Infinite Paths: The Raging Phoenix

Isa knew that she was thinking too much about that. However, she still felt conflicted about the whole situation… she always thought that one side of her family ruled the world because they were just that strong. Still, now that she learned that they had only been made for the purpose of expanding the territory of another being just as pawns, she had a lot of thinking to.

There was something that they could do to help her with that.

"About the SpiritWeaver's path…" Isa said while hesitating.

"You want me to try to use it to find the spirits of the dragons, right?" Rain asked.

"Yes…" Isa said. "You said that you received a part of the power from the spirit of a world, so perhaps we can obtain some from the dragons of this planet. With me, that should be possible."

"That makes sense, but I wonder if the machine gods wouldn't have done the same over the years… it isn't like we found signs of that, but they also can control the aspect of the spirits," Rain explained. "Also, considering that it is weird that the overseer was able to use the spirits of the previous humans to restart the planet… the overlords should have harvested their spirits as well."

"Maybe they did it… but only the ones that died at the hands of the first dragons," Elisabetha said. "Since you are here, it is proof that they didn't take the spirits of those who died before that long battle."

Rain couldn't deny that… still, there were too many things that he was still unsure of. Regardless, there was only one way to find out.

"My father died where the previous throne of the dragon kind should have been… all of the place was destroyed when the flying bases of the wind dragons began to fall," Isa said.

"We should be able to find plenty of spirits there too… come to think of it, I wonder if the stomp was also used to drain the spirits of the land," Rain said.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

…

Lvl 5: Spirit Communication - Communicates with spirits, establishing a rapport through empathic connection and intuitive understanding. Higher levels grant you the power to communicate with spirits that died further in the past. One hundred years per level.

Before leaving, Rain decided to make the path level up a few times, and it cost a shit ton of mana… even though magic sacrifice made the process more efficient, the path and the skills still consumed a whole lot of mana… when he got that skill, Rain soon realized that he would need to make it level up quite a bit as well.

"When did your father die again?" Rain asked.

"2597 years ago," Isa said.

The dragon god had that title for that long… and even before that, he had been around for a couple of hundred years… in any case, Rain made that skill reach level twenty-six, and that consumed almost all of his mana.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

The spirit weaver's path leveled up.

…

Lvl 10: Spiritual Reading - Reads the memories imprinted upon places where significant emotional events have occurred, gaining insights into past events and the emotions they evoked.

"Hmm, this might be useful as well," Rain said while rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Anyway, let's go."

Isa put her hand on Rain's right shoulder, and then he used Teleport. Instantly, he appeared in the middle of the former dragon's territory. Things still looked pretty messy there… the wind blew a lot of sand and dust over the years, but one still could tell that some floating islands had fallen from the sky and made things look like that.

"What the hell…" Rain furrowed his eyebrows.

Thanks to the spirit weaver's path, Rain could see some weird things now. Some clouds like auras moving around in circles around the area… Elisabetha began to act up, so it seemed that they were the spirits of dragons, thousands of them.

"Can you sense anything?" Isa asked.

"I can see it… the souls of a bunch of dragons, but it looked like they lost their sense of self after staying like this for many years," Rain explained. "The first skills are gaining Experience just because I am seeing them… However, I can't see any of them standing out."

"Is that so… perhaps even a dragon god can't fight back against the end that death brings," Isa said.

It seemed that Isa was about to give up already, but Rain knew that it was too soon for that. Without wasting time, Rain used Spirit Communication after he tried to touch a spirit, but his hands passed through it. However, as soon as the skill was activated, he felt a connection being established.

"Who are you? What happened to me?"

"I guess it works…" Rain said. "Anyway, I am your father."

"Can't you at least act like a normal person for a single day?" Elisabetha asked.

"No," Rain replied. "Regardless, I have come to talk with you guys a bit, but I can't stay around for long, so come to Daddy."

Sending the spirits to the pocket dimension had been quite easy. Rain just had to touch them, after all. Still, during the whole thing, he didn't feel anything like the presence of someone like a dragon god.

Maybe Isa was wrong about the date of her father's death… Rain soon confirmed that his guess was wrong when he collected all the spirits, and then he felt the atmosphere of the area changing until he felt a powerful presence emerging from the ground. While the spirits looked like white clouds, that one looked like a dark red one filled with corrupt energy.

"I guess we found him," Rain said and then touched the spirit, and in the next moment, it began to reshape itself.