Chapter 3886: Leegaain’s Legacy (Part 1)

"You might have won this fight if only you had chosen a different battlefield. This is my lab!" A stomp of Raum’s feet raised a dust cloud of the frozen Guardian’s blood that he fed upon. "We are above a mana geyser!"

The feed cores emerged from his body again and replenished their strength by absorbing the world energy and the lingering energy of the Guardian Tier spells swirling around him.

"You lose strength with each blow you suffer, whereas I’m always at my peak. Farewell, Father." The Soul Cutter Blade appeared in Raum’s hand, and he performed a flawless series of cuts and lunges.

He severed Leegaain’s five limbs from his body and pierced through both his heart and brain, just to be safe.

"Don’t worry, Father. This is not your end. I will make good use of your corpse. I’ll treat every drop of your blood and speck of your flesh as the treasure it-"

"That’s it?" Leegaain’s frozen maw asked, cutting the Wonderer short. "That’s all you can do after killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to fuel your deranged experiments?

"This measly power is what you’ve gained from betraying your own kind?"

Even though the ice was thawing at a speed visible to the naked eye, the six pieces of Leegaain’s body floated in mid-air without spilling a single drop of blood.

"You spat on everything my bloodline stands for, captured and tortured your own siblings, my children, for this? Answer me, you rotten bastard!" He said as his limbs reattached themselves.

Raum ignored his father’s demands and activated Winter Kiss again. The entire cave turned into a frozen wasteland in less than a second, but this time the Guardian remained unaffected.

In his rage, the temperature of Leegaain’s body rose to the point his black scales turned red from the heat within, giving him the appearance of a Fire Dragon. His inner fire burned more fiercely by the second, and the red turned white hot.

For a brief moment, the Father of All Dragons bore a striking resemblance to his son, Surtr, the Dragon of Light. Then, the mighty body of the Guardian adapted to its new temperature, and his scales became black again.

There was no fire Leegaain couldn’t contain. No heat could escape his searing heart unless he wished so. Yet that didn’t make his true power any less terrifying.

The ground quaked and shattered below his feet, releasing the magma trapped inside Mogar’s depths. Black storm clouds gathered in the sky, and the wind they carried uprooted ancient trees.

"This is what I can really do, you insignificant fool!" Leegaain roared as Mogar answered the call of his hate. "This is the power of a Guardian, and yet no Fringe has appeared around us. Do you know what that means?"

"I-"

"It means that this isn’t a close fight. That after living for 50,000 years and sacrificing countless lives to justify the abomination that is your existence, you achieved nothing worth paying such an ungodly price!"

As Leegaain’s voice echoed through the ruin of the underground lab, the quake stopped, and the thunderclouds faded as quickly as they had appeared.

"You know what? It doesn’t matter." Leegaain shook his head, sighing. "What pains me the most is that you’ve walked the same path as I did. You had my same idea, and my blood that once flowed in your veins must have guided you.

"Even after turning into an Abomination, you still are my son, and that makes your crimes one thousand times worse.

"Your same idea?" Raum stopped using Frozen Winter and focused on replenishing his feed cores. "That’s nonsense, you never worked on creating artificial mana organs. Only Roghar has attempted to dabble in evolution, Father, and we all know how that ended.

"I read all your research back when I was a Hatchling, and I remember that you wrote that only someone with an energy body like me can safely..." His voice stuttered like a broken record, trailing off as the realization struck him.

"You finally understand, Raum." Leegaain had already ripped the love he had for Azith the Mist Dragon off his heart, and he stomped on it every time he used his dead son’s Eldritch name. "I set the foundation of your work, and you simply built on it."

The Guardian took a deep breath, flooding his body with the mana stored inside his mana core until the boundary between matter and energy disappeared.

"Back when I was a Drake, I created Spirit Fusion exactly because I realized that a body made of pure flesh had limits that I could never overcome in my lifetime as an Emperor Beast.

"I invented the technique to craft temporary pseudo cores in magical constructs that Lesser and full-blooded Dragons still use." Leegaain’s Spirit sword appeared in his hand, but this time it was much more complex and powerful.

"I have to admit that I never found a way to make the pseudo cores permanent, nor to replicate the mana organs of another species, but that’s only because I never stooped so low that I even considered using Forbidden Magic!

"My goal has never been to rule Mogar. I worked on developing temporary pseudo cores because I hoped that the changes in the Spirit Body might trigger a further evolution once I reverted to flesh and blood.

"The practice of Spirit Fusion is meant to nurture a Drake’s life force by converting their own body into pure life energy. Once the transformation is undone, the life force is rebuilt from scratch, smoothing its natural imperfections.

"With time and mastery, the imperfections can be removed and a perfect body achieved. Spirit Fusion is a tool that gently refines the life force beyond the limits of Awakening."

"That’s why, once I embarked on my journey towards Guardianhood, I entrusted Spirit Fusion to my children. I hoped that even though I had failed to reach the next evolutionary step through Spirit Fusion, someone in the future might have succeeded.

"That even in case I failed to become a Guardian like Tyris, I would have achieved immortality through the legacy I left behind." Leegaain’s eyes narrowed as they stared at the Eldritch in spite.

"You have made but one small step forward compared to me, Raum, and it wasn’t worth anyone’s life. Not even yours. As I see it, your Forbidden Magic version of my Spirit Fusion is nothing but a pale imitation of the original.

"I gave you every advantage I could, yet you haven’t managed to inflict me a single real wound from the beginning of this fight. You’ve wasted 40,000 years to do a little better than any Drake on Mogar can."

"Lies!" The Wonderer roared in outrage as he turned once again into a living mass of air magic with Flash and Blood.

This time, however, Leegaain did the same.

The black and the emerald lightning bolts crashed into each other dozens of times per second, and the black bolt failed to hold its ground. The Chaos of Flash and Blood drew its power only from the energy stored inside Raum’s body and forced the air element into submission to move around.

The Spirit Magic of the emerald bolt, instead, was fueled by Leegaain’s Guardian core and assisted by the air element, moving from one favorable natural current to another without encountering any resistance.

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