Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Chapter 1515: Dragon Soul

"It is a paradox," another replied. "We, inside the circle, are desperate to get out. Those outside the circle are desperate to get in."

"There is nothing here. If they breach the wall, they will be disappointed. Their despair will be greater than ours."

The voices that drifted through the darkness were raspy, low, and indeterminate—impossible to distinguish as male or female.

"That thing that just breached the perimeter was a dragon soul. Does that mean a full-grown giant dragon is lurking outside the seal?"

"Maybe the Sea Folk on the other side finally got wiped out?"

"A pity. That dragon was clever; it left no useful memories in the soul fragment."

"The taste of a dragon soul... it’s maddeningly sweet."

A deep, guttural sound rumbled, followed immediately by wet slurping and the crunch of chewing. A fragment of Leonidas’s soul, having arrived only moments ago, had already been torn apart and devoured by the monstrosities.

"The Gate of Vigilance has gone quiet again."

"We probably scared the beast off when we devoured its soul projection."

"Could you not have exercised a shred of patience? We could have lured the body inside before feasting. Would that not have been better?"

Gulp. "Speaking of... the flavor was exquisite, just... insufficient."

The complaining voice was immediately shouted down by the pack.

"It was a dragon soul! The apex of delicacies, the rarest of the rare."

"Patience? And let you swallow it whole while we watched?"

"Food is best served fresh, isn’t it? Tsk tsk..."

"Ah... pitiful new hatchlings. They have no concept that ’food’ even exists outside this world."

"Should we combine our strength and batter the seal?"

"Worth a try. Worst case, we fail and simply go back to sleep."

Beyond The Gate of Vigilance, at the Temple of Terminus.

While the ancient progenitors of the Zeythan Dreadfin race debated assaulting the seal, Orion had reached a critical juncture.

In a dimension hidden from sight, within the chaotic void, the Divine Kingdom—the Abyssal World—had drawn close to the World of Eldoria, hovering just beyond the veil of reality.

Seated upon his throne, Orion opened his hand.

To a mortal eye, he held nothing but empty air. But to Orion’s sight, a root had manifested in his palm.

It was a root of the World Tree.

The surface of the root was etched with ancient, arcane laws, spiraling from thick to thin. Knots studded its length, each pulsing with the chaotic energy of the void. To Orion, every knot radiated a blinding, rhythmic light. The root coiled around his palm, projecting emotions into his mind: joy, intimacy, and hunger.

It was a strange state of being. The World Tree was Orion, yet Orion was not the World Tree.

"Go," he whispered, soothing the entity and guiding it.

Using his palm as its soil, the root elongated, stretching toward the barrier beyond the throne.

This was the moment of truth. If the seal rejected the root, the plan died here. Miraculously, the root phased through the barrier as if it were mere air.

It emerged into the void beyond, completely unnoticed by the bickering Zeythan Dreadfins. They were blind to it. The World Tree defined existence itself; its roots operated on the level of the Void’s fundamental origin—a tier of existence far above the Zeythan Dreadfins. They couldn’t even perceive its arrival.

"It’s done."

Orion’s eyes widened, his heart hammering against his ribs as he watched the root unfurl in The Void.

It was a phantasmagoria of light. The root plunged into the "soil" of The Void, splitting fractally—one into two, two into four—anchoring itself deep into the fabric of space. A vast, complex nervous system spread out, binding with the world.

Through the glowing nodes on the root, Orion peered into the unfathomable depths and saw it: a branch radiating an ancient, mystical aura buried deep within the metaphysical earth.

The World Tree of Eldoria.

In that instant, the Abyssal World’s root successfully parasitized the host world’s trunk.

Images flooded Orion’s mind: the birth of species, the shifting of eras, the cycle of life and death, the evolution of all things. He fell into a trance, swept up in the flow of cosmic epiphany. Meanwhile, specks of light danced along the parasitic root. It was siphoning the Source—the very lifeblood of the world—and feeding it back into the Abyssal World.

The Void.

Dark currents surged.

The successful parasitism of the World Tree went largely unnoticed in this sunless, featureless expanse. Only the most powerful Zeythan Dreadfins felt the tremors, the churning of fundamental energy.

They dismissed it. Such disturbances usually signaled the coalescence of a new, powerful kin.

"The race must be birthing some gifted whelps today," they likely thought. In a world without sky, rivers, or stars, disaster arrived in silence.

World of Eldoria.

Here, the reaction was violent.

Across the seven great dioceses, nature revolted simultaneously. The earth groaned and heaved as terrifying energy gathered in the core, releasing in cataclysmic earthquakes.

Palaces swayed, cities crumbled, and stone towers turned to dust.

Landslides, fissures, and outbreaks of ancient plagues erupted all at once. Volcanoes blew their tops; floods swallowed valleys. Gales, hail, lightning, drought—it was a tapestry of apocalypse.

"What in the hell is this weather? If Leonidas hadn’t just left, I’d swear we were being invaded."

In a repurposed cathedral on the outskirts of Stellaris, Makareth, Isabella, and Tangere—members of the Champions Alliance—had gathered to coordinate the management of their territories.

Makareth stood on the open terrace, glaring at the web of lightning tearing through the sky. As a Demon, the holy brutality of the thunder disgusted him. He didn’t fear it, but he loathed it.

"I don’t think it’s an invasion," Makareth grumbled. "But Orion and the others are definitely behind this. They’ve triggered something massive."

Isabella shook her head, a wry smile playing on her lips. She knew Orion and Leonidas too well. To her, they were agents of pure chaos—the kind who would burn the house down just to see if the smoke alarm worked.

"So this is what the legends mean by ’celestial omens,’ isn’t it?"

"The lightning feels... wrong," Tangere murmured, staring up at the violent sky. "It doesn’t feel like a storm. It sounds like the world is screaming. Or trying to drive something out."