"The world's bug finally happened to you, brother! You're not a vengeful fiend emerging from the flames. You're a king bearing the will to defy, and only the blood of gods can soothe your anger!"
"I'm so looking forward to it, brother. How far can you go?"
Chapter 17: Safe
"Abnormal laboratory temperature!"
Norma's flat, emotionless voice sounded as the red light on the terminal flashed rapidly.
Manstein looked grave. He pushed up the thin, round gold-rimmed glasses on his nose and leaned toward the display. "The temperature's reached nine hundred degrees!" he said, his voice trembling.
A black mask covered Schneider's face, and shock showed in his iron-gray eyes. His grip tightened involuntarily around the compact, single-button device in his hand, and his thumb flicked open the button's transparent safety cover.
They had suspected that Lu Mingfei was a Hybrid with a dangerously high proportion of dragon blood, but they had never imagined his Word Spirit would be so hazardous.
If a Word Spirit like that went out of control...
"Flame? Or King's Flame?" Manstein's breathing quickened.
"Temperature has returned to normal."
Norma's voice sounded again amid the tension, but it did nothing to change the dire, uncertain situation.
All eight high-speed cameras trained on Lu Mingfei from every angle inside the laboratory had been destroyed. The transmitted feed showed only darkness-dead, silent darkness.
That only meant he had stopped using his Word Spirit. They had no way of knowing what state he was in.
Schneider's finger had already depressed the button a third of the way. Just a little more pressure, and vast quantities of poison gas and mercury vapor would pour from the circular vents at the top of the laboratory, engulfing every living thing inside.
"This laboratory is equipped with mercury vapor and poison gas release pipes to prevent test subjects from escaping," Schneider said hoarsely.
"Norma, can you restore surveillance?" Manstein asked.
"The recording equipment, speakers, and cameras have all been damaged. The sensors are presumed to have melted under the high temperature," Norma reported.
"Should we open the door and check?" Manstein turned to Schneider. The lethal switch was in the hands of this grim man whose breathing rasped like broken bellows.
The entire college was covered by the vice principal's Word Spirit, Discipline. No one could use a Word Spirit, yet the heat that had instantly destroyed every device connecting the room to the outside had undoubtedly been the power of a dragon.
"This is no ordinary accident anymore. We initially prepared to deal with a dangerous Hybrid. Now no one knows what is in there. Be ready to have Norma sound the alarm at any moment," Schneider said firmly.
"Gentlemen, please allow me to take over from here." Pazzi, who had remained silent until then, finally spoke.
The efficient secretary opened the silver briefcase. Inside lay a silver M500 revolver and a cylindrical, sealed quartz-glass tube.
The handgun was about the size of a grown man's forearm. Introduced in 2003 by the renowned gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, it fired powerful .50 Magnum rounds with tremendous destructive force. Inside the sealed tube lay a long, slender bullet. Its tip was dark red, with a bloodlike sheen shifting and flowing within.
Both Cassell College professors fixed their eyes on the bullet.
The Philosopher's Stone-the fifth element beyond earth, water, wind, and fire. Pure spiritual essence, the pinnacle of human alchemy, a weapon for killing second-generation dragons and even first-generation dragons!
"You certainly came prepared." Manstein wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
He was beginning to find the situation bizarre. This was nothing as simple as the principal's request over the phone to "arrange a 3E exam for an outstanding young man." What exactly did the Board of Trustees think this Chinese boy was? A dragon prince awakening?
Schneider watched silently as Pazzi loaded the bullet tipped with the Philosopher's Stone into the large-caliber handgun known as a "hand cannon," ready to press the button in his own hand.
With equipment like this, they were practically guaranteed success. Even a pureblood dragon inside could be dealt with. They would not even need to sound the alarm; there were hardly any people on campus anyway.
Knock, knock, knock! Someone knocked from inside.
Manstein froze. They had already imagined the person inside as a dangerous Hybrid who had lost control during a spirit vision. Yet the supposedly crazed, bloodthirsty creature had not kicked down or torn apart the iron door. He had politely knocked.
