Myths Reawakened

Gradually, steam rose and spread from the hot spring until Wayne couldn’t even see his own hands. Pushing his head down, Senna submerged him fully. While holding his breath, he opened his eyes underwater and saw an array of complicated magic circles on the bottom of the pool.

Due to the angle, he couldn’t see the circles clearly. All he could see was the draconic text at his feet. He lowered his head and studied it for a while. Then he turned around...

He couldn’t. Senna had stopped him from turning back with her tight grip on his head. Wayne cursed silently at the injustice of false assumptions. He wasn’t trying to look at Senna, but the draconic text!

Speaking of which, did Senna know the draconic language? Could she teach him?

Still holding Wayne’s head down, Senna closed her eyes and mumbled in unintelligible language, her forehead beading with sweat. The next second, she opened her eyes. Her now golden eyes and vertical pupils gave her an overbearing presence.

As her discreet aura spread, the dragon blood in the altar boiled. The lifeless dragon blood was forcefully activated. Having lost the possibility of evolution, this blood needed to be refined to extract the small amount that was actually useful.

There was a limited volume of dragon blood, and the more it was refined, the thinner it became. Senna believed that the altar was likely going to become obsolete after this attempt, no longer able to extract useful dragon blood.

Wayne flailed around in the water, having held his breath for as long as he could. If she didn’t let go of him, he would be drinking the bathwater.

Although she found him troublesome, Senna allowed Wayne to surface and take a breath. “The dragon blood has been activated. The following steps are each crucial. Open up your thoughts and don’t fight back. I’ll guide the dragon blood into your body...”

“It’ll be a painful process. Bear with it.”

Wayne didn’t see Senna’s face since he was lying on his back in the water. Just when he was going to say something, she pushed him underwater once more.

Golden threads gathered from all directions and entered Senna’s body. She clenched her teeth to suppress her cries of pain, shifting the dragon blood that had required much work to extract to Wayne.

“The altar was built for the dragon’s subjects, granting the possibility of further evolution to the descendants of their blood...”

“You don’t have dragon blood in your body. Forcing the transformation will only cause your body to burn to ashes. Do not fight my thoughts. Let me guide the dragon blood to reforge your bloodline.”

Senna tried her best to explain the process simply. Due to the pain she was enduring, her sentences came out disjointed.

If someone were standing outside the pool, they would see nothing but the thick mist while the noise of Wayne swishing in the water and Senna’s low, pained whispers filled the air. It would seem quite scandalous.

Wayne sensed the dragon blood approaching him, and a powerful mind was waiting to strike. He instinctively wanted to reject it.

“You’ve chosen the elven route for your evolution, so this transformation will be more painful to you. Accept my thoughts quickly. Stop hesitating.”

Couldn’t you have said that earlier?

Wayne pursed his lips, allowing the thoughts and the dragon blood to enter his body. Golden threads of blood burrowed into his skin, rushing along the blood vessels straight to where his heart was.

The Book of Greed geared up to expel the blood. It was arrogant to think that the blood was potent enough to replace Wayne’s blood.

He told the book to be patient. Let Senna try; she couldn’t do it anyway, and he wanted the dragon blood.

More and more dragon blood entered Wayne’s body and gathered in his heart, attempting to change his body from the very source. It wasn’t effective. Senna had pushed herself to the limit but still failed to shake his form. Thinking of the perfect elven form Wayne had, she cursed silently and did her best to gather even more dragon blood.

Senna’s thoughts entered his body. One part reshaped his bloodline along with the dragon blood, while the other part lay low, waiting for him to lower his guard due to the pain to plant a seed in his thoughts.

She had gone as far as undressing; of course she had to benefit from the ordeal.

The dragon blood was her gift to Wayne, enhancing his talent and helping him win the goodwill of the goddess. The seed she planted with her thoughts was an insurance for herself in case Wayne turned his back on her afterwards.

Wayne sensed the thoughts. He understood why she did it. It was natural not to trust a scumbag like him, so she had to have a contingency plan in place. Only Veronica would fall for his deception every time without learning to make him write her written promises.

His musing was interrupted when the strand of thoughts sneaked in and attempted to blend into his thoughts, just like...

The contract he had formed with Mona.

(一`´一)

Oh, is this the game you’re playing now?

Senna’s thoughts were so powerful that Wayne could not resist her no matter if she made a frontal assault or pulled an underhanded trick. His thoughts retreated to the Book of Greed, leaving his lively body at Senna’s mercy.

Be patient. Take it slow. If Senna could turn him into a dragon, he would willingly kowtow to her.

Senna’s two strands of thoughts were both stumped; the former couldn’t reshape Wayne’s heart with dragon blood, while the latter couldn’t find his thoughts.

