The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

Liszt hurriedly left the cabin and came onto the deck, kicking aside two knights who were fighting each other and rushed straight for the mast.

He felt that what Curtis had said was true; after all, the Soul Submerged Wood was in his hands and he possessed the ability to dismantle the ship, so the other party dared not play tricks.

The mast was tall, but for an Elite Earth Knight, it was easy to climb.

At the top of the mast was the Goat Head Flag, which fluttered without wind. The green flame was not the flag burning, but the goat head’s emblem itself ablaze. It was unclear how it was made, for the goat head looked like an actual goat head, not just a painting.

“Remove the Goat Head Flag and place it atop the dragon figurehead at the bow of the ship, and thus the door to the real world shall be opened,” he reached out, preparing to remove the flag.

But suddenly, he felt a tightness in his heart.

The caution he had always exercised reminded him, “Why do I so readily believe Curtis? She is an evil magician capable of using the souls of an entire crew of sailors as casting materials! Her words cannot be trusted at all!”

He glanced below.

He quickly suppressed his urgent emotions and allowed his will to sink into the Gemstone Space, deciding to first open the magic book “To His Highness Annuette—Curtis the Truth” in an attempt to find some answers within this testament.

The first page.

Two lines of green luminescent Serpent Script, written with some unknown pigment.

“My eternal love Annuette, is all still well with you?”

“Making this decision, just for a chance to meet you in the Exiled Lands, might be a descent into eternal damnation. How can two guilty souls, stained with the blood of countless living beings, bear all this sin.”

The words were somewhat mystical and carried a faint pretentious air of a female poet.

He didn’t quite understand them.

The second page.

It was a preface-like text.

“Upon hearing the terrible news of Uncle Cohen, my heart grew as cold as ashes. Due to the sinful thoughts of Annuette and myself, our entire family was dragged into this burial… Perhaps we should have calmly accepted this brief but beautiful love, rather than covet immortality and steal the power of the Sapphire Dragon.”

“The plan of the Dragon Domain Landlord has already failed, and Annuette’s soul has been exiled. Losing my love and then my family, this world has already lost all meaning to me. Maybe I should continue to study the notes of the Ancient Mage and transform myself into a Lich, roaming between life and death.”

“If I could walk freely in the Exiled Lands, perhaps I could meet Annuette again; then all this torment and pain would become meaningful!”

He flipped through this page and the concept of the “Lich,” a strange existence, made a round in Liszt’s thoughts.

He had no time to think further as he turned to the third page.

The third page was strange.

It contained a drawing of a triangle with an eye in the center, the Eye of Truth, representing a magician’s recognition and exploration of the world.

But at each corner of the triangle, there were additional terms.

At the top corner, it said ‘matter,’ with “Alchemist,” “Vampire,” “Necromancer” written beside it; on the left corner, it said ‘magic power,’ with “Magician,” “Druid”; and on the right corner, it said ‘spirit,’ with “Wizard,” “Sorcerer,” “Prophet,” “Succubus,” “Shaman.”

Beneath the Eye of Truth, there was another term—Knight.

“`

A carelessly written line of Serpent Script followed: “Heretics, like beasts, defile Magic Power, brutishly cycling Dou Qi, stifling the living space of magicians! If the age of magic arrives one day, burn all the knights, let the magicians rule the world, and seek the Truth!”

If this was written by Curtis herself, it meant she was a fanatical believer in magic.

This was veering towards heretical religious thoughts, not good, not good.

Liszt inherently detested the term “heretic,” and his gaze lingered on the words alchemist, wizard, and druid for a few seconds before he chose not to dwell on them and continued flipping through the pages.

Starting from the fourth page, the contents turned into research notes, all on a single topic—the repeated experiments on the possibility of soul separation.

From what Liszt had glanced over, it seemed that in ancient times a wizard had developed the “Life Box Technique.” By entrusting their soul into the Life Box, they could become a Lich that transcended life and death, the real and the surreal, achieving an inconceivable state.

Such records were indistinguishable between true and false.

Curtis was mainly repeating this technology to verify the method of separating the soul.

She started with experiments on small animals, then gradually moved to humans, and ultimately to fellow magicians. By the sixteenth page, she had completed the experiment, confirming that the soul could indeed be separated and exist briefly, but it must be entrusted in something that resonates with the soul.

From page seventeen onward, she embarked on the second research topic—the experiment and creation of Life Boxes.

Twenty-five full pages were dedicated to the experimental notes on this topic. Like a genius, on the forty-second page, Curtis successfully completed the Life Box experiment, discovering Soul Submerged Wood that could be used as a Life Box to store souls, as well as the Magic Array for storing souls—the Self-Exile Magic Array.

“Is this the thing, the four walls I cut down and took back? Using this kind of Magic Array, can I strip the soul out and exile it into the Soul Submerged Wood?”

Time waits for no one, he didn’t have the time to ponder, so he quickly flipped through the pages, seeking the content related to the Ghost Ship.

After flipping through about thirty more pages and skipping four smaller research note topics on Lich’s Life Boxes, finally, on page seventy-four, he saw a ship drawn with great detail—a three-masted galleon with the Goat Head Flag clearly visible on the mainmast—this was Goat Vessel, before it became the Ghost Ship.

The subsequent twenty-six pages all pertained to the modification of Goat Vessel, or rather, the setting of Magic Arrays.

Curtis expanded the Life Box Technique to the entire ship, imprisoning all the souls of the crew aboard to protect her own Life Box.

According to her last words inferred in the will, this ship would gradually erode the boundaries between real and surreal with the Magic Array and eventually breach into the Exiled Lands.

Exiled Lands.

Magicians believed that at the edges where Magic Power, matter, and spirit transformed into each other, there existed a place where time and space were indefinable, eternity and transience reflected upon each other, allowing only the souls to wander. That place was the Exiled Lands.

Those who committed heinous crimes were usually exiled to the Exiled Lands by the nobles.

Plainly speaking, it meant casting some kind of magic to let a person die peacefully. However, magicians believed that the souls of such deceased would enter the Exiled Lands.

Curtis’s ultimate goal was to use Goat Vessel to break open the barrier between the Exiled Lands and the real world and send her soul into it.

But what she didn’t expect was for Goat Vessel to turn into the Ghost Ship, lingering between the Exiled Lands and the real world, failing to deliver her soul into the Exiled Lands.

“Woman, completely mad, gone mad for love? One death wasn’t enough; she had to doom countless others!” Liszt felt his skin crawl and was secretly alarmed, “The Goat Head Flag affixed to the dragon figurehead isn’t leaving the Exiled Lands but heading towards them. This woman still wants to harm me!”

Luckily, he was quick-witted and had flipped open this book of Magic Books.

“So, if I want to return to the real world, I must first destroy the Goat Head Flag and the figurehead!”