Geronimo awoke with a splitting headache.

When he opened his eyes, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling—and a pale, terrifying skull looming before him.

"You're awake?"

Ambrose's voice dragged Geronimo back to reality. Panic surged through him as he tried to struggle, only to discover that his body was tightly bound by glowing magical restraints.

"Don't move," Ambrose said calmly. "You'll only make it hurt more."

Geronimo refused to listen and struggled harder. The glowing cords tightened instantly, squeezing his body until his bones began to creak.

Pain exploded through him, and he screamed despite himself.

Only then did he realize something even more horrifying. He had reverted to a frail, utterly powerless human youth.

"How is this possible? My power! What did you do to me?!" Geronimo shouted.

He had already become a dragon, not that fragile human he had been. How could he have turned back into something as weak as an ant in the blink of an eye?

Ambrose replied evenly, "Know your place, kid. Prisoners don't get to ask questions. Now it's my turn. By the way, I'm a lich. I have enough ways to torture someone to fill a book. Let's not waste each other's time. If you insist on being stubborn and force me to rip out your soul and read your memories directly, I'll get quite unpleasant."

Ambrose's words humiliated Geronimo deeply. Just moments ago, he had been a colossal dragon soaring through the sky. Now he was nothing more than a lich's experimental specimen. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Wait, a lich?

Geronimo stared at Ambrose in shock. Could this be the same lich from before?

After devouring Hoffmann Ironfist, Geronimo's memories had become hazy. By then, he had fallen into madness and could no longer recall what happened afterward.

How had he ended up captured by this lich?

After all his struggles, he had still fallen into this lich's hands. Was this fate?

That strange sense of inevitability crushed Geronimo's will. All his suffering, all his desperate resistance, had been to no avail. He might as well have died at this lich's hands back then. At least it would have spared him all that misery afterward.

"Ask whatever you want," Geronimo said coldly. "Then give me a clean death."

Ambrose watched the boy go from frantic to despondent. He had lost all will to live in just a few seconds.

Such extreme emotional fluctuations... It looked like kids in this world had an edgy phase too.

But Ambrose wasn't particularly concerned about his mental health. What interested him was how this kid had managed to turn into a dragon at all.

Ambrose could sense a thread of fate that bound him to the boy. It was indirect, but Geronimo's transformation into a dragon seemed to have something to do with him.

Ambrose carefully questioned Geronimo about the process by which he became a dragon, and was mildly stunned by the sheer drama of his life story.

A remnant of a fallen civilization, reduced to a serf. A serf who rose to become a paladin candidate, who was abandoned on the battlefield, who betrayed the Holy Light and became a Hell Lord's follower. And finally, who gained the ability to transform into a dragon.

So much upheaval in such a short span of time was frankly absurd.

No wonder he was entangled with Ambrose by a thread of fate. Most of his misfortunes were connected to Ambrose one way or another.

Ambrose said, "Fragments of the Cult of Dragonkind's memories, coupled with the blessing of the Dragon Queen, plus a massive amount of flesh and blood as nourishment—those are what turned you into a dragon. You might not be a genuine legend, but you still have a legendary boon. It's tied to devouring flesh, isn't it?"

"I can't be sure," Geronimo said slowly. "But I know I gain power by consuming everything. I can also gain memories and use the abilities of those I eat. But once I eat too much, I completely lose my sense of self."

Geronimo's words made Ambrose deeply envious.

During the battle, Ambrose had already noticed that Geronimo could wield a pugilist's fighting spirit. Hoffmann Ironfist had been a legendary pugilist. That meant that, by devouring legends of different classes, Geronimo could theoretically gain the abilities of every class.

It was an utterly broken legendary boon. No wonder he couldn't control it. The more he ate, the stronger he became. The stronger he became, the harder it was to stay in control. Naturally, it would result in a twisted form of mana addiction.

If this kid had been more cautious, spending a few hundred years slowly digesting and consolidating his strength, he might truly have grown into a legendary dragon who would stand at the top of the world. But that could never have happened. The reason he received such a powerful legendary boon was precisely his greed and ambition. That obsession brought him immense power—and also ensured that he could never stop, ultimately leading to total loss of control.

It was a pity that legendary boons couldn't be extracted. Otherwise, this would have resulted in massive profit.

With the information he needed in hand, Ambrose turned to the question of what to do with the kid.

"The Lyon Empire and the dragon clans are both very interested in you," Ambrose said. "But the dragons are overseas. Transporting you there would be a bit troublesome..."

