Chapter 571: You Need a Dragon Mark

Seris nodded.

Lian kept his eyes on her face.

The issue was not just losing a single Mark.

The Dragon Mark was considered one of the most important legacies of the Pendragon Family, and many members of the younger generation had spent years trying to obtain one.

Some planned to use it during their third evolution to form a Dragon Body.

Others had built their entire growth paths around this blessing.

And now, all those Marks were going to disappear.

He looked at the Mark on the girl’s hand, she had only received the sixth-grade Ancestral Mark that very morning.

The highest possible Mark.

But now, she had to make a decision that most members of her family would probably find difficult to forgive, even after hearing her reasons.

Seris looked at the golden lines for a few seconds, then raised her hand.

"I’ll do it."

Lian didn’t smile and only asked,

"Are you sure?"

"There is no other choice."

She was right.

If the Demon of End was released, it would no longer matter how many people had Dragon Marks.

But there was still another problem, and he used [True Sequence] to examine the flows coming from the root.

The golden paths could be controlled by her Ancestral Mark, but the part of the network that was in direct contact with the Demon of End’s energy was far too dangerous for an ordinary human.

The young Pendragon couldn’t control both parts at the same time, and at that moment, the Eclipse Core inside Lian’s body reacted.

Thump!

Lian lowered his gaze, so once again, they would have to divide their roles.

"You take control of the main path, I’ll hold back the corrupted part."

The girl looked at him for a few seconds before nodding.

The dragon raised its claw again.

"Begin."

Beyond the gap, the golden rings were rotating in different directions, and the silver threads of corruption were still flowing back toward the seed.

Worse still, the Demon of End’s half-freed claw could attack a large part of these paths.

But Seris didn’t hesitate for even a moment, and Lian gave her a brief glance.

"I’ll open the way, just reach the heart of the formation." To carry out their plan, they had to reach it.

She nodded, and they both moved.

[Predator’s Instincts] was still active, and Lian detected the path of the Demon’s claw before it had fully moved.

"Right!"

The young Pendragon immediately changed direction, and the enormous claw came down from above their path, crushing part of the stone behind them.

BOOOOM!

Pieces of stone scattered through the air.

He used [Ashen Thunder Step] to move through the rubble and reach the edge of the gap.

She landed a few meters behind him, the path they needed to cross no longer existed.

Lian lowered his hand, and [Frost Dominion] responded to his command.

Thick ice extended from the edge of the platform, creating a narrow path toward the central ring, but before it was complete, another wave of pressure from the Demon struck it.

The middle section of the ice bridge cracked.

He gritted his teeth.

"Seris, go!"

The girl moved along the path without asking any questions.

At the same time, the young Vorhelm struck a fallen piece of stone with [Glacial Reaper Claw] and his armored fist, changing the direction of the falling debris.

The enormous stone passed beside the bridge.

Seris jumped from the end of the path and landed on the outer ring of the formation’s core, and Lian followed her with [Ashen Thunder Step].

Now they were both standing directly in front of the central core, and the scale of the formation was even stranger up close.

Golden rings rotated over one another in several directions, and a floating black crystal sat at their center, with thousands of thin golden threads extending from its surface.

Each thread was connected to a part of the prison, every chain, every pillar, and every anchor, this formation was even connected to the artifact responsible for creating the Dragon Marks.

And now, the foreign silver threads had worked their way into these same paths.

Seris took a deep breath, then placed the hand bearing her Ancestral Mark against the surface of the central crystal.

At the moment of contact, all the rings around them stopped for one second.

Then golden light spread from beneath her hand, and thousands of ancient symbols appeared on the crystal, rotating around her hand like rings of writing.

Lian realized that the formation was identifying the Ancestral Mark.

Not just as a sixth-grade Mark, but as the closest and most powerful active connection to the main root, in other words, this Mark was the formation’s most important source and anchor.

The formation viewed the owners of the Marks as anchors, and the bearer of the Ancestral Mark was its most important anchor.

The young Pendragon closed her eyes for a moment, and information about the formation’s structure entered her mind.

But unlike the usual System messages, this was not ready-made information, it was more like a set of commands designed to control the seal network.

"Found it." Then she spoke softly.

"What do you need?" Lian stood beside her.

"Time."

He turned his gaze toward the Demon of End, the dragon had raised its claw again.

"How much?"

"I don’t know."

"Fine, take as much as you need."

And he moved in front of her.

Seris activated the formation’s emergency command with her Ancestral Mark, and at that moment, the enormous seal network began to change.

The outer rings slowed down, and the paths that had previously sent energy from the center to different parts of the network began changing direction one after another.

Lian could see these changes from the corner of his eye, but all his attention was on the Demon of End, the dragon had realized that they had reached the heart of the formation.

And it had no intention of letting them finish their work.

"No!"

Its enormous arm came forward.

The young Vorhelm moved away with [Ashen Thunder Step].

