Dragon King: Wind & Spirit

Below the castle, hundreds if not thousands of meters deep into the earth was a maze of caves infested with a myriad of some of the most dangerous and high leveled monsters to have ever existed. Like every other day they went about their daily routine, eating each other and doing whatever it is monsters do when they were not eating each other.

It was in this strangely lit caverns that a wisp of energy traveled through. It was as if this energy had a consciousness of its own as it navigated through the twisting and haphazardly formed labyrinth of a cavern.

It was as if this whole place was an whole world all on its own. There was a bevy of Intelligent monsters and other monsters more inclined to their instincts. Trees grew here, lush and fresh as they rested on a carpet of delicate grass and beautiful flowers. Massive glowing crystals jutted out of the top of the caverns as their pulsing lights lit the whole place like a new year celebration.

Everything here existed in its own moment and corner as even the littlest creepers and insects moved around fighting for their survival like any other animal or monster.

The wisp of energy lacked the ability to appreciate the beauty of the underground world, it moved with a singular objective and continued to move in deeper, foraying into the deepest depths of this systems of caves. It moved far, wide and deep until everything that showcased the beauty of this underground world faded.

In the end it had moved so far that its only company was a bleak darkness filled with despair and the unspeakable horrors it held. But this wisp of energy lacked a will of its own, it lacked a soul so things like fear or terror was alien to it.

Eventually it finally arrived at a huge underground lake that was so big it could practically be considered an ocean. A huge crystal embedded on the roof of this huge and spacious place glowed with a multitude of colors alternatively changing its colors every minute.

And with every color change so too would the weather and temperature of this place change too, from a smoldering heat to a chilling cold it cycled through multiple seasons almost as if it was breathing.

The wisp of energy traveled through this huge underground ocean for almost an hour before it came upon an island that was completely flat and covered in its entirety by red roses.

At the center of this island was a pyramid, and on each level of the pyramid fearsome eight foot warriors made up completely of different elements stood guard.

From the cracks of their dark armor the elements they embodied could be seen escaping or glowing from within.

They were an intimidating sight, but all this was of no consequence to the wisp of energy. The warriors only gave the strand of energy a cursory glance before it burrowed into the pyramid unhindered in its journey.

Within the pyramid was another maze, its walls were covered with obscure symbols and pictures that glowed in the darkness like a beacon to guide the wisp of energy to its destination. And finally it arrived, a huge ball of gas was floating solitary on it's own right at the middle of the pyramid and on an altar.

The gas also flashed with a multitude of colors every few minutes, but anybody with above average perception would know that this ball of gas was above the ordinary.

This ball of gas was like a living person, it was an entity that had seen the rise and fall of countless civilization but had cut itself off from a whole lot of worries or cares.

It was pure power, the kind that even the Gods themselves would wish for. It could call forth mountains in mere seconds and if it so wished pull the very sun out of the sky itself.

The wisp of energy flew and burrowed Into this ball of gas effectively becoming one with it. As soon as this melding was completed the ball of gas flashed rapidly with its colors changing so fast that no one would be able to actually pinpoint which color was which.

It was obvious that the gas was in a state of silent contemplation as it tried to digest the Information it just received from the wisp of energy that just became a part of it. No one could say they knew what this ball of gas was thinking, however one thing was for sure though.

Whatever it had found out from the wisp of energy, it was totally not happy about it. And as if to drive a nail deeper into the proverbial coffin, a woman's voice was heard chuckling with malevolent laughter from within the altar.

"He's here." And a golden reptilian eye stared at the ball of gas, burning with rage and mockery.

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When I woke up my body felt so heavy, that I didn't feel the need to get up. Even with the few hours of rest I just had, I was still very much tired and exhausted, as the feeling of intense fatigue persisted all over my body.

The library was darker now, it almost seemed as if it was only being illuminated by the light of a dying flame, slowly ebbing and getting dimmer than it ever was before. The fight was stressful, and with the high from both adrenaline and my anger completely gone, I felt like a complete fool.

I reckoned there were a lot of things I should not have said to the slime, and a lot of other actions I could have taken way faster than expected. I almost died, and in the end I was making jokes during the whole process of being sent to an early grave.

I made mistakes, and chief among them was trusting Samson. I had no idea what that golem was really trying to achieve, but it was only the first floor and things were already going wrong. Maybe the thousands of years of solitary confinement had driven him insane or maybe he was just a senile old man, or golem.

I got back up to my feet on shaky jelly legs and with labored breaths, I felt every move made, like it was agony unto itself and felt like I was only a step away from dying.

