From Blood Mage to Styx Ancestor

Chapter 40 Tomb Raiding: A Plenty of Coins, The True and False Modi's Tale

"A door that can't be opened from this side?"

Modi stepped forward and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

"There's another way; perhaps we can go around it from there," Elena pointed to the other passage.

“We don’t need to do that,” he shook his head. “Elena, be flexible and don’t follow the rules.”

He gestured for Elena to take two steps back so as not to get in his way.

Once the area was clear, Modi dragged his greatsword and charged toward the door, swinging his weapon as he went.

"Bang!"

The solid metal block slammed heavily against the door, sending the thick door flying several meters away.

"Alright, the door's open." He beckoned to Elena. "Violence won't solve everything, but it can solve doors that can't be opened from this side."

Elena nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face.

She felt her mind had opened up.

Little did she know that this was also Mordy's intention; he was gradually changing her mindset and behavior, training her to become a qualified Greta School blood mage.

This change is gradual and imperceptible; when she comes to her senses later, she will find that she has already transformed into the shape of Modi.

The White Walker army continued its march.

They marched through the tomb passage in perfect unison, arrested the ghouls in perfect unison, and... encountered a dump truck in perfect unison?

Modi was not surprised to see the ancient creation, which resembled a chariot and sped towards him.

In the early Second Age, a powerful magical civilization developed in the North, under the rule of dragons.

This chariot, which combines the principles of magic and mechanics, is its remnant.

The chariot is shaped like the head of a giant dragon, and inside is an ever-burning dragon breath furnace. This magical device has been faithfully functioning for thousands of years, driving the dragon-headed chariot to roar and thunder.

"This thing has very high magic resistance and is very tough. My spells are basically useless against it. To stop it, I'll have to use something else..."

On a whim, he gave Elena an instruction.

The girl immediately understood and handed him a package.

Taking the package, Mordi stared at the eerie, cold light emanating from the dragon's head. He strode across the White Walker army, magical light flashing across his body, his aura suddenly rising.

At this moment, he has shed the idol image of a mage and is about to use the purest violence to compete with the ancient war chariot that can only be described as a dung monster.

Spells? They're just for applying buffs.

A true master should single-handedly strike down a dump truck!

The chariot was close at hand, its eyes gleaming with ferocity, like a true dragon ready to devour its prey, as it charged headlong into Modi, who was rushing towards him.

Go talk to my Dragonbreath Forge!

The steel behemoth collided violently with the flesh and blood, and at that moment, Mordy felt the power of the dragon-headed chariot.

He placed both hands on the steel dragon head, ignoring the chilling aura emanating from the chariot's surface, and took several steps back to regain his balance.

Dump trucks are a formidable enemy, but so is Modi.

The two sides were locked in a stalemate, neither able to gain the upper hand, until the steel dragon head opened its mouth.

A ghostly blue light shone from the mouth of the chariot, and terrifying energy was brewing within.

Faced with this unexpected situation, Mordi was not surprised but delighted. He took out the explosive pack that Elena had given him, mixed it with several bottles of alchemical potion, and threw it into the dragon's head.

The moment he threw the object, he deliberately withdrew his strength and, using the power of the dragon-headed chariot, leaped high into the opposite direction.

The next second after he withdrew, a massive explosion occurred inside the dragon's head, and a dark blue glow engulfed the entire vehicle.

A biting chill radiated outwards, and the entire tomb passage was covered in frost. Even Elena, who was protecting the White Walkers in front of her, shivered and sneezed.

A simple explosive charge wouldn't have this effect. The reason it could achieve this level of effect was because of the several bottles of alchemical catalyst that Modi added, which triggered a chain reaction with the Dragon's Breath Furnace.

The eerie blue light dissipated, leaving only the dragon-headed chariot, now a pile of scrap metal covered by a thick layer of ice.

Clearly, its dragon breath furnace uses the breath of an ice dragon, which is why it produced this result.

"It's hard to understand how low-temperature dragon frost can become an energy source? Is this also part of magic?"

Modi smashed through the ice with a punch, reached into the Dragon Breath Furnace, rummaged around, and pulled out something that could barely be identified as spherical.

If there are no surprises, this is its core, the object known as the "Frost Seed Source".

After examining it for a while, he put it in his pocket.

"This tank is wrecked, let's go."

The White Walker army set off again, encountering no further obstacles along the way that would warrant Mordy's intervention.

"What exactly was that thing we just encountered?"

Unable to contain her curiosity, Elena leaned closer to Mordy and asked.

Modi glanced at her and thoughtfully cast a fire barrier on her, whose face was red from the cold and huddled up, to dispel the surrounding chill.

"That is the legacy of the dragon regime during the Second Era, a time when dragons and the Dragon Cult developed a powerful magical civilization."

After listening to his story, Elena realized that her understanding of the world was somewhat flawed.

