Evolving by devouring from a young dragon

There was no light, no sound, and no sense of space in the passageway.

Alduin felt as if he had been shoved into the esophagus of a dead behemoth, the surrounding membranes soft, damp, and putrid.

He hunched over, his wing membranes pressed tightly against his body, and glided through the spatial tunnel.

This place was continuously reinforced by the lich using spatial magic, thus forming a stable spatial passage. Therefore, there would be no risk for him to traverse it with his current physical body.

But the lich is dead, and without regular maintenance, this place could collapse and dissipate at any time.

Therefore, Alduin must get through here as soon as possible, find the Lich Tower, and obtain the Lich's relics.

I don't know how much time passed, maybe a few seconds, maybe a few days, but a crack appeared ahead, and a point of light came from the crack.

Auduin squeezed through the crack and landed on a stone slab.

The stone slab floated in the void, without any support, surrounded by gray-white mist.

Auduin looked around.

This place is so spacious that five giant dragons could stand side by side.

In the very center was not the black tower one might imagine, but a withered tree.

The trunk was large enough for three young dragons to encircle, the bark was withered and white as death, leaving only bare branches pointing into the void.

A bronze door, rusted and mottled, has been embedded in the tree trunk for a long time.

A cold glint flashed in Auduin's eyes.

The lich is dead, and there is no master guarding this place anymore. But this tower, imbued with the power of the dead for thousands of years, has never been a place for just anyone to come and go. Those deadly moves hidden in the shadows are all dead ends prepared by the lich for those who covet his wealth.

He had no time to investigate one by one; the dragon wings, glowing with a dark light, rushed straight toward the bronze door.

The bronze door wasn't locked... To be precise, the soul seal on it had already failed when the lich died.

Pushing open the door, a musty smell, tinged with a hint of sweetness, wafted out.

The hall was spacious, and the dome was so high that the top could not be seen.

The four walls were embedded with skulls—human, elven, dwarf, orc, and some of which Alduin did not recognize.

The eye sockets of the skull glowed with a faint green light, and the flickering candlelight illuminated the entire hall as if it were a ghostly place.

A stone coffin was placed in the very center of the hall.

The coffin lid was open, and a person was lying inside.

Dressed in a black robe, it was so thin it was just skin and bones, and its face was pale. A thick book with a leather cover was placed on its chest.

Auduin was somewhat surprised.

If he guessed correctly, this thing should be the lich's body before his death, or rather, a backup plan he left behind.

Unfortunately, the ritual required the complete sacrifice of one's soul to ensure its success, and the lich left no trace of his soul, thus having no chance of resurrection.

He shook his head, walked to the corpse, and picked up the book with his fingertips.

But the area above was completely empty.

Alduin's eyes narrowed, and he extracted another wisp of the lich's remnant soul. As soon as the book touched the remnant soul, line by line, it appeared on its own.

He stared intently and was able to understand that it was the language of the dead.

He casually flipped through a few pages, then closed the book again, put it back into the scales, and fell into deep thought.

This document does indeed contain a great deal of research insights on liches, including the interpretation of that bone fragment.

According to the lich's interpretation, what is sealed inside is an ancient dragon that has been dead for many years, leaving only its skeleton, but its influence remains.

The book clearly states that it was no ordinary dragon.

It is an ancient bone dragon, a Void Ancient Dragon, not an undead dragon transformed later, but an ancient dragon species born to govern desolation, decay and the slumber of the earth.

This ancient dragon was killed and perished here in ancient times. Its physical body completely collapsed, leaving only the core of its spine, which was refined into bone fragments and sealed.

Even though it is just a skeleton, its dragon might can still distort the laws of life and death. No wonder the lich was willing to exhaust his energy to unseal it and make it his mount and fighting force.

Although the main task was completed, Alduin still used sound waves to sense his surroundings and, as expected, discovered something unusual.

At the base of the tower, there is a hollow.

Alduin stared at the floor tiles that were indistinguishable from the others, then exerted a slight force with his claws, which glowed with a black light, and gently pried them up, revealing the underground passage.

Auduin descended slowly.

The stairs meandered and spiraled downwards until the 365th step, where a door made of white bones appeared.

A fist-sized green gemstone was embedded in the center of the door.

Alduin extended his dragon claws, the tips touching the gems.

The gemstone lit up instantly, its light changing from green to purple, and then to bright red.

Then the bone fragments began to slide apart, reassembling one by one, revealing the space behind them.

Behind the door is a circular room, not large, only about one-third the size of the stone coffin hall.

The room was piled high with things.

Bookshelves, workbenches, crucibles, distillation apparatus, dissection tables...

A corpse lay on the autopsy table; Alduin recognized it as a silver moon elf.

Her chest cavity was cut open, her ribs were spread apart, and her heart was removed and replaced with a fist-sized black crystal.

Auduin walked over and looked down at the crystal.

The necromantic crystal was purer than any he had ever seen.

The crystal was pulsating slowly. He stretched out his dragon claw and dug the crystal out of the corpse's chest cavity. Without support, the corpse's chest cavity collapsed instantly and then immediately became dry and lifeless.

He put the crystal away and turned to look at the bookshelf.

There weren't many books on the shelf, but each one was as thick as a brick.

He glanced at the headline—

"Anatomy of the Soul," "Plane Anchoring Theory," "Guide to Dragon Lich Conversion," "Records of Legendary Dragon Sacrifice Ritual"... all are forbidden texts.

Auduin took them all.

Auduin wandered around but didn't find anything good, so he walked out of the bronze door and stood on the stone slab outside the withered tree tower.

The spatial passage is still there, but the edges of the crack have begun to twist, and tiny cracks are spreading outwards.

He stepped in and vanished instantly, only to reappear in the decaying swamp.

"Dragon, Dragon Lord!"

Auduin ignored him, simply taking out the books he had just collected and throwing them into his pile of treasure.

Auduin frowned slightly as he recalled the account on the scroll.

The seal on the skeletal dragon of the Sealed Ruins is a legendary magic, which he is currently unable to cast.

Fortunately, the seal has not completely collapsed. As long as suitable materials are found, the seal can be reinforced again.

However, regarding those materials... everything else was fine, but there were three things that gave Alduin a bit of a headache.

High-purity negative energy dragon crystal, a sacred artifact for suppressing death, a treasure capable of stabilizing space...

The first high-purity negative energy dragon crystal is the hardest to find, but he was lucky. If he wasn't mistaken, the black crystal he found in the Lich Tower should be it.

It's called Gibor Dragon Crystal, a crystal formed from the condensation of magic and bones after the death of a dragon with negative energy attributes.

This thing is extremely rare and hard to come by.

In the old days, Auduin might even produce another one after it died.

Unfortunately, his soul is now a mess, mixed up by various forces, and he's no longer qualified to "produce and sell on his own."