Land of The Enemy, The Dragon Heart Series Book 8

M arkin, one of the Mentors at the best martial arts School in Dahanatan, stood in a dark laboratory, surrounded by cauldrons, flasks, phials, bottles, and scrolls. He considered ‘The Holy Sky’ School his second home, if not his only one, which was why he knew everything that happened both in and out of it. “Another failure?” He asked the empty air and walked over to a small altar, upon which lay a jade seal decorated with intricate designs. He moved his hand over it and whispered something, summoning a flicker of green light. A hazy hieroglyph emerged from the light. Markin greeted it with a wide, hungry smile, paying no attention to the fact that the hieroglyph let out a low, drawn-out hum as it moved toward one of the cauldrons. “He’s back,” a voice came from the darkness. Controlling the symbol with his will, Markin grabbed it and placed it into the cauldron. The hieroglyph looked like it was resisting, humming louder now. It tried to pull away from Markin’s grip, but it couldn’t. It was like a fly trying to break free, but only managing to entangle itself even more in the spider’s web. After a few moments of fruitless struggle, it fell silent inside the small cauldron, beneath which a multicolored flame burned. After covering the cauldron with a lid, Markin went over to a table littered with various scrolls. Taking one of them, he wrote something down, looked at all the complex clocks that hung on one of the walls, then scribbled down another note. “He’s back?” Markin snorted. “You mean he’s back under Orune’s supervision? That damned bastard has been watching me.” The lab was quiet for a while. Only the sound of a quill scraping against parchment could be heard. “We only agreed to bring the object back to the city,” the voice said. “He’s back now. So, we-” “Don’t play games with me!” A crushing wave of power swept through the lab. The voice groaned and fell silent again. Markin didn’t even turn around, continuing to write down his notes and perform various spells and rituals over numerous bottles and cauldrons. “When he reaches the Spirit Knight level, you’ll bring him to me.” “But-” “Shut up!” Another wave of power struck the shadow lurking in the darkness of the laboratory. “If you don’t, you can kiss our deal goodbye.” Markin waited for any objections, but there weren’t any. “As you wish, Mentor Markin. I’ll bring him to you, but you have to promise me-” “Name extraction isn’t a fatal process,” Markin interrupted. “Nothing bad will happen to the subject, other than the loss of a useless ‘talent’.” The shadow’s presence disappeared after a moment of silence. Ignoring this, Markin went back to trying to create the Hundred Voices pill. It would help him glimpse the weapon mastery domain located above the Kingdom of the Weapon — the legendary mysteries usually reserved for the Immortals. Was it worth lying to his servant and causing the death of a commoner to acquire? It was. They were nothing more than dust along his path. Markin Davlos would one day have the Emperor bow his head to him and pay for all the grief he’d brought to Markin’s homeland… “Not yet,” Markin hissed to himself. “Soon, I’ll have my revenge. But not yet, not yet… Soon, I’ll be strong enough…” With renewed zeal, he returned to poring over his numerous notes and working with his myriad of cauldrons and bottles. *** Hadjar stood at the foot of a high cliff. Located right in the center of the city, hidden behind high walls decorated with golden and jade bas-reliefs, was ‘The Holy Sky’ School — one of the three best martial arts Schools of the Darnassus Empire and arguably the best School overall. Only the ‘Meltwater’ School and ‘Quick Dream’ School could compete with it for this title. Hadjar had only been away for a month and a half, but looking at all the disciples crowding around the wide iron platform that served as the elevator to the School, he felt as if he’d been gone for at least several years. As he stepped onto the platform, Hadjar glanced around and gave a mental command to his neural network. Scan. Name Parlax Level of cultivation Spirit Knight, initial stage Strength 11 Dexterity 7.5 Physique 13 Energy points 98.5 He didn’t know how the network had been able to find out the name of the guy resting an ironbound club across his shoulder. The computer module probably had access to Hadjar’s subconscious. “Parlax, what do you-” one of the seven-foot tall giant’s friends asked, confirming that the network hadn’t been wrong. Hadjar stopped listening. It was just as he’d suspected: the network had been rebooted, using his mind as the computing module. That was why it had been able to install ‘updates’, which were nothing more than his experiences. Status. Name Hadjar Level of cultivation Heaven Soldier, advanced stage Strength 15.5 Dexterity 16.5 Physique 20.7 Energy points 147 The numbers didn’t surprise him. He could give the neural network the order to switch them from the ‘dragon system’ back to the ‘human’ one, but he didn’t see a point to doing so. Back in the Sea of Sand, he’d spent some time examining the corpse of a Lord of the Heavens that had been killed by Harlim, an Immortal. That had apparently been enough for the network to reconfigure its readings to fit the new system of measurements.