I thought the world-building would be similar to medieval Western fantasy, with at most some magic and supernatural elements, but I didn't expect that even ancient civilizations would appear.

Thinking about it that way, the gunpowder she made by hand didn't seem like much.

Why did that ancient civilization disappear?

"Dragons are transformed from ancient dragons. In that era, there were too many people who hated dragons. These people united and destroyed the dragons along with the Dragon Worship Cult," Modi explained.

"But those people didn't realize it, or even if they did, they couldn't solve it. The dragons are essentially fragments of the Time-Space Dragon God; they cannot be completely killed."

Unless a being of the Demon God rank intervenes, as in the Dragon Hunt of the First Era.

"Although the dragons were buried, their leader, Aldurian, the Shadow of the End, was not. He was banished to beyond time and only recently returned to the material world, where he resurrected the buried dragons."

"Huh?" Elena exclaimed softly, "Could it be that it wants to re-establish the dragon regime?"

"That's true. What's worse, there are very few people on the continent of Itnity who can defeat it now... But that has nothing to do with us, since we have that Dragonborn here."

If all else fails, Modi believes those reclusive immortals will step forward and drag Audurian into a dark room for a beating.

He never considered solving the dragon calamity himself, since he was neither a dragon descendant nor an immortal, and he had no control over the matter.

At most, I'll hunt a few dragons, then hide in the Naberai Catacombs and wait for the Ancient Blood to complete its interdimensional positioning.

Elena had wanted to ask about the Dragonborn, but the unexpected situation ahead prevented her from asking.

"Ghouls, so many ghouls!"

"No, they're not quite the same as regular ghouls."

"Who cares, let's just kill them."

A cacophony of sounds, mixed with the clanging of metal, came from ahead. Elena instinctively drew her straight sword and raised her crossbow, which was now fully cocked, with her other hand.

"It's those bandits." She recognized the group ahead and charged forward with Modi.

Because they hadn't concealed their movements, the bandit leader, who had been on high alert, easily spotted them. He immediately realized something was wrong and shouted:

"These ghouls are controlled by someone. One of those two must be a necromancer. Take them out first!"

He talked a lot of nonsense, but nobody followed through.

All the bandits were locked in a fierce battle, surrounded by a greater number of White Walkers, and none of them could break free.

Especially those two White Walker Lords, whose roars could send an entire band of bandits flying, killing them was as easy as mowing grass.

"How can these ghouls be so powerful?" The bandit leader looked flustered and began to consider retreating.

But he had nowhere to retreat; Modi had been eyeing him for a long time.

Modi drew his sacrificial axe, and with a sudden burst of strength, the axe flew through the fierce battlefield, landing on the head of the bandit leader.

His skull was naturally not as hard as the axe of the human sacrifice; the axe blade was deeply embedded in it, almost splitting it in two.

The scene was so chaotic that few bandits noticed even though their leader was dead.

Their numbers dwindled under the slaughter of the White Walkers until the last man fell, marking the end of this unknown bandit group.

They had considered escaping, but this was an underground tomb with only one passage leading to the outside world. Surrounded by the White Walkers, they had no way to escape.

"Finally found it, the Golden Dragon Claw entrusted by the grocer." Elena pulled out a golden object from the bandit leader's corpse.

Modi glanced at the Golden Dragon Claw and casually asked, "Now that you've found your target, do you still want to come with me?"

Without a second thought, Elena agreed, "Of course."

After a few seconds, seemingly realizing she was being too forward, she coughed twice and added:

"Mortis, you've helped me so much, how could I just leave like that? Don't worry, I won't hold you back."

Modi was surprised that she agreed so readily. After a moment of silence, he asked her for the Golden Dragon Claw.

"This is the key to open the main burial chamber. Open the door for me now, and I'll return it to you later."

She had no doubts whatsoever and readily handed over the Golden Dragon Claw.

The main tomb chamber door is now in sight. There are three rings with animal patterns carved in the center, which can be turned. Each time the ring is turned, the animal pattern on it changes.

This is a puzzle that must be solved before opening the door. The group of robbers probably didn't know how to arrange the pattern, which is why they lingered in front of the door for so long.

They would never know that the order of the patterns was actually engraved on the golden dragon's claws.

Before opening the door, Mo Di whispered instructions to his three Heavenly Kings:

"Protect Elena well and don't let her venture too far into the battlefield. If necessary, take her away directly."

He was confident he could handle a dragon priest who had been asleep for countless years, but he worried that the dragon priest would use Elena to threaten him.

This girl trusts him too much; she probably wouldn't hesitate to jump into a fire pit without a second thought.

If he could, he wouldn't want anything to happen to her.

The three Heavenly Kings thought for a while before they understood what he meant and nodded in unison.

Having made the arrangements, Modi did not hesitate to twist the golden dragon claw.

The door opened.

A tomb converted from a cave came into view, where a slumbering dragon priest guarded this sacred place and awaited the return of its former master.