Chapter 50: Another Soul Within Arianna
[DRAGON KING SYSTEM]
[Host]: Aiden Crowley
[Title]: Hatchling
[Level]: 6
[Experience Points (Exp)]: 1,650
[Mana Pool]: 2250/2250
[Stamina]: 1800/1800
[Health Pool]: 700/700
[Host’s Stats]
-Innate Magic: Fire
-Magic Rank: SSS
Strength: 27 Agility: 21
Intelligence: 30 Endurance: 19
[Host’s Magic Spells]
-Exploding Sun
-Flame Sword
[Host’s Supplementary Spells]
-Body Transformation (Master)
-Immobilis (Master)
-Invisibility (Advanced)
[Authorities]:
- Destruction: SSS
- Replication: SSS
- Space: SSS
[Destruction Skills]
- Fists of Destruction
- Genesis Zero
[Replication Skills]
- Technique Copy
[Space Skills]
- Void Step
- Space Portal
[General Skills]
- Dragon’s Roar
- Dragon’s Fear (Lv.1)
- Dragon Transformation (Lv.2)
- Dragon’s Sight (Lv.3)
[Passive Skills]
- Dragon’s Sense
- Status Reset
- Malice Perception
[Inventory]
-264 gold coins
-Fang Pieces of a Kimian Kat Dungeon Lord
[Inventory Skills]
- Collector
- Forge
[Copied Magic Techniques]
- Wind Gale (D)
- Wind Tornado (C)
- Water Magic Spheres (D)
- Earth Magic Projectiles (D)
- Fireballs (D)
- Ice Shards (C)
- Binding Chains (C)
- Steel Lance (C)
- Mass Magic: Expansion (B)
- Light Magic: Light Constructs (A)
- Lightning Magic: Raging Bolts (A)
- Tree Magic: Tree Binds (A)
[Copied Supplementary Techniques]
- Goddess Embrace (Advanced)
- Levitation (Sage)
[Dragon Curse Meter]: 1.1
Aiden’s eyes scanned through his status window, and everything looked just about right.
However, his Dragon Curse Meter always took him by surprise each time he saw it.
"System, can you keep me updated with increases to the Dragon Curse Meter? I’d hate to be taken by surprise."
[That is understood. You will receive updates on its increase after every major usage of your dragon-related skills]
Aiden nodded in acknowledgment.
The rise in its number was understandable anyway. He had used the powers of the dragon much more recently.
His attention then went to the opposite bed that was empty. He scoffed and shook his head, wondering where the young lord had gone.
Then he lay down on his own bed while staring at the ceiling of their room.
It was unknown what thoughts went on his mind at that moment, but whatever it was made him smile.
....
Meanwhile, Kayden was currently at the library.
Initially, when he entered the library, he became obsessed with trying to find the supplementary spell that he assumed Aiden used to find the dungeon lord earlier that day.
But when he couldn’t find anything that fit the description relating to red eyes and enhanced vision in the same vein, he decided to find and learn a supplementary spell as well.
"No way I let him get ahead of me," Kayden said to himself for the umpteenth time.
For some reason, he needed the constant reminder to keep going.
...
On the other hand, Laela and Arianna were returning from the guild wing. They had spent the rest of the day with the members of Ravens Grave, most especially Piers and Elena.
While they walked through the corridors, Arianna’s entire body suddenly throbbed, and her eyes widened with terror as she wasn’t expecting the reaction that just occurred within her.
Laela noticed this and asked, "Are you okay?" She had a genuinely concerned expression on her face.
Arianna, who seemed as if she was struggling to keep herself together, simply told her, "Yes, go on without me."
After which, she hurriedly walked away.
Laela looked at Arianna leaving with a puzzled expression but couldn’t do anything else.
Arianna herself kept walking hastily across different hallways with alarming urgency until she reached the chambers of the Grand Magus, then hastily opened the doors and barged in.
Thamoryn, who was signing papers in her chambers, raised her eyebrows quickly at such sudden entry into her office.
Without waiting to be spoken to, ’Arianna’ immediately said, "Mother, quickly, the owner of this body is fighting my control."
Thamoryn quickly stood up from her seat and walked toward where Arianna stood, grabbing hold of her.
Then Arianna suddenly spoke out, "Get out of my body!"
Then she spoke again, "Stay quiet!"
Anyone looking at Arianna yell out these two sentences would have thought that the Greystone had gone mad.
But the simple fact here was that there were two separate souls struggling for control over this body.
One was the true owner; the actual Arianna Greystone, who asked the other, a usurper named Liandrin, to get out of her body.
Liandrin was Thamoryn’s daughter, and her soul had been in perfect control of Arianna’s body up until a few moments ago when the true owner of the body had started resisting.
Thamoryn had an irritated look on her face concerning the current situation as she watched them both struggle for control.
She then waved her hand slightly toward the body of Arianna and said, "Sleep."
Right then, the body stopped moving and collapsed on the ground.
Thamoryn looked at the fallen body and sighed. Then she walked toward her door and locked it.
To understand it all: at some point in Thamoryn’s life, around the age of twenty, the young powerful witch of the Town of Sycaris had begotten a child.
Her daughter Liandrin had lived only a short time due to an illness even a mage like her couldn’t fix.
Unable to let go, Thamoryn had used a soul-binding spell to bind her daughter’s soul into a special pendant.
That way, even if her physical body died, the soul would live on until she found a way for her daughter to live as a human again.
For this purpose, she left her hometown; though still within the kingdom of Xathia, and traveled to the main city to join the Magic Academy.
Besides the fact that she was already a capable mage with understanding of basic and powerful magic, she also had the determination to remedy her daughter’s situation.
Which was why she strived so hard until she became the Grand Magus; the pinnacle of magic in the Xathian Kingdom.
She had achieved this status only seven years after she joined the Academy.
Then eventually, she discovered a means to remedy her situation, by having her daughter’s soul possess the body of another who was living.
A God-level spell she had discovered along the way; Soul Branding.
The spell allowed her to overwrite the original soul of a target with another soul, effectively giving her daughter a new body to inhabit.