2026-03-09 01:09:43The dragon let out a strange, twisted sound—not a roar of anger, but a scream of fear. The massive head of blue fire was suddenly sucked forward, pulling into a tight, swirling funnel.
The funnel went straight into Drogo's open mouth.
Vargus stopped laughing. His mad smile froze on his face. His eyes bulged out of his head.
He watched the impossible happen.
The giant thirty-foot dragon of pure blue fire was being sucked into the boy. The fire spun faster and faster, shrinking down, forced into Drogo's throat. Drogo was drinking the fire like it was a cup of cold water.
In three seconds, the head of the dragon was gone. In five seconds, the body was gone. In seven seconds, the tail whipped through the air and vanished down Drogo's throat.
Drogo closed his mouth. He swallowed.
The Great Hall was suddenly dark again. The blinding blue light was completely gone. The intense heat vanished, replaced once more by the freezing, dead cold of the abyss.
Drogo stood in the center of the melted, smoking floor. His bare chest was glowing. The black veins under his skin were no longer faint. They were shining with bright, burning violet light.
Inside Drogo’s mind, the system text erupted in a massive wall of purple fire.
[WARNING: MASSIVE ENERGY INTAKE DETECTED.]
[ANALYZING ENERGY...][BLUE FIRE MAGIC (TIER A) DETECTED.][MANA DEVOUR SUCCESSFUL.]
[FIRE CONCEPT DEVOURED. ADDED TO THE ABYSSAL ARCHIVE.][CONVERTING MAGIC TO RAW ATTRIBUTES...][STRENGTH +50]
[AGILITY +30][ENDURANCE +40][NEW RESISTANCE UNLOCKED: ABSOLUTE FIRE IMMUNITY.]Drogo threw his head back and let out a long, heavy breath. A small cloud of black smoke escaped his lips.
The feeling was unbelievable.
It did not feel like getting warm. It felt like his very bones were turning to steel. He felt his muscles tearing apart and instantly rebuilding themselves, growing thicker, denser, and impossibly strong. He felt his heart pump a massive, heavy wave of dark power through his entire body.
He felt like he could punch through a mountain.
For his whole life, Drogo had been weak. He was the boy who had to hide. He was the boy who had to let people kick him so he could earn a few copper coins.
But now? Now he understood the truth of the System.
He did not just take their magic. He took their strength. Every time a noble tried to hurt him, they would only feed him. He would eat their spells, he would eat their power, and he would grow stronger forever. His capacity was infinite. There was no limit.
He could eat the whole world.
Drogo slowly lowered his head and looked at Vargus.
Lord Vargus was shaking violently. He fell to his knees. His magic Core was completely empty. He had put everything he had into the Inferno Drake, and the boy had just eaten it for a snack.
"No..." Vargus whispered. Tears formed in his eyes and spilled down his pale cheeks. "No, no, no. That is not possible. You are a monster. You are a god..."
Drogo started walking again. His footsteps were different now. Because of his new strength, every time his bare foot touched the marble floor, the stone cracked in a spiderweb pattern.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
He walked through the melted, smoking ruins of the dining tables. He stopped right in front of the kneeling Lord.
Vargus looked up at him. The proud noble was gone. All that was left was a broken, terrified man crying in the dirt.
"Please," Vargus begged. He put his hands together, praying to the boy in the dirty rags. "Please, do not kill me. I was wrong. I was so wrong. I am sorry!"
Drogo did not say anything. He just stared down with his glowing purple eyes.
"I can give you anything!" Vargus cried loudly, the tears running into his mouth. "You want money? I have millions of gold coins in my vault! I can make you richer than a king! You want a house? I will give you a palace! You want medicine for your mother? I will buy the greatest doctors in the Empire! Just please, please let me live!"
Drogo tilted his head. He looked at Vargus's begging hands. He remembered those same hands tossing seven copper coins onto the floor. He remembered Vargus kicking him over the edge of the world.
"You think you can buy your life," Drogo said. His voice was soft, but it carried a heavy, crushing weight. "You think because you have gold, you can do whatever you want. You think you can take my sister, make her a slave, and then pay me to smile about it."
"No! I swear I will never touch her!" Vargus sobbed. He grabbed Drogo's muddy leg. "I will protect her! I will give her everything! Just tell me what you want! I will give you anything you want!"
Drogo looked down at the top of Vargus’s head.