Knock, knock, knock! The knocking was steady, as though the person asking them to open the door was very patient and courteous.
Schneider put away the button.
Manstein gave him a couple of puzzled looks. This ruthless executioner had always been decisive about killing, yet now he was laying down his blade?
Mad. They had all gone mad.
Schneider's clouded eyes remained fixed on the iron door, reinforced and locked by a hydraulic mechanism. He had merely remembered a student.
"Norma, open the door," Schneider said coldly.
Pazzi held the gun in both hands, aiming at where Lu Mingfei's head should be, based on his height.
Manstein took a deep breath. The hydraulically driven iron door seemed to take an eternity to open. Through the slowly widening gap, it felt as though a storm of blood was about to surge out and engulf them all.
The corridor they stood in was actually the laboratory's second line of defense. At its far end was a heavy grenade-launcher weapons pod controlled by Norma, mounted on a state-of-the-art automatic targeting platform. This was, after all, the biological bomb research laboratory belonging to those lunatics in the Equipment Department. Strict precautions were essential, and the principal was always particularly generous when approving funds for the department's safety facilities.
If all three of them fell, the enemy would face a heavy-firepower defensive line and an alarm ringing throughout the college.
The door finally opened. The boy stood calmly in the doorway, holding a stack of answer sheets covered in drawings. He could not conceal the weariness around his eyes, but his Golden Eyes were not alight. His eyes were still dark brown, clear and bright beneath the lighting along one side of the corridor, without the slightest trace of brutality or frenzy.
Schneider looked at Pazzi. The operative from the Board of Trustees kept his gun raised for more than ten seconds before finally lowering it.
His actions were being directed through the miniature camera clipped to his collar and the earpiece in his right ear. In other words, the high-ranking member of the Board of Trustees responsible for this matter had acknowledged that Cassell College's new S-rank student was safe.
Pazzi put away the equipment capable of severely wounding or even killing a first-generation dragon and left the corridor without a word.
Had the storm simply passed like that? Why did the Board of Trustees attach so much importance to Lu Mingfei? S-ranks were rare, but not unheard of. In fact, among successive generations of dragon-slaying leaders, there had always been a few extraordinarily gifted S-rank geniuses.
Schneider was full of questions.
"Your Word Spirit will require further examination." He glanced at the pitch-black laboratory behind Lu Mingfei, his voice hoarse.
Unlike the bright-eyed, energetic boy who had entered the examination room, he now seemed somewhat distracted, just like that other boy from the same city after his 3E exam.
Manstein collected Lu Mingfei's examination papers and placed them in a sealed document pouch. Then he took out an envelope and handed it to him. "This is your student ID. Only with this card will you truly have S-rank access."
Lu Mingfei took the thin envelope, his eyes lighting up.
He could finally go to the library.
Chapter 18: The path to godhood
"What? You don't have a Word Spirit?" Fingel exclaimed, his eyes widening, a large chunk of pork knuckle in his grease-covered mouth.
"That's right. Professor Schneider took me to an underground laboratory to test my Word Spirit, but I couldn't draw out the power of Dragon Script at all. No matter how hard I concentrated on listening to the chanting, I never felt anything resonate with my mind." A thick stack of books sat on Lu Mingfei's desk, including Dragon Genealogy, Dragons and Word Spirit Arts, the Key of Solomon, Dragon Bloodline Theory, and Dragon Genetics.
Alongside them were an Old English dictionary and a Latin dictionary.
Two weeks had passed since the 3E exam. Lu Mingfei had spent almost all that time in the library. Much of the material was intricate and obscure, difficult to master, so he had to settle for a superficial understanding. Still, he had established a basic framework of knowledge about dragons.
It encompassed the dragons' dominance in ancient times; their supreme Dragon Emperor; the first-generation dragons whom the emperor had directly spawned and granted power; Nidhogg's creation of the White King, another being of equal standing; the White King's rebellion; Nidhogg crushing the White King's bones and drinking the ashes; the rebellion of humanity and the Four Great Monarchs; the Dragon Emperor's death; the end of the age of dragons; and the development of human civilization up to the present.
