Leo ignored Kanna after that, leaving her floating in the bubble behind him as he flew deeper into the castle.
The fire lotus's shockwave had left the interior in rough shape. Collapsed walls, gaping holes, rubble everywhere. Broken statues, fallen armor, and objects that must have once hung on the walls lay scattered across the floor like wreckage from a disaster.
Leo kept his magical detection fully deployed, sweeping every corner of the castle. What he found surprised him.
Gold. Gemstones. Rare minerals. Ancient weapons. Books that would make a collector weep. Treasures that would drive people mad with greed lay strewn about like garbage, discarded in random corners.
If he'd been an adventurer or archaeologist, he'd have spent weeks in here. But none of it mattered right now. He needed a way out of the Dimensional Gap. Everything else was worthless.
He passed through the corridor and entered a great hall. From here, the castle branched out. Multiple passages led left and right, dozens of rooms lined the walls, and a grand open staircase at the far end curved upward to a second floor, then continued deeper. The layout was European nobility in style, except scaled up to dragon proportions.
"The architecture looks human, but the scale is built for dragons. Strange."
Leo didn't dwell on it. He began a thorough exploration of the castle, checking every corridor, entering every room, and collecting the scattered books along the way.
During rest breaks, he read through them, searching for useful information. He'd been worried the text might be in an unknown script, but as he flipped through the pages, he realized the language was familiar.
Dragon script.
Fortunately, Leo could read it. A devil who'd found him early on and confirmed his Eligos bloodline had insisted that a proper noble must know at least three languages: human, devil, and dragon. Leo had thought it was a waste of time back then. Devils had an innate ability that automatically translated spoken language for both speaker and listener, so learning to read foreign scripts seemed pointless.
But noble education was noble education. He'd learned it anyway.
Now he was glad he had.
Through the books, Leo finally pieced together the castle's history.
This castle had once belonged to a nation called the Kingdom of Familion. It was their royal palace.
Familion was a human kingdom with deep ties to dragonkind.
According to the records, Familion had originally been a tiny, impoverished country, constantly ravaged by monsters. Its people had been driven to the brink of extinction.
To save his kingdom, Familion's first king traveled far and wide seeking aid. Eventually, through means unknown, he decided to pray to a Dragon God, hoping for divine protection.
Somehow, he succeeded. A Dragon God descended upon his kingdom.
"Seriously?"
Leo was skeptical.
He knew exactly what a Dragon God was.
Dragons were recognized as the most powerful living creatures. Gods were the most exalted beings in existence. Normally, the two had nothing to do with each other. But when a dragon achieved godhood, when a being that could be called a Dragon God appeared, it shook the world.
A Dragon God was the absolute apex of dragonkind. Even the Heavenly Dragons and Dragon Kings bowed before one.
The world's power structure was clear: Low-Class Devils at the bottom, scaling up through Mid-Class, High-Class, Ultimate-Class, and Maou-Class, then Super Devil, and finally God-Class beings at the level of gods and chief gods. Dragon Kings fell somewhere between Ultimate-Class and Maou-Class depending on their strength. The Heavenly Dragons matched God-Class beings, capable of rivaling the chief gods of major mythologies.
But above even that, three beings existed on an entirely different plane.
One was Trihexa, the apocalyptic beast sealed by the God of the Bible at the cost of his own life. In canon, after Trihexa was released, every major faction had to join forces to create a pocket dimension and trap it inside, with chief gods and leaders constantly attacking it. Estimates said it could take ten thousand years to destroy it. That war became known as the Eternal Battle.
And even Trihexa was only sub-Dragon God level.
The true Dragon Gods numbered exactly two.
Great Red. The True Red Dragon God Emperor, the Apocalypse Dragon. A crimson dragon born of dreams, master of dreams, capable of seeing the desires in others' hearts. The strongest being in existence.
And Ophis. The Infinite Dragon God, the Ouroboros Dragon. The serpent that devoured its own tail, symbol of infinite cycles, born from the void of nothingness itself. Chaos. Infinity. The Void.
These two stood at the absolute pinnacle. Every chief god and divine king across every mythology fell short. If either one appeared in the world, the combined forces of all mythological factions couldn't stop them.
Great Red was the stronger of the two. It had driven Ophis, who was born in the Dimensional Gap, out of the Gap entirely, then took up residence there as its guardian.
And this being had supposedly descended upon a tiny, dying kingdom?
As Leo read further, he was stunned to find that the account was probably real.
The book recorded:
"On that day, the sky split open, revealing a gateway to the World of Nothing."
"There, the crimson True Dragon descended to earth."
"The King called it the Dragon among Dragons, the God among Dragons, and offered devout worship."
"The Dragon God was pleased with the King's devotion and bestowed a blessing."
"Thus, the Kingdom received its most precious treasure."
Leo understood now. The Dragon God that had descended upon Familion was Great Red.
Great Red had always roamed the Dimensional Gap. It was the crimson dragon recorded in the Book of Revelation. The description in the books matched perfectly.
"The most precious treasure..."
Leo had a feeling this treasure was what Kanna had been talking about. The thing inside the castle that made her stronger just by being near it.
The subsequent records confirmed it. After receiving the Dragon God's blessing, the Familion royal family produced descendants with dragon blood, naturally powerful from birth. Those descendants wielded the Dragon God's treasure and exterminated every monster in the kingdom.
From then on, the Familion royals were known as the Descendants of the Red Dragon. Only those with the purest bloodline and greatest power could control the treasure and claim the throne.
For countless years, Familion expanded its territory and defeated powerful enemies, riding on dragon blood and dragon treasure. Its influence was unmatched.
But nothing lasted forever. Drunk on its own violence, Familion eventually drew the ire of multiple factions, who joined forces to destroy it. The kingdom fell.
In its final moments, the royal family sealed the last of their dragon bloodline and the dragon treasure within the palace. Then they performed a ritual to carve out the land surrounding the palace and cast it into the Dimensional Gap.
They believed that the last heir, bearing the dragon treasure, would eventually encounter the Dragon God again in the Gap, be freed from the seal, and return to the world someday.
"That never happened, though."
Leo closed the book and exhaled.
He'd finally learned the castle's history. But the Kingdom of Familion didn't appear in any historical records he knew of. This kingdom must have existed so far in the past that even devil history, which spanned the ancient Great War, had no mention of it.
Which meant this castle had been drifting through the Dimensional Gap for an incomprehensible amount of time, never encountering Great Red, or at least never earning the Dragon God's attention.
None of that was Leo's concern.
He only cared about one thing: getting out.
"If Familion had the ability to cut out a piece of land and send it into the Dimensional Gap, they must have had the technology to open a path through the dimensional wall."
That was what Leo needed.
"Could it be somewhere in this castle?"
With renewed urgency, Leo explored even more thoroughly, collecting every book, reading every page, extracting every scrap of useful information.
Days passed without results.
By then, he'd explored nearly the entire castle.
"All that's left is the top floor."
Leo flew upward, bringing the sleeping Kanna along in her bubble prison, and arrived at the castle's highest level.
There was only one room up here: the throne room.
Leo had already found this place earlier, but he hadn't been able to enter.
The door simply wouldn't open.