Cerqin suddenly felt the mana in her body roused beyond control; the strange pull rolled through her like wind through reeds, and her body answered with sharp, secret tremors.
"Ah!"
After that startled yelp, Cerqin looked up, eyes wet with wounded gloom.
"Why can you control the mana inside me?"
"I was going to ask why my mana’s inside you..."
Absorbing another’s mana wasn’t unheard of. Silver Luan knew some secret arts and arrays could manage it.
The price was to dull one’s attribute to avoid rejection.
Or be much stronger than the one absorbed.
Either way, once foreign mana entered, it should be assimilated by one’s own in the end.
Yet to Silver Luan’s senses, the mana in Cerqin was almost indistinguishable from her own. When she probed with spiritual sense, she could call it directly, like twin currents merging.
"Could it be the Egg of the Dragon Deity..."
"The Egg of the Dragon Deity... you mean this shell?"
Panting, Cerqin asked in confusion. The forced stirring felt uncanny; the mobilized mana felt like a foreign shard lodged in her. There was no clear rejection, yet the sensation was vivid.
"This ability doesn’t have many use cases. Its defense is poor, so I’ve barely used it. The inherited memory’s notes are sparse—just that the shell blocks any spiritual probe that isn’t mine."
The Egg of the Dragon Deity was one of the Dragon Deity’s powers. To Silver Luan it was pretty useless, its description bare as bone.
She figured she’d never have a reason to use it. Beyond blocking spiritual sense, its defense wasn’t much, and on land an eggshell-like body drew too many eyes.
Hard to be probed, yet clumsy to deploy—more trouble than it’s worth.
She’d tested it once or twice, found it tasteless, and shelved it.
Silver Luan hadn’t expected it to have this hidden function.
After a round of probing, she began to see another effect.
Assimilation—one facet of the Dragon Deity’s all-rounder divinity.
Thinking that through, cold sweat prickled her scalp.
Cerqin’s current state was actually failed assimilation, and the reason was the Love God. Silver Luan guessed success would mean assimilation and turning her into a puppet.
The Love God’s effect is “infinite.” Even two ranks apart—mid-tier and high-tier worlds apart—that infinity means the Dragon Deity’s effect can’t fully land.
Hearing her reasoning, Cerqin muttered, "Still feels kind of useless..."
"This should be the Dragon Deity’s authority of propagation made manifest."
Even knowing its real effect, it only shifted from useless to maybe situational.
Still pretty tasteless.
"Mm... maybe it’s a little useful?"
Cerqin’s sudden about-face made Silver Luan arch a brow.
"Can you let me go first? You’re hugging too tight. It’s a bit much..."
After waking, Silver Luan had instinctively pulled her close, which only made Cerqin’s restlessness worse—mana churning like a caged tide.
"Wait a sec—"
Silver Luan didn’t plan to release her. She swept the area again with spiritual sense. The results surprised her, but all her focus had already swung back to Cerqin.
She simply carried Cerqin down to the bottom of the shell. In that cramped hollow, seawater stained by mana glowed like fireflies, and Cerqin knew exactly what Silver Luan intended.
"Isn’t this a bit ill-timed... won’t the sound carry out?"
"It shouldn’t."
Aileaf’s deep-dive potion sends speech by mana, distance-based. The egg shell blocks mana and spiritual sense. If Silver Luan doesn’t allow it, not a wisp of mana leaks.
So mana-carried sound won’t leak either.
"W-wait. Can’t we do this back on the ship? How about we explore the sea-dragon remains first?"
Cerqin pleaded softly, yet a bright thread of expectation gleamed in her eyes.
She knew Silver Luan wouldn’t stop here, so she played at reluctance.
Silver Luan saw right through and gave a soft hum. "You sure?"
"Mm..."
The shell was warmer now than when Silver Luan had slept. Its pearly interior wrapped the water, veiling much that shouldn’t be seen.
Cerqin squirmed shyly, legs pressed together, then lifted her head with restless little breaths.
"Let’s be quick, okay? Aileaf must be worried."
"Heh~"
Silver Luan’s dragon tail hooked Cerqin’s ankles and drew her down across the shell’s curved base.
"This dive suit’s in the way..."
A full-body suit, unlike the skimpier cuts, became a nuisance now.
Since they still had to explore the sea-dragon ruins, Silver Luan didn’t tear it off. She caught a seam with her tail tip and, like a slime, slipped inside.
"Mmm~"
"Next time, can we make the suit with a flip-open panel..."
"..."
The Dragon Deity hadn’t only gifted Silver Luan with potent bodily fluids—blood, sweat, every liquid humming like top-shelf potions.
It had also given her tail the gift of morphing.
She could change its length, thickness, and shape at will, like moonlight bending on waves.
That was her edge over Spring Tide and Aileaf right now.
If Spring Tide stacked sensations by borrowing the Phantom God’s feel, and Aileaf used her Littlefolk size like a just-right, arm-length uppercut—
Silver Luan’s tail was the bigger trump card.
She could split the tip into two points to strike two places. She could raise special scales to trigger strange effects.
And, say, afterward, when time was tight and she wouldn’t linger here, yet a thread of hunger still tugged—
She’d lengthen the tail to loop her waist, tuck the tip at her navel, and leave a little upward curl.
Cerqin, head lowered, sat on that curled tip—pretend pilot, pretty armor without function.
Each time she twisted, hunting for the right angle, her head burrowed deeper. Soft, squelching sounds bubbled up.
Just then, Silver Luan hunted down the troublesome deep-sea behemoths in this sea-within-the-sea.
Notably, these beasts were rare mutated kinds; most were of the Sixth Rank. Her earlier spiritual sweep had found no high-tier ones.
With her current strength, culling mutated Sixth Rank beasts was as easy as cutting reeds.
The violent dodges and wide, sweeping strikes made Cerqin, latched to Silver Luan’s front, suffer sweetly.
Luckily, the fight ended fast. Silver Luan caught Cerqin, who was going limp and losing her grip, and began to probe the relic’s interior.
"Judging by the range of my spiritual sense, we’re near the rear tail-end. The important part should be at the head..."
She reached ribs shaped from massive rock. When Silver Luan laid a hand on them, she truly felt a dragon’s breath within.
That breath was faint as ash, long bereft of life.
Without dragon blood, one might never notice the oddity of these rib-like stones.
"There’s little of the dragon’s aura left, but the bones still hold a lot of mana. We could treat them as rare ore."
"Mmm... th-that’s not right, is it? Feels like... grave-robbing..."
Cerqin let out a thin, broken whisper.
In truth, one aim of this venture was the sea-crystal vein, which they had now found. Between the jutting sea-dragon bones, the walls themselves were sea-crystal.
Earlier, the Egg of the Dragon Deity had blocked fine spiritual sensing. Cerqin had guessed the mineral was rare, but hadn’t realized it was the very sea-crystal they sought.
