Deep within the gloomy, foreboding dungeon.
Felix, Ronald, and Raygore threw their full weight against the black iron door before them, bodies trembling as they struggled to hold back the relentless barrage of blows.
Six hands were pressed flat against the ice-cold metal surface, knuckles raised, muscles drawn taut as steel cable.
Felix clenched his jaw. Beads of sweat traced down his cheeks and fell to the stone floor with tiny, almost inaudible sounds.
"BOOM!"
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
From behind the door came a storm of thunderous impacts, each one rattling the dungeon walls like a peal of rolling thunder.
A monstrous, catastrophic force crashed against them in waves, shaking the entire chamber. Stone dust rained down from the ceiling in a steady stream.
"BANG."
One deafening impact, and a clear fist-print appeared in the black iron door, deep and unmistakable, the surrounding metal buckled and warped by the sheer force of the blow.
Solid black iron, and it had been dented that deeply by a single punch.
All three of them broke into cold sweats simultaneously. Great drops rolled from their foreheads; their faces had gone white as paper.
Was the thing behind that door some kind of humanoid dragon? How could any flesh-and-blood creature be this powerful?
"By the Dawn Lord!" Ronald bellowed, his voice cracking high with fear. "Has Orum lost his mind?! Why did he suddenly start attacking us, and why is he hitting so hard?!"
"That's not Orum. It's a shadow-magic duplicate!"
Felix shouted back, something he almost never did. His usual refined, aristocratic tone had gone hoarse. In the din of those thunderous blows, shouting was the only way to be heard.
Earlier, the three of them had been racking their brains in front of a riddle mechanism. Felix had been frowning in concentration, his fingers tracing the ancient runes carved into the stone slab as he worked to unravel its secrets.
The slab bore runes from an older age, and they had to be touched in a precise sequence to open the passage.
After finally cracking the mechanism, the stone door had ground open, only for a black-skinned Orum and a black-skinned Melina to spring out and attack.
Two shadow figures had lunged out of the darkness like ghosts.
The Melina duplicate was vacant, hollow-eyed, capable of nothing but charging straight ahead. She had no tactics whatsoever.
She was easy to deal with: Raygore sent her flying with a single blow of his war hammer.
The instant the hammer connected, the black figure went sailing through the air like a broken kite. The duplicate Melina traced an arc overhead, accompanied by a sharp, keening rush of wind, and plummeted into the abyss below. Her form was swallowed instantly by the darkness.
She hit the bottom and shattered, dissolving into fragments of shadow that scattered in all directions.
The Orum duplicate, on the other hand, had driven all three of them nearly to despair.
Those pitch-black pupils flickered with a bloodthirsty red light, like some killing machine conjured straight from hell.
The duplicate's build was just as massive as the original's: muscles carved into hard, iron-clear lines.
In that moment, Felix was shaken to his core.
In day-to-day life, Orum had always seemed temperate, an approachable young man without airs. But now that Orum was the enemy, Felix finally grasped how terrifying a creature he truly was. That oppressive force radiating off him made it hard to breathe.
The instant the Orum duplicate burst forward, a bolt of lightning came screaming toward them.
Purple arcs tore through the air with a sharp crackling roar, and Raygore took the full blast, fried from the outside in. Smoke rose from his armor.
Electricity danced across the metal plates with a piercing sizzle. Raygore convulsed and crashed to the ground, muscles spasming beyond his control, a pained groan escaping his lips.
If Ronald hadn't cast First-circle spell: Healing Word and poured life back into Raygore, he would have been critically wounded in the very first exchange.
The golden healing light wrapped around Raygore and blunted the worst of the electric damage.
The duplicate's terrifying combination of raw attack power and raw defense was something else entirely.
Muscles like mountain ridges, bones dense beyond belief. Every blow the three of them landed on him was little better than a scratch.
His body might as well have been cast from iron: impenetrable, immovable.
Felix's Ice Blade struck square on the duplicate's chest, the shockwave of the detonation billowing outward, and yet it only peeled back the skin. The solid muscle and bone beneath were untouched.
