Ding!
A crisp system notification chid in Marcus’s ear.
"Player Stonehaven, please be advised: Although the Wyvern Saint Knight Lyanna holds you in high regard with an Intimacy Level of 85, you cannot engage in intimate contact until this level reaches 90 or higher. Warning: If you proceed with your current action, you will incur a system penalty."
’What the hell?’
Marcus almost choked on his own breath. His hand had been inches away from Lyanna’s slender fingers, close enough that he could practically feel the warmth of her skin. He had only ant to brush her hand, nothing outrageous, but just as he was about to close the distance, Lyanna’s brow tightened almost imperceptibly and the system’s cold, chanical warning cut through the mont like a blade.
He resisted the urge to curse out loud.
’This damned system.’
Lyanna was his retainer, bound to him, loyal to him, and yet he, her master, could not even touch her without permission from so invisible rulebook. The only reason was that their Intimacy Level had not reached 90. It was absurd.
Still, as irritating as it was, the notification revealed sothing important. Lyanna was not so unapproachable goddess locked behind an absolute wall, nor was she a mindless puppet that existed without thresholds. The barrier was nurical, asurable and reachable. Once their Intimacy Level crossed 90, things would change.
’And what about 95?’
Could he like... kiss her then?
The thought slipped into his mind uninvited. His imagination wandered a little further than it probably should have, and a slow, wolfish smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he looked at Lyanna. She stood there with her usual composed, frost-touched elegance, unaware or perhaps simply indifferent to the storm of calculations unfolding behind his eyes.
’You’re already mine,’ he thought, unbothered by her aloofness. Cold on the surface, perhaps, but that number did not lie.
After a few monts, Marcus finally pulled himself back to reality. Sothing else felt off.
Why hadn’t there been a system announcent?
Lyanna’s stats were terrifying. Even at a glance, she far surpassed his Grade 9 pet, the Shadow-Stained Gryphon King. Logically, she should have exploded onto the Pet Leaderboard and triggered a server-wide notification. Yet the world remained silent.
Unless the system had announced it without his consent?
His brows knitted together as he quickly opened the Pet Leaderboard.
"Impossible."
The number one position was still occupied by his Shadow-Stained Gryphon King. Lyanna’s na was nowhere in sight. Not second. Not third. Not buried sowhere further down the rankings. It was as if she did not exist at all, despite being bound to him and possessing power that bordered on divine.
Then it clicked.
A realization struck him so sharply that his pulse spiked. What if companions who were not stored in the Pet Space were excluded from the leaderboard entirely? If they were not categorized as conventional pets, perhaps they were not restricted by the sa summoning limitations either.
His heart began pounding.
"Shadow-Stained Gryphon King!"
At his call, darkness coalesced in a flash of shadowed light. A piercing cry split the air as the massive Gryphon King materialized above him, its wings beating powerfully as it circled overhead.
Marcus threw his head back and laughed. His guess had been right.
Lyanna did not occupy a Pet Storage Slot. More importantly, she was not bound by the rule limiting players to a single summoned pet. She could stand on the battlefield alongside the Gryphon King.
This was not an upgrade. It was a fundantal shift.
With himself, Lyanna, the Shadow-Stained Gryphon King, and his Temple Guardian Pebble, his combat strength had leapt to a completely different tier. Very few forces in Dreamland would dare stand in their way now.
Still grinning, Marcus walked toward the remains of the Spring of Purity.
What had once been a pristine, icy-blue spring was now a ruin. The circular basin had collapsed entirely, drained of its luminous waters and reduced to fractured stone and rubble. One of the Five Legendary Springs of Dreamland had been erased from existence.
His gaze swept the debris carefully and right then, sothing caught his eye.
A pet egg.
It lay half-buried among the shattered stone, obsidian-dark and faintly glowing with a nearly imperceptible black aura. It was so subtle that he might have missed it if he had not stepped close enough for the glow to brush against his senses.
’A pet egg inside the Spring of Purity?’
That alone felt bizarre. Springs did not lay eggs. At least, they were not supposed to. The entire situation felt steeped in so forgotten ritual or ancient secret. His thoughts imdiately jumped to Lyanna’s Divine Beast, the Glacier Ice Dragon.
Was it possible?
His breath quickened. A dragon pet would change everything. With a dragon under his command, becoming a true Dragon Knight would no longer be a fantasy.
Without hesitation, he urged his Nightmare Dragon Steed forward and leapt into the rubble. He crouched, brushed aside the stone fragnts, and lifted the egg into his hands.
The mont he examined it closely, his excitent cooled.
It was not a dragon egg, It was the egg of a Soul-Mist Water Demon Cat.
The system description appeared before him:
—
Soul-Mist Water Demon Cat Egg: Originally a Divine-tier beast, this creature lurks in shadows and places of Negative Energy, feeding on souls and dark demonic auras. It delights in slaughtering dark creatures and consuming the souls of light-aspected beasts, making it an exceptionally insidious and vile creature.
A thousand years ago, the Soul-Mist Water Demon Cat was captured by the Water Moon Cult. Using their secret arts and the pure Negative Energy of the Spring of Purity within the Mist Veil Palace, they attempted to refine it into a Super Divine Beast. At the final and most critical stage of the ritual, however, the Mist Veil Palace was besieged by the Dragon Dynasty. As the palace fell, the cultists sacrificed their lives to summon a tide of demonic creatures, abandoning the Soul-Mist Water Demon Cat within the Spring of Purity.
The ritual had been interrupted at the worst possible mont. The unstable demonic energy inside the cat spiraled out of control, and the countless souls it had devoured began tearing it apart from within. It was on the brink of self-destruction. Only by being cast into the Spring of Purity was it able to absorb the spring’s pure Negative Energy and slowly suppress the chaos.
After a millennium, it managed to avoid annihilation, but at a severe cost. It regressed into a pet egg, its power drastically diminished. It cannot hatch unless it consus the soul of a Grade 7 or higher dark-aspected beast. Even if successfully hatched, it will possess, at best, the strength of a Grade 8 pet
—
Marcus stared at the description for a long mont, unsure whether he should laugh or sigh.
A Divine-tier beast, once on the verge of becoming a Super Divine Beast, reduced to an egg that would hatch into a re Grade 8 pet. The fall from grace was almost tragic.
Then again, Grade 8 was far from weak.
He glanced at the Pet Leaderboard to steady his perspective. Aside from his own pet, the highest-ranked creatures were Grade 8, and there were only a handful of them across the entire server. Even the leaders of the most powerful guilds, with their wealth and influence, had struggled to secure a truly high-grade pet.
They were rare, painfully rare.
If he auctioned this egg, it would fetch a price comparable to a Guild Creation Token without question.
But the hatching requirent soured his mood.
Just like his Dark Violet Sky Dragon, this one ca with conditions. It could not simply be incubated and summoned. It required a soul, specifically the soul of a Grade 7 or higher dark-aspected beast.
He frowned.
"The soul of a Grade 7 or higher dark-aspected beast..."
He repeated the words quietly, turning them over in his mind. Killing a monster was one thing. Extracting its soul was another entirely. He had no idea where to even begin with sothing like that.
After a mont, he exhaled and shook his head. There was no use dwelling on it now.
He stored the Soul-Mist Water Demon Cat egg in his inventory and gave the ruins of the Spring of Purity one final, thodical sweep to ensure no other treasures had been overlooked. Only when he was satisfied did he turn his attention to the red Mythic Artifact still hovering steadily above the wreckage.
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