Chapter 131: The Baptism of Golden Blood and the Awakening of the Gene (Part 1)
The Throne Room was plunged into an artificial and suffocating gloom, hermetically sealed by the ancient isolation arrays that Cedric had instinctively forced active. There was no sound. Not even the howl of the frigid wind outside managed to penetrate the thick obsidian walls. Only the accelerated, arrhythmic, and heavy heartbeats of the newly forged warriors kneeling before the immense dais could be heard.
Samael Morningstar, sitting on the Dragon Throne with his immovable posture, observed them in silence. His violet eyes gleamed in the darkness, evaluating the vessel before pouring in the true poison of evolution.
It was then that the translucent reality of the System blinked across his retina.
[Ding. New skill available from the Primordial Dragon Bloodline.]
[Active Skill / Ritual: "Legacy of the Golden Blood"]
Description: As the Progenitor and Sovereign of the bloodline on this plane, your essence is not just fuel for power; it is a Seed of Evolution.
Patriarch's Bond: Allows the granting of a drop of Primordial Blood Essence to a subordinate or direct family member.
Effect on the Recipient: Awakens, purifies, or rewrites the latent bloodline of the target. Cultivation talent is drastically elevated, breaking the limits of the species, and unlocking supreme physical traits (void scales, horns of domination, elemental blood) that were previously inactive or nonexistent.
The Bond of Loyalty: Forges a permanent telepathic and biological connection. The Progenitor can sense the vital status of their heirs regardless of distance and, in critical moments, project their Sword Intent or the weight of their True Laws through their bodies to protect them or annihilate threats by remote control.
Transfusion Cost (Temporary Penalty): Each time the Progenitor extracts and grants this Blood Essence, their own Qi recovery and maximum offensive capacity are severely slowed down temporarily. However, in the long term, the System will return this karmic sacrifice by multiplying the purity of their own base bloodline (Retribution Multiplier x10,000).
Samael read the runes of light. The silence of the room was broken by a smile.
It wasn't a warm or paternal smile; it was a malicious, sharp smile, loaded with an ambition that defied the heavens. For an instant, the Sovereign lost absolute control of his containment. His aura, the crushing Primordial Void, was unleashed.
The pressure was so immense that the physical space in front of the throne rippled violently, distorting the light as if an invisible earthquake were shaking the fabric of reality. The six founding Elders, Lilith, Seraphina, and the kneeling elite held their breath, their hearts skipping a beat. They wondered, gripped by panic and reverence, what fleeting thought had crossed their King's mind for him to unleash a pressure that threatened to crush them all.
Realizing his own overflow, Samael instantly retracted the aura. Space smoothed out, and gravity returned to normal.
Samael leaned forward, resting his elbows on his obsidian kneepads, and looked at the youths who formed the vanguard of his empire.
"Good," Samael said, his deep voice echoing with the calm that precedes the end of the world. "You already have the Law Seeds in your cores. When you reach the Saint Realm, you will already have a clear path, a highway to true divinity, thanks to the resources I have provided you. As long as you do not let yourselves be consumed by laziness... something which, I assure you, I will not allow."
Samael extended his hand, pointing to the Codices still pulsing within the auras of those present.
"And now, each of you possesses a Divine Codex. Ancient knowledge that will accompany you for centuries, and which has turned you into creatures far more monstrous than you were this morning. But you are missing something else. Something that most of you already possess slumbering deep in your marrow, with the exception of Altair and little Elara... though that is a biological error I am about to easily correct."
Samael paused. His violet eyes turned cold, evaluating if the souls of his disciples would break under the weight of his next promise.
"But you must ask yourselves if you are prepared for the pain this entails. And let me be absolutely clear: the suffering that comes next will make everything you have experienced seem like child's play. The death battles against the Saint Grade Titan, the blood spilled in the Sea of Beasts, the tortures of the Pavilion of the Five Paths... none of those massacres remotely compare to the cellular hell you are about to go through."
Samael raised his chin.
"So I ask you only one question: Are you ready to stop being human once and for all?"
The kneeling warriors exchanged glances. There was no terror on their faces. There wasn't the slightest hint of backing down. In their pupils, altered by the Laws they had just assimilated, only a pure, feverish, and reckless emotion shone. They wanted to know what secrets the Sovereign kept, what heritage he was talking about.