The claw struck the outer part of the ring.

CRAAAAASH!

Part of the formation’s stone protection shattered, but the main golden ring withstood the blow, the rings were part of the seal and formation structure, and they had been made strong enough to withstand attacks from monsters.

Lian used that opportunity to reach a damaged spot on one of the dragon’s fingers.

His right fist struck the cracked scale with the power of [Glacial Reaper Claw].

BOOOOM!

A thick layer of ice spread over the crack, and the Demon shook its finger in great anger, breaking part of the ice, but its claw had slowed down for a moment.

He moved back, and at the same time, Seris still hadn’t removed her hand from the heart of the formation.

Her expression remained cold, but the muscles in her right arm had become extremely tense, she was no longer controlling just one path of the seal.

The entire network of active Pendragon Marks was now within her perception.

And she had to return all of them to the center.

She opened her eyes, looked at the thousands of golden paths for a moment, and then carried out the final command.

Across the world, the active Dragon Marks of the Pendragon Family began to shine.

Lucien Pendragon was standing in one of the palace corridors when the Ruler’s Mark on his hand suddenly lit up.

He instinctively raised his hand, but before he could understand what had changed, golden lines separated from his skin like particles of light, and then the Mark disappeared.

In other parts of the city, Kaelen and Lysandra experienced the same thing, along with Tristan and the other young people who had received their Marks that morning.

Even members of the family who were in other cities around the world and had not yet used their Dragon Marks to form a [Dragon Body] experienced the same thing.

All the active Marks disappeared one after another.

None of them knew why, but inside the prison, thousands of golden threads returned from deep within the network toward the central formation.

Lian briefly turned his head.

Golden lights passed through the enormous rings and reached the black crystal at the center.

Seris took a deep breath.

The pressure of transferring this amount of energy was enormous, but her Ancestral Mark continued to shine.

She pressed her hand more firmly against the heart of the formation, and the last golden path arrived, and then.... BOOOOM!

All the rings of the seal’s core lit up at the same time, and the reversed flow created by the Silver Corruption Seed stopped for a moment.

The energy from the returned Marks reached the main chains, and the golden light on the prison pillars grew brighter again.

Several chains that had been loose moments ago tightened with a tremendous sound.

The young Pendragon forcefully let out her breath, her hand still resting on the central crystal.

Lian turned his gaze away from the Demon of End and looked at her.

"Is it over?"

Seris looked at the golden flow for a moment, then slowly nodded.

"The corruption has been pushed back."

He let out a short breath, it seemed they had truly managed to stop the Silver Elf’s final attack.

But at that exact moment, something changed in the formation’s structure.

Golden light flowed through the rings at full power for several seconds... then one of the outer rings shook.

Then a second one.

At first, Lian thought the Silver Corruption Seed had become active again, but when he focused [True Sequence] on the structure, he realized the problem was coming from somewhere else.

The corruption had been pushed back.

The original commands were flowing in the correct directions again.

But something was missing.

Before this, hundreds of active Dragon Marks in different parts of the world had been connected to the central network.

They didn’t just use the formation’s energy, each of them also provided part of the formation’s energy supply, it was a mutual relationship, not a one-way one.

Now, all those Marks had disappeared.

The original energy that had been used to create the Marks had returned to the formations and the seal structure, but that was all... the extra energy that the Mark bearers had been providing to the seal was no longer there.

The heart of the formation had been strengthened for a moment by the returned energy, but without a stable source, this situation wouldn’t last.

The girl still had her hand on the crystal, she watched the changing flows for a few seconds, then spoke briefly.

"We have a problem, the formation needs another source of energy to keep working."

Lian immediately examined the structure again, and this time, he saw something that had been impossible to notice before the Marks’ energy returned.

Hundreds of empty paths surrounded the heart of the formation, each path was a place meant for a Dragon Mark.

The network’s commands were trying to activate those paths again, as if the formation wanted to divide the gathered energy among hundreds of parts and rebuild the previous connections.

But doing that would bring the situation back to where it had started.

The seal’s energy would be spread among hundreds of carriers.

The root would still depend on the same vulnerable connections, and if the Silver Corruption Seed got another chance, it could take advantage of them again.

He looked at the shaking rings, so completing the transfer didn’t mean their work was finished.

They had gathered enough energy to prevent the seal from collapsing immediately.

But to maintain it, they needed a new anchor that could provide the remaining energy required by the seal and the formations.

Lian looked at Seris’s Ancestral Mark for a moment, the girl still had her own Mark, but one person wasn’t enough.

They needed another source.

They couldn’t allow the formation’s energy reserves to be divided among hundreds of different paths again to create Dragon Marks for hundreds of people.

They needed someone who could produce as much energy for the formation as hundreds of people, a power source worth hundreds of sources to the formation.

Seris exchanged a glance with Lian and, after thinking for a moment, said,

"I guess you need to get a Dragon Mark."