One Last System

I looked directly into the Dragon's deep, blue eyes. All the while, my finger continued to point at its cursed wound.

"Cut it," I said those words in a plain tone as if this matter didn't concern me. Yet, at the same time, I kept a slightly worried... and curious look on my face.

The Dragon slowly blinked its eyes. It was also when I realized it had a lizard-like double eyelid. One of those was whiteish and half-transparent, serving only to moisturize its eyeballs.

I lowered my hand and took a step back, giving the Dragon some room to move around.

Since we weren't fighting and I foolishly believed my intentions reached the Dragon's mind, there was a chance it was simply worried about hitting me if I stood too close.

'That, or it still hopes to recover some more strength before restarting the fight,' I thought as a sour smile crept up to my lips.

I took a step back...

And the Dragon finally moved.

It raised one of its front legs before bringing its massive, saw-like claws towards the wound.

The Dragon didn't hesitate even for a second when it buried its claw into the flesh of its wing's membrane. And then it brought its claw down, tearing the membrane away, right at the line I painted with my finger earlier.

In a single move, nearly a tenth of the Dragon's wing membrane was lost. A huge chunk of this surprisingly thick skin fell on the ground with a dull sound.

And I just couldn't help but stare at the events.

The Dragon didn't even need to lick its new wound as it started to regenerate all on its own.

'Huh?' I shrugged when my body swayed when a sudden current of mana rocked against me.

I focused on my mana sense for a short moment... Only to realize that as an immense amount of antimana flooded the bleeding areas of the Dragon's wing, a sudden spring of mana emerged in the world!

'It's like a pendulum,' I thought when a sudden wave of enlightenment struck me down.

I was right above the strange vortex of the city that sucked all the mana and antimana in. Right above it stood a dragon who not only continued to expend a considerable amount of its own anti-mana, but by doing so, he somehow caused an influx of normal mana.

And it was in this very specific scenario, while my senses were flooded by the rapidly changing currents of mana, that I finally grasped the crux of the matter.

'I have no idea of the physics of it,' I thought, swallowing down a gulp of saliva. 'But doesn't it seem like any given particle of mana or antimana... Oh my God...'

I couldn't stand on my legs any longer.

Overwhelmed with the immense simplicity of the situation, I fell down on my ass.

It all happened in just a single moment, a single moment that the Dragon used to nearly complete the process of healing its injured wing.

'Assuming that there is some sort of energy particles, then mana and anti-mana are just less potent yet more stable states said particle can fall into,' I managed to put my thoughts into a more restricted form.

While a mana particle would be in its stable state, it would still have some energy in it. Yet, only when it would be forced into the superposition like my mana engine forced them to would it showcase its true potential!

'This is fucking groundbreaking,' I thought, stunned by how simple and yet how complex this explanation was.

'Take the situation right now,' I thought. I couldn't help but keep on talking to myself, worried that all those discoveries would fade away if I didn't at least voice them out in my mind.

'The Dragon excites the energy particles in their negatively stable state. Yet, as the superposition is unstable, the particles simply swing into the other stable state,' I thought. 'That's why by using a huge amount of antimana, the dragon ended up producing a normal one!'

It felt as if everything clicked together. As if the world fell into the right place, correct track.

I slowly gathered myself up from the ground.

My mind was exploding with myriad ways in which I could make use of this new principle I had discovered.

'Now, I can't be that hasty,' I quickly disciplined myself.

I then took a deep breath to calm myself down.

I closed my eyes and took a moment to let the darkness lul my thoughts to a relative sleep.

"Haaaa...." I released all the air from my lungs, immersing myself in the experience.

The huge wound on the Dragon's wing closed up, putting an end to the swirling currents of mana in the vincity.

As the air in my surroundings calmed down, I finally managed to put a leash on my thoughts.

'It's not healthy to get so excited over stuff like that,' I thought.

This wasn't the first time when this world baffled me. Knowing my luck, it wasn't going to be the last one either. And if I continued to lose my mind over every big discovery of the secrets that shrouded this second life of mine, I would be putting a hard limit over how long my psyche would last!

"I can't forget this thing either," I muttered as I turned my eyes towards the fallen piece of the membrane that quite recently caused so much trouble for this Dragon.

Now that it was deprived of the support from the rest of the Dragon's body and vitality, the entire piece of the wing started to quickly wither.

'If I want to learn anything else, I need to hurry up,' I thought, moving forward only to stop near the wing and lower my eyes over it.

Just like I noticed before, the curse that managed to get one better over a damned dragon was insanely complex. While I could notice certain similarities to how my very mage's tower was constructed, the level of depth that I could feel was simply something else.

Yet, right as the large swath of the membrane was about to decay away...

I noticed something else.

Or rather, I noticed the meaning behind something that was right in front of my eyes this whole time.

'This injury couldn't happen that far in the past,' I thought as I squinted my eyes and focused on this problem. 'Even assuming that the curse would hibernate in that shapeless form, that would mean whoever inflicted this wound had to be relatively close when the dragon first hibernated...'

My mind continued to unveil the mystery. Yet, even though I have yet to consciously reach a conclusion, a weird feeling from the depths of my soul somehow managed to foretell what emotions this new discovery would invoke.

And then, my eyes landed on the very cut that was likely behind the birth of the curse.

'It had to be made with a human's hand,' I thought, gritting my teeth.

The cut was just too clean to be inflicted with a claw, beak, or tooth. It was made in a perfectly straight line, and it was only as short as wide could be the arc of a man swinging his sword.

'A human did it,' I thought, stating the obvious in my mind. 'And they couldn't be far from the dragon when it hibernated,' I brought the short version of what I concluded before.

My blood froze in my veins as I turned my head to the side so quickly that the joints in my spine nearly broke apart.

'Doesn't that mean the monsters we decored before will turn into fighters capable of dealing with this dragon?' I thought, moving my eyes back on the majestic beast.

I was a damned cheat. There was no one more aware of this fact than me myself. In other words, I wielded power far greater than any cultivator of the same level of cultivation as me.

And yet, I still wasn't sure if I could hold this Dragon back if it was fully set on taking me down.

And now a group of people capable of actually handling it were about to wake up in a foreign world, with no memories of recent events...

Right in the area where Mia was supposed to save that stranded disciple of the Tuxi sect!