Xylia (The Empress of Thunder) kept her head bowed, but an electric, excited gleam crossed her purple eyes. In her mind, the memories of her past life as a great sovereign felt distant and pale compared to the present. "I feel that since I was reborn in the ranks of this clan, I am infinitely stronger, more lethal than at the peak of my past life," thought Xylia, clenching her fists while blue static danced between her fingers. "With this family by my side, and under the mantle of a Patriarch whose mysteries seem to have no end, not only will I surpass the woman I once was... I will return to those higher realms and take my revenge on every single one of the wretches who betrayed me. I will drown them in lightning."
A few meters away, Cedric (The Heart of Steel), the regressor, analyzed Samael's words with the cold logic of an Emperor who had seen the end of the world. "What bloodline is the Patriarch talking about?" he wondered, his brain processing thousands of variables through his new Fractal Network. "In my past life, I don't remember having absolutely anything special in my blood. Not me, nor my siblings. I don't remember this clan hiding such an abyssal secret. Everything has tragically deviated from the script I knew." Cedric's face hardened. In his first life, he had been the sole survivor; everyone he loved had been massacred when the Valois scum exterminated them. That memory was an open sore on his soul. "But all of that is dead history. With me here, armed with the Laws of Arrays, I swear on my soul that no one will take this family from me again. I will go to the ends of hell to fetch the materials. I will impose a thousand... no, a hundred thousand Emperor Grade defensive formations. I will turn this Citadel into an impregnable anomaly. Not those Great Emperors from the other continents, nor the millennial monsters of the Central Court, will ever dare look at us."
Further ahead, Kael (Crimson Edge) breathed slowly to prevent the Flame of Purgatory from melting the stone beneath his knees. Samael's words about family and blood brought to mind a private conversation he'd had with his boss in the dark of night. Samael had hinted to him that, against all odds, his mother might still be alive in some distant corner of this rotten world. It was a longing Kael had buried in his chest since she disappeared when he was barely three years old. He almost couldn't remember her face or the sound of her voice anymore. "I swear I will find her," Kael promised himself, the magma veins in his arms pulsing with fury. "No matter what happens. Even if I have to use this sword to cut the vault of heaven in two, or descend and kill the guardians of the Underworld itself. I will find her and bring her back home."
And in the center of the formation, Violeta and Eris, the inseparable sisters of ice and ruin, turned their heads and exchanged a fleeting glance. An identical, nostalgic, and deep smile crossed their faces, defying the coldness of their new Laws.
Memory flowed back to them. A sunny afternoon from a past that seemed to belong to another life. There they were, very small, strolling through the gardens of the old compound. Walking beside them was a child Samael, a rowdy "chibi" with crossed arms and a frown, trying to look tough. The memory was crisp: Samael thumping his small chest with pride and raising his chin to his parents. "Don't worry, mother, father! I will take care of everything! I will always protect them, no one will ever hurt them! And if any idiot boy comes within ten meters of them, I'll beat him so hard not even his own mother will recognize him! Hahahaha!" In the memory, the blurry, warm, gigantic figure of their father gave Samael a gentle rap on the head. "Rascal, what are you talking about? If you let anyone undesirable get close to them, I'll hang you from the tallest tree in the backyard and whip you myself. You have to be better than that. No one must get close to your sisters, not even an inch." Their mother's crystalline laughter filled the air as they walked together, until the scene faded.
Both sisters smiled in the present, their eyes shining despite the spatial frost and black flames enveloping them. "Father, mother... are you watching us?" they thought in unison, looking at the imposing, terrifying, and divine figure of their older brother sitting on the throne. "Look at what he has become. Look at the empire he has raised from nothing. Look at our little niece Elara. Wherever you are, in the afterlife or in the stars, bless our swords and forgive our sins."
Samael observed the unwavering determination, the emotion, and the absolute loyalty shining in the twenty-one faces looking up at him. No one was going to back down. No one feared the promised pain.
The Sovereign of the Morning Star smiled, this time with genuine pride.
"Good. Since none of you have the common sense to flee... it is time, my little dragons, for you to wake from your long slumber."
The word dropped like an atomic bomb in the room.
Absolutely everyone present, including the experienced Elders, was stunned, jaws clenched and eyes wide. In the Hundred Empires of the continent, everyone knew the legends of the Dragons. They were mythical creatures, the undisputed epitome of power, the primordial race that ruled the cosmos before human gods. But never, even in their wildest delusions, had they suspected the Morningstar Clan to have a biological relation to them.
