Reborn as an Extra

Chapter 571: The Grand Seal Of The Final Gamble. Part-1.

After resting for a while, Rio focused and started looking through the memories he had received from the shadow dragon king.

For the entire past week, Rio had been escaping and didn’t even had the time to take a single breath peacefully due to the rampage of the dragon tree.

Only now did he manage to get a proper chance to finally sit down and read through the memories.

’Thankfully, the cube of possibilities already got reset and started leaving me towards the direction; otherwise, my entire one-week escape would have gone to waste...’

While escaping, Rio escaped in the direction the cube of possibilities was pointing too, and the cube had already calculated what direction Rio needed to go the moment he got these memories.

It didn’t need to wait for Rio to read the memories, as it could predict based on possibilities alone.

This saved Rio a lot of time, as he would have had to read the memories first before trying to escape in the direction he needed to go, and that would have made him prone to attacks from the rampaging dragon tree.

’Phew... here we go...’

Without wasting any further time, Rio used his soul manipulation and memory reading ability to read through the final pure soul fragments and memories given to him by the shadow dragon king.

...

(Fragmented Memory 1)

"My king... I-I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to shoulder all the blame by yourself!"

"We all wanted that outcome... now that we have lost... all of us should shoulder the blame on our shoulders together..."

An adult shadow dragon looked at his king with concern; the shadow dragon king was caressing a small sleeping dragon whelp. That small dragon whelp was none other than Elisia.

The environment was quite familiar too; it seemed to be somewhere inside the spirit realm, meaning that this memory was from a time when Shadow dragons had already been banished from the spirit realm.

Looking at the dark cloudy sky filled with miasma, the dragon king smiled as he happily created a big seal in the area.

The seal was his method to save his race from miasmic corruption.

"Yes, we all saw the future of prosperity, we all fought because we wanted a better future for ourselves, we wanted shadow dragons to be free from the rule of the dragon valley..."

"We wanted greater strength so that the dragon who have mocked since time unknown would finally shut up and stop insulting us..."

Shadow dragons were not idiots who would just betray the world alliance just for no reason.

They had their own reasons and their own motives.

The shadow dragons were one of the weakest dragons in the dragon valley, and until the shadow dragon king was born and reached rank SS, none of them ever managed to go past rank S, making them the weakest among all dragons.

They were often insulted for being weak, and the dragons are a kind of race who only care about the strong; weak ones are considered worse than fodder in their eyes.

Most of the shadow dragon race were just a bunch of weak S-rank dragons who weren’t even skilled in combat.

Shadow dragons were always more capable of doing concealment and shadow magic. They weren’t combatants; if considered in human terms, they would be classified as support-type awakeners!

This is the main reason why they were not respected in the dragon valley.

And that discrimination for hundreds of years became one of the main reasons why shadow dragons aimed for a better future when they finally got their own very first SS-ranker.

Their goal was simple, they had made up a deal with the demons and miasma itself; they would help the demons deal with the world alliance and help injure King Allen.

In return, demons and miasma itself will grant them a better place to live and an increase in talent and status!

It was a gamble, a gamble with the entire race’s future placed on the stake; one mistake would cause everything to go haywire, and that’s exactly what happened.

Astra, the greatest healer in the world, managed to heal King Allen right back to full health and saved his life, causing him to, in fact, become even stronger than he already was!

He became so strong that he defeated dozens of demon SS-rankers and the entire shadow dragon race combined!

At that point, the shadow dragons knew they had lost the gamble.

A single woman, a single healer, changed the entire world’s fate with her hands; she not only saved King Allen with her insane healing magic, but she also saved the very existence of the world!

The shadow dragons were captured, and all demons were purged; the world alliance conducted trials on them and sentenced them to the cruellest punishment of them all.

They were banished to the spirit realm and not allowed to enter the material world ever again!

The shadow dragon king, beaten and broken, took his people to the spirit realm and established a barrier that would divert most of the miasmic corruption to him and keep the others safe.

This was his way of saving the next generation and keeping them all safe for a long time to come.

"I might not be able to hold it for too long, but I hope someone else will be able to do it in the future in my place once I am gone..."

While saying those words, the shadow dragon king looked at his daughter, Elisia!

The shadow dragon king already knew that even if he was a peak SS-ranker, he might not be able to hold up against miasma for too long.

At most a few hundred years, and he will go insane too. There needed to be someone who would eventually replace him and keep the race safe and secure.

"B-but... my king, you don’t need to burden yourself for our sake... this... we..."

The shadow dragon king shook his head and spoke.

"It was me who suggested taking miasma’s help in solving the racial discrimination... it was me who led you all to commit the sin of betraying the world..."

"Thus, it will be only fair for me... the king and protector of you all to bear the burden of my sins all by myself..."

"Perhaps, one day, we will have completed our punishment and might be forgiven... I want at least one shadow dragon to remain alive to see that day come..."

With a smile on his face, the shadow dragon looked at the sky and dreamed of salvation.

...

(Memory Fragment 2.)

Hundreds of years passed, and despite the shadow dragon king suppressing the miasmic corruption as much as he could, all the other shadow dragons were not able to survive.

Most of them were unable to withstand the miasmic corruption anymore, and those who were left had also started to go insane.

The shadow dragon king’s body distorted from miasmic corruption, and all the dragons who died were forcefully merged into his body by miasma to make him feel more pain and suffering!

Every passing day was a new nightmare and a new challenge.

The shadow dragon king could do nothing but watch his people die helplessly, and what was the saddest was that his daughter was also not spared from the misfortune of being a shadow dragon.

All shadow dragons were hoping that the daughter of the shadow dragon king would go on to become another SS-ranker and would become the next pillar to keep their race alive.

But the reality was too disappointing; Ellie could not reach rank SS no matter what, and she was stuck on rank S+.

Moreover, she couldn’t properly inherit the bloodline magic of the shadow dragons due to the interference of miasma and corruption.

She had become just another liability to the race instead of being a pillar of support.

All S-rank shadow dragon adults were already out of their mind due to miasmic corruption, and they all didn’t hesitate to declare Ellie to be the biggest shame of their entire race.

She was supposed to be their savior, but she couldn’t stand up to their expectations! She was not the great talented daughter of their king that they all wanted.

She was just a normal and weak Shadow dragon only capable of doing support work.

Time was running out, and there was no more time to keep things dragging; their king was on the verge of collapse from all that miasmic corruption, and thus they made a desperate decision.

The decision to willingly merge their souls and bodies with their king to give him more willpower and strength to fight against miasmic corruption.

They were all going to die anyway; at least their king had the chance to live longer than them with their help.

King Allen came to meet them at the end of the demon extinction war, and after seeing their miserable situation, he promised to free them after he returns victorious from his final gamble.

But that day never came, causing their situation to only worsen with each passing day.

And thus, they all willingly sacrificed themselves and merged their souls with their king, but there was one shadow dragon who refused to follow them in this madness.

And that was Ellie; she refused to merge herself in that disfigured and corrupted tree of horror.

Unlike the other shadow dragons, she grew up in a miasma-filled environment from the very start, which led to her developing incredibly powerful miasmic resistance as her natural dragon body adapted to the dangerous surroundings during her growth.

She wasn’t insane like the others; she didn’t care whether they called her a coward or gave her the tag of being the shame of the entire shadow dragon race.

She was going to do things her own way.

And thus, Ellie left the protection barrier of her father after declaring,

"I will not bow down to miasma just yet!"

With those words, she left in the direction where King Allen had once left!