Ice Blade against him was like throwing snowballs. It didn't slow him down for a single moment.
Felix stared in disbelief. Was this still a human body?
"His physical toughness is completely absurd!" Felix said through gritted teeth. "We can't even hurt him!"
Raygore clenched his jaw. The muscles beneath his plate armor tightened like steel hawsers, and he thrust both hands toward the duplicate.
Using the cover of the ice fog to obscure the duplicate's view, Raygore lunged into a grappling stance, reaching for the duplicate's shoulders.
"HRGH!" A low roar, and Raygore's massive frame pitched forward. He was going for a wrestling throw, trying to hurl the duplicate off the cliff ledge beside them.
If he could get him over the edge, the terrain would finish the job, just as it had with the Melina duplicate.
His arms strained, thick as tree trunks, veins rising like cords beneath the skin. Sweat streaked down his forehead.
The duplicate Orum merely watched him with cold indifference. Not a flicker of emotion moved behind those black eyes.
In the next instant, the duplicate's hands clamped onto Raygore's arms like iron vises.
"BOOM!" Raygore's eyes went wide as a horrifying force came surging through the grip.
It was like a flash flood, completely beyond anything he had prepared himself for.
The duplicate's expression never changed. His muscles barely flexed, and he hurled Raygore bodily into the air.
"Impossible!" Felix and Ronald watched in stunned horror.
Raygore stood two meters sixty in height. Counting his full heavy armor, he weighed at least four hundred kilograms.
And Orum had just tossed that weight aside with brute force, sent him stumbling and tumbling toward the cliff at the edge of the passage.
"Raygore!" Felix and Ronald's pupils contracted in unison. They cried out together.
"BOOM."
With a thunderous crash, Raygore's body swung through the air in a wide arc, the abyss rushing up to meet him.
At the very last instant, his fingers found a protruding rock at the cliff's edge and locked on.
"CRACK." The rock began to fracture under the enormous impact, chips of stone crumbling away.
Raygore poured everything he had into his grip and wrenched himself back up onto the ledge.
The duplicate moved to press the attack, but Felix detonated an Ice Blade at his feet, instantly coating the ground in a slick sheet of ice and buying precious seconds.
"Fall back! We have to retreat, now!" Felix gave the order. Looking at the Orum duplicate before him, every last scrap of will to fight had drained out of him.
The three of them ran. Their footsteps rang in quick, desperate bursts through the stone corridor.
Ronald huffed and puffed, breath heaving in ragged gasps, sweat soaking through the padding beneath his armor. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, terrified the monstrous duplicate would catch up.
Felix ran between Raygore and Ronald, his golden hair disheveled and wild.
"That thing's stats are completely insane!" Ronald panted as he ran. "Is this still a human being?"
Raygore said nothing, but the same shock was reverberating through him.
He had always considered himself exceptionally strong. And in that moment, Orum had completely outclassed him.
The sheer gulf between them left Raygore stunned to the bone.
The three of them sprinted on and finally reached a heavy black iron door. Raygore and Ronald shoved it open without hesitation. All three poured inside.
"Close it!" Ronald shouted, and all three threw themselves against the door.
They held it shut with everything they had, sweat soaking their clothes. Felix's white cotton robe clung to his body. Ronald's brown hair was plastered to his forehead, his face flushed crimson.
Above them, Raygore's heavy armor gave a faint, grinding scrape of metal against metal. He, too, was throwing every muscle he had into holding the door.
"BOOM."
A detonating crash from the other side, and the entire iron door lurched and shuddered violently.
All three of them felt the impact try to rip the door from their hands.
The bolt let out a teeth-grinding shriek of protest, as though it might give way at any moment.
"Can this door hold?" Ronald's voice was shaking. Sweat kept dripping from his forehead.
His hands were pressed dead flat against the door, knuckle-joints bloodless from the strain.
"It won't. We need another plan." Felix's eyes hardened.
"BANG." Another heavy blow. A new fist-print appeared on the door, deep and sharp, the surrounding metal crushed out of shape.
All three of them went a shade paler. They all knew the door wouldn't last much longer.