Of course, they'd had their doubts. They had seen the Patriarch's disturbing violet and crimson eyes. They had witnessed how, during the massacre against General Krow, Samael had unfurled immense wings of Void. But everyone assumed it was an arcane technique, a lost Sacred Art. To think that they themselves carried that genetic heritage slumbering in their veins was a concept too vast to process all at once.
Only Lilith (who knew her own Ash Phoenix bloodline) and Seraphina (who had glimpsed the truth through intimate conversations and her soul bond with Samael) maintained their composure at the revelation.
Samael gave them no time to process the existential shock. He stood up, and his voice cut through the stupor.
"Cedric. Xylia. Elara. Elowen. Lyra. Aylin. Altair."
The seven named snapped their heads up.
"Your conceptual power now belongs to that of a Semi-Saint," Samael said, his voice filling every millimeter of vacuum in the room, "but your flesh, your bones, and your blood remain a fragile mold of mortal clay. A dragon cannot live in a house of straw. The pressure of the Laws will eventually tear you apart. For true power to settle and take root... the house must be destroyed today, to be rebuilt tomorrow with divine iron."
The System flashed with red fury in the Dragon King's retina.
[ACTIVATING SUPERIOR FUNCTION: PRIMORDIAL BLOODLINE CONTROL]
[Execution Mode:] Forced Biological Awakening (Penetration Level: 5% - 10%).
[Probability of Extreme Pain and Cellular Trauma:] 100%.
[System Note:] The manipulation of supreme bloodlines permanently alters the DNA structure, forcing evolution through massive damage.
Samael did not use a knife. He raised his left hand and, using the cutting edge of his own Space Qi, made a deep slash through the obsidian gauntlets and his own flesh.
The blood that welled from the Sovereign's wound was not normal. It was a dense, heavy red, illuminated from within by brilliant, microscopic golden hues. A scent of ancient, wild power flooded the hall, drowning out the smell of ozone and ash.
Samael immediately felt the tremor in his Qi core. The karmic cost of the extraction hit him like an invisible hammer. An intense weakness ran through his meridians; he knew that, in that exact instant, if an enemy attacked, he wouldn't even be able to unleash seventy percent of his true offensive power. His regeneration had stalled, sacrificed on the altar of his family's evolution. But his face was an inscrutable iron mask. No one would notice his vulnerability.
With a fluid motion, Samael forced the blood from his wound to condense and separate in the air.
Twenty-one drops of pure Primordial Blood Essence floated above the steps, shining like miniature suns. With a wave of his hand, seven of those golden and crimson drops shot forward at the speed of light, stopping millimeters from the lips of the seven Pillars he had named.
"Swallow," the Dragon King ordered. The absolute command in his voice left no room for the instinct of self-preservation.
In unison, guided by a blind trust that superseded the fear of death, Cedric, Xylia, Elara, Elowen, Lyra, Aylin, and Altair opened their mouths and took the essences.
The effect was not gradual. There was no warm, celestial glow healing their bodies.
It was a biological detonation. A holocaust in their own bloodstreams.
The Baptism of Blood and the Deformation
The Primordial Dragon's blood clashed against the mortal human DNA and recognized it as an insult to nature. Immediately, Samael's essence began to destroy and devour the cellular structure of the seven, breaking them from the inside to rewrite their genome.
The collective scream that followed was not human; it was the agonizing howl of beasts being forcibly born, shattering their own bone shells.
Cedric (The Emperor of Seals), the stoic strategist who never showed pain, was violently thrown to the floor.
His body suffered an uncontrollable spasm. He clutched his throat and, with a wet, repulsive sound, began to vomit profusely. But what he expelled was not bile or red blood; he was vomiting a heavy, silvery liquid, identical to pure mercury, purging his body's weakness.
His hair, already silver, became stiff and sharp as steel wires. His eyes changed brutally: the pupil disappeared, leaving only an iris of a metallic, soulless steel-gray color. The features of his face sharpened, acquiring a cold, predatory elegance.
The drop of essence had awakened him as the Dragon of Metal and Arrays, reaching 10% purity.
Pain tore through his skull as his brain literally and anatomically stopped functioning organically. His neurons were forcibly converted into a hyper-density runic computing matrix. The Fractal Consciousness Network was born. Cedric, lying on the floor drooling mercury, felt his perception explode. Suddenly, he was processing ten thousand simultaneous combat variables. He could hear the blood flow of the guards kilometers away, he saw the weak points in the palace's masonry, and his Regressor brain began to calculate possible futures at a speed that burned his gray matter.
