Dragon Heart
The Saga:
Dragon Heart
Sea of Sorrow
Book V
By Kirill Klevanski
Text Copyright © 2020 Kirill Klevanski
All rights reserved.
No part of this book can be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Introduced by Valeria Kornosenko.
Translated by J. Kharkova
Edited by Damir Isovic
Cover designed by Julia Jdanova
Illustrations by Valery Spitsyn
Hello all!
My name is Kirill Klevanski and you are reading my adventure LitRPG wuxia saga.
The whole story is planned out and will have 2000 chapters. Now the story has almost 1500 chapters spanning 16 books. 5 books are translated into English and released.
The beginning of the story (click the link):
Dragon Heart: Stone Will
Table of contents
Hello all!
Chapter 333
Chapter 334
Chapter 335
Chapter 336
Chapter 337
Chapter 338
Chapter 339
Chapter 340
Chapter 341
Chapter 342
Chapter 343
Chapter 344
Chapter 345
Chapter 346
Chapter 347
Chapter 348
Chapter 349
Chapter 350
Chapter 351
Chapter 352
Chapter 353
Chapter 354
Chapter 355
Chapter 356
Chapter 357
Chapter 358
Chapter 359
Chapter 360
Chapter 361
Chapter 362
Chapter 363
Chapter 364
Chapter 365
Chapter 366
Chapter 367
Chapter 368
Chapter 369
Chapter 370
Chapter 371
Chapter 372
Chapter 373
Chapter 374
Chapter 375
Chapter 376
Chapter 377
Chapter 378
Chapter 379
Chapter 380
Chapter 381
Chapter 382
Chapter 383
Chapter 384
Chapter 385
Chapter 386
Chapter 387
Chapter 388
Chapter 389
Chapter 390
Chapter 391
Chapter 392
Chapter 393
Chapter 394
Chapter 395
Chapter 396
Chapter 397
Chapter 398
Chapter 399
Chapter 400
Chapter 401
Chapter 402
Chapter 403
Chapter 404
Chapter 405
Chapter 406
Chapter 407
Chapter 408
Chapter 409
Chapter 410
Chapter 411
Chapter 412
Chapter 413
Chapter 414
Chapter 415
Chapter 416
Chapter 417
Chapter 418
Chapter 419
Chapter 420
Chapter 421
Chapter 422
Note from the author
I would like to recommend you several new books of the Russian authors
Facebook groups I follow
Chapter 333
Hadjar was very familiar with dungeons as well as darkness. Probably because the former naturally came with the latter. He was in a dark dungeon once again.
Hadjar had woken up in all kinds of beds: thanks to the Bedouins, he’d even once woken up in a bed full of nude girls ready to please him; but he’d also woken up on hard mats and stones; on the bare ground; in dungeons and torture chambers; in a cave with a dragon; and in a village hunter’s home.
And yet, never before had Hadjar woken up lying on some kind of thick, viscous fluid. Why did he think this was a ‘dungeon’? Because he was completely naked and couldn’t move a finger. The substance around him was so dense that he seemed to be stuck inside it. As if someone with a bad sense of humor had shoved him in a bathtub full of foul-smelling glue.
“Azrea,” Hadjar called out.
His eyes gradually got used to the darkness. He wasn’t able to turn his head, so he couldn’t see a lot: just the distant ceiling, illuminated by a green light coming through some cracks. Wherever he was, it must’ve been huge.
“They tried to trap her in the liquid,” a familiar voice explained. Judging by where it had come from, Einen was somewhere nearby, “but your tigress was... uncooperative. She bit them, scratched their faces, and then disappeared.”
“Azrea,” Hadjar repeated in a completely different tone of voice.
He had no doubt that his furry, four-legged friend felt safe here and could probably even-
“That was three weeks ago.”
His train of thought abruptly ground to a halt. Three weeks ago? It felt like they’d reached the entrance to Underworld City only yesterday. And now he was in a dungeon. Why did it feel like he couldn’t avoid ending up in one?
“It happened right after I woke up,” Einen said.
“It’s unlikely that they spent a lot of time dealing with Azrea,” Hadjar realized. “You most likely woke up almost immediately.”
“I agree.”
Silence reigned in the cave, disturbed only by the flapping of bat wings. Hidden in the darkness, they watched the two immobilized creatures, but didn’t attack them.
“What happened while I was unconscious?” Hadjar asked.
From personal experience, he knew that the worst thing in any prison was the silence. It was better to avoid it by talking to anyone who would listen to you. Even a rat, or, in Hadjar’s case, a rat’s corpse.
“Nothing too terrible.” Einen answered. “A couple of times, someone that looked like a healer came down. I’ll be honest, Northerner, I envied you in those moments. I wish I’d been unconscious, just like you.”
“Was he that handsome?” Hadjar tried to joke.
“It was that painful.” Hadjar felt the bald man grimace.
