Norton could not even be bothered to spare these reptilian Death Servant monsters a glance.
The King of Flames ignored them, though they had more or less been innocently caught up in the disaster. After traversing the long corridor, he entered an even lower level.
This place was gloomier and damper than the upper floors. Eerie green light shone upon two neat rows of coffins in the display chamber, while stale, pungent odors leaked from the gaps between their lids.
The dead, who seemed long untouched by the breath of life, stirred restlessly, trying to crawl out of the underworld.
Norton merely extended a finger and pressed down on an unruly corpse guardian crawling from its coffin. The next second, he burned it into ash fine enough to scatter its soul.
"!"
Though their minds were a beat slower than those of the Death Servants, the corpse guardians, who had only recently awakened, finally realized the extraordinary status of their visitor. They immediately lay back down obediently and sealed their coffin lids tightly.
"...Mature corpse guardian refining techniques."
Norton offered his assessment. Of course, he had not come to bully these corpse guardians for no reason.
He had just confirmed traces of Dragon Alchemy upon that corpse guardian, techniques that humans could absolutely never possess.
Could it be one of his siblings?
"Not certain. Let's keep looking."
Norton reached the end of the display chamber, where a vast emptiness unfolded before him. It resembled a pure sanctuary fashioned from sacred white light, solemnly and unconditionally rejecting all visitors.
This was the end. There was no path ahead, only an exquisite silver-white coffin resting upon a square stone platform as white as jade.
"A boring trick." Norton saw at a glance that it was a concealed alchemical mechanism. It required the blood of a specific person to unlock the hidden passageway.
But he did not need to go through such trouble.
Norton casually let a drop of his dragon blood fall. The blood bead slid into a groove concealed within the coffin's intricate white patterns, and the coffin immediately began clicking. The Alchemical Array was forcibly activated at once, and the silver-white coffin and stone slab shook violently as large quantities of mercury spilled from the gaps in the patterns.
The mercury that formed the Alchemical Array instantly flooded the coffin's surface and even streamed down from it. As though infected by a deadly virus, it thrashed about in panicked disorder, splashing meaningless, irregular ripples and waves.
Suddenly, Norton, who had been watching all along, lightly snapped his fingers.
Snap!
The wildly spilling mercury immediately calmed down and began gradually retracting from the outside, as if time were reversing. Within seconds, Norton had successfully seized control of it, making it reveal the truth hidden within the silver-white coffin—a switch resembling an elevator control panel.
After he pressed it, the entire stone platform slowly descended, carrying Norton away from this floor and deeper into the darkness.
What appeared before Norton on this level was a great deal of mechanical equipment, cultivation tanks filled with electrolyte solution, and empty rooms separated by thick Reinforced Glass.
Some rooms had numbers and labels on their doors, such as "Biology Laboratory" and "Equipment Maintenance Room."
At the end, Norton saw that the second-to-last room was labeled "Interrogation Room." Slightly curious, he glanced inside and found mechanical torture devices resembling operating tables, along with scattered records in a side compartment.
Frigga One test subject failed. Interfering with the complete soul of Zero easily triggers loss of control. After handling the test subject's rampage incident, only destruction was possible...
...Frigga Two's physical strength was forcibly reduced, but this defective clone's compatibility with the soul declined. Rampages still occurred, equipment was frequently damaged, funding consumption was high while effective results were scarce. Disposed of.
...The Medical Association has provided new technical support. Soul Fragments were successfully extracted from Zero to create Frigga Three... Since the forty-sixth execution record, Number Three has remained stable. Perfect control of the Frigga test subjects has become possible.
"These humans... are trying to combine their life sciences with Dragon Alchemy?"
Norton read through the records. Since they dared combine soul-interference techniques with human biological cloning, it was basically certain that a high-ranking dragon was helping humans conduct these experiments. No, perhaps they had formed a deep partnership...
Besides, their goal has always been to control Frigga Zero's soul? What exactly is Zero's soul, to be worth such tremendous effort?
Norton shut the door and looked toward the final room at the end. There was no text on its plaque, only a large room number—"0."
When he pushed open the door, there were unexpectedly no locks or protective measures whatsoever. Norton stepped forward lightly as the sound of flowing water echoed from the circular channels around him.
The walls were made of tall, smooth, seamless alloy. Fine streams of water also spilled down at measured intervals from the narrow, cramped gap where the walls met the ceiling, forming a thin transparent curtain of water.
Water?
Norton clearly sensed that something was wrong. Besides mercury solution, water was also an important medium for performing alchemy.
The room was empty at a glance, save for a crystal coffin in the center. A red-haired figure could vaguely be seen inside... undoubtedly Frigga Zero.
The coffin was tightly bound and imprisoned here by densely packed black alchemical chains.
Norton saw another ring of exquisite Dragon Script, shaped like Rune Script, engraved around it.
These were seal upon seal.
Hmph. Seeing this style, he could basically determine who was funding the human experiments.
And for even that person to covet Zero so deeply, it could only mean... Zero's soul was of even nobler status.
Then the identity of that soul was obvious...
Just as Norton placed his hand upon the sealing chains and began to unravel them, the sound of hoofbeats suddenly came from the water curtain behind him.
Warehouse District.
The once sprawling buildings looked as though they had been carpet-bombed by tactical missiles. Enormous blackened, smoking craters had replaced the massive structures, the thick pavement, and even the foundations.
Though it was still night, flames scattered everywhere brightly illuminated the warehouse ruins and the plaza. Billowing smoke rose into the sky, reflecting the light of the fires below, allowing the heirs of the great families surrounding the park from afar to see everything clearly.
The uninformed heirs stared in shock, thinking the Zhou Family had changed tactics and brought in heavy firepower to bomb the Chen Family, ruthlessly crushing them beyond recovery... No wonder they had mobilized so many families to jointly seal off the routes.
The family heads who knew the truth wore complicated expressions. This was the power brought by the new system. The Zhou Family's demand that so many families come might not have been without the intention of letting them witness it firsthand.
The belief that a mixed-blood's individual military strength could not challenge modern weaponry had begun to waver.
Their families might obtain such military strength in the future as well, but for now, the Zhou Family stood alone at the pinnacle, possessing a power far beyond their reach...