Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 20: Dragon Lord

Cecilia managed to rank Oathran’s cane four more times, pushing it to its absolute peak at Rank 7. At Rank 6, just as before, a special bonus enchantment slot had unlocked alongside the stat boost.

Seizing the opportunity, she layered a Charisma enchantment on top of the already staggering 60% ATK bonus. The cane now gave anyone who held it a commanding aura.

[Cane]

[Rank 6]

[Keeps you from stumbling, whether it is a pebble on the road or an attack coming your way!]

[All kinds of attacks targeting you have an 85.7% chance to miss!]

[Would you like to awaken your Cane: Rank 6 to Rank 7?]

"I wonder what the final evolution will do," she mused silently, her mind racing with possibilities. "Would it make the user completely immune to all kinds of attacks? A true invincibility?" With a nod, she committed. "Let’s rank it up for the last time."

The cane erupted in a final, brilliant cascade of light as the last duplicate copy merged into it.

DING!

[Congratulations! You have successfully awakened your Cane!]

[Cane]

[Rank 7]

[Keeps you from stumbling, whether it is a pebble on the road or an attack coming your way!]

[All kinds of attacks targeting you and your party have an 85.7% chance to miss!]

Cecilia’s eyes flew wide open. "Oh!"

It didn’t reach 100% immunity. Instead, the effect had spread.

The cane now protected a party, which, according to standard system logic, likely meant up to four people!

Yes, it wasn’t the absolute, selfish invincibility she had imagined, but this... this was a game-changing, army-altering buff. A single item could now shield their entire core group, turning the tide of any battle before it even began.

Interesting.

She turned to Oathran, who sat beside her, unable to pry his eyes away. Even after witnessing her divine crafting twice now, the process still held him completely mesmerized.

Seeing her finally done, the man offered a soft, amazed smile. "Since it seems you don’t expend mana to perform these miracles... what manner of energy did you exchange to obtain all this?"

Cecilia handed the cane back to him. It was now impossibly exquisite, its wood grain seeming to hold captured starlight, its presence both majestic and subtle. "Not energy," she clarified. "I exchanged it with money."

"Huh?" Oathran’s head tilted, the majestic Dragon Lord looking adorably confused.

Cecilia nodded, popping the ’p’. "Yup. This cane is worth 12000 Gold."

That was the final tally. Reaching Rank 3 had cost her 5500 Gold. Awakening it all the way to its glorious, game-breaking Rank 7 peak had set her back another 6500.

Oathran almost fumbled the priceless artifact, his face going rigid with shock.

He wasn’t an expert on human economics, but he knew the basics. 100 Gold a year was enough for a royal minister and their entire family to live in comfort, without a single financial worry.

This... this object in his hands... was worth 120 years of that?

Even for a Dragon Lord accustomed to the concept of hoarding wealth, spending such an astronomical sum all at once on a single item was... unprecedented. Staggering.

Was his wife... secretly this wealthy?

Wasn’t a Saintess supposed to be pious and poor, donating most of her salary back to the temple?

"Your Majesty," Cecilia teased, enjoying his stunned silence. "I think this divine blessing of mine is a bit... materialistic."

"What kind of cosmic entity," Oathran whispered, his brain visibly short-circuiting, "bestows an ability that operates on... capitalism?!"

"Like I said, Your Majesty," Cecilia chuckled helplessly. "If you could see the whole picture for yourself, you’d be even more shocked..."

He had no idea. He truly had no idea about the gacha, the banners, the love points... or the fact that she’d just rolled a five-star skill on how to give a world-class blowjob.

"But enough about that," Cecilia declared, turning her body fully to face the man. "Now my conscience won’t hurt when I ask you for what I truly want."

A gorgeous, anticipating smile spread across the man’s lips. He mirrored her movement, turning to face her completely, his restored form making the gesture feel grander, more deliberate. "Ask me anything, my lady. What is your desire?"

Cecilia’s eyelids fluttered shut for one heavy, deliberate beat. When they opened, her sea-glass gaze looked straight into the depths of his misty grey eyes. "I want to know what almost killed you, Your Majesty."

The smile in Oathran’s eyes vanished first. Extinguished like a snuffed candle. A moment later, the gentle curve of his lips slowly followed, flattening into a grim, solemn line.

The man’s hand, his newly restored, powerful hand, clasped the Rank 7 cane just a little bit tighter, the elegant wood groaning softly under the pressure.

"You," he whispered, "are such a cruelly gentle person, Saintess Cecilia."

Unfair.

***

People often said Dragons were a different category of creature altogether. They weren’t simply werelizards or weresnakes. They were Dragons.

They did not belong to the category of ’beast’ at all. They were something else entirely. More like... the progenitors of beasts. The lords of the food chain whose very existence defined the hierarchy beneath them.

So, over millennia, people began to equate them with living gods.

It was a logic mirrored across the world. The werehorses and werezebras revered the mythical Centaurs and Unicorns as their divine patrons. The titans of the ocean, the werewhales, weresharks, and wereorcas, sang hymns to the mythical Merfolk and feared the hypnotic call of the Sirens as their gods.

Perhaps, in the end, it was no different from how humans looked upon the mythical, long-lived Elves, not as neighbors, but as beings of a higher, almost divine order.

But unlike those mythical creatures who had faded into legend, Dragons still walked the world.

And their very presence was often regarded as a miracle in itself.

They were so shrouded in mystery, so fundamentally incomprehensible, that their true purpose remained unknown to the rest of the world. A secret so vast, not even most dragons themselves knew it.

But Oathran, chosen as the Dragon Lord three hundred years ago, knew.

"Oathran Alicei, you are chosen as the next Key Bearer."

That was what the voice of the world, the dying will of the previous Lord, had said to him.

"Every hundred years, the chosen Dragon Lord is tasked with closing two corrupted portals in the deepest, most desolate parts of this planet," Oathran began. "One lies near the Arctic, the other, its twin, near the Antarctic."

Corrupted portals were fissures that had torn open one day without reason or warning. From their bleeding edges spilled an endless tide of monsters, formless, ravenous things that generations of Dragon Lords had named ’Voidcrawlers’.

"The two portals can be connected into a single, unstable wormhole, which we must find somewhere in the world. The only way to seal them permanently is to close them simultaneously. Finding and forging that wormhole is our one and only chance."

"But for thousands of years," Oathran continued, "no Dragon Lord has ever managed to close both at once. It was too dangerous. The power required, too immense. In the end, they all had to sever the connection and seal one portal at a time, a temporary fix that merely reset the clock."

"Until I succeeded a week ago," Oathran said.

Seventeen years ago, he had begun his quest to find the wormhole and connect the two hellmouths. But before he left, he wanted to settle one final, personal matter.

"When I met you that day, I initially wanted to know how I would die. I thought if I knew the manner, I could find a way to die in the best way possible. After I closed the portals, my purpose in this world would be fulfilled. I wanted to truly die, but on my own terms."

"I expected you to tell me I’d die alone, forgotten in some distant corner of the world. I’d told you no beast could kill me, and you were right, I didn’t want them to claim my life as a trophy. I never expected... you would promise to kill me yourself," the man smiled.

"So, Saintess," he concluded, his voice impossibly gentle. "After we heal your heart... let’s sever our bond."

Cecilia’s eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat.

"You know how to do it," the man said, taking her hand and placing it flat against the solid, steady beat of his own heart. A heart that had weathered centuries and saved the world. "By ripping my heart out and killing me."

That way... she would finally be able to fulfill the oath she made to him on the altar all those years ago.