The air inside the hidden mountain cavern was oppressive, thick with a sickening viscosity that choked the lungs. The metallic stench of fresh blood mingled with the acrid scent of sulfur and the blind, sweating ambition of twenty elite mages.
Draped in deep crimson robes, they stood in a perfect geometric circle around a massive magical formation drawn with the blood of A-rank monsters. At the center stood Kael, the Grand Mage of a neighboring, corruption-rotted state. He raised his hands toward the rocky ceiling, his eyes gleaming with the madness of absolute megalomania.
"Faster! Pump every last drop of your magicules into your veins!" Kael roared, his voice echoing maniacally against the damp walls. "We've torn the fabric of dimensions! This forbidden summoning ritual will bring us a Primordial Demon or a mythical calamity bound to our will! With this power, we will crush the Great Jura Forest and force the Holy Empire to its knees!"
The mages complied, pushing their energy to the absolute limit until their capillaries began to burst. The summoning circle flared with a violent, blood-red light that banished the cavern's darkness, and the tempo of the ancient incantations rose until space-time itself groaned and tore in response to their call.
Everything was proceeding perfectly according to Kael's brilliant design. He could already taste the victory, picturing the Demon Lords trembling before him.
But, at the exact moment the ritual reached its climax... everything stopped.
There was no blinding explosion. No majestic cloud of magical smoke.
Instead... the sound died completely.
The violent red light of the magic circle extinguished in a fraction of a second, swallowed by a pitch-black void—a vantablack darkness that devoured light like a starving black hole. Kael felt a terrifying paralysis creep up his spine; the magicules in the air were no longer flowing. They were freezing. The air itself became as heavy as molten lead.
"Wha—what is happening?" Kael tried to speak, but the words tore at his throat, the air fleeing his burning lungs.
Suddenly, without warning, one of the elite mages dropped to his knees, vomiting a waterfall of black blood mixed with chunks of his own viscera, his eyes rolling back in pure terror. Then a second fell. Then a third.
"Lord Kael! The circle... it's not draining magicules! It's draining our souls! This isn't a demon! This... this is—"
The assistant never finished his scream. His body literally imploded from the inside out. He wasn't crushed; he burst into a mist of crimson blood, as if the planet's gravity had been magnified a hundredfold over his body alone.
Kael's eyes widened in pure dread—a terror that utterly bypassed human comprehension. The aura leaking from the dimensional rift wasn't conventional magic. It was Raw Destruction Energy. Just the sheer intent of this mysterious entity crossing over was enough to crush the physical laws of the space.
CRACK!
The cavern walls splintered. The massive stone ceiling, which had endured for millennia, began to vaporize as if made of ash.
From the heart of that absolute blackness, a massive foot emerged. It wasn't a foot, but rather a cluster of black crystal claws radiating with pulsing silver veins. Each talon was the size of a royal carriage, sharp enough to sever dimensions.
The moment that crystalline claw touched the earth... the remaining mages vaporized. They were reduced to bloody dust in horrifying silence by absolute Spatial Domination.
Kael, the strongest and most resilient among them, collapsed on his face. His bones were shattering and grinding against each other beneath the catastrophic aura. In his final moments, drowning in a pool of his own blood, he forced his broken neck upward to see the calamity he had brought into this world.
The crystal dragon's head breached the mountain's ceiling, shattering the entire peak as if it were a fragile eggshell. The horrifying beast opened its colossal eyes... they were a deep Bordeaux red. But what truly terrified Kael was that those eyes held no wild rage or bloodlust... they held a look of profound annoyance. The look of someone rudely awakened early on their day off.
"We summoned... an annoyed god..." Kael whispered with a mad smile, right before his consciousness was snuffed out forever, his corpse becoming just another part of the bloody mud beneath him.
A terrifying silence reigned over the shattered mountain peak. There was no trace of the secret cavern; all that remained was an artificial volcanic crater carved out by the existential weight of "Velnéant". The silver stardust drifting from his crystalline scales danced in the cold mountain air like the ashes of stars.
Inside that colossal dragon skull, the mind of the former Parisian clerk, François, was boiling with anger and confusion.
"Ugh... my back... what the hell was that electric shock?" François thought, struggling to process what was happening. "My head is splitting. Who were those idiots screaming in cheap red bathrobes? Did I accidentally stumble into some crazy cult gathering in an abandoned subway station? And why does this place smell like a slaughterhouse that hasn't been cleaned in a century? All I wanted was to enjoy my chocolate éclair and a shot of espresso in peace!"
