Dragon Heart: Land of The Enemy. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 8 Read online

  The Saga:

  Dragon Heart

  Land of The Enemy

  Book VIII

  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.

  Translated by Julia Kharkova, Sanja Gajin

  Edited by Damir Isovic

  Introduced by Valeria Kornosenko

  Cover designed by Julia Jdanova

  Illustrations by Valery Spitsyn

  Prologue

  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 17 books.

  8 books are translated into English and released.

  To read from the beginning of the story (click the link):

  Dragon Heart: Stone Will

  Enjoy the story!

  Chapter 633

  M arkin, one of the Mentors at the best martial arts School in Dahanatan, stood in a dark laboratory, surrounded by cauldrons, flasks, phials, bottles, and scrolls. He considered ‘The Holy Sky’ School his second home, if not his only one, which was why he knew everything that happened both in and out of it.

  “Another failure?” He asked the empty air and walked over to a small altar, upon which lay a jade seal decorated with intricate designs. He moved his hand over it and whispered something, summoning a flicker of green light. A hazy hieroglyph emerged from the light. Markin greeted it with a wide, hungry smile, paying no attention to the fact that the hieroglyph let out a low, drawn-out hum as it moved toward one of the cauldrons.

  “He’s back,” a voice came from the darkness.

  Controlling the symbol with his will, Markin grabbed it and placed it into the cauldron. The hieroglyph looked like it was resisting, humming louder now. It tried to pull away from Markin’s grip, but it couldn’t. It was like a fly trying to break free, but only managing to entangle itself even more in the spider’s web.

  After a few moments of fruitless struggle, it fell silent inside the small cauldron, beneath which a multicolored flame burned. After covering the cauldron with a lid, Markin went over to a table littered with various scrolls. Taking one of them, he wrote something down, looked at all the complex clocks that hung on one of the walls, then scribbled down another note.

  “He’s back?” Markin snorted. “You mean he’s back under Orune’s supervision? That damned bastard has been watching me.”

  The lab was quiet for a while. Only the sound of a quill scraping against parchment could be heard.

  “We only agreed to bring the object back to the city,” the voice said. “He’s back now. So, we-”

  “Don’t play games with me!”

  A crushing wave of power swept through the lab. The voice groaned and fell silent again. Markin didn’t even turn around, continuing to write down his notes and perform various spells and rituals over numerous bottles and cauldrons.

  “When he reaches the Spirit Knight level, you’ll bring him to me.”

  “But-”

  “Shut up!” Another wave of power struck the shadow lurking in the darkness of the laboratory. “If you don’t, you can kiss our deal goodbye.”

  Markin waited for any objections, but there weren’t any.

  “As you wish, Mentor Markin. I’ll bring him to you, but you have to promise me-”

  “Name extraction isn’t a fatal process,” Markin interrupted. “Nothing bad will happen to the subject, other than the loss of a useless ‘talent’.”

  The shadow’s presence disappeared after a moment of silence. Ignoring this, Markin went back to trying to create the Hundred Voices pill. It would help him glimpse the weapon mastery domain located above the Kingdom of the Weapon — the legendary mysteries usually reserved for the Immortals. Was it worth lying to his servant and causing the death of a commoner to acquire? It was. They were nothing more than dust along his path. Markin Davlos would one day have the Emperor bow his head to him and pay for all the grief he’d brought to Markin’s homeland…

  “Not yet,” Markin hissed to himself. “Soon, I’ll have my revenge. But not yet, not yet… Soon, I’ll be strong enough…”

  With renewed zeal, he returned to poring over his numerous notes and working with his myriad of cauldrons and bottles.

  ***

  Hadjar stood at the foot of a high cliff. Located right in the center of the city, hidden behind high walls decorated with golden and jade bas-reliefs, was ‘The Holy Sky’ School — one of the three best martial arts Schools of the Darnassus Empire and arguably the best School overall. Only the ‘Meltwater’ School and ‘Quick Dream’ School could compete with it for this title.

  Hadjar had only been away for a month and a half, but looking at all the disciples crowding around the wide iron platform that served as the elevator to the School, he felt as if he’d been gone for at least several years.

  As he stepped onto the platform, Hadjar glanced around and gave a mental command to his neural network.

  Scan.

  Name

  Parlax

  Level of cultivation

  Spirit Knight, initial stage

  Strength

  11

  Dexterity

  7.5

  Physique

  13

  Energy points

  98.5

  He didn’t know how the network had been able to find out the name of the guy resting an ironbound club across his shoulder. The computer module probably had access to Hadjar’s subconscious.

  “Parlax, what do you-” one of the seven-foot tall giant’s friends asked, confirming that the network hadn’t been wrong.

  Hadjar stopped listening. It was just as he’d suspected: the network had been rebooted, using his mind as the computing module. That was why it had been able to install ‘updates’, which were nothing more than his experiences.

  Status.

