Chapter 434: A Contest Across Time

Percival Lyon and Angus Watson talked for a long while. The young emperor showed no trace of imperial airs, conducting himself with all the warmth and attentiveness of a worthy ruler. Angus Watson found himself genuinely surprised.

The Percival Lyon of old had been a completely different person. How had someone who had trampled his own men to death out of battlefield panic ended up like this?

Angus Watson couldn't work it out. He had no choice but to accept the emperor's own explanation: that people only truly grew after facing death.

That was how Percival himself told it. His former self had been boorish and ignorant, arrogant yet cowardly, and his public disgrace on the battlefield had finally forced him to change. He had begun to study, to reflect, to rebuild himself around a purpose worthy of his position.

Angus Watson found no particular fault with this account, and gradually came to accept it.

The moment Percival passed through the teleportation array back to his palace, the expression on his face twisted into a vicious, cold mask.

"Damned traitors. Why not just have Angus Watson kill the whole family and bring me their heads? Wouldn't that have solved everything?"

The Percival who had just conducted that conversation was, of course, not Percival at all. That composed, gracious young ruler had been Atros the Eternal, the ancient soul dwelling within the Draconic Armaments.

The real Percival Lyon had none of his composure or acting ability. The moment he had learned that Allen was plotting rebellion, he had wanted the entire family dead. He would never have shown Angus Watson anything but contempt.

In the end, Percival had simply handed his body over to Atros and let the former Dragon Tyrant take over.

The performance had been flawless. Angus Watson had apparently suspected nothing.

Atros addressed the emperor with weary exasperation. "You always think that killing your enemies solves the problem. Consider the situation from a higher vantage. We are immortal; we are not like ordinary mortals. We are a higher form of existence, one close to divinity.

"A god can kill any mortal at any time, but if all the mortals are dead, who will build the temples? Who will offer worship? If you cannot grasp this, you will never understand the nature of time's power."

The emperor calmed himself down somewhat. "The thing you did with Angus Watson—I know you used your power, but what exactly did you do?"

"Imagine that I took the goodwill he was feeling toward us in this moment and transplanted it into his past. The past exerts tremendous influence over a person. Beautiful memories from long ago remain beautiful, and are even embellished with time.

"I didn't alter any specific memory, but rather how he felt about them as a whole. The warmth he felt toward us just now has been threaded back through his memories, becoming vaguer but simultaneously far more deeply rooted. He will perceive his loyalty and admiration for us as something he has always felt, something natural and self-evident. That makes him considerably easier to manage."

The emperor frowned. "The more you explain this, the stranger it sounds. Is this truly the power of time? Is this how time dragons normally use their abilities?"

He had tried reversing time himself, and he could do at least that much. But extracting a feeling from one moment and implanting it in someone's historical memories? That sounded less like temporal power and more like psychic enchantment.

If the Dragon Tyrant of old had possessed this, how had the slaves ever managed to revolt? They should have been worshipping the dragons as creators.

"Of course not," Atros said. "The Dragon Tyrant of old had no need for tricks like this. But we don't even possess one percent of our former power. We must be careful. And you should be working harder—you've started slacking again recently."

The emperor said irritably, "I know, I know, but what's the point of practicing Mage Hand every single day? I've made no progress at all. Are you certain this method is right?"

Grumbling as he was, he obediently summoned the Mage Hand and set the glowing palm to performing delicate exercises. The goal, apparently, was to reach the point where he could play a complex piece of music with it, at which point the next stage of training would begin.

The emperor was impatient, but Atros's only response was always the same: "We are immortal. If you cannot endure this small tedium, eternity will be endless suffering for you."

The emperor, having no answer for this, returned to cultivating what patience he could.

When he grew too restless, he would speak to Atros.

That day, he had barely managed a few minutes of practice before he asked: "What you told Angus Watson about building a greater empire than Lyon, did you mean that?"

"Whether I meant it is beside the point," Atros said. "Isn't it simply obvious? We are immortal and undying. Therefore Lyon will exist forever. And an empire that exists forever—should it not, naturally and inevitably, rule this entire plane? Are we still going to be fighting off orc raids in a thousand years? That would be rather lazy of us."

The emperor paused, then brightened. "That's exactly right. We are undying. It follows naturally that we surpass the Holy King, that we unify this world."

