Chapter 392: Dutiful Claire

She began to pace slowly around him.

"You could loosely say that they both use the exact same energy in completely different ways, but the core concept is entirely similar," she explained. "It is the extraction of raw emotions. And mortal emotions carry immense weight, and also raw, volatile energy. This extracted emotion can work exactly like a fuel source."

She looked back at him with a smile.

"When perfectly combined with ambient mana, it can be harvested and refined, and this specific mixture grants them their ’divine’ strength," she continued. "It is not exactly a fully renewable resource, at least not as easily renewable as standard atmospheric mana is, but it is extremely valuable to them."

She stopped pacing.

"But as for your second question about whether the Angels and the Demons know the full extent of your capabilities?" she mused. "I would say that they only have their guesses, just like I do. You have the unprecedented, terrifying power to control entire Dungeons in the palm of your hand. And these Dungeons that are currently under your control can easily be forced to send endless waves of monsters out into the world."

She gave him a knowing look.

"It is pretty easy for them to put two and two together," she pointed out. "You don’t exactly need to train a massive, expensive army of knights to take over a neighboring territory. If you wanted to, you could easily just send thousands of rabid monsters out to slaughter the defenders, and then cleanly deal with the aftermath by walking your soldiers in to rebuild the place once everything is completely destroyed."

Her expression softened slightly.

"But I am genuinely glad that you did not choose to walk that path until now," she said softly. "Whatever the actual reason may be... whether you are just being incredibly cautious about exposing your full power or not, it really does not matter to me. Because every single human life that is not thrown away meaninglessly for conquest is a precious life saved."

Her golden eyes glowed faintly.

"If you ever blindly sent hordes of monsters out into the various territories, then a lot of innocent people might die terribly in the crossfire. And I do not wish to ever see that happen to my world."

She raised her hand slowly, her open palm facing him.

"There are strict, binding limits placed on us Dragons, exactly like there are strict limits placed on the Angels and the Demons," she said. "And let me just quickly give you a little bit of important, tactical information that you might like to know before I send you off."

She smiled playfully.

"The Angels rely entirely on the system of mortal Apostles," she revealed. "Meanwhile, the Demons rely on the system of Avatars."

Before Adrian could even open his mouth to ask what the hell an ’Avatar’ was, his vision instantly went black.

Adrian opened his eyes and found himself sitting right back inside his dark, empty underground dungeon room.

He just sat there on his steel runic plate, looking around at the wide, empty stone walls enclosing him. He let out a long, exhausted breath and just shook his head before finally standing up and walking out of the room.

As he crossed the threshold and walked into the hallway, the steel plate on the floor behind him completely vanished back into his storage ring.

Adrian casually walked up the winding stairs. But instead of going straight back to his master bedroom to sleep, he walked right out the front doors of the mansion.

He took a long breath. His body finally felt normal again. The advanced runic array had done its job perfectly, stitching his shattered mana veins back together much faster than he had originally anticipated. There was still a faint, dull ache deep in his chest whenever he drew too much ambient mana at once, but it was completely manageable. He could walk without stumbling and he could talk without feeling like his jaw was gonna fall off.

He walked down the short stone steps of his compound.

As he walked outside toward the open training fields, he noticed three familiar figures sitting together on a long wooden bench right next to the mansion’s perimeter wall.

It was Claire, Serena, and Aria.

They were all facing the empty training field, looking like they were busy talking about something important. Adrian casually stuffed his hands into his pockets and started walking over to them.

Before he could even get close enough to show himself, Aria suddenly turned around. It was almost like she had a built in radar specifically tuned sense him if he got near her.

She smiled brightly and hopped off the bench.

"Papa, you’re here!" Aria cheered.

Adrian smiled warmly. He walked over to her and gently placed his hand on top of her head, ruffling her soft hair.

Claire and Serena stopped their conversation and looked up at him from the bench.

"Are you done with that thing you said you wanted to do?" Serena asked, looking him up and down to check for any lingering injuries.

Adrian nodded slowly.

"Yeah. I wanted to talk to the Goddess of Prosperity," Adrian answered honestly. "There was just way too much on my mind right now. I needed some answers."

Claire tilted her head. "Is the news good or bad?"

"Well, I guess it’s a mix of both good and bad," Adrian sighed. "But it’s whatever. I’ll figure it out."

Claire leaned back against the wooden bench and crossed her arms.

"Well, luckily, our current situation is slightly better right now," Claire reported, instantly slipping back into her role as general. "We got the latest scout reports an hour ago. Thanks to the fact that the Avarice Kingdom completely used up most of their able bodied men just to make that weird, artificially enhanced F-rank army of theirs, they didn’t really have a reserve force left to defend their actual borders."

She smirked slightly.