I swept my gaze through the dilapidated first floor and the area of the second floor I was standing on. The trail of destruction was rather intense and I could not really believe that I was the wrecking ball that implemented that destruction.

Well all is well that ends well, but right now I had to look for the brand that connected this floor to the dungeon core. My job could not be really done until I had completely destroyed that brand.

But after almost thirty minutes of roaming and moving around the entirety of the whole library I couldn't find the brand. And with my still aching body, I had tried to move all the debris and scattered pieces of wood and paper thinking they were covering the brand. However there was nothing beneath them.

My search eventually brought me back to the wall that played a part in relocating my shoulder. That wall caused a lot of damage to me, but for some reason it was the only wall or area that had cracks on its surface.

I had come to learn of the sturdiness of the castle the hard way, a full powered punch from would only leave me with a broken fist and a whole lot of pain. However this part of the wall had spider web cracks on it. To me it seemed like another layer was superimposed on top of a normal wall in the library.

Coming into close contact with it left me with a kind of fuzzy and itchy feeling. I could not exactly pinpoint what it was that made me feel this way, but I was sure it had something to do with the brand I was looking for.

The lighting in the room was rather dim as the only source of light I now had was coming from the shattered remnants of that giant slime's crystal core. However dim it may be, it was enough for me to notice the concentric circles with a series of lines connecting them with an eye right in the middle painted on the cracked wall.

If I had to hazard a guess, this looked like a map of a labyrinth or something, but what was really strange about this rather profound looking symbol was that it was releasing tiny little wisps of vapor that floated down to the ground Instead of floating up as you would expect most gaseous based matter to act like.

But as it let out those vapor the lines that made up the entire brand began to fade away one circle at a time. It followed a particular sequence, but it was happening way to fast for me to be able to tell how it followed that sequence.

This was the brand, at least I was about sixty percent sure it was. The strange feeling I had was intensified the closer I was to the brand. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but neither was it a pleasant feeling either. Ultimately it just felt weird and unnatural. As the brand faded away I was faced with a question.

By the looks of things, it seemed like the brand would take a few hours to completely deconstruct itself after it was damaged or destroyed.

The cracks from before had spread through the entire brand with its epicenter spreading right from the middle of it. But the time actually required for it to completely disappear was suspicious.

Of course before this I had no idea the brand needed to disappear or anything, the only thing I knew was that I had to destroy it. But with the amount of time spent for it to deconstruct, I had an Inkling of a feeling that it could also repair itself.

The very thought sent shivers through my entire body. If that was the case then I would have been dead ten times over. The brand was the gateway for monsters created by the dungeon core. And with me lying unconscious so close to it, any monster could have walked through and snacked on me with absolutely no challenge at all.

So which brought up another question, it took so long for the whole brand to go up in smoke so why was there no other monster around. Or was there a monster that in the process of scouring the entire library, I had been unable to find.

I moved back from the brand and thoroughly searched and scoured the entire library in rising paranoia. Of course I found nothing, but I could not help the distinct feeling that something was incredibly wrong somewhere. But regardless of how much I searched, I could not find anything.

I gave a tired yawn as the fatigue from my entire experience and rather exciting day caught up to him again. My entire body hurt, not to mention my back and the back of my neck. Lying down on the cold hard floor was not a smart move. Struggling to keep my eyes opened, at least until the brand completely deconstructed was rather hard, but he I able to see it through.

After the brand completely disappeared I made my way towards the elevator, tiredly dragging my spear behind me. I rubbed my hands at the back of my aching and itching neck and gave a groan of tiredness.

As I was about to enter the elevator, the last blue glow from the library shone on the back of my neck as a tattoo was etched there in glowing blue lines. If anybody looked close enough, they would notice that this tattoo was actually the form of one part of the brand I had just destroyed. It flashed for a moment before it disappeared into my brown skin, with me being non the wiser about its existence.

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"Are you sure of what you're saying?"

Samson asked.

I nodded in response, explaining exactly what happened on the floor below was a whole lot harder than I expected. But I had done so while putting great emphasis on the flaws of Samson's information giving expertise. I was sure that Samson now had a bruised ego.

"But this just doesn't make any sense. I ran my calculations and compiled a strategy for you based on the most recent data in the castles database. There should have been no room for uncertainties. It was not a part of my calculations. I was so sure and now my lack of proper research and the calculation of the probability that things would be a whole lot different after the thousands of years that passed have put our mission in jeopardy."

I had no idea how to respond to the whole self blame mode Samson seemed to have going on right now. In fact I did not even expect something like this. It was a rather human like reaction, but I had already established that Samson was not an ordinary golem.