In his desperate attempt to stand up, his bloody hand grabbed one of the obsidian slabs on the floor. The instant his skin touched the rock, the Transmutation of the Golden Structure activated instinctively. The Law of Metal injected supreme Qi from his mercury blood into the stone. With a deafening metallic screech, the obsidian slab lost its crystal structure and transmuted before everyone's eyes into a perfect block of Indestructible Divine Steel. Cedric had gained absolute sovereignty over inanimate matter.
A few steps from Cedric's puddle of mercury, Xylia (The Empress of Thunder) was experiencing the ignition of her veins.
Her scream of agony was muffled because the blood in her throat literally reached the temperature of nuclear fusion. Her red bloodstream vaporized, being violently and painfully replaced by pure plasma.
Xylia's pale, luminous skin tore around her collarbones, shoulders, and forearms. From the open flesh sprouted not bone, but sharp, thick scales of condensed energy in the shape of crystallized blue lightning bolts that permanently embedded themselves in her body. Her purple eyes lit up with hyperactive electrical storms contained within her pupils. She had become the Imperial Thunder Dragon (10%).
The pain was so suffocating that Xylia opened her mouth to scream again. But what came out was not sound; it was the Frequency of the Sovereign Mandate. An invisible shockwave, propelled by the atomic vibration of thunder, swept the hall.
Outside the heavy doors, the elite Morningstar imperial guards standing watch fell stiff as boards. Xylia's non-verbal command—the cry of pain of her birth—had traveled through the static of the air, struck their nervous systems, and short-circuited their brains, causing total, instantaneous muscular paralysis out of pure instinctive terror.
At the same time, the agony in Xylia's limbs forced her newly mutated nerves to react. In a muted burst of cyan light, Xylia disappeared from her spot and materialized a meter further to the right, falling to her knees. Her Plasma Reaction Circuit had caused her to involuntarily teleport. Her mind and body now operated at "Light-Sonic" speed. Enemy bullets, arrows, and spells would move in extreme slow motion to her new dragon eyes.
But while Xylia accelerated, little Elara (The Frost Shadow) completely lost her anchor in the world of the living.
Unlike the others, Elara did not possess a natural latent bloodline; hers was artificially injected and forged from the direct drop of the Dragon King himself. When Samael's primary blood collided with the Codex of the Mist in her soul, Elara's anatomy surrendered to the paradox.
The little girl let out a weak whimper and collapsed, but she never hit the ground. Her physical body simply gave way and transformed into a dense cloud of frigid mist mixed with droplets of frozen blood floating in the air. Her eyes, now devoid of white, were two orbs of liquid silver-gray with terrifying vertical reptilian pupils floating like ghosts amidst the fog.
She had awakened as the Mist and Frost Dragon (10%).
Atmospheric Infiltration was not a technique she had to conjure; it was her new state of being. In battle, she would be the air itself. To breathe her would be to inhale thousands of microscopic ice crystals ready to cause a sudden embolism from inside the enemy's heart. And thanks to Samael's blood, the Heart of the Shadow Calm anchored her existence. She was experiencing a passive primordial immunity. Swords and kinetic magic would pass harmlessly through her body as long as she moved, making her the perfect untouchable assassin, a winter ghost born from the blood of the Morning Star.
Elara's ice was contrasted by the grotesque outburst of wild life.
Elowen (The Root of Life) fell face first, writhing as her internal organs seemed to bloom. The tears that welled from her luminous eyes were not saltwater; they were thick drops of a glowing emerald-green liquid. Her entire blood had turned into a dense, vital elixir.
The Wood and Alchemy Dragon claimed its domain.
Field Biological Transmutation lost control. Elowen's tears, her Universal Elixir Blood, fell upon the sterile obsidian of the hall. The second the liquid touched the dead stone, the miracle and the horror occurred. From the unbreakable stone violently burst dozens of immense, beautiful carnivorous flowers with petals like green steel razors, snapping their jaws in the air, instinctively trying to defend their "mother" from the pain. Elowen wasn't just a healer now; she saw enemy flesh as simple chemical reagents. A cut on her arm would cause the earth to bloom to devour her attacker.
Beside her, the sanity of the room threatened to fracture under Lyra's muffled scream.
