its short stint was undeniably impressive, the parasite could not help but want more. So much for remembering my name… The long-buried beggar girl felt a hint of genuine anger at the thought of that broken promise, though it soon passed as the mask of 'Ural' washed over her emotions.

"Onto the next prey, then," the shock trooper sighed.

"Assuming I'm even able to find another story to feed on in this shithole of a world… Hm?" His 'bard' senses were tingling. Filled with disbelief, his gaze turned to the wyrm corpse. There was movement from within. The fires were just about put out. The other workers in the workshop started shouting in alarm, pointing at the giant carcass and the obvious bulge squirming beneath the scales. No. Ural grinned. Surely not.

He watched — eyes wide with mad fervour — as the flesh near the frost wyrm's dead heart exploded outwards. Blood poured out in a flood, along with frozen chunks of severed flesh. A figure awkwardly tumbled out from the wound, coughing up the dragon's blood he drank. His armour was practically melted, metal and chainmail hanging off him in tatters. Only an ethereal shroud of blood remained whole, hanging off his shoulders like a ghostly wraith clinging to his back.

Covered in hoarfrost blood, Alcyr Rivers stood, drenched head-to-red in divine sanguine red and freezing glacial blue, his powerful and scar-ridden body healthy and whole. He looked like a demigod reborn. As the bloody cloak flickered to one side — revealing his back — Ural's breath got caught in his throat. Those scars… He recognised them. Knew what they meant. Judging by the gasps from the other onlookers in the room, he was not the only one.

The quartermaster, who had been leading the fire-extinguishing efforts, was similarly awestruck. Ural read the man's lips, which appeared to be repeating the same words over and over:"Bell Bearer… A Godless Bell Bearer…" Ural resisted the urge to roar in laughter. He could not believe his eyes and ears. He knew what the terms meant. He also knew what that sanguine shroud clinging upon the soldier's back meant.

"This slave's destiny must be heavy if even Xun herself had given her blessing, despite Honsu already gifting a piece of his flayed skin," he chuckled.

"Perhaps the Pale Grinner shalln't be stingy as well?" There was a cacophony of lunacy in his mind — the sounds of rambunctious parades, mad laughter, and cries of purest ecstasy. His mad goddess heard his proposal and agreed. And just like that…

… another Saint cast her die into the pool. [Warning: You have drawn the attention of a higher entity.] [The Saint of Rapture revels at your ridiculous state.] [New Mystery: All The World's A Stage] Alcyr blinked. He spat a mouthful of blood aside.

"Half-naked and soaked in snake blood? Not my proudest moment, no." The blood must have been freezing, yet he didn't feel cold in the slightest. His movements were fine as well, somehow neither weighed down by wounds nor ice. It didn't feel like the effects of a skill or a passive ability. There was something weird keeping the cold at bay — a fleeting immunity that he could feel weakening with each second.

There were many things occupying his mind right now, the matter of his inexplicable survival the most concerning. He remembered gaining a new title right as he died. Did the frost wyrm's blood impart a new power unto him? Revive him, even? And then there was the other matter… The Saint of Rapture. He wanted to curse aloud. Mystery or not, the blessings of that deranged Saint were nothing but bad news. Agony spread bloodshed, and Dominion heralded the coming apocalypse. But Rapture?

Rapture would literally rewrite all of reality itself for the sake of its own mad amusement. Never mind that for now; there's nothing we can do. Focus on the present. He had finally killed the frost wyrm, but the loop was still not yet over. Two down, two to go. The rocfiend and the assassin were still alive, and he intended to hunt them down.