Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 3028: Next Destination

The royal cemetery rested atop a quiet hill overlooking Ouroboros, marked only by a single pillar of black stone engraved with ancient serpent script.

Silva.

Emery placed a beautiful yellow flower at the foot of the monument before standing beside Shinta, and together they remained before the gravestone in silence.

A gentle breeze drifted across the hillside, stirring their robes as old memories surfaced unbidden. Below them, the palace’s towering spires shimmered beneath the pale afternoon sun, but neither of them looked away from the name carved into the black stone.

The silence lingered for a long time before Emery finally spoke.

"I’m sorry," he said quietly. "I should have come more often."

His gaze remained fixed on the monument as though expecting an answer that would never come.

After a long pause, Shinta slowly began to speak. She talked about her years at the academy, about the troublesome students she had recently begun teaching, the friends she had made, and eventually, with no small amount of embarrassment, about a certain young man who had become important to her.

By the end, her voice had become little more than a whisper.

"I wish you were here, Mother."

The words disappeared into the wind.

Neither of them spoke again. Shinta’s eyes slowly grew moist as the breeze lifted a few loose strands of silver hair across her face, while Emery simply stood beside her, sharing the silence without trying to fill it.

Eventually, they turned away together and began walking down the hillside.

Halfway to the palace, Emery came to a stop.

Shinta looked back at him, a knowing smile already forming on her lips.

"Do you want some company?"

Emery smiled faintly and shook his head.

"No. I wouldn’t dare steal any more of your time from your grandmother."

"Alright then." She shrugged playfully. "Have fun, I guess."

She continued down the hill, glancing back over her shoulder only once.

By then, Emery had already vanished.

####

Far across the quadrant, a Khaos Waypoint silently tore open in the darkness of space.

The Night Raven ship emerged from the spatial passage before accelerating toward a new destination as its navigation array locked onto a single set of coordinates.

It was not Faulen Planet, where the Serpent Supreme supposedly resided.

Instead, the vessel headed somewhere else entirely.

Emery’s objective had not changed.

He was still searching for Ronan Faulen, but this time he carried a clearer understanding of what had happened to the Serpent Supreme over the past few decades.

It all traced back to the Supreme Gene Project.

Ronan Faulen’s lifelong ambition.

The very project Emery himself had once promised to help complete.

Among the twelve half-blood races, gene research stood above every other discipline—above alchemy, formation mastery, and artifact refining. It was the foundation of their origins, the key to understanding and advancing their bloodlines.

For centuries, each of the twelve races had pursued that research in isolation, guarding every discovery as a closely protected secret. Yet among them, the Serpent clan had always been the most ambitious, devoting countless generations of wealth, talent, and lives to a single, uninterrupted pursuit.

Emery understood that ambition better than most.

It was, in part, the reason his wife, Silva, had died.

It was also the reason his daughter had once been taken from him.

Following the massive incident on Faulen Planet, Emery had made a promise. Together with the Serpent and Wolf clans, he helped establish the Utopia Gene Center, a unified research institute that gathered genetic material from every half-blood race, including the insectoids, who had never before been invited to participate in such an endeavor.

Within only a few years, the project had surpassed what the Serpent faction alone had accomplished across centuries of solitary research.

Then, at the height of its success, Emery disappeared into the Tartarus realm.

During his absence, the astonishing progress of the Utopia Gene Center attracted attention it had never intended to draw. Even the four greatest bloodline factions—the Dragon, Bird, Turtle, and Tiger—began taking notice of results that should have been impossible to achieve in so little time.

Old alliances, dormant for centuries, quietly reformed.

Little by little, the project slipped from the Serpent faction’s control and was absorbed into the Half-Blood Alliance, its laboratories relocated to a new facility on the Dragon homeworld, beyond the authority of any single bloodline.

The reasoning was difficult to argue against.

As the research advanced, it demanded resources no single faction could hope to provide alone. High-grade cultivation materials, ancient blood samples preserved for countless generations, and priceless ancestral relics sealed away since antiquity were all required to push the project further. Treasures once considered sacred and untouchable were finally brought out of their vaults and placed at the disposal of the researchers.

Backed by the combined wealth and influence of the entire Alliance, the project advanced at a pace that had once seemed impossible.

Its discoveries, however, became increasingly secretive. Every breakthrough was classified, accessible only to the highest-ranking figures of the twelve half-blood factions.

By the time Emery returned to the Magus Universe, all he knew was that the Supreme Gene Project had been relocated to a new research complex somewhere on the Dragon homeworld.

Everything else, the Ouroboros Queen had only just revealed.

Ronan Faulen, the Serpent Supreme, had recovered and regained his Supreme realm several years before Emery’s return.

Then he discovered that the project he had devoted centuries of his life to no longer belonged to him.

His fury had reportedly been absolute.

What followed was a conflict deliberately kept from public knowledge—a silent struggle between the Serpent Supreme and the four ruling bloodline factions.

The Serpent Supreme had yet to return to his home world after that.

Which meant the answer to Emery’s question was surprisingly straightforward.

If he wanted to find Ronan Faulen, there was only one place to begin.

Draconis Prime

The sacred homeworld of the Dragon bloodline.

That was why the Ouroboros Queen had shown concern for his safety. If Emery truly intended to find Ronan, he would inevitably find himself walking into the center of a conflict between Supreme beings. Whatever awaited him at the Dragon Sacred Land was unlikely to be simple.

Emery could only let out a weary sigh.

The truth was, despite the unique relation he had shared with Ronan, he held little affection for the Serpent Supreme himself. Ronan’s obsession with the Supreme Gene Project had brought him enough demise.

At the same time, Emery had no desire to involve himself in another political storm with the Tartarus expedition only a few months away.

Unfortunately, he was in dire need of a new, stronger body replacement, and Ronan remained the one person most likely to possess an answer. More importantly, the Dragon sacred land now housed the most advanced gene research facility in the entire Half-Blood Alliance, a place where the combined knowledge of all twelve bloodline races had been gathered over decades.

If there was anywhere capable of solving his problem...

It would be there.

Hours later, the Night Raven approached the distant planet.

Even from orbit, its colossal golden mountain dominated the horizon.

"You have arrived at your destination."

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