"Hi."
Ian set down the documents in his hands, shook his head slightly, and laughed inwardly with some irony. Even dragons can possess human shells—Sheo's body is human, pureblooded to the absolute extreme, yet that does not prevent her true form from being a dragon. Ascenders are fundamentally the same. To Terra, many concepts on Earth that seem as unyielding as steel are utterly meaningless.
"Because this world... truly has supernatural power."
Mentioning Sheo brought dragons to mind. Mentioning dragons brought to mind the two dragon eggs from the Crystal Dragon mission.
The moment he thought of it, he asked.
And as though Isengard had long anticipated Ian's question, he smiled and handed the youth another document.
"The Tranquil Sea Labyrinth beside Mistveil Port... I knew about that. They still haven't hatched?"
Ian studied the report in the document and nodded in understanding. "Thinking about it carefully, that does make sense."
Among the three dragon eggs left behind by the Aether Crystal Dragons in the Swarm Path, only one could hatch normally. The other two were flawed. He, in his hive-transformed state, had fused them into that normal dragon egg, turning it into a three-headed Aether Ultimate Crystal Dragon.
Even if the Empire had taken them away for specialized care and incubation, it would probably still be rather difficult for them to hatch normally.
And besides...
Ian suddenly had a premonition.
"Could it be... that fusing into one was their proper path?"
With the power of his hive-transformed self, if he had wanted to raise three Aether Crystal Dragons normally, he definitely would not have forcibly fused them into one—after all, three was greater than one. To his past self, even if three Aether Crystal Dragons grew more slowly than an Ultimate Crystal Dragon, they would surely still have been