Price Ryan and Ange Watson spoke for a long time. The young emperor showed not the slightest hint of arrogance, carrying himself entirely like a wise and enlightened ruler, which took Ange Watson completely by surprise.
The young emperor before him was entirely different from the one in the past. How could this be the same person who had panicked on the battlefield and trampled his own men to death in terror?
Unable to make sense of it, Ange Watson could only accept the emperor's own explanation—that one only truly grew up after facing life and death.
That was Price Ryan's story: he claimed he had once been crude, ignorant, arrogant, and cowardly, and only after making such a disgraceful spectacle of himself on the battlefield had he learned from the bitter experience and resolved to reform.
From then on, Price Ryan had begun to study, investigate, and set grand ambitions for himself... Finding nothing amiss with this explanation, Ange Watson gradually accepted it.
Only when Price Ryan returned to the imperial palace through the teleportation array did the expression on the young emperor's face abruptly shift, twisting into something ferocious and venomous.
"That damned traitor! Why not just order Ange Watson to slaughter his whole family and bring me all their heads? Wouldn't that solve the problem once and for all?!"
The Price Ryan from moments before had not been the boy himself, but the ancient remnant soul dwelling deep within the Dragon Tyrant Armament—Artross the Eternal.
The young emperor possessed no such acting skill. Ever since discovering Alan's intention to rebel, he had wanted nothing more than to butcher Alan's entire family; he never could have shown Alan's elder brother the slightest warmth.
In the end, the young emperor had simply surrendered control of his body to Artross, letting the former Demonic Dragon Tyrant play the part for him.
The performance had been flawless; Ange Watson seemed not to have suspected a thing.
Artross spoke to the young emperor with helpless exasperation: "You always assume slaughtering every enemy will solve your problems. Can you not look down upon them from a higher vantage point? Emperor, we are immortal. We are different from those mortals. We are a higher order of life, near to gods!
"A god can indeed kill mortals at any moment, but if every mortal is killed, who will build the temples to worship the god? If you can never grasp this truth, you will never understand the power of time."
The young emperor calmed down slightly and asked, "Like what you did to Ange Watson? To be honest, I only know you used that power, but what exactly did you do?"
Artross explained, "If you insist on an explanation... you can understand it as me taking the goodwill he feels toward us now and transferring it into his past. A person's past exerts a profound influence over them; just like any beauty once touched, the memory of it is forever romanticized.
"I am fine-tuning his feelings rather than specific memories. By transferring the goodwill he feels toward us in this moment into his past, the sentiment becomes vaguer, yet far more potent. He will believe his reverence and loyalty to us has always been a matter of course, making it far simpler for us to control him."
The young emperor could not help remarking, "That sounds stranger and stranger. Is that truly the power of time? Is this how time dragons normally wield their power?"
The young emperor had experimented with reversing time and could comprehend it, but extracting the emotions contained within a span of time and casting them into someone's past memories?
It hardly sounded like the power of time anymore. Was this not simply a mental charm? If the Demonic Dragon Tyrant had possessed such power in the ancient past, how could the slaves have ever rebelled? They ought to have worshiped the dragons as their creators.
Artross explained, "Naturally not. In the past, the Demonic Dragon Tyrant had no need for such petty tricks. But today, we possess not even one percent of our former strength, so of course we must tread carefully. You need to apply yourself as well; you have begun to slack off again recently."
The young emperor said impatiently, "I know, I know. But what is the point of practicing Mage Hand every single day? It has been so long, and I haven't made any progress at all. Are you sure you aren't teaching me the wrong way?"
Even as he complained, the young emperor obediently summoned a Mage Hand, manipulating the glowing palm to perform delicate movements. This was his daily exercise; he had been told that once he could control the Mage Hand to play exquisite melodies, he would be ready to advance to the next stage of his training.
The young emperor was perpetually impatient, and Artross invariably offered the same reply: "We are immortal. If you cannot endure even this measure of monotony, immortality will be nothing to you but an eternal torment."
Resigned, the young emperor had no choice but to try his best to temper his mind.
Whenever he grew genuinely restless and irritable, he would strike up a conversation with Artross.
Having practiced for merely a few minutes today, he could not resist asking, "When you told Ange Watson that we would build an empire greater than Ryan, did you mean it?"
Artross replied, "It is not a question of meaning it or not, Your Majesty. Is it not a matter of course? We are immortal, and thus the Ryan Empire shall endure eternally. For an empire that exists for eternity, is it not natural that it should rule this plane? Surely we cannot still be worrying about orc invasions thousands of years from now. That would be utterly indolent."
The young emperor stared blankly for a moment, then agreed, "That makes sense. Yes, we are immortal. Naturally, we must surpass Holy King Arthur, and naturally, we must unify this world."