To Lu Mingfei, some aspects resembled the Lands Between after Marika shattered the Elden Ring-demigods bearing divine blood wielding their respective powers and plunging the world into war, a sprawling family drama among gods. The greatest difference was that Earth's mortals had successfully claimed the era after the dragons fell silent, whereas the Lands Between remained trapped in endless war and despair, awaiting the prophesied Tarnished who would save the world.
"Word Spirits are the most important weapons dragons and Hybrids have. Isn't not having one like losing a leg? And you still got to keep your S-rank rating?" Fingel's voice dripped with bitter cynicism. "Pure favoritism. And you still say you're not the principal's illegitimate son?"
"It doesn't matter. I'm much stronger than a lot of Word Spirits myself." Lu Mingfei had learned a fair amount about Word Spirits, including, of course, the basic Word Spirit sequence chart.
Many of the Word Spirits listed there appeared to produce effects similar to sorceries or incantations. Different categories corresponded to different elemental powers, with most belonging to the four major systems of Bronze and Fire, Earth and Mountains, Oceans and Water, and Sky and Wind. A small number had effects and elemental powers that were difficult to classify.
To Lu Mingfei, sorceries and incantations were simply tools, no different from combat skills or weapons. Having them was preferable, but there was no need to be disappointed without them. He now even held an alchemical blade like Red Skies. When he had begun his journey through the Lands Between, all he had was a large wooden club scavenged from a heap of corpses.
"That's true enough." Fingel viciously bit into his pork knuckle.
Ever since Fingel had admitted his A-rank strength that night, Lu Mingfei had dragged him to the combat training grounds every few days to spar. Fingel had never seen fighting techniques like Lu Mingfei's. His strange and varied moves ranged from sweeping, overwhelmingly forceful attacks to nimble, sinister strikes that were almost impossible to guard against. Some even felt as though parts of their movements were missing. Moreover, Lu Mingfei's sensitivity to combat rhythm, distance, and predicting both his own actions and his opponent's was like that of a silent, invisible ghost. Never mind attacking him-even touching him took effort.
Fingel was usually the one who got beaten black and blue.
As compensation, Lu Mingfei had promised to buy him dinner for an entire semester.
Almost all the cafeteria staff were on summer vacation, and they served only German-style stewed pork knuckle to staff on duty and the few students staying on campus. Consequently, Lu Mingfei knew very little about the true upper limit of the cafeteria's meal offerings. Fingel secretly decided that the harder he was beaten now, the more he would eat once the semester started.
Combining his reading with his practical experience fighting Fingel, Lu Mingfei had gained a rough understanding of Hybrids' strength. Their power system was highly offensive, but its users' bodies were extremely fragile. An ordinary bullet could deal with most low-level Hybrids.
He estimated that, in his current state, defeating the formidable enemies he had once faced in the Lands Between without relying on Word Spirits would be rather difficult. There was too little room for error.
Recently, however, he had discovered several books deep in the library that could not be checked out. They vaguely mentioned humans stealing the authority of gods, as well as the Hybrids' "path to godhood." Lu Mingfei read with a purpose. With books on subjects such as the principles of alchemical machinery, he would only skim diagrams so complicated they made his eyes hurt. Information concerning "power" was what he examined closely.
Some information seemed to have been deliberately erased, especially anything concerning the "path to godhood." Only one volume mentioned it once, without any explanation, and the phrase never appeared in any other book. It was like a lone island in the vast ocean of the library, with only those few words showing above the surface. It was hard not to wonder what its enormous submerged foundation looked like.
He had tried asking Angers, but Angers had only replied that it was not yet time for him to know.
Apart from his dormitory, the library, the training grounds, and the Equipment Department's laboratories, the place he visited most often was the principal's office.
The principal's office was not far from Valhalla. It was an unremarkable two-story building surrounded by trees, looking as plain as a garage from outside, though the interior was another matter entirely. The whole building was essentially a bookshelf. The first and second floors opened into each other, and above the central atrium was an enormous frosted-glass skylight, still covered in fallen leaves from the previous autumn that no one had cleared away.
