Chapter 6: The Dragon's Bloodline
Status: Mortal Level 6
L2: Physical [8], Mental [12], Soul [10] – Disciplined Seer-Warrior, Ascending Scholar of Paths
R2: Physical [10], Mental [10], Soul [10] – Limitless, Yet Caged by the Flesh
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By the time L2 reached six and R2 turned three, the laboratory—the sanctum where their existence was first forged—had become little more than a graveyard of forbidden genius. The humming of ancient runes, the soft whir of arcane machinery, and the flickering resonance of primordial essence—all had faded. The heart of their father's creations, pulsing with blood rites and mythic science, had run dry. Its essence was exhausted.
The world beyond those rusting walls stirred. The balance that once held factions in uneasy peace was cracking. Tensions between humans and mythics boiled, but beneath the surface, deeper powers moved—old, patient forces. The laboratory had served its purpose. The era of hiding was over.
In the heart of the ruins, two children stood—not merely orphans of war, but forged entities. L2, calm and calculating, bore eyes sharpened by comprehension. At just six years old, his mind was already a nexus of thought and intuition. Beside him, R2, younger yet burning brighter, pulsed with raw, transcendent power—his very existence a challenge to natural law.
Their father's last command remained:
"Seek the Dragon King. When the world no longer holds space for you, return to the blood."
This command wasn't simply instruction. It was a map etched into their soul. The Dragon King wasn't a legend—he was an ancient sovereign, a primal axis in the order of reality. To reach him was to confront their origin. To reach him was to claim destiny.
They were no longer anomalies of failed ambition. They were Mortal Level 6 Ascendants—a tier beyond children, still below the heroes and prodigies of the known world, yet marked by growth unlike any others.
L2 had honed his threefold nature deliberately:
Physical [8]: Tempered through repetition and meditative combat. His strikes were measured, not yet overwhelming, but each movement was purposeful.
Mental [10]: His mind was a forge of insight. Theories, languages, arcane law—L2 consumed and refined knowledge as others breathed.
Soul [10]: Attuned, focused, unwavering. He could meditate into stillness, commune with essence, and dream across thresholds.
In contrast, R2 stood as a paradox. At just three, he had achieved perfection in every core measure—
Physical [10], Mental [10], Soul [10]—a being of limitless potential, bound by the weakness of a body that could not contain him. His vessel was not yet transmuted; his power was caged, coiled, volatile.
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Their mother's chamber still whispered of old sorrow and sacred sin. In the center stood the incubator—a grotesque marvel, humming with the ghost-memory of birth. It had once housed the sacred egg their father risked everything to acquire. That egg, taken from the vault of sleeping dragons, had been merged into R2's gestation cycle. The result was irreversible: R2 carried the essence of a draconic origin, not by bloodline alone but by womb-fused integration.
They were not entirely human. Nor entirely mythic.
They were both—and neither.
They were the dragon-blooded hybrids, the synthesis of intelligence and essence, mystery and matter.
Their birthright placed them outside of known order. The mythic races—Wormkin, Sky People, Sea Lords, and even the Dragonkind themselves—would regard them with fear or scorn. Not merely for what they were, but what they could become.
To humans, they were aberrations—proof that mortality could be overcome, and therefore, a threat to control.
But the Dragon King's dominion offered hope. Within that realm of flame-forged law and transcendent rites, there was a place for them. Not as sons of a man, but as heirs to a higher order. To be judged not by their birth, but their power.
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Yet the path would not be easy. They were children in body, not in fate. L2 knew it would take more than their birthright to survive the path ahead.
Each level beyond the sixth would demand sacrifice and trial. Each step forward would test their spirit.
R2's very being was unstable. His cultivation was strangled by the limits of the body—his soul's magnitude pressed against his bones like a storm within a cage. When he exerted himself, his body cracked. His breath came with fire. His senses frayed.
And yet, he could learn.
L2 had already begun channeling his energy into refined breathing forms, creating his own style of energy circulation. He'd studied the meridian patterns in their father's notes, begun mapping pressure points, and learned to delay fatigue through rhythmic acupoint compression.
R2 was a natural vessel of raw force. But without method, he would eventually burn out.
L2 would be his guide.
Where R2 was flame—untamed, radiant, explosive—
L2 was stone—enduring, shaping, containing.
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They were not yet ready to face the world's champions. Not the celestial generals. Not the infernal warlords. Not even the true mythic beasts.
But the path to the Dragon King was not meant to be easy. It was carved through battle, through death, through rebirth.
They would need to cultivate faster. To draw on everything they had.
They would need to break through Mortal Level 6 into the Domain of Ascending Flame, where Essence Shaping became possible, and the body could begin transmuting to house the soul's full potential.
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In the days that followed, they buried what remained of their home. The lab, the nursery, the broken cryo-runes.
L2 etched a sigil at the base of the mountain—a marker of memory, and of future vengeance.
He bound their last food and tools into a rune-carved satchel. A map carved into a dragon's scale—a gift from their father—would lead them to the edge of the Flame-Spine Mountains, the gateway to the dragon realm.
Every night, L2 watched the stars, reading celestial patterns.
R2, unable to sleep long, practiced breath holding, leaping from cliff to cliff, always pushing his limits. His skin burned red with internal heat. But his smile never faded.
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One evening, during meditation, L2's senses expanded beyond the mundane. He reached into the sea of his own soul and touched a memory not his own—an ancestral echo. A great dragon, coiled in darkness, speaking a phrase in the lost tongue:
"Power is not granted. It is remembered."
He awoke in cold sweat.
His soul was awakening more rapidly than he expected. The resonance was growing. Soon, the realm would call to them.
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They had no clan.
No master.
No protector.
But they had each other.
A Seer-Warrior whose wisdom blossomed beyond his years.
A Transcendent Vessel whose flame grew stronger each day.
Together, they would not just reach the Dragon King.
They would ascend beyond the mortal realm and return not as lost children—
But as sovereigns in the making.
This was not survival.
This was becoming.