He tried to rub his eyes out of exhaustion, but what appeared before him froze him in place. Instead of his carefully manicured human hand, a colossal, black crystal claw rose before him, crackling with terrifying purple energy.
"Wh—what is this absurd nonsense?" His eyes—which were now the size of two houses—widened in horror. "This claw is bigger than my entire old apartment in the 7th arrondissement! Where is my white linen shirt? Where are my fingers?! Why do I only have four fingers that look like icy guillotine blades? And how am I supposed to hold a coffee cup with these pointy disasters?!"
He barely finished his internal panic attack before a cold, mechanical, and unbearably irritating voice pierced his consciousness.
[Notice: Massive quantities of Raw Destruction Energy detected leaking from the host's vessel. Threat Level: Imminent Cosmic Annihilation.]
[Notice! Notice! Maximum Emergency Protocol activated to protect the stability of the Material World.]
[Fusing 'Laws of Space' and 'Will of the Void'... Passive Skill: (The Eternal Seal) successfully synthesized.]
"Huh?! A seal? Cosmic annihilation? What nonsense are you talking about, you stupid ma—"
Before he could finish his French curse, space tore open around him. From the absolute void, massive chains forged of twilight-black metal erupted, covered in glowing golden runes of an unreadable cosmic language. The chains moved like starving metallic serpents, wrapping viciously around his massive crystalline limbs, choking his neck, and shackling his light-absorbing wings.
He felt a terrifying, cosmic cold bite into his scales. "Damn it! What the hell, let me go!" He exerted a fraction of his strength trying to break free. In a split second, half the mountain beneath his foot exploded into dust, but the chains didn't budge a single millimeter. They were an absolute anchor tying him to the very laws of the universe, emitting a deafening metallic screech.
[Notice: Assigning 'True Name' to stabilize the volatile human soul within the material dragon vessel...]
[Consuming 5% of the cosmic magicule reserve to execute the baptism...]
[Temporary Name selected: Velnéant.]
"Huh? Velnéant?" he uttered, his deep voice shaking the entire valley, annoyed by the absurdity of the situation. "Is that a new French perfume or something? Whatever, at least it sounds somewhat elega—"
He didn't know that a monster speaking the name granted by the System was the equivalent of signing an eternal contract with existence.
As soon as the word left his terrifying jaws, a massive magical hurricane erupted. A vortex of silver and black winds swallowed his colossal body entirely. And here, the true torment began.
It wasn't just a shrinking of size; it was a cosmic pressure crushing and grinding his crystalline bones. Intense heat and freezing cold warred within his cells, and he felt as though his soul was being forcefully dragged through the narrow eye of a needle. The destruction energy that flowed within him like a raging ocean was violently ripped away and compressed into those cursed black chains.
He let out a horrifying scream of agony—a scream that began as a sky-tearing dragon's roar and ended as a desperate human cry.
[Notice: A 'Soundproof Barrier' has been successfully erected to prevent the rupturing of eardrums in all lifeforms within a 50-kilometer radius.]
The catastrophic extraction lasted for fifteen minutes that felt like an eternity. Finally, the vortex dispersed.
In the center of the crater, a young man collapsed to his knees, panting violently, cold sweat drenching his body. He possessed a cold, aristocratic appearance; silver-white hair fell in elegant disarray over his forehead, his skin was pale as if sculpted from Louvre marble, and his Bordeaux-red eyes were pierced by vertical, black dragon-slits.
He was still bound by the black chains that wrapped around his human body like the shackles of a celestial prisoner.
[Notice: Naming process complete. Activating Ultimate Skill: 'The Eternal Seal'.]
[Sealing 97% of the host's total power capacity to ensure the space-time continuum does not collapse.]
The chains began to glow with a molten red hue, then literally melted into his skin. They converged, settling into a single point on the back of his right hand. There, an intricate, pitch-black tattoo of a dragon coiled upon itself was branded—the ultimate symbol of his sealed annihilation.
Velnéant remained on one knee, trembling from exhaustion. He looked at his hands, slowly raising his fingers in front of his face.
"Five... fingers," he sighed in profound relief, completely ignoring the fact that he was just a monster capable of destroying a continent. "Thank God. I can finally hold an espresso cup in a civilized manner."
[Notice: Constructing an Extra Skill corresponding to the host's deepest desires and precise structural comprehension...]
[Notice! Fusing 'Structural Analysis' and 'Laws of Existence'...]
[Ultimate Skill: (Lord of Eternal Architecture - LEA) successfully acquired.]