"We're running out of time," Felix said, the urgency in his voice unmistakable. Sweat dripped from his forehead and spotted the stone floor.
"The Hero's Trial is about to end!"
"Well, nothing we can do about that!" Ronald said helplessly, despair filling his eyes.
"We can't even beat him!"
"What rotten luck!" Ronald kept at it, bitter frustration thick in his voice. "How did we end up rolling the hardest monster in the dungeon?!"
According to what people had written on the message board, the creatures in this Hero's Trial were mostly sand worms and gargoyles. Nothing too dangerous, all well within manageable limits.
But their run had somehow produced a shadow duplicate. And not just any one. The strongest possible version. Their luck could not have been worse.
"CLANG!" With a shattering crash of metal, the black iron door convulsed again.
The entire door frame was trembling. A crack appeared across the surface, running top to bottom in a jagged line, spreading fast, accompanied by the agonizing shriek of tearing metal.
All three hearts rose into their throats.
Then, at the very instant the tension peaked, footsteps sounded behind them, followed by a calm and familiar voice.
"Captain, open the door. I'll deal with the shadow duplicate."
Felix, Ronald, and Raygore all went rigid at once.
That was Orum's voice. The tone was unmistakable.
The real one had arrived.
All three turned their heads together, eyes blazing with sudden, fierce relief, as though the most powerful reinforcement imaginable had just descended from the heavens.
They looked back to see Orum and Melina coming from the entrance passage. Both of them were dusted with grime from a recent fight, their clothes somewhat torn, but their eyes were steady and clear. They had obviously completed their own task and come running.
"Orum!" Felix said, disbelief and relief mixed together in his voice. "You finished the other side of the trial? You have the key?"
Orum said nothing extra. He simply reached into his coat and produced a gleaming jade key.
The gem-set key caught the torchlight and glittered softly, giving off a gentle pulse of magical energy.
"Got it." His tone was steady and unhurried, as though what he had just come through wasn't a life-or-death fight but an ordinary afternoon stroll.
Melina stood at his side, her black beast-ears trembling slightly, betraying her inner tension. But her gaze was just as firm as his, and the dagger in her hand still bore traces of black residue.
"That quickly!" Ronald's eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open enough to fit a whole egg.
Felix's green eyes flickered with incredulous light. Even his composed features couldn't conceal the shock written across them.
None of them had imagined Orum and Melina would finish the trial this fast.
But in a flash of thought, Felix found a reasonable explanation.
If the other branch of the trial had also involved a shadow-magic duplicate, then Orum with his overwhelming combat ability, paired with Melina and her expert Wanderer techniques, could absolutely have finished the fight faster.
Orum's raw power was enough to make anyone's breath stop. Add Melina's refined Wanderer skills, and the two of them were unstoppable together.
"Good. We'll step away from the door now." Felix's voice was resolute. His golden hair stirred faintly with the energy of the moment as he steeled himself for what came next.
"Captain, take the others behind the stone door. The moment it opens, I'll hold the duplicate's attention. Melina slips in and retrieves the key."
Orum's gaze was steady. His voice carried authority, and he delivered the plan with calm precision.
He knew better than anyone just how difficult a body like his own was to kill.
That monstrous regenerative power, defensive strength, and raw attack force, even he found it sobering to think about.
The life energy supplied by the Monster Organ, "Ancient Tree's Heart," surged through him like a great river, vast and inexhaustible.
The strength granted by "Bugbear Sinew +2" far exceeded anything a normal human could produce, enough to shatter bedrock.
And that said nothing of the various monster organs fused into his bones and flesh. Each one pushed his physical capabilities beyond human limits.
So his plan was simple: pin the duplicate down and buy Melina the time she needed to retrieve the key.
The wavering black iron door was wrenched open. The metal hinges gave a piercing, grinding scream, as though the gates of hell were slowly parting.
Darkness poured out from behind the door like a tide from an abyss, carrying with it a suffocating pressure.
Orum looked ahead, and there in the dark he saw himself staring back: pitch-black skin, blank expression.
Those hollow eyes were like twin abysses, utterly devoid of anything human.
