Liora and the others looked at Adyr, then at the spot where his gaze was fixed. Confusion flickered in their eyes, but before they could ask, a voice rose from between the Blood Dragon's scales, answering their unspoken questions.

"How did you realize?"

Blood seeped up through the gaps between the plates where Adyr was looking, streamed into the air, and began to coalesce into a figure they all knew too well.

"Sevrak..." The name spilled from their lips with hate and shock.

They had thought he was dead. They had even seen his mangled body and burned it to make sure he was not only dead but gone beyond return. Yet now the man stood before them again, whole and unbroken.

Sevrak ignored the others' stunned looks. With pitch-black eyes, he fixed on a single figure and waited for an answer, genuinely curious how Adyr had spotted him when even Throgar Soulforge had failed to notice.

"I have good instincts," Adyr answered with a smile. It wasn't a complete lie. His bloodline talent, Gaze, which let him glimpse ahead, worked like an instinct and had warned him before Sevrak's sneaking strike, letting him slip away.

"Is that so?" Sevrak smiled at that, realizing Adyr was hiding the truth, but he did not press a question he knew would yield no answer.

He turned his eyes to the Blood Dragon beneath his feet and asked a different question. "Those things you threw inside-were they the explosives you used earlier?"

This time, Adyr saw no reason to lie or hold back. "They were"

Sevrak nodded once, unsurprised. "I have never seen anything like them in my life. As I expected, you are not from these lands."

He looked utterly calm, as if it did not matter that 2 Titled-rank-level bombs were about to detonate beneath him.

Actually, he didn't care at all. He spoke with absolute confidence. "But those are not enough."

As his words rang out, everyone, including Adyr, narrowed their eyes.

A moment later, a great blast tore through the Blood Dragon's stomach. A shockwave punched outward, and huge crimson scales, blood, flesh, and shards of bone sprayed across the field.

Adyr and the others raised their guards to block the rushing heat and the flying scraps of flesh, while Throgar shielded them with invisible barriers.

When the peak of the blast began to fall away, the air held only the stink of burned meat and the chemical tang of the explosion lingering overhead. They looked at the result.

"How is that possible?" Disbelief widened Liora's eyes.

The Blood Dragon's belly was ruptured open, its throat torn all the way up. Through the split front, the white bones and the spinal column along its back were visible. Even its lower jaw had been blown apart and torn from its hinge, hanging by a strip of flesh and swaying at the side of its face.

Yet despite all these wounds, the Rank 4 Spark still stood. There was no pain in its expression and no sign that it was about to die.

Then, like a bad joke, the massive torn gash from stomach to throat began to heal at incredible speed.

"Why do you look so surprised? You did not truly think you could kill a power close to Rank 5 with only this much effort, did you?" Sevrak laughed, still standing on the dragon's head as if nothing had happened, watching their shocked faces.

"It's a power paid for with a treasure, the lives of 3 Rank 4 Practitioners, hundreds of Rank 3 and below, and the blood of an entire kingdom, after all." He spoke without a whisper of regret, only pride and satisfaction in what he had done.

"Your soul is corrupted, Sevrak. Even the Gods would not forgive you for this," Liora cried when she heard his pleased explanation and saw the satisfaction on his face.

Sevrak ignored Liora again and focused on Adyr. "I really wanted you to subdue the Spark, you know."

His expression cooled into mild disappointment as he went on. "Long ago, I realized you were from some Elder race and hoped to slip into your Sanctuary to see what secrets a Practitioner born with a golden spoon keeps."

It wasn't surprising that Sevrak knew Adyr was from an Elder race; failing to notice would've been foolish, especially now that he stood with the other 2 Titled Practitioners as an equal and even seemed to hold more power and authority than they did.

What was shocking was the word 'sneaking in' itself and what it actually meant. Hearing him, Adyr looked calm on the outside, but a faint chill ran within.

So that was his plan from the start. The thought settled heavily, along with a ripple of relief that he had not, in fact, subdued the Spark-thanks to Liora and the others.

Sevrak's plan was simple in theory: use the Blood Dragon as a Trojan horse, like an infected file breaching a system, and infiltrate the deepest, most vulnerable place in Adyr's defenses.

For a Practitioner, the worst possible fate was an enemy entering their Sanctuary, like a cancer cell that killed the body from the inside.

Of course, doing it was far harder than saying it. Even Throgar and Zephan looked stunned; neither had imagined such a thing could be attempted.

But it seemed the Blood Dragon's newly gained powers could enable it.

Adyr didn't break his calm. He laughed with Sevrak, as if none of it had rattled him. "My apologies for ruining your plans."

Then the smile faded to a small curve at the corner of his mouth. "So what is your next plan now? Do you want to kill me?"

By then, the Blood Dragon was almost fully regenerated and no longer looked mindless, as Sevrak had seized control again. If he wished, he could unleash its full power and kill them. But for some reason, he did not seem inclined to do that.

Adyr's steady, unafraid bearing took him aback for a moment, then fit precisely with what he believed about Adyr's background.

Sevrak did not answer directly. Instead, he asked his own question. "Do you know why I killed all my trusted aides and harvested all my kingdom's blood?

For what purpose did I create this Blood Dragon?"

Adyr held silent for a moment. He was sure the answer was not something as simple as 'I wanted revenge for my grandson!

Then he answered with calm certainty. "Because you wanted power."

Hearing it, Sevrak laughed again. "Indeed, you are right." Revenge was only an excuse.

"When a life stretches over centuries, loyalty and love do not last. Sooner or later, only survival matters, and then the pursuit of immortality." His reasoning was plain and sincere.

He had not sheltered and grown his kingdom and the Practitioners under him so they would love him like a people adore their king. To him, they were a farm -kept and tended until the day he would use their blood to add to his strength. "And for that reason, even though I still want to kill you and turn the Outer Region into a ghost land, I cannot do that now, for reasons that should be obvious."