Chapter 352 A Transformation

POV Brown:

The man's finger trembled as it hovered above a flashing post button. He was scared of what would happen once he posted it.

He could already see the chaos it would cause.

Until now all of them acted without fear, they could mix into national politics, and potentially even assassin a king.

And all the consequences would never catch up to them outside of LOMM.

"The world needs to know of the dangers! This is what it means to be a reporter!"

His finger touched the glowing button and pressed it. There was no step back, he just crossed the Rubicon.

He slumped back into his chair, he managed to ask only a single question, but he wasn't angry.

As just that one question was enough to shake the world. Now, he just needed to wait for the storm his post will summon.

'I wanted to fish out some secrets, but instead, I got something obvious yet as much terrifying.'

Still, it made his craving to uncover the dragon's secrets even stronger. The shady and mysterious dragon was no longer just something distant, there was now a real possibility of the dragon eventually appearing on Earth, his home.

'What about demons? All these alleged possessions? Are they already moving and living between us? Could we even do something if some of our leaders got possessed? Could we even detect it?'

He felt weak once more, scared of the dark secrets hidden deep within the shadows of both worlds. The secrets that were hidden from the eyes of the general public.

'Just because the public discovered the existence of a supernatural only recently, doesn't mean that governments didn't know about it from much earlier.'

POV Vesuvius:

The dragon stirred as he felt a new connection open up within his soul. It shot far, far away, like an arrow dragging a thin tendril behind it.

'Hmm, another one accepted my invitation. '

The burning aura of fire crawled up to it all the way to the dragon, 'So fire affinity one. Simple, but not bad.'

Vesuvius sent his minions with his letters to all his lesser brethren on the continent he could locate, all of them carrying his letter and a vial of his blood.

He was preparing for a grand war, and he needed allies and warriors. He was building an army in shadows that would strike his enemies unprepared.

'Once I send the order to attack, the hell will be unleashed.' Wyrms, lesser dragons, and earth dragons were nesting in mountains, deserts, and other uninhabited locations all over the world.

'No, one will expect a solitary species like them to attack at once in a massively coordinated attack. Enemies will not even have a chance to form an army, as they will be struck from everywhere.'

One by one, his forces were growing, with lots of his lesser brethren heeding the command of his dragon lord's authority. Without anyone even knowing he was building his hidden army.

'Previous dragon lords were failures. They had so much power and authority, but they were still defeated and stomped to the ground, one by one. Most of them just slept through the wars, until their turn to die came.'

Vesuvius knew that the dragon kind was beyond powerful, but they still failed due to their horrible strategical decisions, or more likely, their lack of them.

'But the gods are not too different, by the time they will move against me it will be already too late.'

Vesuvius turned his attention back to the war draconid genuflecting before him, its large body pressed to the ground, melting the stone with its heat.

A tiny golden droplet floated in the air, even though it was only big as a small bean, its radiance was bright enough to glow through the heavy haze.

'Let's see if it will work this time. This one should have most of my affinities, truly a talented exemplar.' Vesuvius had his head full of hypotheses.

"Accept my gift!" The dragon flicked his long claw and the droplet moved straight into awaiting open jaws of the armored monstrosity.

The golden light vanished as the gates of its mouth closed.

Its eyes flickered in golden light, the energy surging through its entire body. The cracks started to spread through its armor.

The dragon's horns lit up and his domain spun, he grabbed the divine energy flowing through the monster and calmed it down, stirring and holding it on the rein to prevent it from going berserk.

The golden radiance of the draconid's eyes was getting brighter and brighter, the divine energy from the dragon's blood dissolving within its body, carried by its blood.

It circled through it, passing through cells and transforming them.

Then it stopped, and the golden light died down, leaving behind only the monster, with blood leaking from its eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

The cracks in its body slowly, but surely close right before the dragon's eyes.

Vesuvius's hearts skipped a beat, and his eyes lit up, 'Truly, it works. More off affinities shared between us means higher compatibility with my divine blood, limiting the damage to a body.'

Over the past day, he confirmed lots of his theories, coming to the conclusion that it was safer to slowly transform by repeated application of smaller concentrations of his blood.

'This is becoming harder and harder. But I gave my word to uplift her, and I will not break it.' The words of a dragon were sacred, it was one of their few good characteristics.

POV ???:

Riders in plain, grey traveling cloaks, ridding horses, galloped down a muddy, but wide road, passing by groups of soldiers.

The soldiers marched down the road, their simple gambesons covered in the dust and mud of roads. Their long spears dangling from their backs.

They all looked depressed as if they marched to their death. There was no glint of life in their life as if they had already come to peace with them not coming back home from the war.

'They are nothing but cannon fodder to stall the demons. They are all just simple soldiers, armed with just simple, mundane iron spears. Their weapons can't even pierce through demon skins.'

The riders looked at each other. They saw how it was all becoming worse the further west they traveled, the frontline against the demons getting closer with each day they traveled.

In the distance, through the abandoned fields, were quiet villages, but there was no sign of life in them. No smoke came from their chimneys.

"How long will it take before they get desperate enough to summon angels." PunkGuy refused to think about it more, scared about what secrets he would discover.

Everyone hoped it would never come so far, as they knew the angels and demons would turn everything into smoldering wastelands in their clash.

The high-ranking demons and angels would fight without any hesitation or scruples to unleash their attacks with the power to annihilate small towns in a single blast.

POV Vesuvius:

As if the water in a dam reached a critical level, golden light exploded from the war draconid as the saturation of its cells with divine energy reached the critical level.

The ground shook, and the small pits of liquified mana shone, in bright radiance, the beast sucking in all the energy and mana within its reach.

They were pits of liquified mana prepared by the dragon, ' It's good that I noticed during my first experiment that it tried to suck in all the mana from the environment. The divine energy is likely only the catalyst, but the mana is the fuel that will power up the transformation.'

His horns shone like a pair of neon rods as he carefully directed and controlled all the energies swirling in the air.

Magma, stone, air filled with smoke, lightning, and even the snow all gushed toward the transforming beast.

They all gathered and swirled, colorful lights brightly flashing, tremors shaking with the entire island of black stone.

The mass of elements quickly took on a shape akin to an egg and enveloped the draconid in its protective shell.

The dragon's two hearts pounded shrill at the entire transformation. Until now, he has witnessed the egg-like transformation only with the wyrms, 'I can probably expect some large changes when it needs to form this cocoon-like thing.'

Vesuvius turned his eyes to the distance as he felt one of his minions enter his world.

The kobold's voice resonated through the vast world, "Your majesty, we have a small problem"