  Name

  Hadjar

  Level of cultivation

  Heaven Soldier, advanced stage

  Strength

  15.5

  Dexterity

  16.5

  Physique

  20.7

  Energy points

  147

  The numbers didn’t surprise him. He could give the neural network the order to switch them from the ‘dragon system’ back to the ‘human’ one, but he didn’t see a point to doing so. Back in the Sea of Sand, he’d spent some time examining the corpse of a Lord of the Heavens that had been killed by Harlim, an Immortal. That had apparently been enough for the network to reconfigure its readings to fit the new system of measurements.

  Mysterious hieroglyphs and sigils flashed around the edges of the platform. Hadjar now knew that, hidden beneath the iron, there were storage crystals that powered it.

  As for the impressive difference between his and Parlax’s stats, this could easily be explained by the effects of the Wolf Broth, his strengthened and elongated meridians, and his dragon’s heart. Right now, despite being a Heaven Soldier at the advanced stage, he had the power of a mid-stage Spirit Knight at the very least.

  Hadjar got off the platform and lined up with the other disciples, most of whom had silver tokens. The outer circle disciples held sacks full of various herbs, stones, wood, and roots. Gathering these resources was practicall
y the only way for them to get the Glory points they needed to study at the School.

  There were several disciples with golden tokens in the crowd as well. The fully-fledged disciples also carried bags, but their bags were full of monster cores or artifacts they’d earned in battle against the disciples of other Schools.

  Sometimes, the sheer fervor the disciples displayed when going after one another made Hadjar feel uneasy. The Emperor and the nobility, however, encouraged the students’ ‘fighting spirit’. Today, there were no disciples with jade or wooden tokens to be seen.

  “Stop right there,” a familiar voice thundered.

  Chapter 634

  A fifteen-foot-tall giant of a golem-warrior loomed over Hadjar. Clad in Imperial level armor, it held a twenty-foot-long, Imperial level spear in its hands. Next to it stood a giant golem-tiger whose roar had once blown the head off a Lascanian spy. That’s what the School’s disciples claimed, anyway, he hadn’t been there to witness it himself. It had happened on the night of the attack in which hundreds of Darnassian nobles had been killed. After that, the two Empires had begun preparing for war, recruiting even their mortal residents.

  “Hadjar Darkhan,” he said and held out his golden token. “Fully-fledged disciple of ‘The Holy Sky’ School. I’m returning from a mission.”

  The golem-tiger approached Hadjar. Its eyes were the size of a hand. After sniffing his token to make sure that it was the genuine article, it moved aside. The golem-warrior put away its spear, granting Hadjar entrance to the School’s grounds.

  Hadjar walked down a wide, stone road, which he and Einen had often called the ‘central avenue’. Several smaller roads branched out from it, one of which led to the forest inhabited by the disciples of the outer circle. Einen and Hadjar had also lived there during their first couple of weeks at the School. They’d built a hut on one of the hills and spent several nights there. A little farther away, opposite the Hall of Fame, were the dormitories of the fully-fledged disciples. They were old but still functional buildings. Behind them stood the dormitories of the inner circle disciples, which looked like swanky hotels and taverns.

  Around the Treasure Tower, a huge, seven-story building that stored all the artifacts and knowledge of the School, were the private lodgings of the personal disciples.

  Passing a group of outer circle disciples carrying huge bags on their shoulders, Hadjar stopped to chat with them.

  “Senior disciple.” They bowed their heads. Hadjar vaguely remembered some of them.

  “Junior disciples,” he said, following the School’s etiquette. “I was away for a while. Could you tell me why the security checks are suddenly so strict?”

  The disciples looked at each other.

  “You must’ve been away for more than a month,” one of the girls guessed. Like most cultivators, she was incredibly beautiful. “The School was attacked a few weeks ago.”

  “The School itself was attacked?” Hadjar asked, shocked.

  She nodded. “Disciples of the ‘Meltwater’ School’s inner circle attacked the elevator and killed about a hundred of our friends. Then they went up to the gates, where several of our own inner circle disciples killed them.”

  “It was the Dinos siblings, Dora Marnil, and an islander with a spear,” said a young man with a longbow. “Einen, I think his name was. He’s also become a disciple of the inner circle.”

  Hadjar was shocked at first, and then delighted. While he’d been away, Einen had managed to acquire a jade token.

  “You look surprised, senior disciple,” the girl noted.

  “It isn’t every day that disciples from other Schools attack us.”

  “You’ve really been away for a while… It used to be like that. Nowadays, we run into someone on the Imperial road almost every day.”

  Hadjar frowned. He’d once fought against disciples from the other Schools on the Imperial road. That was where he’d met Price Geran, a man who could’ve become his friend, but had instead died as the most worthy of adversaries.

  “The Emperor has announced that the war games will soon be taking place,” the girl continued. “Everyone says that they’re the prelude to our inevitable war with Lascan.”

  “War games?”

  The girl nodded. The young man with the bow quickly clarified.

