Chapter 5-160: To the Victor... (1/2)

Everyone knew we were going to be heading back after this kill, simply because of how much there was. I had to spin up another Mass Disk group to transport it all, too bad, so sad.

Helix alerted everyone that we’d killed it, and when they demanded proof, posted the vids and us carving it apart. Sama was murderously fast at it, and even The Mick was impressed by how fast she could take apart a physical body so cleanly. She sent him to watching the rice and dicing the dragon meat to boil with spices and such, calling out instructions to him every so often which he followed very carefully.

I just spun up containers, tossing the rubyish Dragon Pearl I’d taken from its head underneath its horn idly. It was really good at channeling magic, although the fundamentallum in its lungs was the source of its breath weapon. The Pearls made excellent Orbs...

I also reassembled its lower jaw with Marrowmeld. My first Dragon Baneskull was going to be a thing.

Helix drifted over, in between dissection-filming sessions as he uploaded through the Obelisk. “Hey, Trav, question, question,” he asked eagerly, his Vaccine floating out there and giving us a perfect selfie. “How did the dragon find us? Shouldn’t we have been pretty much untraceable in the cinderstorm?”

“Well, first, it’s not a true dragon. It’s a Huo Lung, a Cultivation creature, more like a spirit creature than a magical creature. It wants to feed on living magical creatures, and if you recall, we had Master Fred’s Ward up protecting the Hut...”

“Right, but he used hellfire to blend in with the cinderstorm!” he agreed.

“To a magical creature, that was just another form of negatively-attributed fire, but to a Huo Lung, it was a distinct standing magical flame, obviously not natural, nor belonging here. It probably saw it from some distance away, and snuck up by melting itself a path through the ground.

“We basically broadcast our positions to it, because of what it was.”

“Oh.” He looked impressed, gazing off in the direction it had been operating from. “Are there going to be more creatures like that out here?”

“Cultivation creatures? A dragon wouldn’t even stay around unless the fire Qi was rich enough to support it, and it’s a higher-order creature.

“Somewhere in the Firezone, something is converting fire mana into Qi. There’s definitely going to be lots of lower-order Fire Spirit creatures there.” I waved my hand and flicked up a rough holo of the area. “I’m guessing there.” I pointed to the most isolated and smallest of the five outer volcanoes of the Firezone, and also the only one near the locations where this alien creature had been sighted.

“I don’t think we’ll see another Lung-type dragon... but whatever creature is overseeing the conversion is probably still there.”

Helix looked at me carefully. “So, we should kill it.”

“Oh, Heavens, yes. It thinks Powered are the choicest of munchies. Kill it, and butcher it and turn it into comps and Karma.”

The idea definitely delighted him. “Serves it right... and that stew smells so good!” he agreed. “Uh, another question... why haven’t the undead kicked it out?”

“What do the undead care?” I replied. “Mana or Qi, they’ll still be around, still rise... and you can bet they are harvesting any fire creatures here for ‘special troops’. If they try to do the same in return, the Shroudlord can just crush them leisurely, and whatever conversion process they are using to make their Fire Qi.”

“Is there any way to reverse the conversion?” Helix pressed quickly.

Unwhite fires rippled up mistily, fell from Clavus. “Qi is not formed naturally, it is forced on the world, forcibly changing it. Vivic fire eats it like any other unnatural force, and returns things to the way they should be.”

“Ohhhh, the damn stuff is so useful...” He nodded like a curious chicken

“Not if you’re not a natural creature. Then the stuff is pretty worrisome.”

“Happily!...” he grinned. “Why are they doing this conversion stuff?”

“Removing Chi and Mana from the world neuters the abilities of Powered, making them easy to kill and get rid of. It will even stop them from being born. At that point, Cultivators control the world. So, they’ve simply begun the process in a place they didn’t think people would be able to do anything about.”

He managed to look troubled as he actually thought about the implications. “They’re trying to take control of the world...”

“Yes. Powered are their direct competitors. They want to reduce humanity to the status of only providing raw material to make more Daoist Immortals, they have no other use. They’ll cut off technology as interfering with Qi, start raising beasts and plants that take in Qi and spread their ecology, and basically reduce humanity to a feudal state with them as the unquestioned overlords as they seek ever-higher levels of power.

“They are perfectly willing to use any and all means to achieve this goal, and completely shamelessly, but they cannot deny their inner nature or goals. They will do this, regardless of any smiling words to the contrary, because beings like you and I are in their way of an ideal world, and have to be cleansed off it if they wish to live properly... like scraping dung off your boot.”

His expression twitched again. “They think so little of us, huh...”

“A human’s only purpose in life is to be a potential source of a new Daoist Immortals, and so to have children before they become one... if they are worthy. As you are Powered, your only purpose in life is to be a filling meal.”

Finally, just a flicker of light behind his eyes. “A meal? They are going to eat me?”

“Process your soul, devour your power, and refine you into a Cultivation pill, if done properly.”

He was having a hard time processing that, that someone or something that was supposedly human could be looking at him that way. “Are you sure about that?” he had to ask.

“Unfortunately, yes. You’ll see it soon enough. You saw it here, you just didn’t process it.”

“What do you mean?” he frowned.