Chapter 210 — 언령(言靈) 혹은 언령(言令)
Episode 210
Word-Spirit (言靈) or Word-Command (言令)
The dragon heart, having lost so many of its powers over the ages, looked like nothing more than a faded stone.
But.
The instant it touched his tongue, it melted as if it had been waiting only for that moment, slid down, and passed his throat.
Whoooosh!
In an instant, a massive gale of mana erupted around Elric.
Yet it wasn’t the ordinary mana gale he’d once been proud of.
Draconic mana.
Mana laden with the power of dragons.
Thump!
Thump!
And in time with it, Elric’s mana began to whirl faster and faster. His heart—the central axis of his mana circuit—pounded madly in his chest.
His blood sped through his body, pushing the mana it carried into every limb.
The mana stone seated at his solar plexus answered in kind, unwinding more mana like skeins of thread.
That, too, was draconic mana.
The Gem Dragon’s draconic mana.
Until now, the force that had empowered Elric was the demonic energy stored in Mephisto’s Demon Jewel; the Gem Dragon’s draconic mana had remained frozen, refusing to stir.
It was the Guardian Dragon’s draconic mana that roused the Gem Dragon’s, coaxing it to leak out for the first time.
Like a tightly wound spool finally unspooling.
The Gem Dragon’s draconic mana coursed through his body.
At the same time—
Elric’s mind sharpened.
Feeling a vastness of mana he’d never even been able to imagine, he tasted—if only for a moment—the dragons’ boundless power said to rival divinity.
It offered him new vistas and shattered his old frames.
The horizon of his unconscious expanded again, all on its own.
It was like… his eyes had finally opened.
Ahh.
In that limitless rapture—
The Guardian Dragon’s last will, the one that had gifted him this new world, flashed through Elric’s mind.
-What do you mean by that? You want me to eat your heart?
The first time he’d heard it from the Guardian Dragon—
Elric had recoiled.
How could anyone say such a thing?
Yet.
The Guardian Dragon was oddly calm as he spoke of his own death.
-You asked me to teach you the Dragon Tongue, but that isn’t something you can learn just because you wish to. It’s a power bestowed upon our kind. When humans are born, you don’t “learn” how to move your arms and legs, do you?
What was obvious to a dragon could not be taught as a language at all—hence why it was called the Dragon Tongue.
-But there are shortcuts. You carry his heart, and you already wield the Word-Command, which is the groundwork for the Dragon Tongue. If you can awaken his heart, which is frozen for now, then your Word-Command will gain power on its own.
-As a catalyst… is that what you mean?
-Yes.
-A catalyst…
-I mean change the foundation of your blood to dragonblood. You know about dragonblood, don’t you?
At that, Elric could only nod.
Batu had gained only a portion of dragonblood and yet skyrocketed in growth. And now the Guardian Dragon was telling him to eat the heart and change his very bloodline into dragonblood.
What kind of power would that bring?
-Even if you leave me as I am, I’ll be dead before long.
-But…
-Listen until I’m finished.
-…
-If you don’t take my heart, that Demon King will take it instead. My corpse will be pickled in demonic energy and turned into their weapons, or else used to make a Bone Dragon or some such.
All the while he spoke—
The Guardian Dragon’s gaze was placid, but a faint fear ran under his voice.
-Even after I die, I don’t want my rest violated like that. I… am tired to the bone.
-So you take my heart instead. Like I said, this is a deal. I’ll give you my heart; in return, protect and hatch our offspring. That’s all I ask.
-Don’t stop at my heart. Take everything I have.
-Fashion my scales into your armor, and my bones into arms and blades. Share my flesh with everyone.
-Then they’ll each receive at least a little dragonblood. It won’t live up to what you hope for, too much authority has been lost—but it’s better than doing nothing.
What the Guardian Dragon said was simple.
Turn your entire army into dragon-tooth soldiers.
Elric had already seen such troops in the Gem Dragon’s nest.
If he could assemble them artificially…?
And place them all under his command.
It was no wonder his heart pounded at the thought.
-If, beneath your hoofbeats, all your enemies fall—then I can finally shake off this long, stifling weight and sleep in peace. Our children will see a much wider world.
-So.
-Eat my heart.
Even after hearing the Guardian Dragon’s last will, he couldn’t refuse the answer the dragon desired.
-…Understood.
And so—
That was why he stood here now.
Kwoooooom—
The draconic mana raging around Elric only intensified, swelling into a gale.
It felt as if a dragon had been crumpled up and rammed into him whole.
The Gem Dragon’s power and the Guardian Dragon’s power blended, rapidly transforming—no, remaking—Elric from within.