"I don't want your gold," Drogo whispered. The dark voices of the Abyssal Archive whispered with him, echoing in the ruined hall.
Drogo reached down with his right hand. "I want your Core."
Drogo’s hand shot forward. It moved so fast Vargus did not even have time to blink.
With his new, massive strength, Drogo did not need a sword. His bare fingers stabbed straight into the center of Vargus’s chest. The velvet jacket, the skin, the muscle, and the bone—Drogo’s fingers broke through all of it like wet paper.
Vargus’s eyes went wide. His mouth opened in a silent, perfect circle of shock. He gasped for air, but his lungs were filled with blood.
Drogo’s hand was deep inside the noble’s chest. He felt the warm, beating heart, but he ignored it. He was looking for something else. He reached deeper, feeling for the center of the man's magical spirit.
There it was. It felt like a solid, glowing ball of warm glass. The magic Core. It was empty of fire magic, but the Core itself was the source of a mage's life.
Drogo closed his fist around it.
"You wanted to cleanse your waste," Drogo whispered into Vargus's ear. "Consider yourself cleansed."
Drogo pulled his hand back violently.
He ripped the magic source right out of Vargus’s chest. A spray of red blood painted the white marble floor.
Lord Vargus’s body went completely stiff. His eyes rolled back into his head. Without his Core, his life force vanished instantly. The High Lord of the Sun, the cruel master of fire, fell backward onto the ruined floor like a broken puppet with cut strings. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Drogo stood over the body. He slowly opened his bloody fist.
Sitting in the palm of his hand was a glowing, pale blue crystal the size of an apple. It was Vargus’s Core. Even empty of magic, it glowed with pure, raw life energy.
The purple text burned in Drogo's mind again.
[A MAGE CORE HAS BEEN EXTRACTED.]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONSUME THE CORE?]Drogo did not hesitate. He squeezed his fist tight, crushing the crystal. It shattered into bright blue dust. Drogo’s glowing purple veins flared wildly as his skin absorbed the dust, drinking the very soul of the noble lord.
[CORE CONSUMED.]
[MAXIMUM HEALTH INCREASED. MANA REGENERATION INCREASED.][A KING AMONG INSECTS HAS FALLEN.]Drogo took a deep breath. The taste of power was sweeter than anything he had ever known. It was a terrible, beautiful addiction.
He looked down at his clothes. He was still wearing muddy, torn rags. It did not fit him anymore. He was no longer a beggar.
He reached down and pulled the fine, expensive leather boots off Vargus’s dead feet. He put them on. Then, he grabbed a dark, heavy wool cloak that a fleeing noble had dropped on the floor. He wrapped it around his shoulders to hide his glowing black veins and his bare chest.
He turned around and walked out of the ruined banquet hall.
He had the power now. But power was not the goal. The goal was his family.
“Mother. Tiana,” Drogo thought, his eyes narrowing as he looked out into the dark night sky. “I am coming home.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 9
The dragon let out a strange, twisted sound—not a roar of anger, but a scream of fear. The massive head of blue fire was suddenly sucked forward, pulling into a tight, swirling funnel.The funnel went straight into Drogo's open mouth.Vargus stopped laughing. His mad smile froze on his face. His eyes bulged out of his head.He watched the impossible happen.The giant thirty-foot dragon of pure blue fire was being sucked into the boy. The fire spun faster and faster, shrinking down, forced into Drogo's throat. Drogo was drinking the fire like it was a cup of cold water.In three seconds, the head of the dragon was gone. In five seconds, the body was gone. In seven seconds, the tail whipped through the air and vanished down Drogo's throat.Drogo closed his mouth. He swallowed.The Great Hall was suddenly dark again. The blinding blue light was completely gone. The intense heat vanished, replaced once more by the freezing, dead cold of the abyss.Drogo stood in the center of the melted,
Chapter 8
The Great Hall of the Vargus Estate was empty of all its rich guests. The loud music was gone. The laughing was gone. The only sound left was the crashing of broken plates and the heavy, terrified breathing of Lord Vargus.All around the room, expensive silk dresses and dropped gold rings lay on the floor. The rich nobles had run away like scared sheep. They pushed each other out the broken iron doors to escape the monster covered in gray mud.Lord Vargus did not run. He could not run. His legs refused to work.Vargus crawled backward on the smooth marble floor. His expensive red velvet jacket was ruined, covered in spilled wine and dirt. He kept pushing himself away from Drogo. His hands slipped on the wet floor.Vargus looked up at Drogo Payne. The boy was just standing there, completely still.Just an hour ago, Drogo was nothing. He was a dirty, weak, sick "Null." He was a broken bucket for Vargus to throw his magic garbage into. Vargus was the proud lion, and Drogo was the smalles
