Chapter 49: The Dragonlord's Bloodline

The Head of House Edderion didn't even have time to scream before his body split apart, transforming into hundreds of new lifeforms. His tongue, now a living slug, slowly slithered across the metal floor and came to rest atop Aegon's foot.

Only a single, crystal-clear ruby remained on the seat. It had taken his place, quietly absorbing the immortal substance flowing from the chair, glowing faintly with a cold red light.

Above, the massive crystal orb that Pan inhabited suddenly flared, casting a ribbon of crimson light that coiled around the gemstone that had once been Head of House Edderion. The two began to entwine, their energies fusing together in eerie harmony.

"Keh keh keh~ That's it… ascend now, my precious Dragon Pillars…" Pan's twisted voice echoed from above. Cold and bone-deep, it sent a chill down the spines of the remaining fourteen.

Aegon could feel the aura of Pan's magic intensifying. It swelled and surged like waves crashing outward in every direction.

The other Dragon Pillars, now fully realizing their fate, began to cry out for mercy. One after another, they begged Pan to spare them—but he paid them no attention. Their pleas soon turned to curses, snarled insults, and frenzied screaming. Yet none of it reached Pan's ears. He remained utterly unmoved.

Beneath the metal platform, the fleshy pillar continued to grow, fed ceaselessly by the flow of immortal matter. The mindless organic mass pushed up against the underside of the platform like a sprouting seedling racing toward the sun, lifting it higher and higher.

As it grew, the Valyrian steel pipes were torn apart by the swelling muscle. The exposed tissue filled in the ruptures on its own. Shaped by the Pureblood Formation, the flesh slowly morphed into hollow, throat-like channels that continued the transmission of immortal essence.

Before long, the platform had been pushed all the way up—emerging from the depths of the sinkhole into the open air.

When it finally rose to the surface, Aegon saw the devastation around the Fourteen Flames—unleashed by the Source Alchemy Array. It was a vision straight out of hell.

Charred corpses littered the land. Some were Valyrians, others slave miners. Their bodies lay twisted and mangled, as if wracked with unbearable pain in their final moments.

Dragon corpses were everywhere. Bloodsource Peak, once claimed by the Dragonlord Council to be a sanctuary, had in fact been the first to fall. The dragonriders stationed there were among the first to be consumed by the smoke and flame. Their mounts had perished alongside them, their massive bodies now rotting in the open, releasing the stench of death.

The pillar of flesh still wasn't finished growing. From a tiny sprout, it had become a full sapling. Immortal substance hissed as it surged upward through the fleshy, throat-like tubes—a wet, sinister sound, like a demon's breath.

Then, two more Dragon Pillars collapsed under the strain of beastly reawakening. With an explosive burst, they disintegrated into hundreds of bizarrely adorable little creatures.

These fleshy insects, like newborns, seemed endlessly curious about the world around them. They crawled, hopped, and fluttered about the platform, exploring their surroundings without fear.

Pan didn't stop. He reached out with more of his glowing crimson tendrils, linking to the blood crystals left behind by the collapsed council members. His shrill laughter pierced the air like a chorus of needles stabbing into everyone's ears, intensifying their agony beyond measure.

The remaining eleven Dragon Pillars were still struggling, some screaming, some begging, some appealing to Pan's reason or shared history. Aegon watched them coldly, silently noting how none of them had given up. They were true old-world politicians—opportunists to the end, clinging desperately to any hope of survival, even at death's door.

But their efforts were meaningless.

As the flesh pillar grew into a monstrous tree with a trunk dozens of meters thick, the deaths of the Dragon Pillars only accelerated. Every minute, one or two more were lost.

The insect-like creatures began swarming, their numbers growing denser. Soon they ventured beyond the platform itself. Some crawled into the skulls of the Valyrian dead, and shockingly, those desiccated corpses began to stir—rising unsteadily to their feet...

Amid all this, Aegon was faring better than most.

After a few minutes of being infused with immortal substance, his body began to grow stronger.

Muscles bulged like forged steel, layer upon layer of dense, taut power forming beneath his skin.

His bones lengthened and thickened under the influence of the immortal matter, cracking and popping audibly as they reshaped. In mere minutes, his height had climbed from 1.8 meters to 2 meters—and he was still growing.

His frame stretched skyward, statuesque and sculpted like a figure carved from stone. Skin and muscle rippled with raw force, pressing against his clothes until they bulged, the seams straining with every breath—as if they might burst open at any moment.

"What a flawless body... If you keep absorbing like this, you might actually ascend to a demigod," Pan's voice echoed across the platform. A projection of him materialized, his gaze fixed intently on Aegon, eyes brimming with astonishment.

