Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

CH46 A Bonsai Tree...?

***

There was a reason Alex had felt a sense of familiarity with the hall.

He had entered a place like this before—many times, in fact.

Well, not exactly like this one.

The place he had entered before was far grander, far older, and infinitely more powerful in presence. Even if you added the surrounding Mana Stone Mine to this place, it still paled in comparison.

That other place hadn’t flaunted wealth with glittering stones or flashy minerals. No, it had been filled with runes, knowledge, and rare arcane resources—the sort of subtle opulence that radiated quiet, unshakeable power.

This place? It felt more like gaudy excess.

Like comparing a Royal Palace, rich with history and dignity, to the newly built mansion of a nouveau riche merchant.

Yes. That was it exactly.

Because this hall wasn’t just a chamber—it was a residence.

Or more accurately, a lair.

A Dragon’s Lair.

More specifically... an Elemental Dragon’s lair.

The reason Alex had stepped inside so casually—without any of his usual caution—was simple. He’d grown too accustomed to entering and leaving the lair of an Ancient Dragon.

And more than that, he wasn’t just some outsider anymore.

Within him flowed the Dragon Blood Essence and Dragon Heart of an Elder Dragon.

In comparison to his lineage, the aura of an Elemental Dragon lair felt no more threatening than the presence of a lesser noble’s estate to a Royal Prince.

Insignificant.

That said, an Elemental Dragon—especially one strong enough to form a stable lair—was still a being equivalent to a Saint-rank Warrior or Grand Mage. Not a being Alex could afford to underestimate.

Which meant there was only one reason he wouldn’t have sensed danger with his advanced Spirit Sight or powerful Spiritual Force.

The owner of the lair... was dead.

There it lay, in the heart of the hall—a massive corpse, regal even in death.

The remains of a Fire Elemental Dragon.

The creature’s body remained intact, untouched by time or decay. It had been preserved—kept pristine—by the dense, surrounding Mana.

Alex was silent for a long moment.

He remembered what Uthvaazgol had once told him.

"Dragons are blessed by Mana."

And now, those words took on vivid meaning.

To Alex’s Spirit Sight, it looked as if the fire-elemental Mana in the hall had refused to abandon the creature.

It was still protecting its fallen guardian.

’The dense ambient fire-elemental Mana didn’t form into Elemental Crystals... just so they could protect the body of their blessed Dragon,’ Alex sighed, struck by the melancholic beauty of it all.

He stepped forward and bowed.

A silent gesture of respect.

The being before him had clearly been worthy—of reverence, of fear, of love from the world it once soared over.

But just as he completed his tribute, the hall stirred.

The perfect balance of ambient Mana—kept in delicate stasis for who knows how long—was broken.

Without warning, the Dragon’s body began to burn.

A flame erupted over the corpse, fuelled not by flesh, but by the very fire-elemental Mana that had protected it for all this time.

Alex braced himself—expecting a violent, devastating inferno.

But instead...

The flame flickered gently.

It released a warm, soothing heat—not scorching, not ravenous.

Just soft... and sorrowful.

It wasn’t an attack.

It was a farewell.

A final tribute from the world to a creature that had finally been acknowledged in death by someone who came after it.

True to the world’s mysterious nature, the Dragon’s body didn’t burn to ash.

No.

What Alex witnessed was not destruction—it was transmutation.

The flesh, bones, and scales of the massive beast did not disintegrate. They transformed into flame—pure, elemental fire.

Before him now stood a dragon of flame—five metres tall and ten metres long. A blazing silhouette in the exact shape the Dragon once held in life.

But then...

The fiery dragon began to shrink.

Gradually, the flames folded inward, compressing without distortion or shockwaves, defying all known magical logic. In moments, the entire fiery form condensed into a single, oval-shaped flame—no taller than seven inches.

Alex stared, momentarily thrown off by the familiar size.

’Huh... That’s about the size of my dragon down below,’ he thought, raising an eyebrow.

[A.N: 🌚]

The flame hovered in front of him, suspended in air like a sentient offering. And as Alex tried to comprehend how such an enormous entity had compressed so completely without twisting space around it...

The flame shot forward.

Straight into his chest.

More precisely—into his Mana Heart.

Startled, Alex stumbled, but there was no pain. No resistance. The flame simply sank into his core, like it belonged there.

And there it stayed.

Even when he probed his Mana Heart using his Spiritual Force, there was no danger. In fact, the flame had started refining the Astral Energy within his Mana Heart—purifying it, enriching it, making it far more potent than before.

He wasn’t sure what the long-term effect of such purification would be... but he knew it couldn’t be bad.

More importantly, even if he wanted to remove the flame, he couldn’t. It had fused with his Mana Heart as though it had always been meant to rest there.

So Alex did what he always did when faced with a force beyond his control.

He accepted it.

He adapted.

And then, he moved on.

’Maybe Master would know what it is. Or how to deal with it, if it becomes a problem later...’

With that, he pushed the matter to the back of his mind.

He didn’t have time to worry about mysterious Dragon Flames lodged in his chest.

Because now that the body was gone, he could clearly see that the golden mana signature he’d been tracking hadn’t come from the Dragon at all.

There was something else.

’Let’s see what other goodies daddy golden mana has in store for me,’ Alex grinned, eyes gleaming with curiosity.

He followed the golden mana trail to a corner of the lair—just beside the throne the Flame Dragon had once used.

There, standing quietly, was a tree.

An unassuming thing at first glance. No fruits. No flowers. No menacing aura.

But Alex wasn’t fooled.

He could see the golden mana radiating from it.

It wasn’t large—barely three metres tall. Like a bonsai that had overgrown its pot and now stood proud in the open. But the fact that it stood beside a Dragon’s Throne, untouched by the passage of time, told Alex everything he needed to know.

This was no ordinary tree.

It had survived long after the Dragon’s death—possibly tens of millennia. That alone made it exceptional.

Alex circled it slowly, observing it from every angle.

There were no defensive enchantments. No hidden formations. No pulsing energy nodes.

No obvious reason for its significance.

And yet... the golden mana remained steady, unyielding.

Finally, trusting his instincts, Alex reached out and placed his hand directly on the spot where the golden mana was most concentrated.

BOOM!

It felt like an explosion went off inside his Mindspace.

His vision spun. The material world faded. And then—

Transcendence.

Alex felt his awareness tear through the veil of reality, peeling past the mundane, past the elemental, into a realm few ever glimpsed.

A realm where reality was not shaped by atoms or elements, but by symbols, logic, and eternal laws.

A realm... of Runes!

***