The awakening of the Mist, Illusion, and Sound Dragon was a direct attack on the collective mind of the hall. As her body contorted under the genetic rewrite, Lyra unconsciously radiated the agonizing pain of her snapping nerves outward.
The Materialization of Delirium took effect. Elders Torian and Livia, closest to her, let out a groan and clutched their chests, feeling real, lacerating pain in their own ribs, even though no one had touched them. Their brains were being tricked, convinced by Lyra's biological presence that they too were suffering the mutation.
To worsen the nightmare, Lyra's contorted body was enveloped in a dense dark mist. The Mantle of the Nameless Mist. Looking at her, the features of Lyra's own face became blurry, unrecognizable. The Elders felt a chill of amnesia creeping through their memory, momentarily forgetting why they were in the throne room and who the screaming girl in front of them was. Lyra had become the bane of the battlefield; she could erase entire armies by erasing her identity and convincing them that their nightmares had physical mass.
Aylin (The Tempest of Thorns) did not collapse. She remained standing, clinging to her Wind Spear with both hands, her nails digging into the steel shaft until her fingers bled.
Her small 1.60m frame trembled violently. She laughed maniacally as thick tears fell down her cheeks. The pain of awakening the Wind, Earth, and Root Dragon was maddening. The white sclera of her beautiful eyes disappeared, devoured by a deep, predatory amber color, shining with the lethality of a primeval reptile.
Her Authority of the Symbiotic Ecosystem could not be contained. The ground beneath Aylin's boots exploded; sharp stakes of earth and stone rose like spears, while hurricane-force air currents swirled around her body at blade-like speeds, slicing her own clothes and scratching her skin, until her new bloodline imposed dominance and the living earth recognized its new empress, embracing her instead of hurting her.
And concluding the biological holocaust, the quietest, darkest, and most macabre mutation of all: Altair (The Lord of Entropy).
Unlike the convulsions, elemental outbursts, and muffled screams of his companions, Altair did not utter a single sound upon receiving the Drop of Primordial Essence. His mutation was not an explosion; it was a suffocating implosion, a slow-motion collapse into the absolute void.
The young warrior fell heavily onto his obsidian knees, but his face reflected no pain, only an apathy so profound he seemed to have died in that very instant. The Monarch of the Ash Dragon (8%) had begun to rewrite his genome.
To the naked eye, the change was horrendous and subtle. Altair's messy, gray hair lost all its vital luster, turning the color of dead ashes from a millennial fire. His skin, already pale, became translucent, revealing a network of veins that pumped not red blood, but a thick, black ichor that pulsed beneath his epidermis like a nest of coal snakes. Just beneath the surface of that deathly skin, patches of dry, lusterless black scales began to form, looking like fossilized necrotic tissue clinging to his muscles.
With a dry, macabre crack, the skin on his forehead tore on both sides. Two short, jagged horns, charred like burnt branches, sprouted painfully from his skull. Finally, when Altair opened his eyes, humanity had been completely erased. There was no white sclera, no iris, no pupil; his eyeballs had turned into two spheres of absolute matte black, devouring voids that reflected none of the room's light.
The Metabolism of Desolation activated furiously. The genetic rewrite was shredding Altair's human heart, threatening to kill him from biological shock. But his new bloodline did not feed on pure Qi to heal; it fed on the death of its surroundings.
Unconsciously, Altair's body began to inhale the destruction his companions were accidentally causing in the hall. He absorbed the energy from Cedric's toxic mercury, the residual heat of Xylia's lightning, Elara's lethal frost, the rot of Elowen's carnivorous plants, and Aylin's gravitational erosion. All that energy of degradation and ruin flowed into his chest in the form of threads of gray smoke. The more destruction there was around him, the more his own damaged tissue regenerated. The fibers of his shattered heart knitted back together, stronger, colder, reversing his own internal entropy at the cost of devouring the entropy of the world.
Slowly, Altair raised his trembling hands. Through his fingers flowed the Embrace of the Void. If at that moment his pale hands were to brush against a Saint Grade sword, the steel would rust and disintegrate into dust in a second. If he managed to place the palm of his hand on the forehead of a young enemy genius, the Seal of Decay would impose centuries of erosion in a blink, turning a prodigy into a decrepit old man with no energy to lift a weapon. Altair had become the hourglass of the end of the world, a calamity of infinite attrition that would never tire as long as there was death around him.