Before he could finish, Geronimo shouted, "I don't want to go to Lyon! I'll go overseas! I choose the dragons!"

After all the trouble he'd gone through to betray—no, to abandon—the Holy Light, how could he possibly be sent to Lyon? That would be a fate worse than death.

"Heh." Ambrose chuckled softly. "Who told you that you have a choice? I'm just informing you of the options. Whoever pays more will get you. Don't you think I should be compensated after you smashed half my castle?"

The only reason Geronimo was still alive was because Ambrose planned to sell him. Otherwise, Ambrose would have killed him without a second thought.

The Lyon Empire had been one of the main forces behind the dragons' exile. Now that a dragon's roar had echoed across the continent again, they would be extremely concerned—and they would pay up, no matter how much it cost.

As for the dragons, even though the Dragon Queen wasn't their chief deity, many dragons still felt a deep attachment to this "Brood Mother." Geronimo himself could transform into a dragon, which would likely make him valuable to them as well.

In theory, the dragons were richer than Lyon. How much they were willing to pay, however, remained to be seen.

Out of courtesy to Alabastra, Ambrose would definitely prioritize the dragons in the case of a tie.

As Ambrose fall silent, Geronimo blurted out urgently, "I have gold too! I'll pay you! Sell me to the dragons. I can't go to Lyon!"

Gold?!

That keyword instantly caught Ambrose's attention. He turned his hollow eye sockets toward the boy and asked in the briefest possible terms, "How much? Where?"

"I'm not sure. About a million, maybe. I hid it. If you promise not to send me to Lyon, I'll give it all to you."

Geronimo had looted several hundred thousand gold from the House of Cerberus' vault, then stolen another five hundred thousand from the dwarves, for nearly a million in total. Perhaps because his dragon instincts had taken over when his mind was unclear, he had hidden all of it in a dragon lair he dug himself.

Even now, he could still vaguely remember the location.

"A million is no small sum," Ambrose said with feeling. "Murder and arson really do pay well."

The kid had only been a dragon for a few days, yet he'd already made over a million. It was truly enviable.

"If you really give me a million, I can promise to prioritize selling you to the dragon clans."

Whoever paid more got priority. Ambrose was a businessman. He believed in honest dealings and fair pricing.

What Geronimo wanted was a guarantee, not priority. But there was nothing he could do against Ambrose. He was forced to reveal the approximate location of his dragon lair.

"A few of my servants may still be guarding it," he said hesitantly. "When you take the gold... if possible, please spare them."

"Servants?"

"I shared my blood with them. They gained some dragon power from it."

That made Ambrose pause. "Your blood?"

"Yes. They were slaves. Absorbing my blood is how they gained strength."

Ambrose wanted to reveal to Geronimo that he was a carrier of mana addiction, and anyone who had consumed his blood would likely suffer from the same fate as well. Even if Ambrose did nothing, they would destroy themselves eventually.

But that was an elven secret, and Ambrose wasn't at liberty to share it with him.

This kid who had stirred so much chaos still didn't know that everything he created would ultimately be destroyed. At best, he would leave behind a brief record in history.

Speaking of destruction, a new potential buyer suddenly occurred to Ambrose.

After casting a sleep spell to send Geronimo into slumber, Ambrose softly chanted a spell. A mass of black shadow appeared before him.

This was the knowledge of the Weft gifted to him by the Dark Goddess Shara. The sealing technique used to deal with mana addiction had been researched from this shadowy mass.

Beyond storing knowledge, it possessed another special function: it allowed him to communicate with Shara at any time.

Ambrose linked his thoughts to the shadow and sent a message through it.

"Honored Goddess, I promised you before that I would deliver a legend as your follower. I happen to have come across a legendary paladin candidate who abandoned the Holy Light. Would you be interested?"

Lyon had gold. The dragons had gold. But no amount of gold could compare to a deity's favor.

What deities could offer often went beyond monetary value. Knowledge of the Weft, for instance, simply couldn't be priced.

If he was going to sell Geronimo off anyway, why not sell him to a god?

There was no immediate response from Shara, likely because she was busy scheming against her twin sister again.

Ambrose wasn't in a hurry. He put the shadow away, then took out the Necromantic Codex to send a message to Alabastra and inquire about the dragons' offer.

But the moment he opened the book, he saw the group chat buzzing with activity.

While Ambrose was busy looking for buyers, Heki Stone had been enthusiastically boasting in the chat.

[Human-Hater: Friends, I have become the Dwarven King, effective today.]