Norma reacted as anyone who heard that their guardians had betrayed them would. Her face paled and she shook her head from side to side. Instant denial, which was inescapable.
Who would simply believe the accusation of a stranger that the ones who had been smiling at them all the time could have been waiting for an opportunity to stick a knife in their back?
However, words did not come out of her mouth, for Norma was not an idiot. She knew more of the details than Draco who had mostly used speculation and deduction to fill in the gaps. As such, she had a much greater insight into what Draco had been describing than even he did!
Norma was drowned by a feeling of despair so great that she began to ventilate, despite not being a living being that needed to breathe. Still, she subconsciously needed a way to vent her growing desolation, and mimicking something she would have done were she alive was a sad attempt at doing so.
Draco remained silent and watched her go through the motions. Norma was a Semi-Origin God, so her mental fortitude was much greater. The average person would go through the 5 stages of denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and acceptance.
However, Norma had directly skipped over her anger and bargaining phase because her logical nature as a Tradeskill Goddess forced her to understand the reason behind it, only leaving despair that something so cruel had been done to her.
In the end, Norma sighed and gazed at Draco. She had gone from denial to acceptance in under a minute. Draco wasn't sure whether he should be impressed or terrified over the adaptability of Norma.
Draco had originally pegged her for a Sunna version 2.0, but clearly, he had been looking down on her too much!
"One question. How did you realize your earlier conclusion which we both mutually accepted was flawed?" Norma asked silently.
Draco twisted his lips before sighing and answering her bluntly. "I came to the realization when you answered my first question. Why would you want to kill me? Your answer told me all I needed to know about your train of thought."
"And so I thought; If I were an Origin God, why would I bother protecting or nurturing someone who thinks like this?"
Draco shrugged lightly. "After that, I just needed more information to that end, which you yourself provided me."
Norma was stunned. "You mean to say that the reason they wanted to replace me wasn't because I was hard to control… but because you all feel I'm insufferable?"
Draco nodded weakly. "You being hard to control or not is really just a side thing. They need you to alleviate their burden, which you would be compelled to do as a new Origin God. They don't even need to directly order you around to do so."
"However, no one wants to be in the same workplace as an insufferable person, especially if it would be for eternity, even if they are very productive and useful. They seem to have chosen to rather suffer it out than have to deal with that."
Norma was left speechless. This was something she struggled to come to terms with, because she had originally reconciled with the fact that their actions had stemmed from their dislike caused by her insubordination.
In other words, a logical standpoint. However, Draco was now telling her that their actions and this elaborate plan must have been created for an emotional reason, which absolutely floored her.
Draco remained silent for a while longer to allow the Refinement Goddess to process his words. After a while, she became calm once again and nodded towards Draco.
"I have two questions before I'll allow your incarnation consume me. The first is, shouldn't you be wary of the Origin God's response after telling me this? I assume they would rather I died ignorant and you remained clueless of all these facts to make for a smooth transition."
Draco smiled at this. "It was a guess I made after comparing some data. When I was first brought before Kopernico, he had initially wanted to go through the formal processes and get rid of me as soon as possible. However, a cursory scan showed him more about me."
"From this, I've learned two things. The first is that Origin Gods appear to be too busy with their perennial work to focus on the happenings of every life form."
"Secondly, they are not omniscient. Kopernico had to assess me before my features became clear to him, and he did not know I'd appeared from within your Treasury straight away."
"Of course, either of these guesses might have been right or wrong, but one thing that had made me certain of it was when you stated your behavior towards the Origin Gods. Someone who had started to despise their way of looking over their shoulder would not leave their eternal resting place open for peeking."
Draco leisurely folded his arms. "In other words, it assured me that nothing that occurs in the Treasury is visible to the Origin Gods unless you allow them to see it."
Norma tilted her head upward slightly, trying to hide the hint of praise in her glance. "On that matter, you are right. The reason you haven't been struck into non-existence for blasphemy the very second you dared utter something like that is because you're here, or more specifically, with me."
Draco shuddered internally. If he garnered the ire of the Origin Gods, his life wouldn't be peaceful at all. While he and Eva might dare to disdain True Gods because they knew the truth, they could not dare to do so against the topmost echelon. If the former could be likened to pseudo-GMs then the latter would basically be the game's developers, capable of actually drop down the ban hammer on his head.
"Final question. What do you plan to do with my Inheritance?" Norma asked in a muted tone.
Draco's eyebrows locked and he frowned. "You've already seen into my mind, Norma. I want your Inheritance to experience Tradeskills even better and climb even higher. I want to bring crafting in general to new levels, and it sounds like your Inheritance is the path towards achieving that."
Norma shook her head lightly. "You're underestimating my path. This is something that even the Origin Gods have gone this far for in terms of preservation. Its power and utility are far beyond what you can imagine, Hybrid Draco."
"I have full confidence that with your talent, you will eventually complete my path before you - if I remember correctly - intend to head to other worlds through the Void Realm. You might even be able to take it further and refine it by assimilating it with the various systems in other universes." Norma admitted honestly.