Chapter 7
CRACK.The massive iron doors did not open. They did not fall down. They simply dissolved. The thick metal turned into a giant cloud of gray dust. A sudden, freezing wind blew from the hallway, pushing the dust into the Great Hall.The nobles coughed and covered their eyes. The dust fell over the beautiful food. It fell into the red wine.When the dust cleared, a person was standing in the doorway.The nobles stared. They could not understand what they were looking at.It was a boy. He was barefoot, wearing clothes that were torn into dirty rags. He was covered in thick, gray mud from head to toe—the kind of mud that smelled like the bottom of the world.But the boy was not normal.Deep, dark veins branched across his pale skin. They climbed up his neck and down his arms. And those veins were glowing. They pulsed with a faint, terrifying violet light, beating like a dark heart.But the most frightening thing was his eyes. They were not human eyes anymore. They were pools of glowing pu
Chapter 6
The Great Hall of the Vargus Estate was a place of impossible light and endless wealth.High above the marble floor, massive chandeliers floated in the air. There were no candles or ropes holding them up. They were made of pure, shaped fire magic, burning brightly to show everyone the power of the Vargus family. The light made the gold on the walls shine like the sun.Long wooden tables filled the room. The tables groaned under the weight of too much food. There were whole pigs roasted with sweet apples in their mouths. There were bowls of silver filled with purple grapes from the southern islands. There were fountains made of glass that poured red wine instead of water.Lord Vargus sat at the head of the largest table. He wore a brand-new jacket made of deep red velvet. Gold threads were woven into the collar. He looked handsome, powerful, and very happy. He held a cup of wine in his left hand. His right hand was wrapped in clean, white silk."More wine!" Vargus shouted, laughing lou
Chapter 5
The purple stars in the void suddenly flashed bright, blinding violet. The thousands of whispering voices merged into one single, terrifying roar that shook the very fabric of the dark."THEN LET THE FEAST BEGIN."Pain hit Drogo like a falling mountain.It was worse than the Mana Slag. It was worse than broken bones. He threw his head back and screamed. A thick, dark energy rushed into his chest, right where Vargus had pumped the poison. The entity was not just touching him; it was pushing itself inside his body, weaving into his blood, his muscles, and his mind.In Drogo's mind, a strange, glowing text began to appear. It was not written on paper. It looked like words carved out of purple fire, burning directly into his brain.[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION STARTING...][CONNECTING TO HOST: DROGO PAYNE...]Drogo thrashed in the void. He felt his veins tearing open and stitching themselves back together. He felt the toxic Mana Slag that was killing him suddenly freeze, and then... it was eate
Chapter 4
The falling stopped. The wind stopped. The cold stopped.Drogo Payne expected to feel the hard, crushing blow of the ground. He expected his bones to shatter. He expected the sweet, final darkness of death.But there was no ground. There was no hard stone.There was only silence. It was a perfect, deep silence. It was quieter than the slums at midnight. It was quieter than a closed tomb.Drogo opened his eyes, but it did not make a difference. The darkness was absolute. He could not see his own hands. He could not see his feet. He was floating in an empty black sea without water.“Am I dead?" he thought.He felt his chest. The sharp, blinding pain of his broken ribs was gone. The heavy, burning poison of Lord Vargus’s "Mana Slag" was gone too. His body felt light. It felt like nothing at all.A heavy sadness washed over him. Tears formed in his eyes, but they did not fall. They just floated in the dark.He had failed.He thought of the seven copper coins scattering across the beautifu
You may also like
Ascenders: Rising From Zero
Sir_Impeccable27.5K viewsKingsman Return
Kuraii155.8K viewsThe Overpowered Grass Magician
Shame_less00745.4K viewsThe Legend Of Sword God
Djisamsoe 19.2K viewsBorn Without Magic, Destined to Rule All
Artemis Dee987 viewsReborn as the Tyrant’s Heir
Novelia Lux1.5K viewsCultivation God's Blood
KHOMAIROH 1.4K viewsI Became the Sect Master’s Shadow
Artemis Dee441 views