"Kale," Lazek said, his voice trembling with a dark and disturbing delight. "We are going to do great things with this monster of yours. Great, terrible things."
He reached for his tea again, his hand still shaking slightly, but his eyes never left Neo.
Neo didn’t flinch. The hydra sat on the tabletop, giving a wet huff from its central nose. Its six golden eyes tracked the man without blinking, cold and unimpressed. To the creature, Lazek wasn’t an intimidating authority figure; he was just an annoyance intruding on its space.
Lazek’s hand hovered in the air, dark energy coating his fingers. He reached forward, curious to touch the hydra’s scales and feel its four distinct hearts beat against his palm. He needed to understand how a Feral-rank creature could produce an aura dense enough to make his own carefully bred chimaeras look like cheap clay models.
Before his fingertips could touch the scales, a shadow cut across the table.
Kale stepped smoothly into the gap between them. His physical change was hard to ignore; he was taller now, his posture broader, and his pale green hair fell past his shoulders, catching the bright glare of the midday sun.
He didn’t draw his weapons or raise his voice. He simply stood there, hands resting near the daggers at his belt, eyes fixed on Lazek with quiet discipline. His expression carried no malice, only a clear line that could not be crossed.
Lazek paused. The dark mana around his fingers withered into nothing. He looked up at Kale, then glanced past his shoulder at the three-headed creature watching them from the table.
The manic edge in Lazek’s posture collapsed, replaced by a deep slump. He pulled back and sank into the wooden chair behind him. The teacup on his saucer rattled as he pulled his hands away.
"In the end, you still don’t trust me, do you?" Lazek sighed. It wasn’t a scolding, just a tired fact. He had poured resources, materials, and secrets into the boy, yet Kale remained closed off, an island wrapped in mysteries he refused to share.
Kale’s jaw tightened slightly. The stoic composure he maintained chipped for a second, letting a quick flash of guilt show through before he pulled it back.
He thought of his home village, Dagan, the smell of burning timber and screams cutting through dragon fire. He thought of the system notifications that had pulled him back from death, and the torture of over a million simulated iterations required to create Neo.
Those weren’t stories he could pass off over tea. They were heavy facts. Sharing them wouldn’t build trust; it would draw anyone nearby into the exact same crosshairs he was trying to dodge.
Neo gave one final dismissive hiss, beating its small wings and hopping off the table into a patch of sunlight near the balcony. The hydra curled its three necks together to rest, though one golden eye remained pinned on the Grandmaster.
"Sit down, Kale," Lazek said, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Kale pulled out the opposite chair and sat without a word. The chaos of the Beast Tide had cleared, the adrenaline had bled off, and the shock of his sudden growth had settled. Now came the interrogation.
Lazek leaned over the table, dark eyes fixed on Kale. "Are you going to explain where you got dragon blood? That creature over there isn’t just carrying a superficial trait. The marrow itself is altered."
He motioned toward Kale’s frame. "And look at you. You walked into the hatchery looking like a kid and came out looking five years older. Your hair changed colour, your muscle density changed, and your baseline mana tripled. How did you build that thing? Even my old master spent decades trying to force a stable dragon hybrid and failed. You did it in three weeks."
Kale looked past Lazek, his gaze drifting toward the dust floating in the sunbeams.
Silence stretched between them, filled only by Guild workers clearing debris in the courtyard below. Kale felt the heat of the Red Life Pill in his stomach, the flow of Hexarion blood in his veins, and the quiet hum of his link to Neo.
He brought his eyes back to Lazek, meeting his gaze directly.
"I can’t tell you, master," Kale said, his voice quiet but steady. "Not now."
Lazek took a long breath. He didn’t explode into a rage or slam his hands on the table. He simply closed his eyes, having expected the answer. He knew how Kale operated. The kid calculated every step and buried every card until forced to play it. Squeezing answers out of him right now was a waste of breath.
"I can’t give you the process," Kale said, softening his tone slightly. "But I can give you something else. Something you’ll get far more use out of than an explanation."
Lazek opened his eyes, his exhaustion giving way to curiosity.
Kale reached into his spatial pouch, withdrawing a small vial of reinforced glass. Inside, five thick drops of deep red fluid glowed with a faint gold light. Even sealed inside glass, a pulse of heat washed off the vial, causing the quiet mana in the room to ripple like water.
Pure Dragon’s Blood.
Lazek’s breath hitched. As a Master Fleshcrafter, he felt its biological pressure. It was pristine, uncorrupted by the decay that usually ruined a dragon’s body after death. His fingers twitched as he stared at the glass. To someone who worked with flesh and genetics, this substance could overwrite biological limits.
Before Lazek could speak, Kale set several storage containers on the table. Inside were dozens of glittering beast eggs, pulled directly from the Swamp Hatchery during the panic, rare species that hadn’t been seen in local markets for years.
Lazek stared at the containers, his mind struggling to process the layout. The eggs were a fortune on their own. But the vial sitting next to them was absurd. A young apprentice holding pure Dragon’s Blood violated every rule of the craft.
Lazek’s thoughts raced, trying to piece together a timeline. He recalled reports from the Ebon Viscounty, the destruction of regional outposts, and sudden movements from the Church. But he lacked a crucial piece: he had no idea a Red Dragon had descended on Kale’s home village.
In Lazek’s mind, there was no logical path connecting a low-ranking boy to a Tyrant-rank dragon. The only reasonable conclusion was that Kale had stumbled across an ancient cache left behind by some forgotten Tamer. The idea that Kale had stood over the dragon’s corpse was too ridiculous to consider.
Seeing the gears turning behind Lazek’s eyes, Kale smoothly changed the subject. "Did you speak with Renard?"
Lazek let out a dry breath and leaned back. "It turns out the Prince knows considerably more about my own apprentice than I do. He seemed exceptionally pleased with himself about it, too."
Kale felt his jaw tighten. ’That royal bastard couldn’t keep his mouth shut.’ He could picture Renard smirking, throwing out half-vague hints just to make himself look important.
Kale stayed silent, staring down at the table, unable to look Lazek in the face.
Guilt settled in his gut. Lazek had saved him after the Umbra Stalker attack, poured millions of Accredit into his training, and shielded him from Guild bureaucracy. Lazek was the closest thing to a mentor he had, yet Kale treated him like a threat to manage.
Lazek noticed the change in Kale’s posture, the slight drop in his shoulders, the quiet tension in his hands.
He stood up from the table and smoothed down his grey coat.
"Master," Kale said, standing up as well. "I give you my word, bound to my sigil. I will tell you everything. Every step of the evolution, every material, and every method. The moment I reach the rank of Lord Tamer."
Lazek paused near the centre of the room. He didn’t turn around. Reaching Lord Tamer took decades. By setting that condition, Kale was promising that once he stood as an equal, he would share the truth.
"We head into the deeper forest tomorrow," Lazek said, his voice functional again. "At dawn. Be ready at the gates. You need practical combat experience with your new build, and that hydra needs to fight something real."
He grabbed the vial and containers and walked toward the door. As he stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut, a small grin touched the edge of his mouth.
Lazek hadn’t made Grandmaster by being stupid. He knew Kale wasn’t withholding information out of disrespect. The kid was caught in circumstances too volatile to speak aloud without burning everything down.
Standing in the quiet corridor, Lazek slipped the glass vial into the inner pocket of his coat. His fingers trembled against the fabric, but not from frustration.
With this blood, and a disciple capable of engineering impossible anomalies, the overwhelming strength of the Dragon Church wasn’t an unyielding wall anymore. It was just a dangerous problem waiting to be solved.