Kanberich nodded: “You could leave this stuff in a mundane bottle and it would still be good in five hundred years. It’s like a glass droplet — the components balance each-other with enormous force, such that it goes around and becomes completely stable again.”
Thus, Zel brought out her bottle with the Sap of Grinning Death. She put a single drop of the substance into her own cup. The dragonslayer’s eyebrows went up in surprise and recognition.
“...Where did you get that bottle?”
“The elder of the Hadegoke Branch tried to use it to kill me, at the behest of someone from the Root Branch. Sap of Grinning Death — it can’t hurt me, so it’s just a fun little thing.”
“I know what it is, and who made it. I am merely surprised that you have it…” he said with utter seriousness, before lightening up. “But since you do, give me a drop as well.”
Clinking their cups together, the Young Monster and the Old Monster drew down their drinks and, with grins on their faces, emitted sighs of satisfaction.
“Y’know, Ozmir has his own reserve of this stuff, but he hasn’t shared any of it, has he?” Kanberich slurred. “Do you even know how the sect got all that Culca in the greenhouses? It sure wasn’t as a cultivation resource. That babyfaced bastard personally went to an Ankhezian enclave and stole a seedling so he could make booze out of it.”
It wasn’t long before clarity of thought and speech returned the old man, in no small part because he used a detoxification technique that involved him exhaling a gust of flame. After blinking and shaking his head a few times, he held up the last remaining, unadulterated cup for Victor to drink, prompting him with a nod. He tentatively did so, still remaining awkwardly quiet. By he look in his eyes, however, Zel somehow didn’t feel that he was spiraling again. Deep in thought, yes, but not spiraling.
“But… Ozmir aside, I had an actual reason for this beyond wanting to share the fruits of my long-time hobby,” Kanberich continued. “This drink is called Aqua Prisma — Prismatic Liquor. Also called Liquid Moonlight and a thousand other names. The highest grade — that which we have just partaken of — is called Exorcism Liquor, for its ability to at once center the mind and suppress mental disturbances. Between heaven and earth, this liquor alone may permit you to truly drink away your sorrows for long enough to resolve them properly. The limitations of its effectiveness aside, Victor being under its effects will be necessary for the next stage: My Dragonslayer Flame Method.”
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Both a metaphorical and literal fire lit up in Kanberich’s eyes.
“That’s why you came to me, is it not?” he asked Zelsys, turning his gaze up to Victor without waiting for an answer. “My Dragonslayer Flame Method and my Dragonslaying Spear Art are the only things I can share with you, and spear techniques are clearly not the cause or the solution for your issues.”
Once more he looked to Zelsys. “So come. Explain to me the full breadth and depth of the pit your precious disciple finds himself in. Eberheim considered, it is sure to be one filled with grasping corpses and its walls are sure to be slick with gore.”
And so they did — Zelsys implored Victor to explain himself first, and, in line with Kanberich’s description of his Exorcism Liquor, the redhead spoke with remarkable clarity of thought. Zelsys then went over her own outlook on the situation, and Kanberich nodded along, eventually bringing out a supple scroll of purplish dragonhide. It was actually so dark as to be nearly black, with purple only showing through at the edges of scales and in the creases. This one was truly just dragonhide used as a material, Zel sensed no aura of life from it — its aura was in fact nearly identical to Kanberich’s. In the same vein, the scroll’s aura also reminded her of the Sword Phantom and Formless Destroyer Scriptures, being the distilled essence of the author’s personal understanding. Rather than unroll it, Kanberich gripped the scroll tightly, pressing it to the table as he explained.
“From the sound of it, your attempts at refining dragon tissue are along the right track, you are merely going about it with the wrong method, and you lack the proper tools to achieve the end result through your particular refinement style. In short, dragonflesh does not acknowledge your primacy as King of Flesh and Bone. You don’t lack in strength of spirit, your metaphorical flame is simply not of the correct nature to subdue the self-supremacist strength of a true dragon descendant. The flesh of a lesser descendant such as a Wildfire Kite will bend, but trying to apply the same brute approach to the flesh of Eisengeist is like trying to cage the sun in mundane iron. And so, in order to prevail over dragons, one requires first of all the simply ability to do so, to contend with them in terms of sheer power. This, you possess.”
“But I could not conceivably stand against Eisengeist under my own strength. Not without Deus Machina Teutobochus, and that is not my own strength,” Victor protested.
“Let me finish, will you?! Second, you must find and battle a dragon. Then, another, and another. Even if you lose, even if you must crawl away, what matters is to stand against your betters, even if you cannot defeat them — but philosophy aside, they must still be dragons. This is the most crude and fundamental method of becoming more akin to a dragon and in turn assimilating the strength of dragons. The faster and more glamorous alternative is to actually slay one and devour its power directly, of course. The tangible benefits aside, such an act will irrevocably mark your soul, change you, make your existence fundamentally more like that of a true dragon. As it stands, I am a truer Dragon Descendant than all but a small handful of the strongest Three-eyes on the continent, closer to a true dragon than them, my existence weighs heavier and my will bends the world more readily, even as I am now, yet to recover the vast majority of my cultivation.”