The walls held either oil paintings or bookshelves reaching all the way to the ceiling, filled with matching hardcover sets and rubbings of ancient texts. Stairs and platforms ran along the shelves at varying heights, allowing people to climb up and down inside this enormous house of books.
After learning that Angers had lived for more than a century, Lu Mingfei often dropped by to ask questions that had come up during his reading. He felt that Angers was like an extremely advanced artificial intelligence: input a few vague keywords, and a wealth of knowledge would pop out. He was far more useful than Fingel's computer, and sometimes Lu Mingfei even got to hear vivid historical stories that only an old man could tell.
Not only that, Angers also knew about his parents-the dazzling other side of the unassuming junior researcher and housewife: an S-rank prodigy as proud as the sun, and an S-rank beauty who had been the dream woman of half of Cassell College's elite dragon slayers.
These were all things Lu Mingfei recorded and organized in his notebook after returning to his dormitory.
Summer vacation was nearing its end. Two months had passed in the blink of an eye.
That afternoon, the sunshine was warm. Sitting across the broad desk, Lu Mingfei filled his cup with Ceylon black tea and calmly took a sip.
"Principal, an alchemy volume mentioned that a Hybrid's body can be considered to contain two minds, one human and one dragon, each representing the strength of its respective bloodline."
Chapter 19: Blood Rage
"You've actually learned that much already." Angers set down his teacup, folded his hands on the desk, and spoke slowly. "Do you remember the path to godhood you mentioned before?"
Lu Mingfei pricked up his ears, unwilling to miss a single detail.
"Two minds coexist within a Hybrid's brain, one with human attributes and one with dragon attributes. Of these two conflicting personalities, the human one usually dominates because the proportion of human genes is higher. The hidden dragon personality, however, is something entirely different. Dragons are a race that believes absolutely in power, and there is a savage, ferocious side to their nature. Compared to a dragon's personality, even a human tyrant is little more than a docile lamb. The Ice Sea Bronze Pillar Inscription records that after the Black King Nidhogg suppressed the White King's rebellion, he flayed and devoured his own kind. I don't know whether that is exaggerated, but dragons truly are a brutal race."
Angers paused and looked at the silently contemplative Lu Mingfei. Not every Hybrid could accept such secrets the first time they heard them. Learning out of nowhere that their genes made them naturally predisposed to multiple personalities could sometimes be more unsettling than discovering that dragons existed.
But Lu Mingfei merely pondered.
Over this period, he had actually already learned the filthy, bloody history of how Hybrids came into existence: humans and dragons had been forcibly mated until their offspring became stable. This information was crucial. It showed that within Hybrid culture, the relationship between humans and dragons was not simply that of heroes and evil dragons, but also servants and masters, thieves and gods.
The path to godhood...
"Could it be that Hybrids' genes are unstable?" he asked in puzzlement. Yet the students and teachers of Cassell College, himself included, genuinely had dragon blood flowing through their bodies, and he had not seen them lose control or suffer from unusually prevalent genetic diseases. In fact, according to the records, Hybrids had a genetic advantage over ordinary humans. Not only were they exceptionally good-looking, but they also tended to be healthier.
Angers smiled. "Mingfei, you have a very sharp mind."
He continued, "Dragon genes are far stronger than human genes. Although dragons are reptiles, they represent the ultimate stage of reptilian evolution. Their genes are fierce and highly aggressive, capable of even devouring or modifying the genetic sequences of other species. Hybrids' genes are indeed unstable, and the changes always move in one direction, from human to dragon. The transformation is irreversible."
Lu Mingfei still remembered his high school biology lessons, so he could follow this explanation.
Angers explained further. "After repeated alterations by the dragon genes, a Hybrid will eventually become very close to a pureblood. The human portion is devoured, and the dragon portion awakens more and more..."
"Is that becoming a god?" Lu Mingfei connected the pieces of information.