The jet-black skin gleamed with an eerie sheen, like a death god wrapped in living shadow.
In one hand, the duplicate gripped a refined-steel lance, its tip catching the faint ambient light and throwing off a cold, lethal gleam.
The moment the black iron door swung fully open, the duplicate surged forward, body exploding off the ground like an arrow released from a drawn bow.
Combat Technique: Thrust!
The duplicate's silhouette vanished from where it had been standing. Air screamed as it was torn apart, and in the next instant the lance tip was already closing on Orum's chest.
The speed was beyond comprehension. Not even an afterimage was left to track.
There was no room to dodge.
Orum's eyes blazed with fierce fighting spirit. He didn't flinch. He drove forward instead, legs unleashing a terrifying burst of force, the stone slabs beneath him cracking and splintering outward.
His hand brought the Flame-Steel longsword around in a decisive thrust to meet the refined-steel lance point-first.
He used the exact same technique.
Combat Technique: Thrust!
Two figures closed the distance to nearly nothing in an instant, like two meteors meeting in mid-air.
"CLANG!"
A grinding, ear-splitting peal of metal on metal exploded through the air, ringing hard against every eardrum.
Sparks rained outward in a meteor shower, lighting up Orum's sharp and composed features.
The shockwave rolled outward in all directions, whipping Melina's dark hair into a wild storm.
The Flame-Steel longsword's material was several times superior to the refined-steel of the lance. Its blade carved through metal the way a hot knife cuts through butter.
"SHINK!" The refined-steel lance head was split cleanly in two.
Metal fragments flew in every direction, each piece slicing a bright arc through the air.
The sword followed through without slowing. A flash of cold light, and the blade drove into the duplicate's eye socket, straight through to the brain.
"THUD." The Flame-Steel tip punched through the skull. Black liquid erupted from the wound.
The fluid was thick and viscous as crude oil and gave off a nauseating, bloody stench.
The duplicate's body locked up at once, as though every last thread of life had been cut simultaneously.
The black eyes dimmed instantly, and the body began to tip backward.
But even after absorbing that kill-confirmed strike, the duplicate's body was only frozen for a moment.
The very next instant, the wound around the eye socket began to close.
The black fluid stopped flowing. The muscle at the edges of the wound began to stir, rippling like something alive, regrowing at a speed clearly visible to the naked eye.
A vast tide of life force erupted from somewhere inside the chest, pouring outward like spring water, flooding every corner of the body, and the damage sealed itself shut before their eyes.
Monster Organ: Tree of Ten Thousand Lives.
Even a killing blow could be healed in an instant. This was practically a deathless body that could reset three times over.
The duplicate snapped a kick forward, the force behind it like a battering ram, slamming into Orum's abdomen.
The air itself cracked from the force of that kick.
"BOOM!"
Orum felt a tearing, ripping pain detonate through his midsection, as though a siege ram had struck him dead-on. His body jackknifed inward, feet leaving the ground, and he was launched backward like a cannonball.
He tumbled through the air and smashed into the dungeon's thick stone ceiling.
"RUMBLE!"
Stone chips exploded outward. Dust billowed everywhere. The ceiling split into a web of cracks at the point of impact, and chunks of rock clattered down like heavy rain.
Orum dropped from the height, adjusted his posture in mid-air, knees bent slightly, and landed steady.
A thin thread of blood escaped the corner of his mouth, but the fighting spirit in his eyes burned even fiercer than before.
"So that's one life used," he said.
Orum wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. He looked at the duplicate, whose wounds had already vanished entirely, and the blaze in his eyes intensified.
"Then let's continue."
The duplicate stood in silence. The eye socket that had been punched through moments ago was perfectly healed. Its eyes were smooth and unbroken again, as though the critical strike had been nothing but a hallucination.
Those pitch-black pupils still held no emotion whatsoever. Only a flat, cold, mechanical killing intent.
"That regenerative ability..."
Orum was privately shaken.
He hadn't expected it. Even the immense vitality provided by the Monster Organ "Tree's Heart" had been reproduced one-for-one by this shadow magic.
