Hair as blue as the sea. An immaculate uniform without a speck of dust. And a face as beautiful as a sculpture.

She was a woman of aloof yet innocent beauty, whose slightest smile could set men's hearts racing.

Yet instead of her usual gentle smile, the Blue Dragon Princess exuded an intensity as sharp as a blade, regarding Li Qingyu with eyes as cold as a winter lake.

"Li Qingyu, what are you thinking?"

The voice that escaped her soft lips was every bit as icy as her gaze. Rose spoke again, her expression so ruthless that Yu Na-gyeong would have doubted she was the same kind princess she knew.

"No, just what sinister scheme are you plotting?"

"You barge in and ask what sinister scheme I'm plotting? That's a rather difficult question to answer."

Li Qingyu looked troubled. With a soft sigh, she continued.

"My clan is plotting far more than one or two sinister schemes. Unless you specify which one, I won't know what to tell you about first."

"... Is that so."

The answer rang too true to be a joke, yet was too nonchalant to be serious. Even so, Rose was not flustered. She merely moved her wrist slightly.

"Then let me ask you directly."

Pressing the blade closer against Li Qingyu's throat, as though warning that she would tolerate no more nonsense, Rose revealed the purpose of her visit in a cold voice.

"Why does 'he' have 'that'?"

It was something she had not been able to bring herself to ask Limon. But as a fellow princess of the Seven Dragons Society, she had every right to ask—and Li Qingyu had a duty to answer.

After a brief silence, Li Qingyu smiled ruefully.

"Chao didn't seem to notice, so I thought I might get away with it if I was lucky. Apparently that was too much to hope for."

She had expected this outcome to some extent. Rose was not so oblivious that she could watch Limon cut down Karl right before her eyes without realizing who he was. And since he had even played the Violin of Deepest Black, there was every chance Rose had sensed 'that.'

That was why Li Qingyu had offered no resistance when Rose crossed space and put a blade to her throat. And why she quietly answered with a question of her own.

"Would you believe me if I said I knew nothing about 'that,' and that it was all simply a coincidence?"

"... Are you serious?"

"It's the truth."

Li Qingyu nodded calmly. Her eyes, deep and dark as obsidian, did not waver in the slightest. She did not look as though she could possibly be lying.

"I cannot believe that."

But Rose flatly rejected her words. It was not merely because she knew how foolish it was to trust the Black Dragon Princess, a master of schemes and conspiracies. If Limon had possessed nothing more than ordinary psionics, Rose would at least have considered whether Li Qingyu was telling the truth.

Innate talent mattered in psionics, but so did effort. Anyone could acquire psionics, depending on how thoroughly they trained in the Seventy-Two Martial Schools.

There was just one problem. When Limon played the Violin of Deepest Black, Rose had felt a perfect resonance with him: the Harmony of Like Energies, in which their energies naturally stabilized and amplified one another, on an entirely different level from formations that artificially induced a psionic response.

And as the Blue Dragon Princess, she instinctively knew what that resonance was.

"That is Dragon Psionics."

Something countless masters of the Seven Dragons Society had failed to obtain, despite driving themselves so hard that they lost their lives. A more fundamental, transcendent power of dragons, on an entirely different level from psionics developed through training.

It was the purest form of psionics, one that only the seven princesses of the Seven Dragons Society, who had inherited the dragons' blood essence, were born with and could wield.

"Are you saying it's a coincidence that the 'eighth' essence of psionics, which our Seven Dragons Society has sought for nearly a thousand years, happens to belong to the Sword Lord?"

The essence of psionics. Also known as Dragon Psionics.

It was indispensable to fulfilling the Seven Dragons Society's cherished ambition, something incomparably more precious than a controlling stake in the Seven Dragon Group.

How could it be a coincidence that Limon, who possessed it, had become Li Qingyu's betrothed? Li Qingyu's answer to Rose's cold question was clear.

"Yes, it is a coincidence."

"..."

Perhaps she had not expected even Li Qingyu to be quite so shameless. Rose fell silent. Li Qingyu smiled at her and added one more remark.

"Though logically speaking, it's closer to inevitability than coincidence."

"What logic are you referring to?"

"The reason the Sword Lord has Dragon Psionics."

Rose's eyes wavered. Why... No, how could Limon, the Seven Dragons Society's sworn enemy, possess Dragon Psionics? Any member of the Society would pay an astronomical sum to learn the answer.

But Li Qingyu did not exploit her disquiet. She simply continued calmly, as though making small talk.

"You know why the seven of us princesses are born with the essence of psionics, generation after generation, don't you, Rose?"

"Isn't it because we inherited our founders' blood essence?"

"That's right. There are other factors, but ultimately, what matters most is our founders' blood."

Every martial artist in the Seven Dragons Society knew that. Rose regarded her with suspicion on her cold face, wondering why she was bringing it up now. Li Qingyu calmly explained.

"In other words, our founders' blood contained an essence of psionics even purer than what we seven princesses inherited."

At that moment, Rose's eyes widened. Only then did she realize what Li Qingyu was suggesting.

"... Are you saying that when the Sword Lord was drenched in our founders' blood while fighting them, he acquired the Dragon Psionics it contained?"