Hadjar grunted and looked at the ceiling again. He’d often imagined his first visit to Underworld City. Of course, he hadn’t expected the royal treatment or a red carpet, but he hadn’t expected to be thrown in a dungeon for the umpteenth time.
“Do you have an escape plan?”
“A few, in fact,” Einen answered. After his friend let out a sigh of relief, he added: “But I need at least one of my fingers to be free for each of them.”
Hadjar cursed up a storm. He spent the next few hours brainstorming about their current situation. In his desperation, he even turned to the neural network, only to be greeted by the following message:
Computing module is currently rebooting…
Approximate time until completion is 3 years, 4 months, 12 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes, 45 seconds…
... 44
... 43
...
There was no way out.
“What if-”
“Already thought about it.”
“Maybe-”
“That too.”
“We could-”
“Not very likely.”
“Well at least I’m trying!” Hadjar declared indignantly.
“Northerner, I’ve been here for three weeks, playing chess
with bats. You want to know what scares me the most? I lost a few times! Therefore, no matter what you end up proposing, I’ve already thought it over several times.”
Hadjar couldn’t tell if Einen was joking or not. He sincerely hoped that the islander was still managing to mock him, even in such a stressful situation. Six hours later, Hadjar realized that Einen wasn’t joking. He’d also lost to a bat. The animal looked at him with its scarlet, beady eyes, inspiring slight trepidation and a considerable amount of envy.
Ten hours later, Einen and Hadjar started arguing, accusing each other of being the cause of the unenviable situation. They even tried to crawl into each other’s ‘bath’-cells, but the glue held them in place.
Then the days started dragging on lazily, like a grazing buffalo that didn’t have a care in the world. Einen and Hadjar talked less and less. They silently indulged in deep meditation more often than not.
The substance in which they lay possessed not only immobilizing properties, but also a strange ability to absorb energy. When they tried to free themselves with the help of their energy, the liquid began to glow and power flowed away from their bodies and cores. It was a creepy dungeon, much more horrific than a simple slave collar with poisonous spikes. At least the latter was easy to understand and even familiar in a way.
“Hadjar,” Einen said.
He didn’t really want to talk, but his lips and tongue were the only muscles that he could actually use.
“I’m still here, don’t worry. I haven’t gone anywhere,” Hadjar joked dryly.
In all this time, no one had ever visited them. Not even that red-haired witch who’d obviously wanted to kill Hadjar. Surprisingly, they didn’t need food. Apparently, after processing their energy, the glue would feed them in some strange way. To be perfectly honest, Hadjar wanted to believe that it was processing their energy and not their excrement...
“What was that thing you ate when the dragon attacked us?”
Hadjar had been waiting for this question. Surprisingly, Einen had decided to ask it after almost a month and a half of them being imprisoned... Okay, admittedly, he hadn’t been able to get any answers from Hadjar during those first three weeks.
For some time, Hadjar had pondered whether to answer honestly or not. After Nero, Einen had become the first person whom he could call a friend. They’d fought shoulder to shoulder and watched each other’s back, but something in their relationship was different. There was no sincere recklessness or a readiness to charge after one’s friend, even into the abyss or a hopeless fight.
“A fairy’s body,” he answered finally.
There was utter silence. Then Einen said, “What? What’s a fairy?”
Now it was Hadjar’s turn to look incredulous.
“What do you mean — what’s a fairy?”
“I mean… What is a fairy, Northerner? The secret elixir of your royal family? A mystical potion of some kind? An artifact?”
“That sounds like a joke, Einen. However, your previous one about bats and chess was better.”
Hadjar noticed a gurgle like the one he’d heard when they’d quarreled and Einen had tried to break free from the glue in order to strangle him.
“If I could, I would challenge you to a duel,” the islander growled, continuing to make the gurgling noise.
Hadjar arched his right eyebrow skeptically. Alas, only the bats could appreciate it.
“Do you really not know who fairies are?”
“Who? I think they’re more of a ‘what’!”
Hadjar snorted. Then he coughed. Then he laughed out loud. He laughed long and hard. Even his belly started aching. After two weeks of complete immobility, this pain was a pleasant change of pace.
“Why are you laughing, barbarian?”
“Just give me a minute,” Hadjar said, out of breath, “let me enjoy the moment.”
“What moment?”
“The one where I know something you don’t.” Hadjar laughed again. He sighed and sniffed. “What a wonderful feeling it is when everyone around you seems dumb.”
“I never called you dumb. Ignorant maybe, but not dumb. I’m gonna ask you one last time, barbarian, who are fairies and how do you know about them?”
“They’re the messengers of the gods. I know about them because my mother told me stories when I was a child. I thought all children knew about them...”
Again, there was utter silence in response.
“Hey, baldy, don’t go all quiet on me now...”
Silence.
“Einen!”
“Calm down, barbarian,” Einen whispered wearily, “let me digest this new information. It’s not every day somebody tells me they’ve eaten tangible proof that the gods exist.”
Alas, the islander didn’t get a chance to finish ruminating. Footsteps were heard in the hall, and Hadjar finally saw someone besides bats.