"Indeed," Atros agreed. "We will surpass Arthur Lyon."

The thought he kept carefully to himself was that the one who would truly surpass Arthur Lyon would not be his descendant, but instead his greatest enemy.

Every story had its villain, and no villain would willingly consent to remain another's servant. Atros was no different.

Since his will reawakened, he had been planning his own future.

He had long since grown tired of this young emperor. Percival was selfish, foolish, greedy, and incapable of self-restraint or willpower. He had been damaged deeply by generations of twisted imperial upbringing, and was brutal without a shred of empathy.

Even the Dragon Tyrant of old had only been merciless toward other races. The Dragon Tyrant had been genuinely devoted toward his own kind, enslaving other species not for personal gain, but for the flourishing of dragonkind as a whole.

This emperor was nothing like that.

Only he mattered to himself. Nothing in the empire outweighed his own importance. A person of such absolute selfishness would never accomplish anything of consequence.

Unfortunate, then, that Atros still needed him, at least for now.

But not for much longer. Today, the Emperor had willingly surrendered his body to Atros's control. Tomorrow, the day after, over time, the Emperor would grow accustomed to it. One day, Atros would take permanent control, and that would be the end of it.

Atros was patient. As he had said himself, he was eternal, and had no need to rush.

Allen and the lich gave him little cause for concern, either.

To Atros, Allen was a naïve idealist. His appeals might win followers, but if Atros chose to make concessions through the emperor, to acknowledge and correct past wrongs, what grounds would Allen have left to argue for a break? The empire's authority would return to the royal family regardless.

There might be some dilution of power, and the office of High Inquisitor would likely grow stronger, but that was only a temporary inconvenience.

Time erased everything, and Atros commanded time. With sufficient patience, he would reclaim those powers one by one and reassume absolute rulership.

That was the wisdom he had learned over seventeen centuries.

The Dragon Tyrant of old had been too impatient. Even when the tide had turned against him, why accept a duel to the death against Arthur Lyon? Human lifespans were a hundred years at most, while time dragons were eternal. If he had simply retreated and let the surviving dragon clans find somewhere to hide and wait, Arthur Lyon would have died in time, and everything would have resolved itself.

The Dragon Tyrant of old had been too proud. He had not known when to bend.

Atros would not repeat that mistake. He intended to unify this world, with every race, every creature, brought under his dominion.

His mind turned to the memory crystal, to that image of the sword strike, luminous as the first light of dawn. The technique was unmistakable. That was Arthur Lyon's signature move, with which he had made his name.

Unlike other paladins who made their Sacred Slash a spectacle of blazing light, Arthur Lyon had always been understated. His strike carried no great radiance, no dramatic display. It looked almost casual, just a simple slash of an ordinary blade.

And yet on those ancient battlefields, no dragon had been able to withstand it. The Dragon Tyrant himself had fallen to it.

It was the Holy Light in its truest form, the dawn that embodied hope, a power that channeled the divine essence of the Lord of Dawn himself.

That was why the Lord of Dawn had cherished Arthur Lyon so deeply and had even tried to break the terms of the wager with the dragon gods for his sake.

When Arthur Lyon had discovered the dragonblood curse eroding his soul, the Lord of Dawn had come to him and offered a way out: the god would remove the curse and receive him into his divine realm.

The price was that the dragon gods would be released from their restrictions in turn, free to help restore the dragon clans to the continent.

Arthur Lyon had refused. He had let the curse take him and gave up everything in exchange, including his soul.

Even then he had left a final safeguard in place, ensuring that the Dragon Tyrant's newly reborn form would die at the elven king's hands.

At the time, Atros had been barely conscious. Formless and unaware, he was ignorant of all that had transpired. But as his power slowly recovered, he found he could peer into the river of time and see what had come before. The further his sight reached, the more clearly he could see into the past.

And the more he saw, the more he burned to surpass Arthur Lyon.

How could a mere human be superior to dragonkind?

Atros murmured to himself, "Arthur Lyon, I hope with all my being that it was you in that memory crystal. I want you to see your empire taken from you, to see this world become mine, with your own eyes. I was reborn in this form, and perhaps you can be reborn as well. Do not disappoint me. Let us have another reckoning. This time, I will defeat you with your own empire!"