And this was just a single stage of a Hero's Trial.
The magical legacy left behind by the great empire of ten thousand years past was vaster and more unfathomable than he could have imagined.
Still, the duplicate seemed unable to use the faction skill granted by his status panel: Life's Concerto. Possibly because that spell drew its power from the Fae realm rather than from Orum himself, and the faction affinity Orum's original possessed had not been inherited by the duplicate.
The duplicate gave him no more time to think. It hurled itself forward again and resumed its assault.
Orum dodged and struck back. Both of them dove headlong into savage close-quarters combat.
Fists and feet traded blows. Each collision produced a deep, bone-rattling crash.
"THUD. THUD. THUD." The air shook under the repeated thunder of impacts.
Every punch Orum threw carried enough force to split a mountain. The duplicate was identical in that regard.
Their strength was perfectly matched, their techniques identical in every way. Orum's only advantages lay in tactics and his superior equipment.
This was a battle between two evenly matched forces.
Outside the iron door, in the passage beyond, Felix and the others caught the rumbling and shaking at their backs as they retreated and all felt a jolt through their chests.
"Is this still a human being fighting?" Ronald swallowed hard. "It sounds more like two dragons tearing each other apart."
"We need to get farther away. We can't be around to affect Orum's combat performance." Felix urged them on, and his own feet moved faster.
In the shadowed tunnel, every exchange of blows set the floor gently trembling.
After roughly a minute of intense, grinding combat, Orum caught the duplicate in a moment of vulnerability and launched a decisive strike.
The duplicate had just thrown a heavy punch, which Orum sidestepped clean.
The old force was spent; the new force hadn't yet arrived.
Orum's body ghosted around to the duplicate's flank and rear.
The Flame-Steel sword flicked out like a striking serpent, the blade tracing a lethal arc.
"THUD."
A dark, clean slash, and the duplicate's carotid artery was severed.
Black blood poured out like water from a spring, tracing a strange and eerie arc through the air.
The duplicate's body stiffened sharply, on the verge of collapse. But the very next second, a colossal surge of life force erupted again.
Green-tinged radiance welled up from the chest, and the wounds sealed themselves at visible speed.
Severed vessels rejoined. Skin tissue regenerated rapidly.
The entire process was uncanny and awe-inspiring, a complete defiance of everything life should be bound by.
The Tree's Heart, after all, was a monster organ that straddled both the natural and necromantic domains.
"Second regeneration." Orum's pupils contracted sharply.
From the very start of the fight, he had been working out a counterstrategy. He hadn't planned to rely on the Flame-Steel longsword to batter through the duplicate's skeleton.
Flame-Steel weapons were far too valuable. If the blade took serious damage, the cost would be more than he could accept.
The Bugbear's bones were comparable in hardness to a high-quality magical shield, as unyielding as tempered steel. Without an attribute advantage to exploit, trying to brute-force through them would cost far more than it gained.
A full-power strike from the Flame-Steel longsword might eventually shatter them, yes, but it would inflict serious damage on the precious blade in the process, and that was a very bad trade.
After all, killing this shadow duplicate carried no extra reward whatsoever.
Orum felt like complaining. Win and get nothing; lose and suffer a penalty. Whoever designed this stage had no idea what they were doing.
He had no intention of destroying a priceless Flame-Steel weapon in a place like this.
So against his own duplicate, Orum had adopted the more conservative approach.
Even though he had destroyed the duplicate's weapon right at the start, he had spent extra time since then rather than steamrolling it in a one-sided rout.
The two of them kept fighting. Orum did everything he could to hold the duplicate's focus and waited for an opening that would guarantee a finishing blow.
The duplicate's tremendous defensive power, combined with its regeneration, had turned the fight into a war of attrition.
Orum's physical energy was being spent continuously. Every second, every heartbeat was burning fuel at an intense rate.
But inside Orum's chest, two hearts and four lungs operated like furnaces filled with molten metal, pouring an unbroken stream of energy into every corner of his body.
With the monstrous physical backing of his monster organs, he could have kept fighting at this intensity for hours and not felt so much as a cramp or a twinge of muscle fatigue.
