Demonic Dragon: Harem System - Chapter 726

Chapter 726: Dragon’s Nest, with rewards!
The palace receded as he left Cristhalis as if stepping off a balcony. His body leaned, mana spreading through his back, arms, and legs… and, in seconds, Strax simply glided, sustained by magic as if the sky were an old friend offering a ride.

The snow below was a white sea in eternal fury. The wind cut like blades. The temperature was so absurd that any normal creature would have frozen in minutes.

Strax? Strax found it… refreshing.

He took a deep breath, letting the icy air fill his chest.

The energy was there.

Subtle. Creeping. But ancient. So ancient that it made even his draconic blood react like an animal sniffing out foreign territory.

“This is coming from very far away…” he murmured, adjusting the flow of mana and gaining more altitude.

The landscape slowly transformed. Towering mountains of pure ice. Deep fissures that swallowed the light. Winds howled so loudly they seemed to carry lost voices. Everything was white, gray, or blue, as if the world there had forgotten all other colors.

He kept flying.

Minutes turned into half an hour.

Half an hour turned into an hour.

And still… no sign of the entrance.

The energy was everywhere, but diluted, weak, like a distant breath. It was like trying to find the origin of a perfume carried by the wind.

Strax didn’t give up.

He simply sank deeper into that icy silence—the kind of silence that only places forgotten by gods and mortals could have.

With each mountain passed, the energy became a little clearer.

With each snowy valley crossed, his chest vibrated a little more.

And then…

Between two colossal peaks, something changed.

The air became heavier.

Denser.

More… alive.

Strax slowed down, floating like a leaf too large to fall. His eyes scanned the landscape for any irregularity.

Nothing.

Only ice.

Snow.

And silence.

But his instincts screamed.

“It’s close.” He moved forward a few more meters, alert to any oscillation.

Then the energy pulsed.

A single beat.

Like a muffled “thump,” coming from the depths of the mountain ahead.

Strax’s eyes widened and a smile escaped him.

“Finally…” He landed on the snow—or rather, sank up to his shins, because that place was practically frozen soup.

He closed his eyes.

And concentrated.

The icy draconic energy spread like invisible threads through the air, but now he could feel which one was the strongest… the mother thread… the trail of the nest.

He began to walk.

One step. Another.

The wind howled even louder, as if trying to push him away.

Strax ignored it.

The energy trail led him to a colossal ice wall—a mountain so smooth and shiny it looked like a mirror sculpted by the very gods of winter.

He ran his hand across the surface.

Nothing.

No cracks.

No paths.

But the energy came from there.

Exactly from there.

“Are you kidding me…?” he sighed, with a mixture of irritation and amusement.

And then he did what any dragon would do:

He pushed mana into his palm and melted the ice with a touch.

The surface reacted.

It didn’t melt… It didn’t crack…

It vibrated.

As if it recognized that mana.

And then…

CRACK.

A line appeared in the ice.

Then another.

Then another.

Until the entire wall opened like a natural gate, revealing a dark, wide tunnel completely enveloped in a fog too cold to be normal.

Strax approached the entrance.

And the air there was unlike anything he had ever felt.

Too cold even for the North.

Too ancient even for Cristhalis.

Too strong even to be the work of any natural creature.

He took a step inside the tunnel.

And the energy enveloped him like an icy embrace.

He smiled slightly. “So here you are…”

The nest. Finally found.

The tunnel narrowed and, at the same time, seemed to stretch infinitely—that kind of spatial illusion that only places saturated with ancient magic could create. Each step echoed as if someone larger, much larger, was walking with him. The icy fog brushed against his skin like insistent fingers, as if the nest were… sniffing out whoever dared to enter.

Strax was not intimidated.

His mana spread, illuminating the path with a soft indigo-blue glow, and the mist receded, almost respectfully.

The icy energy grew stronger.

More intense.

Denser.

And then the tunnel opened—not into a cave, but into an ice cathedral, so colossal that Strax had to raise his gaze for long seconds to find the ceiling, overflowing with crystals like luminous thorns.

And what was inside…

It even made him breathe deeper.

It wasn’t a nest. It was a graveyard of riches.

Treasures. But not human ones.

There were piles and piles of metals he didn’t even recognize—ancient alloys, extinct minerals, gems that pulsed with pure mana, ceremonial objects from civilizations that had already turned to dust.

Gigantic suits of armor made for creatures that could never be human.

Stored spheres of power. Crystals of frozen mana, each larger than a person.

And gold. Lots of gold. Enough to redesign entire economies—if anyone were crazy enough to try to carry it.

Strax whistled softly.

“A dragon… really lived here.” But it wasn’t the treasure that held his attention.

It was what lay at the center of the cave.

The floor seemed to have been molded, melted, and refrozen to form a gigantic bed. And upon it…

A colossus.