Rip, rrrip—
His mana circuits were reworked to favor the flow of draconic mana, his muscles and bones made tougher and denser. Even the body’s fundamental components—its very factors—were being reshaped, bit by bit.
But the pace was slower than Elric had hoped. The Gem Dragon’s mana wasn’t spilling out fast enough, and the dragonblood the Guardian Dragon had spoken of wasn’t forming.
“Stop him! Stop that bastard, no matter what!”
Reda must have sensed what Elric was doing; he bellowed until his throat tore. He wanted to rush Elric himself, grab him by the collar, and force him to spit out what he’d swallowed—but he had no chance.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The demons perched on the barrier threw everything they had at breaking it. They tried body-slam charges and blasted it with mana, but it only spiderwebbed with hairline cracks; it showed no sign of collapsing.
“Out of my way!”
At last, unable to stand it, Reda shook off Hyul’s thought-form, folded his wings, and dove straight down. He lost his left arm in the process, but he didn’t seem to notice at all.
As expected! Delicious! I’m taking more of that for myself!
Hyul’s thought-form gulped Reda’s left arm down in one bite, eyes gleaming, then streaked right after him. Even with just one arm, he could feel his sigil swelling. What would happen when he devoured the rest?
Kraaaash!
Where Reda landed, the barrier shattered. The demons nearby burst one after another into blood pulp, but Reda didn’t care in the slightest.
The barrier was layered, and there were still five or six more veils left. Reda aimed to smash those too.
Watching him, Elric ground his teeth at the frustratingly slow pace of his remaking.
Rip, rrrip. His body continued to shift, but slower and slower. The Guardian’s heart alone wasn’t enough to draw out dragonblood. Too much authority had withered; the heart’s function had faded with it.
And before this, he’d bled far too much fighting Reda—he was short on volume to begin—
Wait.
Just then, Elric felt as if someone had clubbed him in the back of the head.
Blood…?
The Guardian Dragon had taken grievous wounds fighting Reda and bled out a river. Where had all that blood gone?
The cavern!
Right beneath his feet. Dragon blood had to remain in pockets all through the ground.
The moment the thought struck, Elric invoked his Word-Command without hesitation. But this Word-Command was nothing like the one he’d used before—its effect and reach were on a different order altogether.
He didn’t even need to painstakingly define the bounds of the mana field; wherever Elric’s gaze “fell,” a mana field assembled on its own.
“【Freeze】.”
Crack, crackle—
From underfoot came the sharp sound of rapid freezing. The dragon blood that hadn’t evaporated and still clung in places was turning to ice.
“【Seep in】.”
And the instant he pulled it all his way, the frozen blood rose as one from the ground and seeped into Elric.
Crunch, crackle—
And with that, the remaking that had slowed not only picked up again—it accelerated.
Elric realized his blood had become something entirely different, packed tight with far more mana than before.
Strength flooded into every part of his body.
Dragonblood.
And with it, Elric succeeded in becoming a Dragon Magus.
“Goddaaaammit!”
From Reda’s perspective, the offering he’d all but secured for Azazel had been snatched away before his eyes. Rage was inevitable.
Kraaaash!
By the time he finally blasted apart the remaining barriers in a savage explosion, the sigil of frenzy was blazing as never before.
He was completely blind with madness.
“If not him, I’ll take your blood, Merbinger!”
Elric didn’t bother to answer.
He simply felt the majestic force that dragonblood bestowed and prepared to strike back.
“【Come to me】.”
With magic invoked not by a simple Word-Command but by a True Word, the Sigil of Winter blazed.
3-star, 4-star…
The stroke count of the sigil climbed swiftly, and the power of the two authorities swelled explosively in tandem.
Elric could feel the wraith of Nahatram settle more deeply upon him. Until now he’d only borrowed the man’s strength; now he could sense even Nahatram’s emotions and stray thoughts.
“Now this, at least, is to my liking.”
He could hear Nahatram’s voice clearly—something he’d never managed before.
It sounded like a complaint about how suffocatingly frustrating things had been until now.
“Now I can finally cut loose a little.”
“Is that so?”
Elric smirked and answered simply, then drew an ice lance up from the earth.
He planted his foot and thrust, the tip leveled at Reda. Hanseol, the winter storm, roared as it flew.
Kraaaash!
The two collided and vaulted into the air.
Black demonic miasma and pure white flurries, two opposing forces, crashed again and again, weaving a colossal column that stitched earth to sky.
And then—
“…Gah!”
On one of Reda’s wings, sent spinning back—
A huge hole gaped clean through.