Chapter Sixty-Seven: The Dragon Soul of Heaven and Earth
Having lost his telescope, Wang Ling could no longer see the details of the battle; all he could make out was a massive mushroom cloud enveloping the valley. From time to time, beams of holy white light and dark shadows shot into the sky—clearly, the angel was fighting the crime lord who wielded the power of darkness.
This was a battle that had no place in an E-rank scenario!
Just then, two streaks of light appeared in the heavens—one golden, one silver—flying straight toward him. They were two dragons, formed entirely from radiant energy: the Soul of the Heavenly Dragon and the Soul of the Earth Dragon!
When twelve cloudburst bombs turned the valley into ruins, the angel had shielded herself with holy light against the explosion, but the Double Dragon brothers and Marian's corpse were shredded by the shockwave in an instant, their remains incinerated to dust by the searing heat. At that moment, the souls of the dragons, which had soared above the battlefield, lost their hosts with the deaths of the brothers.
As beings of pure energy, the dragon souls could not survive long exposed to the atmosphere and sunlight without a vessel; they would gradually weaken under the assault of other energies until they dissipated entirely. Possessing no consciousness, driven solely by instinct, the dragon souls immediately sought new hosts to inhabit.
But not just anyone could withstand the power of a dragon soul. An ordinary human body would be torn apart by such immense spiritual force, while powerful beings like Bai Feng or the crime lord already possessed their own energies. The dragon souls, as beings of energy, instinctively repelled foreign energies and thus could not enter the bodies of such individuals.
Wang Ling, however, having survived the infusion of dragon soul energy—leaving traces of it within him—became an irresistible lure to the homeless dragon souls!
The golden Heavenly Dragon Soul and the silver Earth Dragon Soul drew dazzling arcs of light through the air, shooting down and plunging directly into Wang Ling's body. The sheer force of their energy shattered his consciousness, and he fell instantly into unconsciousness.
Yet his body was lifted by the entwined golden and silver brilliance; countless threads of light surged from his pores, weaving a glowing cocoon around him. Within this radiant egg, Wang Ling’s vacant eyes were open, and within each pupil swam the shimmering silhouette of a dragon—one gold, one silver.
The souls of the Heavenly and Earth Dragons had begun unleashing their power, transforming Wang Ling’s blood and body to prepare him as their new host.
In truth, anyone seeking to claim the dragon souls in the world of Double Dragon would find it nearly impossible. So long as the souls slumbered within the brothers, killing them changed nothing: the dormant souls would not leave. Once awakened, the souls would bind irrevocably to the brothers’ flesh and spirit; killing the hosts would destroy the souls as well.
Only at the very end of Double Dragon II, when the souls left the brothers to unlock the mysterious gate and summon the angel to revive Marian—only then, in the fleeting instant when the souls exited their hosts, could they be seized. Even so, to attract the dragon souls, one’s body had to already possess a trace of their power.
Thus, Bai Feng’s scheme to slay the angel and, incidentally, the Double Dragon brothers, set in motion an exceedingly fortuitous coincidence. Having undergone enhancement from the extracted dragon soul energy in the laboratory, Wang Ling drew the orphaned souls to himself. Standing on the sidelines, he became the unlikely beneficiary: the powerful advantage meant for the story’s protagonists now resided within him!
On the hillside, Bai Feng was unaware of what was happening to Wang Ling. Her eyes narrowed as she watched the battle in the valley. The crime lord’s dark energy was clearly being suppressed by the angel’s holy light. Yet this final boss of the Double Dragon world was not merely an energy wielder—he was a formidable martial artist, his combat experience far surpassing the angel’s. His mastery of the Dragon Marrow Fist inflicted significant wounds upon her.
“It’s time.”
A scroll appeared in Bai Feng’s hand. She unrolled it slowly. Made from the hide of an ice dragon, it was a pure, icy blue, emanating waves of intense, fluid magical power. After Bai Feng paid the requisite price for using the artifact, the scroll crumbled to dust and drifted away. Instantly, winds began to howl across the valley.
A gray-white whirlwind, laden with icy snowflakes, swept through the valley. The mushroom cloud of black and red smoke left by the cloudburst bombs was dragged down by the gale, forming a black storm that spanned earth and sky. Razor-sharp wind currents sliced through everything in their path like steel blades.
Amid the whirling tempest, the ice-based magical energy, now crystalline snow, unleashed a terrifying cold front, plunging the temperature to minus one hundred degrees Celsius. Countless ice crystals swirled with the storm, adhering to every object they touched. The ground froze over in an instant, the ice thickening visibly before the eye, until the entire valley became a domain of ice and wind.
