A cold, shimring light rippled across the void as Lucia summoned his status ledger within the gray quiet of the mory Battlefield.
Na: Luciassax
Race: Ancient Dragon (Royal Lineage)
Level: 152
Attributes: Vigor 40 ( 10), Mind 30, Endurance 15 ( 15), Strength 31 ( 15), Dexterity 25 ( 5), Intelligence 30, Faith 30, Arcane 30
Skills: Ancient Dragon Combat Techniques (Beginner), Storm Swordsmanship (Interdiate), Dragon King's Body (Tier 2), Claw of Ruin (Tier 2), Dragon Lightning Incantation (Interdiate), Golden Tree Incantation (Interdiate), Fundantalist Incantation (Beginner)
Special Ability: Cradle Blessing
Legendary Abilities: Dragon Bloodline Inheritance (Unlocked), mory Battlefield (Unlocked), ??? (Locked)
Over the previous moon, he had logged dozens of frantic, grinding exhibitions inside the brackets of the Lower District. While the absolute majority of those bouts concluded in seamless tactical victories for his "Lucifer" persona, he inevitably ran afoul of a few desperate cutthroats who attempted to split his skull with hidden toxics or illegal blades.
Surviving the gauntlet had yielded four spendable attribute points, all of which he imdiately channeled into his most glaring operational weakness: Dexterity. Concurrently, his Dragon King's Body had advanced to its second tier, remarkably granting a flat five-point feedback bonus to his Dexterity, finally hoisting the tric into an average, acceptable register.
Storm Swordsmanship and Dragon Lightning, functioning as his primary martial engines during public brawls, had achieved massive breakthroughs. Accelerated by the raw resistance of the Colosseum and his relentless, nightly duels with Samuel, both skills had successfully broken into the Interdiate rank a fortnight past.
His newly acquired Golden series incantations were entirely the byproduct of Miquella's daily companionship. Once the analysis trics for the young prince breached the ten percent milestone, unlocking the Rembrance Battle Mode, the ntal projection of the child within the starry void beca Lucia's secondary private taskmaster. Alongside Samuel, the phantom Empyrean was forced into a relentless schedule, drilling Lucia through the watches of the night without a single turn of rest.
Practicing against the living god by day and trading steel with his echo by night, Lucia watched Miquella's analysis percentage soar. His command over the Erdtree's light grew systematically, with the Golden Tree Incantation breaking through as his third interdiate skill three days prior.
As for his stagnant Ancient Dragon Combat Techniques, it wasn't a failure of diligence. The reality was that the scope of the lineage was simply too vast. The codex encompassed a sprawling matrix of martial skills engineered by the Sky City elders, centuries of combat forms stolen from the Storm Dynasty, the primordial thods of the Farum beastn, and even the industrial hamr-styles of the Misbegottens. Crucially, a full third of the curriculum required an operator to be conford to their full, colossal draconic morphology. Given his operational reality within the capital walls, Lucia focused his daily physical drills strictly on his human and semi-dragonized states; he lacked the space to unfold forty ters of wings. Elevating that particular ledger would take years of patience.
Happily, within his semi-dragonized form, his raw physical attributes had almost entirely eclipsed Samuel's baseline. Even his previous structural deficit in Dexterity was now only a fraction lower than the Apostle's. Though he remained thoroughly outmatched by the older killer's master-level finesse, the sheer kinetic density of his Tier 2 Dragon King's Body and Claw of Ruin allowed him to consistently trade his own clinical death for a mortal wound against his opponent, driving the analysis tracker powerfully toward the fifty percent threshold.
Against Miquella's phantom inside the arena, the arithtic was reversed: Lucia consistently claid the tactical upper hand through brute physical mass, yet the boy's pair of high-tier Golden miracles were an absolute nightmare. In desperate straits, the projection would detonate a localized flare of pure grace, forcing a mutual destruction or occasionally seizing an unexpected victory out of thin air.
Ultimately, mutual annihilation comprised a full seventy percent of their rembrance ledger. Miquella secured solitary survival in ten percent, and Lucia walked out of the sand alive in a re twenty.
