Chapter 36 - Dragon Secret

It was not just about wanting something you couldn’t get. The carvings also stated that your intent needed to be of a good nature.

Meaning, your desire had to be pure and unselfish. Arthur was confident the temple would recognize his good heart.

The first thing that came to mind was his mother and stepsister, and the sad situation they were in. Arthur wanted to change that. It was the reason he was playing the game in the first place.

He honestly thought the door would instantly recognize his good heart and open, but nothing happened. Arthur stayed in a cross-legged position, meditating for quite a while.

Ten minutes passed in total, and still nothing happened.

"Damn it," he complained. "Why isn’t it working?"

What was he missing? Weren’t his feelings for his family good enough for this trial?

Arthur took a deep breath, analyzing his current feelings without bias.

He realized something. Although he had good intentions regarding his family, and they were his main goal, his mind still wandered to something else from time to time...

The man who had killed him. The desire for vengeance was still engraved in his heart. It was hard not to harbor those feelings against that person.

Arthur had no idea why it happened, and even though he had been sent back to the past alive, it didn’t make the feeling go away.

It had to go away. If Arthur wanted to get through that door, he had to extinguish the vengeance in his heart.

Maybe not extinguish it completely, as that was asking too much, but at least learn to live with it and not think about it all the time. His heart needed to hold only pure things.

And just like that, an hour passed with Arthur sitting in front of the door, meditating...

All the other players were leveling up, and he should have been doing the same, but he was once again doing weird things that no one else was.

Louise had already finished gathering most of the ores and herbs, and she was waiting for him in the mountain village. She had even thought about coming to check on him, but she decided against it.

’I’ll wait a little longer before going after him,’ she thought.

And then, finally, Arthur let go of his vengeance. To do it, he focused on admitting that his family was much more important than getting his revenge.

Besides, that was in the past. Someone had killed him, but now he was back. Why keep dwelling on that instead of focusing on the future that was to come?

Being stuck in the past was never a good thing.

’If I want things to go differently this time, I have to act differently. Dwelling on the past won’t do me any good.’

The door finally opened, sliding to the side in a slow manner. It wasn’t easy to move solid stone blocks.

It was magic at its finest. That was why the door was impossible to open through any other means. Only by completing the trial could someone enter.

Arthur was greeted by a long hallway. It only went straight forward, which was a relief. At least it wasn’t a labyrinth.

His torch was still lit, so he used it to see where he was going. How long it would last was unknown to him.

Not knowing what could be waiting for him ahead was driving Arthur crazy. Having absolutely no information about the ruins was daunting enough, but knowing they were linked to dragons made him even more anxious.

The hallway had nothing out of the ordinary. Just stone after stone. The construction was quite impressive to have lasted this long.

Unlike the ruins outside, the underground area was well preserved. It had suffered much less from the passage of time.

But once again, what caught Arthur’s attention was how massive the hallway was. It was less like an ordinary, narrow tunnel and more like an avenue that could fit three lanes of cars.

Arthur walked for around ten minutes straight, finally reaching the end. Another door waited for him.

This door also had carvings in the Dragon Tongue. Arthur read them, hoping it would be easy to open this door as well, but it wasn’t...

"It requires dragon blood? How the hell am I going to get that?" he complained.

It would be impossible to get through. Arthur already knew it, and he was ready to leave and accept defeat.

But just as he yelled his complaint, something on the other side moved. Arthur heard it clearly.

He had no idea what it was. A monster, perhaps, or a person, or just some device. But something had definitely moved. Of that he was sure.

"Is anybody there?" he called out.

There was no answer. No matter how much Arthur spoke, the other side remained quiet. That single noise he heard was the only response. It went dead silent.

Arthur decided to try something else. He changed his language setting to Dragon Tongue so he could speak normally, but the game would translate his words to sound like a dragon.

"Is anybody there?"

This time, someone answered. Arthur wasn’t expecting it to actually happen. Using the Dragon Tongue was just a hunch, something with a low chance of bearing fruit, but it had worked.

"Who are you?"

The voice from the other side was majestic. A profound power accompanied every word. Arthur knew he was talking to something legendary. It was a dragon.

"I’m Arthur," he said. "I stumbled upon these ruins by accident, and then I saw the carvings on the door, so I had to check it out."

The dragon on the other side trusted Arthur. If he had passed through the first trial, then it meant he had a good heart.

But it was still wary of him. Who knew what humans were capable of? What if Arthur had found a way to bypass the trial? It wasn’t impossible.

"How do you know the Dragon Tongue?"

"I studied it in Dragon City," he said. "My master taught me. Bram is his name."

The other side went completely silent after hearing Bram’s name. Arthur waited for a response. Acting rude in front of a dragon wasn’t a good idea; anyone knew that.

"Bram? The one who lives and works in the city? The one who owns a blacksmithing shop?"

Arthur found the way the dragon spoke to him a bit amusing.

"Yeah, that’s right. Do you know him?"

Once again, silence fell over the tunnel. But then, after a few seconds, the door in front of him opened, revealing the creature Arthur had been talking to.

It was a massive white dragon with piercing blue eyes. It was so big that just its head was more than five times Arthur’s size.

The dragon wasn’t looking very good, though. Its scales were heavily damaged, and there was a massive hole in one of its wings.

"Bram is my husband," the dragon said.

Arthur was already shocked by the sight of the creature, but that piece of information shocked him even more.

"Husband? Wait a second, how is that possible? Isn’t he just a guy? A guy has a dragon wife?"

It reminded him of a movie from Earth, a pretty good one, actually. Anyway, how was that even a thing? Arthur had never heard of such an arrangement.

The dragon chuckled. "Silly. He’s not a human, but a dragon. We can assume humanoid forms. It’s better for living among humans and for doing... other things."

"Whoa, stop right there. I really don’t want details about a dragon’s intimate life. Damn it, so that drunk old man I call ’master’ is actually a dragon?"

"Is he drinking again? No way," she said. "My name is Myra, by the way."

She was much friendlier than Arthur expected. It was probably because he was Bram’s apprentice, giving them a sort of connection.

"What happened to you? Why isn’t Bram looking for you?"

"He is looking," she said, "but I cannot go back. Not now. The dragons are planning a rebellion, and they want me to be a part of it. This will only bring death to both sides, and I want to stop it."

"Bram wants this rebellion?"

Myra nodded.

"Yes. Humans killed Bram’s father long ago, so he wants to take down Dragon City. He wants to kill the humans who live there and let the dragons rule the place."

Arthur knew about the rebellion. It originally started when the players reached that location at around level 100. In the end, though, the players had chosen to stand by the humans to protect Dragon City.

If the dragons took over, the players would have a hard time keeping their shops, houses, and the entire infrastructure they had built. The big guilds simply couldn’t let that happen.

Besides, the players thought it was much cooler to fight dragons than to fight humans.

"If I go back there now while I’m wounded, I won’t be able to stop it. I need to recover first and grow stronger. Only by getting stronger can I stop the rebellion."

Knowing the whole story was good. Arthur was getting information he hadn’t known before.

But what about the rewards? Had he spent all this time for nothing?

Myra, however, sensed something within him.

"Are you perhaps... a Soul Artisan?"