"Close your eyes. Let your consciousness enter a dormant state."
The King gave his order, majestic and absolute.
Though the dragon servant didn't understand why, it obeyed as a loyal subject should. Gazing into its own reflection on the river's surface, it hypnotized itself. The next moment, its massive body went limp along the riverbank—falling asleep instantly.
Norton observed the dragon's immense skull, paying close attention to the now-quiet neural patterns within its brain.
Now that it was unconscious, the neurons were no longer active.
Perfect. Time to begin.
Norton hadn't chosen his faithful guardian for this experiment out of cruelty or callousness. He simply had a fierce curiosity for this new, unfamiliar system of alchemy—the Alchemy of the Atlas Institute.
Norton earned his title as the King of Bronze and Fire because he had mastered unparalleled flame, and through it, extracted a special form of bronze from the planet's ley lines—a regenerative metal reborn through perfect incineration. Using this miracle alloy and his own top-tier alchemy, he had created countless bronze works.
Including his home beneath the Three Gorges: the Bronze City.
A master of such level couldn't possibly ignore the allure of a new alchemical system.
"Emiya Shirou… what a fascinating human." Norton mused while delving deeper into this strange technique.
As an immortal dragon king, he had seen countless humans—noble, vile, ambitious, gifted, and countless who were nothing at all. But few had ever sparked this level of interest and curiosity.
Even more impressive: Norton was not some fool like Fenrir. He had never trusted any human. Even when he had taken the name Li Xiong during the Han Dynasty to help Gongsun Shu become emperor, it was purely for personal gain.
In those chaotic years of war, Norton used the turmoil to build another home—a Nibelungen of his own—called White Emperor City, hidden along the Yangtze. There he lived in peace with his brother, Constantine.
But Gongsun was defeated and killed. Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu marched west. And the Shenzhou mixed-blood families brought armies with them. Norton had no choice but to unleash his ultimate Word Spirit: Candle Dragon, an elemental inferno that engulfed all. White Emperor City was swallowed by destruction, and both he and his brother fell into deep slumber beneath the earth.
His reawakening in the modern age came as an accident.
Initially, he hadn't regained full awareness. Instead, he wandered for decades with amnesia, believing he was a human named Lao Tang. But even in human disguise, his nature remained unchanged. A dragon cannot become a man. He could not find a place in human society—until he met Emiya Shirou.
"Magic circuits… Divided Thought…"
At first, Norton had dismissed the idea of developing a new system as naive nonsense. Throughout history, many brilliant minds had tried to break free from existing shackles—yet all had failed or been forgotten.
Even Kassel Academy's current Nibelungen Project was basically a near-aborted effort.
But Shirou's framework was different.
With his godlike alchemical vision, Norton could tell: Magic Circuits were not mere arrays. They weren't some passive runes to draw power. The Zhou family saw them as living organisms. Norton saw deeper.
They were a bridge—a living conduit between the soul and the flesh.
Structurally, they resembled a second nervous system. Woven throughout the entire body, synchronized with blood flow, they converted spiritual energy into a manipulable form: Mana.
And through a sufficiently strong soul, mana could flow like the Yangtze River.
Norton's golden eyes gleamed. His aura surged, magic energy bursting forth and stirring elemental interference. The wind howled into a localized gale, and even the sleeping dragon trembled as it felt its king's abyssal magic pressure.
Norton snapped his fingers.
The burst of ambient mana transformed into pure fire, elemental and wild. He became a sphere of blazing heat—a miniature sun hovering above the ground. The surrounding vegetation incinerated into ash in an instant. The Yangtze's waters boiled and steamed from the heat.
And this was not a Word Spirit. Nor was it domain magic from a dragon's authority.
This was simply mana leakage. That's all.
Even without his twin Constantine—who embodied "Strength"—Norton, who held "Authority," had advanced far on his own.
Mana Burst (Flame).
He even gave this phenomenon a skill name, satisfied with its resonance. Then he turned toward his servant, flame reflecting in his golden eyes. He raised his hands—now shaped into blazing claws.
He had already dissected Shirou's description of Divided Thought and compared it to modern circuit systems.
To his insight, the two shared parallels. Divided Thought would require multiple artificial thought circuits—constructed from alchemical arrays—to house those fragmentary personas.
Mental rewiring like this would be a monumental hurdle for humans. At best, they might distill their mind into a Philosopher's Stone. But for a dragon king—a being who could reshape the living—it was child's play.
With fire as his scalpel, his refined alchemy formed a domain over the dragon's brain. In moments, a web of circuits activated within, stimulating synapses with explosive clarity.
The dragon servant awoke, dazed.
It felt a sharp boost in mental agility—like its brain was suddenly running in high gear. Stranger still, it could hear multiple voices in its mind… all of them its own?
Norton smiled. His theory was confirmed.
Then he pointed to himself.
The dragon blinked, confused. It had never seen anything like this before. But its King had already reached heights it could never comprehend. New techniques from him? Completely normal.
BOOM!
Norton's blazing form vanished. Darkness returned—but the pressure in the air only intensified. The dragon nearly toppled into the river.
Yes—YES! Norton's entire being radiated glee as he felt the world slow around him.
Multiple mental circuits layered within his mind surged. All trajectories of movement became visible—every falling leaf, every drifting speck of dust was now a mathematical inevitability. Looking "farther," he saw time branching outward like a tree—future possibilities unfurling.
This was the power of Divided Thought—an overwhelming multiplication of cognitive potential. Even just "looking" allowed him to perceive futures. He now understood how to elevate his alchemy even further.
Forget Word Spirits. This was superior.
He turned toward one of his old creations: a set of conceptual weapons forged from seven ideas, meant to slay other dragon kings.
The Seven Deadly Sins.
But as his golden eyes scanned the weapons, a flicker of dissatisfaction crossed his face.
The purity… was lacking.
Now, with his ability to simulate and compute at a near-divine level, he could improve upon every step. He could craft something greater.
Weapons worthy of a greater enemy.
To slay the mightiest of all dragons—
The Black King.
To achieve that, he would forge seven true weapons of world destruction.
(End of Chapter)
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