Currently, the analysis tracker for the young prince sat at thirty-seven percent. When the progress had cleared the twenty percent node, the battlefield had presented a choice of three distinct rewards:
Gain Golden Divine Power equivalent to 20% of current total Faith trics.Triple Rings of Light.Erdtree Heal.
The initial option would have instantly fused a fifth of pure, high-tier Golden Faith into his soul, imnsely accelerating his Fundantalist casting. The secondary and tertiary choices represented the absolute pinnacle of Radagon's geotric laws and Marika's life incantations, respectively—miracles that would normally require a year of grueling archival research to decode.
After a brief calculation, Lucia had selected Erdtree Heal.
While an instant twenty-percent infusion of Golden Faith was a glittering temptation, his internal power system was still within its primary accumulation phase. The draconic lightning and primordial vitality coiling within his marrow were only beginning to map their permanent architecture; forcing a highly refined, foreign divine energy into the mix risked corrupting his original trics. Triple Rings of Light offered massive, area-denial offensive value, but in terms of single-target destructive capability, it couldn't compete with the absolute, flesh-rending line of the Claw of Ruin.
But Erdtree Heal rewrote his survival paraters completely:
[Erdtree Heal: The supre restorative miracle of the Golden Lineage, containing the absolute, un-fused Law of Life. Fully reconstructs the physical and ntal state of all blessed entities within the casting paraters—restoring vitality, spiritual energy, divine power, and muscle density. Legend dictates the Eternal Queen once dropped this grace onto a champion on the precipice of absolute dissolution, reversing the ledger of life and death.]
In the reality of the Lands Between, the spell wasn't a dry chanic that simply refilled a health bar. It was an absolute alchemical reset. Combined with the skeletal defense of his Dragon King's Body and the permanent, passive nding of the Cradle Blessing, this miracle transford Lucia into a terrifying engine of attrition. Even among the ancient heroes of the dynasty, his survivability had entered an outstanding register.
If I can unearth the ninth-tier Indestructible Scale later down the line... he thought, a cold thrill passing through his chest. The math is too beautiful.
Centuries ago, ancient Fortissax had relied on a re eighth-tier Indestructible Scale to face-tank Godwyn's forces while the latter was actively tethered to the raw power of the Erdtree. At the ninth tier, a dragon could likely take a direct, localized teorite of Astel or an absolute Scarlet Aeonia to the teeth and walk away with minor scratches.
He locked his future progression path: raise his remaining foundational skills to interdiate rank, force his transformation tier and claws into their third evolution, and then initiate the direct cultivation of the Indestructible Scale and Void Wings. Once an opportunity manifested to wrest the secrets of the Aspects of the Crucible from Samuel or a Fla Chieftain, he would initiate research into the Imasurable Tail.
Lucia cleared his mind, exiting the gray arena to return to his physical flesh. The oak panels of his bedchamber had barely settled before a handmaid rapped against the wood, reporting that the twin Empyreans had cleared the outer courtyard checkpoints and were currently waiting within the inner gardens.
Lucia nodded, instructing the servant to fetch a crate of sweet honey-pastries from the kitchens for Malenia before stepping out into the arcade. When he was still dozens of paces from the main veranda, the high, joyful laughter of the little girl playing with Shirley wove through the stone columns.
Yet, before his boots could clear the final archway, a small silhouette materialized from the corridor ahead. It was Miquella. The boy's features lacked their usual serene, courtly composure; his pale forehead was tight with a rare, intense strain. The mont his eyes registered Lucia's silver locks, a visible relief washed across his shoulders.
"Lucia, forgive my unannounced arrival," Miquella whispered, his voice tight and hurried. "I bypassed the protocol today because our house is facing a variable I must share with you imdiately."
Tracing his tense posture and matching it against the recent dispatches from the south, Lucia's mind locked onto the incoming current. He stepped into Miquella's space, dropping a heavy, relaxed palm onto the young prince's shoulder with a bright, confident laugh. "Drop the court anxieties, brother. We've shared too many duels to stand on protocol. Whatever storm is clearing the ridge, my shield stands beside your own. Co, let us find a quiet room and map the board."
Miquella let out a slow breath, his eyes steadying. "My thanks, Lucia."
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