The black-skinned duplicate in front of him was exactly the same. It seemed never to tire, launching a relentless tempest of attacks against Orum again and again.
Then, at that moment, the shadow at Orum's back rippled faintly.
Like a breeze moving across still water. A change so subtle it was almost imperceptible.
"I have the key, Orum!" Melina's voice came from out of nowhere.
She had used the Wanderer's stealth technique to move like a ghost, silent and unseen, and had completed her task.
While Orum held the duplicate's attention, Melina had slipped into the depths of the passage without a sound and successfully retrieved the second key.
"Perfect!"
A flash of sharp relief crossed Orum's eyes. "Pull back now! We're going to open the treasury!"
The tension in Orum's chest released all at once. He drove himself backward in one explosive leap, putting distance between himself and the duplicate.
The duplicate seemed to sense something had changed. It let out an enraged roar.
But Orum had already turned and was sprinting toward the exit at full speed.
Orum's mind was already settled. Continuing to wrestle with this duplicate served no purpose.
The objective was achieved. Melina had safely retrieved the key. The critical step of the Hero's Trial was complete.
Fighting on against a creature that was nearly impossible to kill would only drain time and energy for no gain.
And the hourglass for the Hero's Trial was still running. Every second counted.
As the duplicate closed the gap from behind, Orum drew a deep breath and let the energy inside him gather.
The immense strength of "Bugbear Sinew +2" surged through his veins. His dual-heart system hammered hard, pumping blood at a ferocious rate, building something inside his body like the pressure before a tidal wave.
His left arm swelled with sudden power. Veins rose like serpents across the surface, every muscle along the arm hardening, the whole limb becoming something like a siege ram cast from iron.
The Flame-Steel arm shield blazed on his forearm, loaded with the force of a collapsing mountain.
"Get back!" Orum let out a low, fierce roar. His left arm drove forward.
The arm shield hammered into the duplicate's chest like a battering ram.
Air detonated at the point of impact, producing a sharp, screaming crack.
"BOOM!" A crash that shook the heavens.
The duplicate's chest took the blow like a cannonball at point-blank range. Both feet left the ground instantly, and the entire body was sent hurtling backward like a broken kite.
The duplicate tumbled through the air, cutting a sharp line through the darkness, and smashed into the heavy stone wall at the far end of the tunnel.
"RUMBLE!"
The impact thundered through the entire tunnel.
Cracks spread from the point of impact like a spiderweb across the wall, and chunks of stone broke free and crashed down.
The duplicate's body was driven deep into the stone. The rock around it had shattered from the force. Black liquid welled from all seven facial orifices, and the body convulsed violently.
Orum didn't look back. He turned and ran.
His footsteps rang through the stone corridor, fast and getting faster.
"ROAR!" An enraged howl came from behind him. Orum didn't turn his head.
Shadow magic constructs of this kind could only move within their designated area.
Once he crossed out of the trial zone, the duplicate could not pursue.
Orum's pace quickened further, barely pausing as he cleared two corridors in succession, his footsteps echoing through the empty stone halls like an urgent drumbeat.
At last, the familiar great stone chamber appeared ahead.
The ten-meter hero statue still stood at the center, stern and imposing.
Orum had returned to the entrance of the Hero's Trial.
As expected, the duplicate had not followed.
An invisible magical barrier separated the trial zone from the outside, and the duplicate was firmly contained within it.
From deep in the passage came the sounds of furious pounding and snarling. The duplicate was clearly enraged at being unable to give chase.
After perhaps ten seconds, the sounds gradually fell quiet.
Orum finally let himself breathe. Drops of sweat fell from his forehead and struck the stone floor.
"Orum! You're out!"
Felix's voice came from ahead, warm with relief and delight.
Ronald, Melina, and Raygore were already there, gathered around the statue, clearly having waited for him some time.
Melina came hurrying toward Orum, her black beast-ears swinging back and forth in quick, happy movements.
"Thank goodness! We were starting to worry that thing had you tied up and you couldn't get out!"
The relief in Melina's voice was palpable.
