GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

He has spent most of the time in the egg within this mental space. It appears to him as a large, dark, and empty world filled with stars of various colors and sizes.

The stars are the imprints of every dragon that passed the naming ceremony and was given a name by the dragon spirit. They are all connected by an invisible spiritual entity, which makes the bloodline space look like a river of stars.

He has been going upstream of this river, looking for the special talents that he needs. It is a good use of his time. The alternative is to hatch now, but he can't do that.

As he is currently, he ought to have hatched 50 thousand years ago. Normal dragon eggs spend ten thousand years in the egg, but he has already spent six times that amount of time in the egg. His littermates have grown up and have left the cave. Even his mother has forgotten about him.

The delay is partly because he is greedy for more talents and partly because the alternative is not palatable. Because of this unpalatable alternative, he can't hatch yet, even if he wants to. His hatching will create too much commotion, which will bring him a lot of problems with the dragons.

The issue is that he is not fully gestated. His inner world is much too powerful. A single dragon egg is not enough to make him gestate completely. This is because he is far from being a normal dragon.

He originally needed an Origin cycle for his inner world to take shape since he had to rely on the trickle of mana and Origin energy in the atmosphere to develop. Fortunately, he is not alone. The supply of mana, origin energy, and divine life energy from Legion reduced that time to 30,000 years. But that has not removed the requirement for a fragment of a world for him to complete his gestation, so he still can't hatch 30,000 years later.

Legion-5 had to use a fully grown dragon heart, plus the godhood of a great god, the crown of a demon king of Chaos, and finally the divine ability of the giants of order to recreate the world engine that dragons lack.

He, on the other hand, is a complete dragon, just like the dragon ancestor, so he has the world engine within him, but he needs more than energy to mature and recreate the divine ability of the dragon ancestor. He needs the power and space of a world.

He doesn't need a large fragment of the world. Just a little bit would do. It will stabilize and complete his inner world. Even cosmic energy has not helped in that aspect. In fact, cosmic energy has strengthened his inner world and increased the requirements for gestation. Now he won't take just a little bit of the plane he is in currently to develop fully, he has to take about half of the whole plane.

It is clear to him that the dragons won't take kindly to that. They will not watch on as he absorbs their plane just to complete hatching. There is going to be a great fight when he hatches, which he is not ready for. He will need the help of Legion to survive, and they aren't yet ready to take on the whole dragon race. So he spends his time in the ancestral trials, getting more talents.

That's what he was doing until the world god showed up. Now he is not sure if it is a good idea to continue following the river of stars in search of the talents he needs.

From here on out, the chances of encountering a world god will increase. Tssandulighafan didn't appear to have ulterior motives, but the world gods he might attract next might not be satisfied with merely satiating their curiosity.

The worst part is that Soverick can't help him. Soverick is blind to everything going on in the dragon's bloodline space for reasons unknown. That means he can't advise Legion-8 about any upcoming danger.

Soverick was able to advise Aeternus not to go after all the demons in the abyss to harvest their marks of sin and use to upgrade his because he saw that they would attract a powerful being in the process.

They are not sure who that powerful being is but they suspect that it would be the realm lord, as the realm lord has a vested interest in the abyss for the era of conquest.

But despite this uncertainty about the source of danger, Aeternus has surely avoided the danger. He can't have that luxury in the bloodline space. So he would be going in blind and might stumble into a world god if he continues hunting for talents.

He gritted his teeth mentally and said, "There's just one more talent that I need. I will stop when I get that talent."

He is like a gambler now. He doesn't know which of the stars has the talents he needs, so he has to try them all. If he is lucky, then the next trial will give him the talent of creation that he needs. If he is unlucky, then it might take a hundred or a thousand more trials.

"The talent of creation is very rare in dragons, so it will probably take another hundred thousand trials to find it. I don't have anywhere to be, so there is no problem with time. The problem is with world gods."

He made up his mind and resumed taking the trials. He can't give up now after working so hard. He already has the talents of fire, air, water, earth, space, time, light, darkness, life, death, lightning, and destruction. What he needs now is creation to complete his inner world. Then he will achieve something that every dragon kind has been looking forward to. He would have the potential to match the dragon king. There is no way he will give that up when he is so close.