This was a grand spell, capable of transforming a kilometer-wide area into a frozen wasteland. In the world of Fire Emblem, its power was second only to forbidden spells like Inferno’s Law or Supreme Light. Inscribed upon dragon hide by the great sage Athos with unmatched magic, even an adult dragon would be reduced to a corpse beneath the might of the Winter’s End.
The angel and the crime lord, locked in battle, were first stripped of their protective energy shields by the cyclone. Then, swept up by the numbing hail, they were encased in a nearly unbreakable layer of ice, harder than steel—transformed into two pillars of ice, fused with the frozen earth beneath them.
As the storm of Winter’s End faded and its magic waned, the black and red smoke from the cloudburst bombs had been utterly dispersed. The valley was now a crystalline world, a kilometer of terrain buried beneath a meter-thick sheet of ice. Two pillars, each more than thirty meters high, stood at its center.
Within these pillars, the angel and the crime lord were trapped—like prehistoric creatures frozen in Antarctic glaciers in the Ice Age.
Gazing at the distant ice pillars and the faint holy glow still flickering within, Bai Feng drew from her hand a strange sword—its blade spiraled, blue-white in hue and inscribed with countless luminous runes—brimming with power. This was the Guardian Queen’s Sword, a B-grade weapon from the world of Final Fantasy Tactics on the GBA.
“To slay an angel—let this feat be accomplished by me, an aspiring dreamer!”
Drawing a deep breath, she gripped the Guardian Queen’s Sword, drank a mighty potion from Inotia 3, boosting her attack by fifty percent, and charged toward the rapidly cracking ice pillar…
Wang Ling awoke to a sudden voice in his mind:
“You have reached the maximum stay of fifteen days in the world of Double Dragon. You will now return to the Dream Space.”
The scene shifted, and he found himself once more in his private room, beneath the orb of the auxiliary mainframe.
“You have successfully completed the Double Dragon II scenario. The system shall now evaluate your performance:
World: Double Dragon
Scenario: FC Double Dragon II
Difficulty: E-rank
Completion Rating: D (originally A; lowered due to the death of protagonist Billy, further lowered for the deaths of protagonist Jimmy and Marian).
Mission Rewards:
E-rank Completion Chest: Black Iron Chest
Currency: 8,000 (1,000 points each for Missions One and Two, 2,000 each for Three and Four, plus 2,000 extra for personally killing two high-level enemies).
Attribute Points: 4 (base reward 3, plus 1 for D-rating completion).
Skill Points: 2 (base reward 1, plus 1 for D-rating completion).
After all evaluations were completed, the Dream Badge issued a prompt: ‘Rewards have been distributed. The Black Iron Chest is now in your private room. Additionally, due to the deaths of all main story characters in the Double Dragon world you experienced, this world will not be reopened for you in the future.’
“So, killing off the protagonists lowers your evaluation! I remember my reward at the end of Mario World was 9,600 currency, 19 attribute points, 14 skill points, 2 extra dream skill points, a Black Iron Shining Chest, and a Crystal Prize Wheel. This time, the rewards are much less…”
“But it hardly matters—the benefits I’ve gained here are more than enough: Linda’s dream, three super dark fighters, the tentacle whip, the golden-red mask, and my body has been transformed by the dragon soul’s power. Wait, just before I passed out, there were two beams of light flying toward me!”
Just as Wang Ling prepared to check his attributes, a prompt came from the mainframe: “Energy-based souls have entered your body. You may spend 20,000 currency to fuse with them. Upon fusion, you will obtain a unique bloodline. Would you like to proceed with fusion?”
“What? Energy-based souls?” Wang Ling recalled the breathtaking golden and silver lights that had rushed toward him before he lost consciousness, and his heart leapt. “Could it be the Soul of the Heavenly Dragon and the Soul of the Earth Dragon?”
A wave of ecstatic disbelief surged through him, and he responded immediately, “Accept fusion!”
“Insufficient currency for fusion. When you accumulate enough currency, you may initiate fusion at the auxiliary mainframe,” came the cold, mechanical reply, tempering Wang Ling’s elation.
“Damn! Twenty thousand points—that’s no small sum!”
Wang Ling checked his wealth and, even with the scenario rewards, found himself far short of the total.
(Haha, in truth, the Heavenly and Earth Dragon Souls are just the core drives—think of them as the Nine-Tails within Naruto, a powerful engine. The protagonist’s future class system will definitely surprise everyone and be a sight to behold!)