* * *

Jerusalem, the world's last holy land.

To every devout believer, it was paradise on earth. After the seven dragons devoured the avatars and destroyed all the other holy lands during the Bronze Age, Jerusalem was the only place left where one could meet a god in person.

But there was one fact most people overlooked. The existence of a paradise on earth meant there was a hell as well.

["... So, in short, you're saying this place is hell?"]

"If anything, it's closer to the Holy Alliance's garbage dump."

Beneath Jerusalem, Limon walked down a passage stretching through the vast darkness and continued nonchalantly.

"It's also a fortress of abandoned gods, and the most accursed graveyard in the world."

["What on earth happened to give it such a bizarre combination of identities?"]

"Well, the story's surprisingly simple."

Limon stopped for a moment. Raising his torch, he looked at a mural carved into the wall, depicting seven dragons battling gods wreathed in brilliant light, and continued.

"This was simply one of the last great battlefields of the Silver Age."

At the end of the Silver Age, the world was ruled by priests and witches who wielded magic, and by avatars who had descended to earth. But when the seven dragons awoke from their slumber, where they had escaped an ancient calamity, those avatars were reduced from great rulers to prey.

Of course, the gods did not go down without a fight. They mobilized the priests and witches who followed them to cast magic from myth, bestowed divine relics on the Magic Knights hailed as heroes, and ordered them to hunt the dragons. They used every means at their disposal to resist the seven dragons.

But the results were devastating. No magic, nor any great hero, could ultimately prevent the avatars from being devoured by dragons.

Moreover, those persecuted by the witch hunts and religious wars of the time became followers of the dragons and founded the Seven Dragons Society, driving the gods into an ever tighter corner. They even lost their holy lands and had no choice but to flee.

"In the end, only three places held out against the seven dragons' invasion until the end of the Silver Age."

Limon calmly named those three places.

The first was London, defended by three Great Witches and Avalon, the Great Barrier of London, one of the Silver Age's most powerful magics.

The second was the Fairy Kingdom, where ancient spirits remained alongside the Fairy Queen, an absolute being of the Golden Age.

And...

["The last one was Jerusalem?"]

"Yes. More precisely, this place."

By then, every other holy land had already been annihilated. Hounded by the seven dragons until they had nowhere left to flee, the gods made their last stand in Jerusalem, the sole remaining holy land.

Setting aside their old grudges, they worked together to build an immense labyrinth beneath Jerusalem. That was Tartarus: a subterranean fortress of 666 floors, imbued with the miracles of countless gods.

["Your explanation makes it clear why it's a fortress, Team Leader. But why call it a graveyard and a garbage dump too?"]

"Because there are literally mountains of corpses buried here."

Limon walked along the wall. At the end of the mural depicting the fierce battle against the dragons, he looked at an image of bodies piled high and continued.

"There are bodies of Magic Knights, witches, and priests here—even gods."

["... Gods leave corpses too?"]

"They can drop dead, can't they? Why wouldn't they leave corpses?"

Of all the final battlefields of the Silver Age, Jerusalem had claimed the most lives. Unlike Avalon, guarded by heroic spirits, or the Fairy Kingdom, protected by spirits of nature, they had to fight the dragons themselves.

And when they died, their bodies were automatically hidden in Tartarus. The gods had placed a curse on the underground labyrinth, wary of the dragons devouring them and growing stronger.

As the corpses accumulated, the curse of Tartarus grew stronger as well. They had been so desperate that they were forced to use even the corpses of gods as sacrifices.

Their dogged resistance, using methods so ruthless that even a black mage would have marveled at them, had not been entirely in vain. Jerusalem held out until the end of the Silver Age, and the surviving gods barely managed to conclude a peace treaty with the seven dragons.

Of course, it was closer to unconditional surrender than a peace treaty.

Still, the gods were satisfied simply to have survived and preserved their existence. They returned to the surface and rebuilt their churches in Jerusalem.

But the curse lingering in Tartarus did not disappear afterward. Eventually, the gods began using it to seal away cursed objects and important secrets, or to imprison sinners. That was why Limon described it as an accursed graveyard and the Holy Alliance's garbage dump.

["... However desperate they were, using corpses like firewood? The gods did some truly horrific things."]

"That's how terrifying the seven dragons were to them."

War, by its nature, wore down both sides. No matter how overwhelming one side's advantage, as the fighting intensified, it had to accept some degree of damage.

The problem was that this obvious logic did not apply to the war between the seven dragons and the gods.

"Every time the seven dragons devoured an avatar, they recovered more of their former power and grew stronger. Imagine how horrifying that must have looked to the gods."

["That sort of thing isn't all that unusual for players, though."]

"That's because players are the weird ones."

Limon spoke dismissively. Players who grew stronger merely by killing monsters in dungeons were the abnormal ones. Normally, repeated battles to the death against powerful enemies were an excellent way to end up crippled, not stronger.

In fact, both he and the Sword Emperor had suffered serious internal damage every time they were drenched in the seven dragons' blood while fighting them, forcing them to recuperate for months.

"Getting stronger without fail just by defeating an enemy? If someone could do that shit, would they even be human?"

Limon sneered. Then he added, his voice mocking:

"They'd be a monster—or a dragon wearing human skin."