Chapter 334
“You look good, stranger.” The paunchy man who’d shielded Hadjar from the red-haired witch’s spell leaned over his ‘bathtub’.
Now that Hadjar could see him from up close, he noticed something quite abnormal: slightly sagging, fatty cheeks, which even the weakest practitioners couldn’t have. During training, even without any meditation, a practitioner’s figure would become rather attractive and well-shaped. Only those who had advanced a long way down the path of cultivation could have some extra fat on their sides, along with people who needed it on their own chosen path.
Neither seemed to be the case with this man. Although Hadjar wasn’t a true cultivator since he was still at the Transformation Stage, he could feel the presence of the Spirit in another person. In Einen, he’d detected the influence of the Staff Spirit and the Spear Spirit. In himself — the Sword Spirit. In this paunchy man, he could feel no Staff Spirit, nor the Spear one, the Dart one, not even a Stick Spirit. Hadjar sensed nothing that would be familiar to him.
Nevertheless, the man held a military iron staff with a colored stone at the top. The power emanating from it wasn’t at the initial levels of cultivation, but at the level of a Heaven Soldier.
“What do you want from us?” Hadjar asked, looking into the man’s eyes.
“What do we want?” The man seemed surprised. “From you? By the Evening Stars, we want nothing. It was you, strangers, who disturbed our peace.”
“We just came near the entrance to your city.” Einen joined the conversation. “If you stuck your heads out of your hole more often, you would’ve noticed that we’d emerged from a spatial fault.”
The paunchy man turned to him, measured Einen with an appraising look, and then shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter whether you appeared from a fault, rode in on desert ravens, used a flying carpet, or the Jasper Emperor himself carefully put you here. Strangers aren’t allowed to enter Underworld City.”
Hadjar could definitely dispute that. He knew of at least one stranger who’d wound up here and, moreover, become a disciple of the Sage.
“South Wind,” Hadjar said. “My teacher is South Wind. He was the Sage’s disciple. I have his seal.”
“South Wind,” the man repeated, as if trying to remember someone. “South Wind... South Wind... I don’t remember anyone who went by that name.”
“He changed his name to Eternal Stream,” Hadjar pressed, not giving up. “In Lidus, he was also called The Sand Sea of the Hot Valley.”
“Still nothing.”
The paunchy man continued to examine the tub, sometimes checking things that were comprehensible and obvious only to him. He did it very casually, using simple, deliberate movements. He seemed to have experience with this.
“Serra, then.” Hadjar noticed the strange man flinch. That encouraged him. “Serra the witch. She was my brother’s wife. Not for very long, but still! And she was my good friend-”
Hadjar didn’t get to finish speaking. The paunchy man ran his fingers along his staff, and as he did so, it was as if an invisible giant had struck Hadjar’s belly with an iron fist.
Along with wheezing coughs, a trickle of blood escaped Hadjar’s mouth. Leaking out of the corners of his lips, it dissolved in the green liquid.
“We found her amulet among your things, stranger.” The paunchy man’s voice was full of steel and cold hatred. “Many of us loved and respected Serra, so I would advise you to stop bringing her up.”
“But-”
Another blow caused Hadjar to twitch in a reflexive attempt to defend himself. He felt like a stupid fly trapped in a tenacious spider’s web.
“I don’t know how you defeated one of the best disciples of the Sage, but your lie is obvious to anyone who was even a little familiar with Serra.” The man got up, turned to Einen, and struck him with the same invisible air attack.
“Why...” the islander hissed out, spitting blood.
Ignoring Einen’s lamentations, the paunchy man returned to Hadjar’s side.
“Serra never loved... men,” he said, “and her many mistresses are evidence of that. I don’t know what fate you’ll choose, but I’d avoid her sister if I were you. Nobody who knew Serra would believe that you were able to kill her, but Tilis won’t stop. She’s vowed to avenge her sister’s death.”
With these parting words, the man turned around and walked off, out of Hadjar’s line of sight. Suddenly, it dawned on Hadjar.
“Ramukhan!” Hadjar called. The man halted. “By the Evening Stars, the Great Turtle as my witness, Demons and Gods smite me if I’m lying, I’d also love to... avenge her death. Alas, there is no mortal whose life could be placed upon her funeral pyre.”
A deathly silence filled the dungeon. Even the bats didn’t dare make a sound.
“Make sure to tell Tilis all about it,” the paunchy man answered mockingly, and added, “If you survive.”
He heard the man walking away once more, followed by the thud of a stone door. Or maybe a hatch. Hadjar’s imagination, which had been flourishing in the time he’d spent watching only the unchanging ceiling, had conjured up a hinged bridge.
“Are you sure you had a brother and not a sister?” Einen asked with obvious pain in his voice.
“I’m certain,” Hadjar grunted, “it’s you I’m suspicious of.”
“I’m surprised to hear you’re interested in what’s beneath my robes. I’ve heard that sodomy is strictly forbidden in the north.”