109 Alric the Dragonoid
Third Person POV:
Nacht opened his eyes and found himself in a weird place.
Around him were hundreds of different types of machines.
He could not feel a single drop of mana from anywhere throughout the space.
'How is this place still running….'
He bent forward and picked up a handful of the soil.
'The soil is devoid of life too but is mixed with some unknown metal'.
"Plumede "
"Stolots"
"Walgner "
"You three spread out and search for anything interesting you can find and report me.
You three have an hour.
Gimodelo you are staying with me "
"" Yes sir Nacht "" all four of his devils replied.
He tried using Shadow magic and found that the space is locked disabling his teleport ability to leave fortunately his mark on Julian was still there.
While his devils were exploring the area, he did his own investigation with a hint of regret.
The Faust family was a family that had a huge secret.
They had the knowledge of the process to connect to the underworld and make contracts with them.
According to his knowledge, the devils are categorized into ranks based on their power and mana.
The strongest are the Supreme Devils then the High Raking devil, Medium Ranking, and low ranking.
The summoning ritual he knows can only summon a devil up to medium ranking into the real world while partially summoning a high-ranking devil.
'The Art of Demon Summoning' was the first book he ever read which was written by a Dragonoid Alric.
His Ancestors found that book in a dungeon after which it became a family heirloom.
That book is what brought disaster to his life.
It took away his parents and his brother Morgen who was a light to him in a world full of darkness.
Nacht never tried to revive his brother as he knew that his brother would not have wished that.
His brother would never have wanted his sacrifice to go to waste.
That is why he is acting as a spy in the Spade Kingdom as he found that the rulers of that nation can use the power of the devils.
He needs to find what other methods exist to summon the devil and stop them if they are planning to summon more devils.
When he found that this dungeon was related to Alric, he had to get to the end of the dungeon.
He looked closely into the machines that were everywhere but accidentally triggered a mechanism.
Some machines started glowing and started combining machine golems and dashed towards Nacht.
"Sigh! Why can't I investigate in peace."
"Let's do it Gimodelo "
[Devil Union ]
A while later Nacht stood there with all the machines golems completely crushed.
All his devils had returned to him by the time he was finished with the results of the investigation.
He moved toward the center of the space and fired a ball of shadow magic at a specific place in the air.
The ball of shadow hit something which made the space around it start breaking revealing the roots of a gigantic tree which reached beyond the sky.
Nacht touched the tree and realized something.
He could sense both Dark Magic and World Tree Magic from the tree.
'What is this tree and where does it lead to'
[The sky is fake sir Nacht ] one of his devils informed.
'I am aware of that' ]
Nacht sliced apart a part of the tree and kept it with him to look into it later on.
At the roots, a cave-like structure was made with Nacht entered.
It opened up to a futuristic chamber with one side having a library while the other side had some machine containers.
On closure look, it can be seen that different types of creatures were floating in the machine containers with white rods coming out of various parts of their body.
One such body belonged to a human with red eyes.
Nacht looked closely at each figure and recognized some as races that existed once.
[Sir Nacht, they don't have any organs inside them] Gimodelo said to him.
Nacht tried to find out what these bodies were kept for but couldn't find anything that made sense.
Finally, he turned to the books and started flipping the pages to find if they made any sense.
Suddenly he felt the shadow mark he left with Julian get erased followed by a feeling of dread.
He instantly took all the books into his shadow and dashed outside.
*************
Elsewhere
Julian froze in his spot seeing the scene in front of him.
"This is not a joke right ?"
In front of him was an entire city almost the same as Earth.
From the structures of the building to the roads, everything resembled a smaller city.
At the center of the huge city, was a big tree that was going beyond the clouds. On that tree was a circular ring-like building from where he sensed mana fluctuation.
The entire town seemed to be devoid of any kind of mana except that building.
Julian was a bit hesitant to go but still decided to move forward. The cause of his worry was that he could not see Secre or Kirin around him, he could not even feel his connection with Kirin.
He was not worried about Nacht as he was strong enough to handle himself, if things go downhill he could straight up leave the dungeon.
Julian walked slowly looking closely at each building which brought back a lot of memories.
From schools to houses to hospitals to parks everything looked so similar.
But the thing that made it strange was that there was not a single living being there but everything was in perfect condition.
The question arose, who was maintaining all this stuff as if everything was frozen in time?
"I might get me answers there"
Wings emerged behind Julian as he flew towards the building and landed near a big door.
Julian entered the chamber which looked like the throne room of an emperor.
Just as Julian was about to light the entire room that was enveloped in darkness, he felt immense danger and made a slash with his dagger.
Ting!
Sprt!
"What…."
His wrist along with the Dagger was separated from his body.
Julian looked down to see blood flowing uncontrollably from his abdomen as a white rod had stabbed through it passing by his mana core.
He could not even sense the attack properly as if it just teleported near him.
"My magic and my control over my body are….gone"
The door behind him closed back as the entire room lit up.
On the throne made of gold, sat a 7 feet man with shoulder-length white hair. His skin was pale as if blood had been sucked out of it.
He had pointy ears like the elves, eyes that looked like they belonged to reptiles, fingers that belonged to Dragonoids, and wings that looked like a mix of devils and dragons.
He wore clothes with a lot of ornaments that looked like that of royals.
The mana in his body felt like an infinite ocean.
Finally, he had a five-leaf Grimoire floating beside him which looked as if made from multiple Grimoires.
"I have sealed your physical strength so don't try to struggle pointlessly," he said coldly.
The man disappeared from his place and appeared near Julian closely inspecting him.
Julian could tell that that man just used light magic.
The man snapped his finger as Julian felt excruciating pain in his abdomen and head and dropped to the floor.
He picked up Julian's severed wrist and joined it back as if it was never separated in the first place.
"I was thinking that I had to go to the surface to get new bodies but seems like luck is in my favor"
The man took out the rod from his body but still, Aoki could not move his body nor use his mana.
"Don't try to struggle and waste your energy, the seal I have used can even render a high-class devil useless so a Ragnvindr with an impure bloodline will not even stand a chance...
My name is Alric Hainsworth, the most genius inventor you will ever hear about "
Alric extended his claws and pulled out Aoki's mana core which looked like a pulsating ball of silver light and sealed off his abdomen.
"You have reached silver core…not bad, not bad but this will not do."
He inspected the core for a few seconds with amusement.
"As expected the Seed of Origin has perfectly assimilated with your mana core.
My experiment is a success "
He took out a syringe filled with a red liquid and injected it into Julian's mana core making it turn black.
He touched the modified mana core to Julian's chest near his heart which started to enter his body and attach to his heart.
Instantly black blood started flowing all over his body for a while before returning to normal.
Black roots started to emerge from his heart and spread all over his body.
Notifications started to pop up in front of Julian.
[Mana core(Dark Silver) -> Mana heart ( Dark Silver)
Mana capacity increased
Mana points: 750 →1000 ]
Sprt!!
With one swoop of his hand, Alric took out Julian's heart tearing through his bones.
But instead of Julian's life fading away, he was alive with his heart getting regenerated completely while the heart that was taken out turned to ash.
"Another success….this will make sure that the body will not lose power if the mana core is taken out"
Finally, Alric took out a red orb and touched it with Julian's forehead making his Sharingan rotate at full speed as the color became deeper.
[Bloodline purification process started:
1%
2%
…
.]
Alric could see anger in Julian's eyes making him chuckle.
"Seems like I owe you an explanation, " Alric holding Julian's chin up.