"Don't worry. A copy will never beat the original."
Orum wiped the sweat from his forehead. His voice was easy, and a faint smile settled across his face.
Felix came forward, his green eyes alive with excitement.
"We have two keys now. Let's open the treasury!"
He gestured toward the two key slots carved into the base of the hero statue.
"This is the reward we earned, after everything we fought through!"
Every pair of eyes locked onto the statue's base. Every heartbeat quickened.
What could a Hero's Trial left behind ten thousand years ago have waiting inside?
Melina reached carefully into her coat and drew out the two keys.
One was a jade-green gemstone key, giving off a soft, warm green glow.
The other was a deep carnelian red, vivid as fresh blood.
Her hands trembled slightly. Even she was swept up in the anticipation of opening the treasury.
The jade key was gently fitted into the slot on the left, sliding home perfectly.
The carnelian key went into the right slot, fitting just as exactly.
"Click." Two soft, simultaneous sounds.
In an instant, the entire chamber was flooded in a wash of mysterious magical radiance.
The ancient runes carved across the statue's base all lit up together, releasing a warm and sacred golden light.
The glow of the runes moved like flowing water, spreading across the stone surface and forming patterns of dazzling brilliance.
"RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE." The ground began to shake with deep, rhythmic force.
A massive stone dais rose slowly from the floor in front of the statue, accompanied by the heavy grinding of ancient mechanisms turning somewhere far below.
The machinery of an old civilization worked in the depths of the earth, producing a low, solemn resonance.
These masterworks of a great empire from ten thousand years past had endured the long march of ages and still turned without flaw.
The dais rose steadily, and finally came to rest at chest height.
The moment it reached its full height, every person present drew a sharp breath.
On top of the dais lay a small mountain of precious things.
Gold coins heaped up in a glittering pile, shining brilliantly in the magical light.
Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds were scattered throughout, sparkling with dazzling intensity.
Pearl necklaces wound through the gem-heaps like silver serpents, each one gleaming with a soft, lustrous sheen.
Everyone had gone completely still. The treasure before them looked like something out of a fairy tale, the hoard of a dragon, and it left every mind dizzy with wonder.
Even Orum, who had never had much experience with serious money, could make a rough estimate: the value of what sat on that dais exceeded three thousand gold coins.
And yet, for all that wealth, the gold and jewels were not the thing that stopped everyone cold.
What caused Felix's pupils to contract sharply was something standing upright in the middle of the treasure heap: an egg the color of pure gold.
The egg was roughly the size of an ostrich egg. Its entire surface was an immaculate, brilliant gold, as though it had been cast from liquid gold itself.
Across that surface, exquisite patterns moved slowly, like living things, and the egg gave off an aura both sacred and ancient, a breath of something primordial.
"What is that?"
Melina's voice shook with awe. Her beast-ears wouldn't stop trembling. She had never in her life seen an object like this. The sacred energy it radiated made her instinctively want to prostrate herself before it and, at the same time, made something else in her want to recoil.
Ronald's mouth had fallen open. The words had all gone out of him. "By the Dawn Lord, that's..."
Beside them, Felix had simply stopped functioning.
The moment his eyes found that egg, something violent stirred in the depths of his chest.
A call from the very root of his bloodline. It sent tremors through his entire body. The blood of the dragon clan was answering.
A thousand years of ancestral memory awoke in that instant, and Felix felt something rise in him that he had no words for: an overwhelming rush of awe, of excitement, of something vast and unnameable.
His green eyes blazed suddenly bright, nearly blinding. Deep in his pupils, something like silver fire had kindled and was burning.
The dragon blood in his veins began to boil. A scorching heat pulsed through every artery.
Even Felix, in this moment, could not hide what showed in his face. His usual composure had cracked, and what poured through was pure, undisguised joy.
His hands trembled. His pupils held the reflection of the golden egg's light.
"That... that is a Golden Dragon Egg."
"I can feel its life force."
Felix's voice was barely steady. His eyes were full of a delight he could no longer contain.
"This is a living egg. One that could hatch a Golden Dragon hatchling."