CHAPTER 35: THE PRINCESS & THE DRAGON'S TOME**
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The bandits never saw what hit them.
One moment, they had Princess Kael cornered against her overturned carriage, blades glinting. The next—**a boot shattered their leader's jaw**, a golden-eyed stranger disarmed three men in one motion, and an old man with a pipe snapped the last bandit's knees with a bored sigh.
Kael wiped blood from her lip, glaring at her rescuers. **"I had them right where I wanted them."**
Shen flicked gore off his knuckles. **"Sure you did."**
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The Astral Palace's library stretched into impossible dimensions, its floating shelves humming with ancient power. Kael led them through the labyrinth, her silver-gold hair catching the light of crystallized knowledge.
**"Study whatever you need,"** she said, gesturing to the endless tomes. **"But don't touch the Black Section."**
Shen's gaze locked onto the restricted area the moment she said it.
As Ryulga and Nolan left to "go fishing" (a terrible lie—they were clearly dungeon-hunting), Shen got to work.
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For three days, he tore through the kingdom's greatest spells, remaking them in the void's image:
- **Firestorm** became **Voidstrike**—a blade of compressed nothingness that ignored armor.
- **Titan's Might** twisted into **Overdrive**—sacrificing flesh for explosive power.
- **Phantom Step** evolved into **Vanish**—five seconds of perfect, conceptual erasure.
But the final book was missing from its pedestal.
Kael found him staring at the empty stand, her fingers tightening around her sleeves. **"...The last one's guarded below the palace. By the thing that killed our entire royal guard."**
Shen's shadow-armor pulsed in anticipation. **"Let's go say hello."**
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The descent into the catacombs took hours. The air grew thick with the scent of burnt ozone and old blood. At the bottom, behind a door carved with screaming faces, lay the **Arcane Dragon's hoard**—and at its center, the final tome floating above an altar.
The dragon itself was less a creature and more a **sentient storm** of stolen magics, its form cycling between fire, lightning, and deeper, stranger energies.
**"Darkness cannot wield light,"** it boomed, its voice shaking dust from the ceiling.
Shen's armor flickered as his stolen spells destabilized. The dragon was right—his void energy rejected traditional magic.
So he **ripped off his gauntlet** and plunged his bare hand into the storm.
**"Then I'll make my own."**
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Pain like he'd never known. The dragon's magic tore through him, burning away flesh and memory alike. Kael screamed as his blood hit the altar—
—and the **Supreme Lord Eye** awoke.
A third eye, blacker than void, split open on Shen's forehead. The dragon's magic **froze**, then **shattered**, its power reforged into something new:
**Dark Mage Form 2.**
No longer just armor—this was **living annihilation**, a silhouette of the abyss given will. The dragon's corpse collapsed into ash as Shen's new form absorbed its essence, completing the tenth technique:
**"Reign."**
The ability to **temporarily overwrite reality's rules** within a ten-meter radius.
Kael stared at the monster she'd helped create. **"...What are you?"**
Shen's three eyes blinked out of sync. **"Hungry."**
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