Chapter 1308: Dragon Heart Scale, Dragon Core!

Deep inside the abyss rested a colossal formation of ancient ice, so dense and old that the surrounding frozen world seemed almost young beside it. Centuries of cold had hardened that prison until even magical steel would have looked fragile against it, and trapped inside was the enormous blue-white Dragon.

Motionless and barely alive!

Her crystalline scales had lost much of their brilliance, and strange black growths resembling thick tentacles had burrowed through openings in the ancient ice. Some had slipped between scales along her limbs and neck, others had attached across the chest and belly, while several had penetrated much deeper.

They were not restraining her.

They were feeding from her!

Phei had understood what Dragon Essence was thanks to the amount being slowly drained from her was impossible to miss. Dragon Life Force too as said by the system and his very being, were all being drawn from her with such careful patience that it became obvious whoever created the prison had never intended the Dragon to die quickly.

The thing feeding upon her wanted a source that could survive long enough to replenish what was taken.

Then the System showed him what else those tendrils were touching.

Her Dragon Core!

And her Dragon Heart Scale!

Dragons possessed many powers depending upon their kind, age and whatever they awakened across their lives, yet beyond their very souls there were two things tied frighteningly close to their very existence.

The Dragon Core was far more than a reservoir of cultivated Dragon Essence and all their energy and essences:

It was the furnace around which nearly everything physical about a Dragon was built, strengthened and sustained. Dragon Essence, bloodline powers, elemental nature and centuries of cultivation were condensed, refined and continuously reborn within it, but its prowess and essentiality reached much farther than raw energy alone.

The Core nourished the Dragon’s flesh, bones, blood, organs, scales, muscles and wings, reinforcing the monstrous physical body Dragons were famous for while supplying the strength behind their regeneration, endurance and overwhelming vitality. Even the natural pressure carried by Dragon blood, the destructive force behind their breath, the density of their hard scales and the physical manifestation of many bloodline abilities ultimately drew upon the Core.

Dragon Core therefore represented the accumulated physical might of the Dragon itself!

Every century of cultivation deepened it, every refinement of the bloodline strengthened it, and every elemental transformation left traces within it. Damaging the Core could cripple far more than cultivation. A Dragon could lose control over its element, suffer catastrophic weakening of its body, see its regeneration collapse, have its scales lose their natural hardness and watch abilities cultivated over centuries begin falling apart.

If the damage became severe enough, even maintaining the enormous physical form of a true Dragon could become difficult as the body lost the immense foundation to required to sustain itself.

The Dragon Heart Scale was even stranger.

If the Dragon Core governed the physical Dragon and the power it accumulated throughout its life, the Dragon Heart Scale guarded the continuity of the Dragon’s very existence.

It was not merely connected to life or soul, but embedded within the deepest origin of the Dragon itself, carrying its bloodline, vitality, Soul and the very souls’d foundation (Soul Realm and Soul Energy, innate nature and the ancient force that made it a Dragon rather than simply another powerful beast.

A Dragon’s transformations were anchored through the Heart Scale, allowing its true existence to remain stable whether it walked in its colossal true body, compressed itself into a smaller draconic form or assumed a humanoid one.

The same Scale supported the Dragon’s most instinctive defenses, reinforcing not only flesh and scales but also the unseen protections surrounding its life-source and its soul.

More importantly, the Dragon Heart Scale was the natural fortress of a Dragon’s soul.

From birth, portions of the Dragon’s soul became intertwined with it so deeply that separating the two completely was almost impossible. The Dragon Heart Scale protected the soul against possession, destruction, corruption and spiritual invasion while quietly preserving traces of the Dragon’s memories, bloodline and true spiritual imprint throughout its life; this one or the next after reincarnation!

Even when the soul suffered terrible damage, the Dragon Heart Scale could shelter what remained and prevent the Dragon’s existence from being completely erased.

That connection continued even after death.

As long as the Dragon Heart Scale survived, a Dragon was never truly considered entirely dead!

The physical body could be destroyed; the Dragon Core could shatter, flesh could rot away and the soul itself could be torn apart until almost nothing remained, yet the Dragon Heart Scale could continue preserving the deepest spiritual imprint of the Dragon within itself.

Given enough power, the proper method and someone capable of awakening what slept inside it, those preserved fragments could be used to reconstruct the soul, restore their bloodline and eventually rebuild a living body around the Dragon’s original existence.

For Dragons, their reincarnation itself was therefore deeply connected to the Dragon Heart Scale.

A Dragon whose Scale remained alive possessed an anchor preventing its soul from completely disappearing into the cycle of death.

Even if reincarnation had already begun, the surviving Dragon Heart Scale could retain enough of the original spiritual imprint to call that existence back, reunite scattered fragments of soul and restore the Dragon as its former self even with all its powers (although not awakened) rather than allowing it to be reborn as someone/something entirely different.

This was why ancient Dragons guarded their Dragon Heart Scales more fiercely than almost any treasure and touching one was unforgivable!

The Core contained what the Dragon had accumulated throughout its life, the tremendous power of its body, cultivation and elemental might.

The Heart Scale preserved who that Dragon actually was.

To lose one could ruin a Dragon’s body and power. To lose the other could threaten its transformations, natural defenses, soul, bloodline, survival and even the possibility of returning after death.

The Zone Lord had been draining both, feeding upon the Dragon Lady from opposite ends of her existence. The Dragon Core supplied the accumulated power of her living body, stripping away years of her Dragon Essence, elemental strength, physical vitality and the tremendous force sustaining her true form, while the Dragon Heart Scale fed it something far more precious.

Had the Zone Lord completely exhausted her Core, the Dragon Lady could have been left physically ruined and stripped of nearly everything she had cultivated.

Had it completely extinguished the Dragon Heart Scale, there might eventually have been nothing left to save.

The Zone Lord had discovered that killing her would waste the meal.

So the bastard had turned a young Dragon into food that regenerated.

’Unforgivable!’

The System had been brutally clear about how that ended.

At the rate her Dragon Core, life force and Heart Scale were being consumed, she only had a few months before there would no longer be enough of her left to recover.

Phei remembered standing below that ancient prison with his hands slowly tightening while the tendrils continued to pulse. He had been searching for some way to remove her without bringing half the abyss down upon them when he remembered one of his notifications; that one ability!