"However, that is not what I am asking. When you complete the path and reach the pinnacle, what will you do with my true Inheritance?" Norma asked Draco while staring him in the eye.
Draco finally understood what she was trying to say. With a heavy tone, he elaborated: "For your descendants, I plan to take them as my people and habituate them into my fledgling city-state. With the benefits of Vita City-State and their talent, they will simply soar to heights thought impossible in the main plane."
"For your resources, I plan to take exclusive control over them and nurture them in small worlds. They are the topmost quality as well as the rarest of the rare in the current era, they have to be cultivated carefully. I would change it so they would only be used by the best of the best when making new or objectively useful products. Allowing Amateurs to practice with them is supremely wasteful."
"For your items… well, I don't know exactly what I will get, but I assume I will use them to the best of my ability and otherwise share them with those I deign worthy."
"For your path, you already know. However, you can rest at ease. I have no intention of joining those fellows in that courtyard whatsoever."
Norma hesitated for a bit, before sighing. "I can accept that then. As I said before, I cannot give you my inheritance that traditional way because I don't like your overall personality, but I will bestow you with the knowledge on how to claim it after consuming me. Here."
She flicked her finger and a small white ball of light flew over to Draco and entered his forehead. He watched this happen calmly without trying to avoid it and closed his eyes to digest what she had sent.
When he opened them, his eyes revealed complex emotions. "Goodbye, Norma. May your soul rest in perfect peace."
Norma smiled and lowered her head while closing her eyes. "Thank you, Hybrid Draco. May the world tremble beneath your feet, and convulse at the thought of your might."
And then, as if the one who had pressed the 'pause' button came back and switched to 'play', the vile Dragon Nidhogg clamped its mouth shut over Norma's essence, using a skill in place of Draco, one that he had saved for just such an occasion.
Subsume1!
Once Nidhogg consumed Norma, her spirit waned and flickered out of existence like a poor-quality light, her posture remaining the same till the end. Draco however, shivered and sat down as Nidhogg roared and rushed back into his body.
Norma had been a Semi-Origin God, and the quality of her essence was not something he could digest easily. As such, Nidhogg had felt it would be wiser to return to Draco and use the energy to replace his consumed bloodline source.
This act allowed Draco to recover 10%. Draco then spent the next 3 days converting the essence within Norma - which was like Origin Energy but not - into bloodline source.
He couldn't move the energy outwardly due to how his skill worked, so he had no choice but to utilize it for such a purpose, though there were many other things he could have used it for.
Ultimately, Draco only managed to restore 30% of his bloodline source with 90% of Norma's essence, which left him speechless and his face black. He decided to use the last 10%, not on his bloodline, but his Dragorugio armor to evolve it by one Rank.
Draco felt this endeavor would yield much more benefits as he managed to easily raise the armor from the Epic Rank to the Legendary Rank. He put aside checking the changes to its skills and power just yet, as he was left confused by the quality difference between using the essence for his bloodline and his armor.
It made no sense. Why did a whole 90% of a Semi-Origin God's fundamental essence yield so little bloodline energy? Only about 1/3rd in terms of percentile quantity.
Suddenly, Draco shivered as he realized something, he had been ignoring all this while!
So far, his connection with the world of Boundless, which had been inexplicable since he first experienced it, had been largely one-way! He could use his real-life resources to strengthen himself or interact with the game world.
The same was true for many others like Kiran, who could bring his mother's sarira into the game world and have her experience the game world which should have been impossible.
Due to his own experience, Draco had for the longest time believed that this was how it fundamentally worked, but he forgot one key detail!
The connection wasn't one-way! He should have known this because in the past, the Eyes of Caelo were an item within the game that had helped him loosen the seal on his bloodline, which he eventually broke in the real world.
He had forgotten about that precisely because he broke it open in the real world, but it didn't change the fact that it had all started within the game world. Heck, even Clarent, a digital entity, had interacted with his legitimate soul!
And more recently, when he performed the Ascension Ceremony, his blood had taken on a slightly golden hue thanks to the strengthening from the Horned Demon inheritance.
Because it had been minuscule, he also subconsciously ruled that out. However, this current matter was huge!
Thinking back to it, it was actually a large oversight on his part. After all, he had always been burning bloodline source in this game to empower his kids with his most important wives, but no matter whether it was he or Eva, they had always needed to go to the real world to recover it.
Nothing in-game had worked, but this time, Draco could feel his actual bloodline source recovering from using essence in the game! It didn't matter how inefficient it was, this was HUGE NEWS!
It answered one of his and Eva's biggest fears, which was the fact that they would be able to acquire replenishment for the bloodline sources from anywhere else after First-Grade NuSmoothies wore off on them.
Draco then flinched again. Thinking like that, 1st Grade NuSmoothies were able to recover more bloodline source than even the essence of a Semi-Origin Goddess.
In that moment, Draco asked himself the question that Eva and literally everyone else who had ever drunk 1st Grade NuSmoothies always did.
What the hell was even used to make those drinks?! ｢Subsume – Active Skill
Effect: Store the mass, energy, and soul of an entity consumed by you.
Note: Up to 10 entities can be stored at Rank 2.
Cooldown: 1 day.｣