"You shouldn't be too hard on yourself, everyone makes mistakes sometimes." I spoke up In an attempt to console Samson, however.

"NO! I…..don't…..make…..MISTAKES!. Humans do, and any other mortal creature that is born and grown. But I am a cut above them all, specially designed and implemented for the pinnacle of golem perfection. I don't make mistakes, this just came up as a result of a lack of information and research. I am incapable of mistakes."

At the end of his rant, Samson's voice faded into a whisper as he sat on the floor while staring at his four fingered hands. I was terrified, I had just faced a slime the size of a house, but the look on the face of Samson, the obsession and paranoia in his voice had creeped me out so badly, I felt like tiny little insects where walking all over my body. Samson took great pride in what he was, but from it stemmed an obsession that made him volatile and unstable.

I did not need a doctor to tell me that this golem was insane, his actions so far was more than enough to have me believe that all these years of being stuck in this castle with no one else but a dungeon that was steadily growing and consuming everything you knew and loved had pushed Samson over the edge. I could not imagine living that kind of life for thousands of years and even more so without my son by my side, it would have been an unbearable torture.

But this knowledge did not encourage me to pity Samson, on the contrary it made me extremely distrustful of the golem. It made me afraid, and I knew for a fact that if things don't change fast, I was going to end up being a victim of the golems insanity, whether intentionally or accidentally.

I did not have anything else to tell him, so I left the golem sitting on the floor and made my way to infirmary without saying another word. I had other things to worry about and take care off. The killing of all those slimes had increased my radiation bar again, which meant I could use the energy currently running through my body to improve my attributes again.

On a prior explanation from Samson, I had come to understand that any sort of energy that stemmed from radiation was poisonous to any living being unless that being had a biology constituted for poison or energy.

The entire atmosphere of Gonin Gora was radioactive only to humans from earth, and that was mainly because our bodies would not be able to adapt to the terrain and composition of the new planet before its atmosphere; comprising of thousands of new and unknown elements and energies completely foreign to earth's humans kill them.

So what was really killing me was not radiation, it was the fact that my body was not constituted, built, or evolved enough for this terrain. But the atmosphere of Gonin Gora was not only comprised of new elements and compounds, it was also comprised of energy, of essence. Interweaved between all of the chemical compounds and elements were the essences of elemental and magical energy, the essences of divine and demonic power.

It was choke full and a host to myriads of different energies that served as the fuel and base of abilities and powers of the hundreds of classes that lived on the planet, especially to a volatile source of all energy, an unrefined compound known as the Ether, and base form of most if not all of the energies in existence.

The gene modifier, even though it was a product of a planet that was way behind in technological advancements, was a marvel. It had the ability to combine and regulate every kind of energy or power found in the atmosphere and use it to strengthen its host.

Samson reckoned that if the earth's humans body did not have any limit to the amount of energy they could absorb, then they would become practically invisible and immune to everything, building resistance to all manner of elements and abilities.

But that was just a theory, it would have been amazing if such a thing were to happen, however Samson and I were working on a goal of giving me an internal system that can handle and regulate the Influx of energy on its own, effectively building a body that won't breakdown from the bombardment of energy and continue to grow stronger and evolve.

RADIATION BAR: 8567/500

COMMENSE GENE MODIFICATION

ACCEPTED.

STRENGTH MODIFIED

AGILITY MODIFIED

VITALITY MODIFIED

SENSORY PERCPTION MODIFIED

ENERGY MODIFIED.

ENERGY AND SENSORY PERCEPTION CAN NOW BE MODIFIED.

STATUS: STRENGTH 4.9, VITALITY 5.6, AGILITY 4.6, SENSORY PERCEPTION 2.5, ENERGY 2.5

RADIATION BAR: 67/500.

I barely had any time to be surprised by the changes being displayed, before I was once again drowned by a wave of pain. Unlike the last time where I immediately blacked out, this time unconsciousness was no where to be found.

My body was only barely holding itself together, but with this sudden development I l actually had an Inkling that I might not survive this modification. And with that thought came a wave of pure fear.

It was pure agony, it felt like my bones, tissues and flesh were being broken down and reconstructed, only to be broken down and built back up from the ground again.

My blood boiled and my head ached, I could actually feel myeelf trashing around in pain and agony, but with every move I made the pain in my body intensified. My body felt like it was doused in lava, and then my raw peeled flesh was now thrown into a field of pepper and salt. Pain, torture, agony, despair.

There were too many words that could be used to describe the hell I was currently experiencing, but not one of them could properly describe it. It went on and on and on, until I knew nothing but the darkness that offered me solace. It was peaceful, it was quiet, it was empty.