But then he slowly shook his head, raised a finger, and pointed at Aegon with a tinge of regret.

"Such a shame. The human body has its limits. Even if Tiamat can perfectly filter out your beastly nature, you won't escape being torn apart in the end. This so-called ascension was a dead end from the start. No human can withstand the full essence of a god."

Aegon ignored Pan's ramblings, his focus inward, locked on his status panel. Moments earlier, after breaking past the racial limit of 100 points, his vitality and mental power had triggered an upgrade to his [True Dragonblood] trait.

[True Dragonblood – Dragonlord: Charisma +10, Fire Resistance massively increased to 300%, Mental Resistance -50%; 100% chance to subdue a Dragon and become a Dragon Knight. Can tame multi-headed Dragons; the number of Dragons tamed is closely linked to mental strength.]

Aegon had become a true Dragonlord. Yet now, with no more dragons left alive on Valyria to tame, he couldn't help but feel a pang of regret.

Boom! Another Dragon Pillar shattered, exploding into countless tiny lifeforms.

The collapse of the Dragon Pillars was accelerating. Now, each one disintegrated like a blood-flesh bomb, detonating in an instant. The resulting shockwaves scattered blood-flesh insects in every direction, creating a rain of wriggling organisms beneath the metal platform.

The chaos on the platform mirrored the carnage below...

At the bottom of the abyss, the pillar of flesh had fully encased the area where the fifteen Dragonlords had been. A colossal fleshy cocoon had formed—a grotesque egg of blood and muscle.

Within it, the Dragons were undergoing terrifying transformations.

Unlike the Dragon Pillars, who violently burst apart, the King-tier Dragons that had absorbed too much beastliness didn't explode. Instead, they deflated, collapsing like ruptured sacks of flesh, their bodies slowly merging into the walls of the cocoon.

One by one, the King-tier Dragons were absorbed into the pillar—except for Tiamat.

Tiamat remained untouched by the assimilation. Though its eyes were tightly shut, its body kept growing, slowly pressing into the space where the other Dragons had once been. As the beastly essence continued to accumulate, grotesque tumors began to bulge from Tiamat's neck.

Eventually, when only Tiamat remained inside the cocoon...

With a wet tear, one of the tumors split open. From it, a second dragon head—slightly smaller than the main one—emerged, struggling its way out.

Now bearing a second head, Tiamat loosened its tightly clenched jaws, and the sound of its labored, monstrous breathing echoed through the fleshy egg.

Up on the metal platform, Aegon noticed changes in Tiamat's attributes.

In addition to the ever-increasing layers of [Greedy Feast], Tiamat had gained a new talent: [Regenerating Dragon Head].

[A-Rank – Regenerating Dragon Head: Your vital weakness is no longer limited to a single head. As long as at least one dragon head remains, your life will not end. Vitality and mental strength increase by 20% for each head; losing a head increases life recovery by 100%.]

Looks like Tiamat's undergoing an evolution too... Probably mutated into a multi-headed form, just like me, Aegon thought.

By now, the metal platform had been lifted a full kilometer above ground, borne upward by the massive flesh pillar.

The pillar itself had swelled to over a hundred meters in diameter—grown from a sprouting seedling into a towering, grotesque tree. It was like a monstrous bloom rising from a mass grave, obscene in its grandeur.

Only now did the pillar's ascent slow slightly.

It wasn't from exhaustion. Every additional meter it lifted the platform required it to expand further in width, and that meant a greater cost in energy.

At this point, Aegon was the only Dragon Pillar left on the platform.

The other fourteen councilors had all disintegrated, their remains transformed into blood-red gemstones floating above their respective seats. Pan greedily absorbed the energy from each one, like a bottomless void devouring everything in reach.

A projection of Pan pointed gleefully at the bulging veins on Aegon's face, laughing hysterically.

"Kekeke! Unbearable, isn't it? You've really amazed me! You actually absorbed this much divine essence! Now come on, ascend! Explode!"

Aegon let out a cold snort.

"You think I'll die here?"

"Oh, sure! You'll really become a demigod, huh?! Hahaha! That's the best joke I've heard all century! Hahaha!" Pan doubled over with laughter, holding his stomach with one hand, pointing at Aegon with the other, dancing like a lunatic across the fleshy platform.

But Aegon ignored the madman.

He parted his lips slightly—and a Blood Orchid appeared in his mouth.

Without hesitation, he chewed the flower stem and all, swallowing it whole.

Pan froze. The laughter stopped dead.

His eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at Aegon, watching the bulging veins across his body slowly fade and smooth away.