Chapter 193: Origin Magic
Lakyus was still holding the small figure in her arms, hands resting lightly around Draudillon's slight frame.
Her expression was soft, her bearing gentle — the particular quality of someone who believes, genuinely, that what they're holding is something fragile and in need of care. Something about the way she held herself radiated warmth that bordered on maternal.
Lucian was watching this unfold from a few steps away, and internally he was undergoing a significant collision.
"Unbelievable..." he murmured, voice low enough that no one else could possibly hear it. "She actually fell for it?"
He studied Lakyus's face. The tenderness was visible all the way down to the details — the softness in her eyes, the concern furrowed quietly between her brows. He considered it for a moment. A thought surfaced: was she faking it? Performing the moved-older-sister role deliberately, to get back at Draudillon for the "once we're married we'll be family" business? That was exactly the kind of move his sister was capable of. She'd been genuinely irritated by that line.
He watched for a few more seconds.
He let the theory go.
That expression wasn't performed. The softness in her eyes was real. The careful, measured pace of her breathing — the way you breathe when you're holding something you don't want to startle — was real.
"...She actually fell for it," he said to himself again, and raised one hand to cover his forehead. He pressed once, attempting to physically offset the helplessness rising from somewhere below his sternum.
No wonder Princess Renner had had Lakyus wrapped around her finger. The mechanism was apparently very simple. All you needed was to let something real show through a crack, and Lakyus would walk directly into it without any hesitation.
He lowered his hand and looked at the two of them in the center of the room with the expression of someone who has arrived at acceptance.
Draudillon was still in Lakyus's arms. That young, girlish face was working very hard to maintain an innocent expression — but her body had gone completely rigid. She was clearly not accustomed to being held with this particular variety of warmth.
Sebas, across the room, had registered none of this.
He was deep in his own internal landscape, quietly running everything Draudillon had just said against everything he already knew.
If dragons are truly as she described — long-lived, indifferent to the rise and fall of human things, driven purely by passing interest and whim —
Then it made complete sense.
Shalltear had been operating near Ye Ranta. She was hunting through the forest in her vampire form. Her presence alone — the raw power emanating from a True Ancestor operating at full capacity — would have drawn the attention of anything within a significant range. A dragon out wandering for its own entertainment would have noticed her immediately.
The dragon, moved by curiosity or interest, made contact. It discovered what it had found. And then, acting on that same casual impulse, it controlled her.
Everything aligned.
Sebas's gaze sharpened without him quite meaning it to. No wonder every probe Ainz-sama launched had sunk without a trace. All that careful, sustained probing — and Nazarick had been searching for something that had already packed up and gone home. A dragon that had passed through this region, acted on a fleeting whim, and when the situation resolved itself, simply returned to wherever it spent its time — without another thought for the Kingdom or anything in it.
The deduction settled into shape in his mind with a completeness that felt like pieces clicking into place. It fit against every known piece of information without contradiction.
A genuine wave of relief moved through him. He steadied his expression, pulled his attention back to the room, and spoke.
"Your Majesty." A new question. "I'd also like to ask something more specific — what does a dragon's power actually look like? What form do its capabilities take?"
Draudillon, currently enduring the sustained discomfort of Lakyus's maternal embrace, responded to the question like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on. She was out of Lakyus's arms before the words had fully landed.
"Ah — mm! Dragon capabilities!"
She took half a step back, putting distance between herself and Lakyus, and appeared to register this as her rescue. She cleared her throat and rebuilt the innocent, cheerful presentation, though the residual stiffness from the embrace was still visible. "A dragon's physical form is immensely powerful." She began counting on her fingers. "Their scales have a hardness far exceeding steel. Their claws can tear through city walls. And their aptitude for magic is at the very top of any scale you'd want to measure."
She paused.
Something flickered in those large eyes. A hesitation.
Should I mention Origin Magic?
Her gaze settled for a moment on Sebas's face — an upright-looking old man with trustworthy features. Then moved to Lucian's calm, neutral expression.
What these two had done for the Dragon Kingdom went considerably further than "assistance." The beastman threat had been removed at its root. Millions of lives had been kept. And besides — Origin Magic wasn't exactly classified information for most powers that mattered.
Draudillon made up her mind.
"...But truly powerful dragons don't use tier magic." Something in her voice settled into a slightly heavier register without her trying. "They use something older. A power called Origin Magic."
Sebas's breath stopped.
His pupils contracted by a fraction. The quiet, settled calm that had been sitting in those pale grey eyes was suddenly gone.
Origin Magic.
He had never encountered those words in any document, any record, any text he had read. Not once.
"Origin... Magic?" He asked Draudillon to confirm, carefully, in case he had heard wrong.
"Yes." She nodded. "Origin Magic is the magical system native to dragonkind — older than tier magic. It predates everything else. And only dragons who are capable of wielding it are given the title of True Dragon Lord."
Sebas's throat moved.
He registered, sharply and immediately, what this might mean.
This could be the power the dragon had used to control Shalltear.
Her mind-control was something no known tier magic could have achieved. Undead were supposed to be categorically immune to mental attacks — that was a foundational principle of the power system. No spell in any tier should have been capable of reaching through that immunity. But if Origin Magic operated at a different level entirely — if it bypassed the rules that governed tier magic, working on something beneath and prior to those rules —
Then everything made sense.
A wave moved through Sebas's interior that could have been felt in another room, but none of it reached his face. He gave a small nod, signaling Draudillon to continue.
She was slightly unsettled by the quality of his attention. But she continued.
"However, Origin Magic does have its limitations."
Sebas's eyes lit up with immediate, unguarded focus. "What limitations?"
Draudillon's large eyes dropped. She was quiet for several seconds — genuinely hesitating, weighing something. Then she raised her gaze again.
"...Origin Magic consumes the soul."
The air in the reception room seemed to thicken and hold still.
Sebas went rigid.
What had looked like an explanation became something else entirely in the same instant. He had been reaching for a piece that solved a puzzle. What he found instead was a new terror.
Consumes the soul.
The thought that formed in his mind was immediate and carried the quality of a cold weight dropping.
The Supreme Beings who had left Nazarick — who had not transmigrated with Ainz-sama, whose names were still locked in the guild roster but whose presences had been absent for so long. Their souls very likely existed somewhere in this world.
If a dragon had found them —
If a dragon had decided that the souls of Supreme Beings made fitting fuel for Origin Magic —
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