"Indeed. We must surpass Arthur Ryan," Artross echoed.
Yet there was one sentence Artross left unsaid: the one who would truly surpass Arthur Ryan was not his descendant, but his ancient enemy.
Like the villain of every tale, no antagonist would willingly serve as another's thrall, and Artross was no different. From the moment his consciousness reawakened, he had been scheming for his own future.
Artross had long grown sick of this young emperor. The boy was selfish, foolish, and greedy, devoid of the slightest self-control or willpower. Worse, the twisted upbringing practiced by the Ryan imperial family over the generations had left him with severe psychological depravity—brutal, and utterly lacking in empathy.
Even the Demonic Dragon Tyrant of old had been cruel only toward other races; that time dragon had been exceptionally benevolent toward his own kin. The tyrant had enslaved other species for the prosperity of the dragon race, not for his own petty self.
This young emperor, however, cared for nothing but himself.
Humanity, the empire, and all else were nothing compared to his own desires. A person of such extreme selfishness could never achieve greatness.
Regrettably, Artross could not yet part ways with him.
Still, it would not be long. Today, the young emperor was willing to surrender his body to Artross's control; tomorrow, the day after, and in the days to come, the boy would grow accustomed to the sensation, until one day Artross took complete dominion over everything.
Artross possessed ample patience. Just as he had said, he was an immortal being; there was no need to rush.
As for the threat posed by Alan and that lich, Artross paid it little mind.
In his eyes, Alan was merely a naive idealist. His speeches might inspire many to follow him, but what if Artross took control of the young emperor and made concessions?
If mistakes were made, they could be corrected. If past wrongs were set right, what standing would Alan have left to advocate for a schism?
When that time came, the supreme authority of the empire would inevitably return to the imperial family.
It might be diminished for a time, and offices like the Supreme Arbiter might gain greater power, but that was of no consequence.
Time smoothed away all things, and Artross held dominion over time. With sufficient patience, he would reclaim that power piece by piece until he was once more the supreme sovereign.
This was the insight he had gleaned over more than one thousand seven hundred years.
The Demonic Dragon Tyrant back then had simply been too impatient. Even after the tide had turned, why duel Arthur Ryan to the death? A human's lifespan was a mere century, whereas a time dragon was eternal.
Had he simply gone into hiding alongside the surviving dragons for a time and waited for Arthur Ryan to die of old age, would every problem not have resolved itself?
The Demonic Dragon Tyrant of old had prized his own pride too highly, failing to understand the wisdom of biding his time and yielding before an overwhelming edge.
Now, Artross would not repeat the mistakes of the past. He truly intended to unify this world. Dragonkind or any other race—all of them would bow to his rule.
Artross could not help recalling the scene preserved in the memory crystal. That sword strike, resembling the first light of dawn, was far too familiar. Was it not the very signature technique that had made Arthur Ryan's name renowned throughout the world?
Unlike other paladins, Arthur Ryan had never been ostentatious. His Divine Smite carried no dazzling, blinding radiance; it was as plain and unremarkable as a casual swing of a blade.
Yet on the battlefields of that era, not a single dragon had been able to withstand Arthur Ryan's faint light of dawn.
Not even the Demonic Dragon Tyrant could, for it was the pinnacle of Holy Light, the true dawn symbolizing hope, touching upon the very origin of the deity known as the Lord of the Dawn.
That was also why the Lord of the Dawn had favored Arthur Ryan above all others, even going so far as to attempt breaking his wager with the dragon gods for his sake.
Back then, when Arthur Ryan discovered he had contracted the Dragon Blood Curse and that his soul was being slowly eroded away, the Lord of the Dawn had spoken with him. The Lord of the Dawn was willing to intervene to lift the curse and receive him into his divine realm.
The price, however, was that the gods of the dragon pantheon would no longer be bound by their restrictions, free to lift the seals upon their kin and return to the continent.
In the end, Arthur Ryan had refused, and thus perished completely under the Dragon Blood Curse.
Yet even as his very soul dissipated, he had left behind a contingency, ensuring that the newly reborn Demonic Dragon Tyrant met his end at the hands of the Elven King.
Artross had been in a state of dormant ignorance at the time, oblivious to many of those events. But as his power steadily recovered, he was already able to peer into the river of time and witness all that had transpired.
All of the past was now laid bare before Artross, and the more he learned, the less he could suppress his desire to surpass Arthur Ryan.
How could a mere human be greater than the dragon race?
Artross whispered to himself in his heart: *Arthur Ryan, I truly hope that person in the memory crystal is you. You will watch with your own eyes as your empire is seized by my hands, and this world becomes my possession. If I could be reborn in such a form, surely you could as well. Do not disappoint me. Let us contest each other once more. This time, I shall use your very own empire to crush you completely!*
Chapter 434