A gigantic skeleton, so perfectly preserved it seemed to have fallen asleep there yesterday—not ages ago.

The vertebrae were as long as tree trunks.

The frozen wings rose like cathedral arches.

The horns were curved blades, almost transparent, gleaming in bluish hues.

But it wasn’t bone.

Not really.

The skeleton was made of pure ice.

Not ordinary ice.

Ice that glowed from within. Ice that pulsed with mana. Ice that formed natural runes in its fissures.

Ice… alive.

Or at least, ice that once was.

An Ancient Ice Dragon. One of the rarest. One of the most feared.

And utterly dead.

Strax approached slowly, feeling the pressure of the ancient aura—even in death—pushing against his skin as if testing him, weighing his worth.

He touched the ice bone.

The surface was smooth as glass, but so cold it should have frozen the hand of any living being.

But in him… it only brought a slight itch.

“Who were you…?” he murmured. “And what the hell did they leave behind?”

The bone vibrated under his touch.

Light.

Weak.

Like a distant echo.

This dragon had died a long, long time ago.

But the nest… still breathed with its mana.

Strax took a step back, looking all around—treasures, crystals, the body.

Everything there was powerful, but it all existed for one reason:

This dragon hadn’t died naturally.

The icy essence that permeated every stone, every crystal, every inch of the cave… was residue of death magic. Something that had drained the creature to its core.

And then his eyes narrowed.

“There’s someone else here, isn’t there?”

The mist answered. It circled the skeleton. Then it formed a light swirl, as if drawing the silhouette of something that was no longer there. Something… that still left its mark.

Strax smiled. “I found more than I bargained for.”

The mist inside the ice cathedral seemed to recede as he ventured deeper, as if even the air were trying to prevent what was about to happen. The dead ancient dragon lay stretched out, silent, immense… and yet, Strax felt its gaze on the back of his neck, as if the frozen creature were assessing every step of the intruder who dared to enter its tomb.

It was then that something different caught his attention.

At the edge of the platform where the ice bones formed the bed, a soft glow pulsed—rhythmic, slow, but alive.

Strax approached.

And there, surrounded by stalactites that descended like crystal spears, was an egg.

Enormous.

The size of a barrel.

Made of translucent ice with cracks shimmering in ethereal blue.

But… still pulsing with energy.

Strax raised his hand, curious.

“So you left offspring…”

His fingers touched the cold surface.

And immediately—IMMEDIATELY—something pulled.

His mana was ripped away as if invisible threads were swallowing him by the fingertips. A brutal, hungry, desperate suction, as if the egg were trying to drink every drop of energy he had.

Strax narrowed his eyes.

“Whoa, hey, hold on…”

But there was no holding on.

The mana continued to be drained, going straight into the egg, as if feeding a heart about to beat.

He pulled his hand back and the suction ceased, leaving a crackle of static energy in the air.

Strax examined the egg more closely.

The ice wasn’t normal ice.

There were natural runes.

Ancient scars.

Magical burns.

And then he understood. “You’re starving, aren’t you?”

He looked at the colossal skeleton behind him.

The ancient dragon had died.

All that remained was the frozen body… still saturated with icy mana, but ownerless.

Strax carefully set the egg aside.

Then he walked over to the corpse, the bluish aura reflecting on his face.

“Alright, old man,” he murmured to the dead dragon. “Then I’ll make use of what you left behind.”

He opened his palm, let his mana expand… and then touched the bone-crystal.

The reaction was instantaneous.

The entire body of the ancient dragon trembled with a muffled rumble.

Cracks of light raced across its wings.

Its horns cracked.

The ice gleamed with a power that hadn’t breathed for ages.

And Strax absorbed it all.

Absolutely everything.

Like a flame devouring ancient firewood, his mana coursed through the skeleton, pulling in every crystallized fragment, every frozen memory, every remnant of magic left behind.

The process was swift.

Violent.

And grand.

The dragon’s body slowly dissolved into luminous ice dust, being sucked straight into Strax’s chest like a star being consumed by a black hole.

The entire cathedral trembled with the energetic impact.

When the last fragment vanished, when even the colossal wings turned into shimmering particles absorbed by him… silence returned.

And Strax was different.

The air around him rippled with power. “Hah…” he cracked his neck. “That… was a feast.”

He returned to the egg.

Now, just by getting close, the object trembled slightly, responding to the energy he had just consumed.

Strax placed his hands on his hips, assessing.

“An ice dragon hatchling, huh?”

The egg pulsed in response, hungry but alive.

He picked it up—carefully, but without hesitation—and raised it as if deciding something important in an instant.

“Well.”

A crooked smile appeared.

“A pet isn’t bad.”

He pressed the egg against his chest, its warmth mingling with the ancestral cold of the sleeping creature inside. “Let’s see… what you’ll become eating my mana, little one.”