265 Rune Master
The red dragon turned its head to look at Elliot.
Their eyes met.
And the moment that happened, like a giant wall of glass splintering into a million pieces, the barrier between Elliot and his dragon soul came crashing down!
A vast amount of red dragon memories began to flood his mind and a powerful surge of righteous anger somehow filled his heart.
Strange memories flashed rapidly one after another in a series of vivid visions from the point of view of a red dragon.
The first time he flew in the sky.
His first kill.
His revenge.
His wife.
His kids.
His grandkids.
A great war.pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ
Another great war.
And finally, the scene of his death…
Unlike the other visions, the scene of his death was much more vivid and much longer than the others. It was also filled with a deep sense of righteous anger.
It was a final stand of some sort.
He was one of the last few dragons still battling in what seemed like a hopeless defense from the outset.
They were defending their planet against a horrifying onslaught of strange but powerful bug-like monsters that were completely black and full of strange power.
Each red dragon was terrifyingly powerful, and could kill thousands of bugs with every attack, but they were like giant elephants drowning under a literal sea of army ants.
One after another, one red dragon fell under mountains of those black bugs.
And finally, only he remained. He unleashed wave after wave after wave of scorching hot flames that reaped the lives of hundreds of thousands of black bugs.
But it was his swan song.
His final hurrah.
He collapsed to the ground, completely out of energy. pᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴoᴠᴇʟ
Within a few seconds, he could hear millions of bugs still alive scurrying towards him.
One, then two, then thousands of those bugs were upon him, biting, biting, biting, biting.
VROOOO!
A loud sound suddenly sounded across the sky as a massive spaceship descended.
The help he had been desperately asking for had finally arrived, but they were too late.
It wasn’t their fault.
The bugs had invaded their planet so suddenly, in so many locations at once and in such great numbers that they barely lasted a single day.
Searing heat suddenly covered his body.
But he was too far gone to care.
Death had him in a death grip, and was firmly leading him away.
Before he disappeared with Death though, he heard a deep sigh of sadness.
“Goodbye old friend.” ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
And with that, the flash of memories ended.
Elliot gasped at the vividness and the strength of that final vision.
It was so real that at one point during the final seconds Elliot had started fidgeting uncomfortably as he fought the urge to scream in the horror of being eaten alive by black bugs!
“What a horrible way to die.” Elliot thought coldly to himself.
The dragon soul within him was born out of the remnant soul force within the Red Dragon Blood Essence which had reached critical mass when Elliot consumed the second vial.
When the remnant dragon soul force solidified and merged with a portion of Elliot’s soul, its memories and final dying emotions went along with it, and it was exactly what Elliot had seen.
With the merging of the dragon soul with his own soul, there was no longer any need for him to “communicate” with it. All that it was had become him.
And as Khalendros had so aptly remarked earlier…
Elliot had become a dragon.
True, he was still very much a human being.
It was his base race, and it would always stay with him.
But he was also undeniably also fully dragon.
He was no longer a half dragon that could only transform into half a humanoid dragon.
If he wanted to, he knew for certain that he could transform into a full fledged red dragon!
“The awakening only happened after I finished the conversion of all my energy into Cosmic Dragon Energy. So this awakening must be a unique occurence, one that is completely unprecedented in this universe.” Elliot analyzed calmly.
“And judging by the effect I am having on the blue dragons, I am of a much higher grade than them. Exactly how high though, I will need to find that out for myself.”
It was true.
His very presence at that moment had completely rattled Khalendros and especially Khellendra.
“Can… can you switch it off?” Khalendros asked through gritted teeth.
“Switch it… off?” Elliot’s mind whirred rapidly for a moment. He knew it was impossible to switch off his bloodline.
But retracting his aura shouldn’t be impossible.
In fact, he needed to be able to do it. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be screaming out his presence everywhere he went?
“Let’s try using that invisibility ring.” Elliot thought.
Whoosh!
With a thought, every single trace of Elliot’s existence disappeared from the dragon’s senses.
Khalendros and Khellendra immediately sighed in relief as the tremendous pressure that Elliot was subconsciously emitting disappeared.
“It’s working.” Khalendros said. “Do that, but without the visual effect.”
“Easier said than do-” Elliot was about to answer back to Khalendros when suddenly, he realized that he actually knew how to do it!
“Surprise. Surprise.” Elliot laughed out loud to himself.
Because he was still completely stealthed, his laughter wasn’t heard by the two dragons.
“I truly am the luckiest being in this universe. Of all the red dragons that could have their blood essence harvested and be given to me, it just have to the that of a… Rune Master’s! Ha!”
If it was the previous Elliot, he would have definitely laughed much, much more hysterically than he just did.
But after merging with the dragon soul, he had become much more stable and much calmer in light of extreme situations such as the situation of extreme fortune which he was experiencing at that moment.
“It’s actually so simple. I simply need to modify the energy pathway this way and…”
Whoosh.
Elliot’s body appeared once more, but without the fierce draconic aura that had made the two blue dragons so fearful of him.