  “In six months, in the fields of Gareven, the war games between us, the ‘Quick Dream’ School, and the ‘Meltwater’ School will take place. The School that wins will receive an award from the Emperor. Everyone believes that winning these games will be the key to winning the Tournament of the Twelve.”

  Hadjar whistled. He had indeed missed a lot during his travels.

  “We’re sorry, senior disciple,” they all bowed, “but we need to get to the Hall of Fame as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, of course. Best of luck to you, junior disciples,” he said, waving them on.

  As he watched them walk away, Hadjar took a deep breath and sat down on the nearest bench. If the Emperor had decided to arrange war games, which had only been held between armies as drills in the past, then a war was inevitable. It would probably begin shortly after the Tournament of the Twelve, which would allow the disciples to get even stronger before then. Given the fact that disciples weren’t given the same training that the military got, the games would turn into a bloodbath, which would, in turn, make the survivors even stronger in the end. In other words, the plan was to get rid of as many disciples (or ‘mouths to feed’, in military terms) as possible, with the end goal of making future officers out of those who proved themselves worthy.

  “Holy shit.” Hadjar breathed out. He’d really missed a lot.

  “I agree, my future disciple.”

  Startled, Hadjar turned around and came face to face with Orune. The old swordsman looked the same as he had the last time they’d met: muscular, broad-shouldered, and covered in Name tattoos. He was barefoot, wearing plain canvas pants and a necklace made of fangs that was surely a spatial artifact. Surprisingly, his presence didn’t attract curious glances. Disciples walked past them as if Orune wasn’t even there.

  “Mentor Orune,” Hadjar said and, without thinking, gave him the orc greeting — he brought two fingers to his heart, then to his forehead, and then directed them toward the sky. He followed that up with a bow, not out of necessity or because he wanted to suck up to the man, but out of deep respect. “Please forgive my tardiness. I ran into unforeseen trouble along the way. The delay was entirely my fault. I’m ready to-”

  Orune interrupted Hadjar with… laughter. Slapping his knees with his hands, he laughed so loudly and joyously that anyone could’ve easily mistaken him for a lunatic.

  “My future disciple,” he said at last, wiping away tears. “Tell me, have you returned stronger than when you left?”

  “Much stronger.”

  “Then you ought to have stayed for at least six more months, if they would’ve served you as well as these past six weeks have.”

  Orune leaned back on the bench and crossed his arms over his massive chest.

  “Now, tell me…” His gaze and expression turned serious. “Did you stay because you wanted to get to know the orcs better? What interfered with your journey?”

  Hadjar wasn’t surprised to learn that Orune knew that the two feathers in his hair had been given to him by the orcs.

  “Pirates attacked the ship I was on.”

  “Pirates…” Orune pressed his hands together and stared straight ahead. The disciples walking past them tensed up when they noticed his gaze and hurried to leave as quickly as possible. “Hadjar, you need to be careful. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “Why? Do you know something?”

  “Nothing solid. But I do have my suspicions. I really hope I’m wrong, as it would be unpleasant for me and deadly for you if I’m not.”

  Hadjar nodded stiffly. He was certain that someone had sent the pirates to get rid of him. There was no other reason for them to have been there.

  “On to m
ore important things.” Orune slapped his knees again, assuming his usual carefree attitude. “Give me the letter and go to the seventh training arena. I think they’re waiting for you there.”

  Hadjar took the scroll out of his spatial ring. It instantly disappeared from his hand. The fangs on Orune’s necklace flashed.

  “See you later, my future disciple. I’ll be back when you earn a jade token.”

  Orune disappeared into thin air, and Hadjar saw that 80,000 Glory points have been transferred to his account. It was quite the amount for an outer circle disciple. To the inner circle ones, however, it was a decent allowance.

  After sitting on the bench for some time, he got up and headed toward the seventh training arena.

  Chapter 635

  H adjar leaned against a tree, observing two disciples as they trained. One of them was Tom. Fully armored and armed with an Imperial blade, he was getting ready to use a familiar Technique. Behind him, a ghostly sword surging with lightning hung in the air.

  “Bloody Charge!”

  During their last fight, Tom had been able to disappear and reappear next to him in the blink of an eye. Over the past month and a half, he’d been able to reach the Spirit Knight level and acquire a Thunderbolt Spirit, which made his movements even faster.

  Enveloped in red lightning, Tom dashed toward his opponent at an incredible speed.

  “Thunder God’s Sword!”

  His blade was also coated in red lightning. It looked both beautiful and deadly. The blade had turned into a lightning bolt that contained frightening power capable of turning any foe to dust.

  However, his opponent wasn’t going to give up. Einen hadn’t changed much in the past six weeks: he wore the same clothes and had the same calm and expressionless look on his face. A ghostly spear-staff hung in the air behind him. The scales that the weapon was covered in reminded Hadjar of the fangs normally seen in the maws of huge serpents.