Chapter 959 — A Private Invitation
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The hatchlings incubated in factories, the implant modifications and booster addiction that would cling to them for life, everything under the control of vast artificial intelligences, the sharply divided upper and lower worlds, the temples, the undercity, the factories, the districts, the priests, the councilors, the elders, the common folk, the self-running city, the corporate-tailored employees.
Tarrande.
The Kingdom of "Dragons."
Everything here had left a deep impression on Gaoyang, a shock even greater than what he had seen when he first stepped out of the tomb. In the span of a single day's tour and sightseeing, every impression he had held about the dragon kingdom had been completely overturned.
All the impressions of dragons as mysterious, powerful, elegant, and majestic had been shattered by reality. The world built in the imaginations of bards and playwrights had crumbled apart, leaving only a bizarre residue, a twisted and absurd impression, and countless thoughts and conjectures.
Faced with such a Tarrande, those tales of knights slaying evil dragons with their swords, of dragons forging pacts with heroes, of castles and kingdoms at war with dragons suddenly became endearing, even bathed in a warm glow.
Gaoyang seemed to suddenly understand why so many "travelers" from the dragon kingdom had gone to the human world and taken the form of bards, composing so many bizarre legends of dragons utterly at odds with the facts; he understood why "upper-class dragons" like Metzen would be bored enough to write piles of fabricated "hero versus dragon" tales, even putting her own good friend into them as a model.
He had once thought these were nothing but tedious and baffling quirks, but now... he could not help suspecting they might be a kind of remembrance—a remembrance of the pastoral life the dragons had once had, one that did not depend on boosters and implants, on artificial intelligence and automated cities—or perhaps merely a beautiful fantasy.
The Extreme Arena, one of several great arenas in Agondor, where a "competitive game" that struck Amber and Virodai as utterly incomprehensible was raging fiercely.
It was an ellipsoidal three-dimensional arena—vast quantities of sturdy alloy and high-strength polymer shell forming something like a "giant egg." Twelve dragons fought within this transparent egg over an emblem of honor called the "Champion's Ring," and those competing dragons had already gone far beyond Gaoyang and the others' impression of what a "dragon" was.
They boldly used large numbers of external implants, bone layered over bone, skin layered over skin; alloy armor and turbine injection devices made their once flesh-and-blood bodies look like strange flying machines of one shape or another. They grappled, fought, even slaughtered one another inside the giant egg—apart from forbidding high-power dragon breath and magical attacks, this so-called "competitive game" permitted almost any form and degree of melee, and dragon melee... in human eyes was utterly devastating.
One competing black dragon was eliminated. Beset by opponents in midair, after a savage and brutal struggle and slaughter he was torn nearly to pieces and thrown down, wings, limbs, and torso scattered in four directions. The heavy wreckage crashed onto the alloy floor at the bottom of the "arena egg," dazzling arcane sparks and runaway frost, flame, and lightning flickering from the broken stumps. His chest cavity burst open and a still-functioning heart tumbled out; the containment device failed to activate in time, and hot, faintly glowing fluid gushed from every part of the black dragon's body—more machine oil and booster than blood.
A recovery team rushed into the arena, swiftly retrieving the black dragon's torso along with its head, while the remaining wreckage was simply left lying on the field.