The Dragon Emperor of Another World: Awakening of a Legend

CHAPTER 6: Perilous Harvest

For weeks, the road became a blur of danger and discovery. Ethan Lockwood and Celestia Draconyx moved like a storm—swift, relentless, impossible to pin down.

Their first destination: the Crater of Fallen Stars.

Jagged rocks encircled the site like the claws of a giant beast. The land shimmered with residual mana, fractured by the impact of a comet long forgotten. Shards of star metal glinted beneath the shattered earth, but they were guarded.

A pack of mutated wyverns had made the crater their nesting ground, their scales infused with cosmic energy. One of them, a two-headed brute with celestial veins glowing across its hide, perched atop the largest shard.

"They're nesting," Celestia murmured, crouched beside Ethan behind a cluster of charred stones. Her wings were folded tight, her breath steady.

Ethan squinted through the shimmer of heat. "We need that shard. Think we can lure the alpha away?"

She smirked. "I’ll handle the sky. You take the ground. Don’t die."

Moments later, Celestia launched upward in her full dragon form, a streak of silver and shadow. Wyverns shrieked, wings flapping in agitation. Ethan darted across the crater floor, activating his Voidstep to blink from rock to rock.

The alpha wyvern swooped toward Celestia, jaws snapping. She spun midair and released a cone of black flame, searing the creature’s wing membranes. Ethan, meanwhile, slid beneath a smaller beast, carving a precise arc with his blade—Void Cleave.

Mana exploded in a flash of purple.

With Celestia locking the alpha in aerial combat, Ethan reached the largest shard. It pulsed beneath his hand, sending a tingle up his spine.

"Got it!" he called.

Celestia heard him, flipped in a barrel roll, and slammed her tail against the alpha’s chest. It crashed into the crater wall with a bone-cracking howl.

They didn’t linger. Shard secured, they vanished into the forest before the pack could regroup.

Next: the Skyreach Ruins, where high-altitude temples held the rare Night-Lilies.

But they weren’t alone.

The ruins were haunted by mana ghosts—pale blue phantoms with hollow faces and echoing wails. They twisted the air around them, distorting sound and vision.

Ethan summoned a clarity ward from his pouch. The device shimmered, anchoring his senses. Celestia’s voice reached him clearly through the bond.

"Ghosts hate light," she said. "Burn them from the inside."

She conjured a sphere of lunar flame and hurled it into the shadows. Screeches erupted. One ghost, nearly invisible, lunged for Ethan.

"Reactive Summon!"

His pouch flashed, producing a light-drenched dagger in his hand. He plunged it into the ghost’s chest. The creature shrieked and dissolved.

They pressed deeper into the temple’s heart. There, growing from a crack in the altar, bloomed the Night-Lily—a single pale petal glowing with ethereal ink.

Celestia reached for it reverently. "One step closer."

They didn’t look back as the temple collapsed behind them.

Their final task: the Whiskers of a Thunder Drake.

Stormclouds boiled above the Arask Canyons. Lightning forked between the peaks. At the center of it all—perched like a god of storms—was the Thunder Drake.

Ethan adjusted his enchanted gloves. “Ready?”

Celestia’s eyes flared with electric anticipation. “Always.”

The battle began with chaos.

The Thunder Drake descended, crackling with stormlight. Its roar shattered stone, sending shockwaves that flattened trees.

Celestia took the lead, diving with wings aglow. Her flames clashed with lightning, disrupting the drake’s flight. Ethan followed her lead, drawing a Thunder Chain from his pouch and hurling it like a lasso.

The chain wrapped around the drake’s neck. It screamed and thrashed, but Celestia struck with razor claws, cutting a whisker clean from its muzzle.

The moment it hit the ground, Ethan dove and snatched it. “We’ve got it! Fall back!”

They retreated under cover of a summoned storm dome, narrowly avoiding a retaliatory lightning blast that scorched the canyon floor.

When they returned to Dasi, Eileen was waiting.

The forge hissed and burned with anticipation. Eileen took the materials with wide eyes. “You actually got everything. That’s... absurd.”

"You didn’t think we would?" Ethan teased.

“I thought you’d die. But I respect the alternative.”

The next three days were a blur of fire and metal.