She pushed hard to draw more and more dragon blood, but even once she had drained the altar, she still made no progress. With Wayne’s thoughts hiding from her as well, she lost her patience.

She had no reason to give up after coming this far. Since Wayne had realized her intention, she stopped pretending.

A ray of golden light flashed from her forehead, and a streak of red blood ran down her face. She grabbed his heated body to press their foreheads together. Enveloping her blood with her thoughts, she injected it into him forcefully.

The evolution path of a perfect elf was more difficult to tear down than she had expected. She could already foresee how complicated the reconstruction would be. More importantly, she couldn’t locate his thoughts. It was as if his thoughts had left his body.

After a few more minutes, she was close to losing her mind, tired of the hide-and-seek game Wayne was playing with her. She pushed aside her reservation and opened her golden eyes with her vertical pupils blown wide, using draconic magic with her bloodline.

Around the altar, the pillars representing earth, fire, water, and wind glowed. Since Senna’s dragon blood was purer, she was deemed the master of the altar. Her thoughts grew impossibly greater under the altar’s amplification, allowing her to modify Wayne’s physical form.

White scales slowly covered his body, and his pounding heart turned golden. Senna searched every corner of his body for a long time until she finally found where his thoughts were hiding.

“Don’t fight me, good boy. I’m only leaving something to build the foundation for our mutual trust.” Senna closed her eyes. Her thoughts weaved into a thread and suddenly slammed into him.

Boom!!!

Senna saw a dark cosmos—a dead universe. Earth, fire, water, and wind elements spread across all parts of the universe, trying to awaken the world that had been in slumber for countless years.

Among them, the fire elements were the densest and the most proactive.

Senna looked around in disbelief. For a moment, she felt like she had stepped through the Gate of Truth. The sheer amount of four elements Wayne had in stock shocked her, but what shocked her even more was the fact that a world like this existed in his body.

She believed this to be a Divine Realm in the early stage of its construction, but Wayne wasn’t at a rank where he should be able to construct a Divine Realm. Moreover...

Where were his thoughts?

Hiss!

The noise of flesh wriggling came from above. Senna extended her thoughts upward and saw an impossibly massive eye. The eyeball was lodged in the cosmos. When it closed, it disappeared from view, and when it opened, it became the center of the universe. Chaotic whispers spread from the eye, telling the tale of the universe’s emptiness and helplessness to her thoughts.

Shocked, she made a run for it without hesitation. Her thoughts split into several parts to search for a way out.

Numerous tentacles extended from the universe and grappled her fleeing thoughts, putting her back together and holding her right before the massive eyeball. She sensed the universe’s void from a close range.

“Ahhh—”

In the pool, Senna’s body expanded gradually with fine white scales covering her skin, slowly transforming into a half dragon.

She owned the altar and had acquired a great amount of dragon blood. With her pure bloodline, she had progressed much further than Silvia and Veronica in her evolution, so she should be turning into something more than a half dragon.

However, the process was interrupted.

Wayne’s pale tentacles held onto her and tightened. Large swathes of white foam rushed into her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. Where their foreheads were pressed together, white foam was streaming into her at a visible rate.

“Open up your thoughts and don’t fight back!”

“I’ll grant you evolution and show you the greater world...”

The discordant whispers tormented Senna’s thoughts, stripping away her control over her body and imprisoning the last of her thoughts in a tight corner. In the darkness, a vast whiteness rose into a great wave and flooded her, submerging her. She furiously fought back, turning into a great dragon to stage her last resistance. After some time, she saw the writing on the wall and chose to detonate her thoughts for mutual destruction.

In the darkness, a firework bloomed.

More and more tentacles reached out to piece the broken firework back together, accompanied by pitying whispers. They dragged a pale Senna into a white ocean.

Amid the low, slimy voices, her world became an endless white. All colors drained from her thoughts and body...

***

“Ack, ack!”

Standing in the center of the pool, Senna looked around in fear and saw only the same altar. Wayne, the source of her terror, wasn’t with her.

The cold dragon blood filling the pool had lost all vitality. Senna looked up and jumped out of the pool. She saw Wayne sitting on the altar, an innocent look on his face.

“You’re awake, Senna. How do you feel? Disgusted?”

More than disgusted. She almost threw up!

Killing intent boiled in her eyes. As soon as she took one step, though, she felt a turmoil in her stomach, making her drop to her knees, her limbs weak. She propped herself up with both hands, vomiting white foam.

The white foam gathered and morphed into several tentacles, wrapping around her arms. Under her fearful stare, they blended into her skin, flesh, and blood.

She was no longer a pure dragon.

“You...”

“What have you done to me?”