Besides the bodies of dead lizard men and dragons, there wasn’t much to find. Of course these things would be worth their weight in gold, but there were holes dug into the three massive dragons and something had been dug out of them. Once they reached the underground where the gate was, all they found was was half of the door, a clean slash had cut it in two and the top half of the door was missing. Once they had taken a closer look, they realized, to their surprise, the the gate was slowly reforming, as though the gate was loading slowly from the bottom to the top. Based on their estimations, it would take several years for the gate to reform.

They were all at a loss as to what to do from here on. They had gathered to shoot some footage of themselves laying waste to the dragons and claiming the gate, but now the only thing they were filming was the remains of the battle that had happened before they arrive.

It was a live stream.

They were immediately told to cut the feed.

Now the entire world was talking about Laz.

...

As for Laz himself, he was currently hold up in an empty room on a cruise ship. He had made his way here after the battle, but as for how he got here, he had no idea.

Laz was in rough shape with third degree burns on a good portion of his body, a wicked gash across his chest in which the bones of his rib cage could be seen underneath and his right arm looked like a banana that had been sitting in the sun for weeks on end, shriveled and blackened.

When he opened his eyes, the sun hit him and he couldn’t help but close his eyes again, unable to handle the light. He wasn’t on a bed, instead he had collapsed on the floor, broken and bleeding. The pool of blood from his chest wound and the dozens of others that riddled his body had leaked into the carpet, staining the soft and gentle fabric. Although he didn’t know how he had gotten here, he knew that he had survived and for that, he was thankful.

The battle had been hell. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The three great dragons had been god level and old ones at that. They weren’t at the level of Ancient gods, but had been in the god realm for a long time and had the power to show for it. It was the first time someone in the same realm as him had come close to killing him. With hundreds of those lizard men killing themselves just to injure him and weapons that blazed with dragon fire, Laz had fought from the entrance to the gate, forcing his way step by step while the bastard dragons retreated step by step, slowing his approach.

At first, he was fine, but once ancient levels of power started to come from the gate itself, Laz knew he had to risk it all to kill those beasts before dealing with the gate itself. If he couldn’t close it in time and those Ancient level beings were able to come through, the world would be doomed. As such, Laz could no longer hold back and switched all of his defenses into offence, taking down one dragon quickly as dragon fire scorched his body. The other two lead to the gash on his chest and the rest of the damage to his body, except for his arm.

Once the cave was quiet, he swung Jörmungandr and with no regard for his life or safety, struck at the gate that looked like a massive door, splitting it in half. The backlash of cutting a spatial tunnel imprinted and established was a the blackened husk of an arm he currently had.

The warm water ran down his body as the blood was washed off, forming a red whirlpool down the drain. It hurt, more than it should have been. Summoning the remaining wisps of black flames he could still dreg up, he used it’s extraordinary power to burn the infection from all of his wounds before he collapsed only catching himself before his head hit the bottom of the tiled shower.

Dragging himself out of the glass door, Laz reached a towel and began to dry himself while still on his knees, unable to get to his feet. Naked and still bleeding, Laz made his way to the bed, the power of his blood weak and thin, the life force that normally filled him had almost run dry.

Laz wasn’t sure if he would survive the night, but he knew that if he did nothing, he would leave things up to fate and that wasn’t something he was used to doing. Taking a gem stone from his ring, Laz looked at the shinning jewel and the power that was housed inside of it. He had sensed these gems inside the bodies of the dragons and had grabbed them out, knowing that he needed to keep these out of the hands of humans but not knowing why exactly.

After a moment, he put the glittering gem into his mouth and waited. The strange energy began to slide down his throat as the gem melted in his mouth, broken apart by the little bit of energy he could spare. As it entered his body, he felt a fire erupt inside of himself and barely hid himself back from screaming.

It felt like he drank lava... but even that wouldn’t have hurt his god level body. Instead, this made it feel like he was a normal mortal again as the pain wracked his body. Fire works exploded outside his window as he wasn’t able to hold his voice in.

His shout made the ship shake as the primal roar of pain echoed and shook the massive metal giant. Luckily, with the fire works going on outside, people’s attention was sidetracked and even though it alerted them, they had no clue what had happened.

The power of the dragons gem ignited the fire of his blood, causing it to rush again as it drained the energy quickly and circulated around his body, now as thick as lava and unwilling to leave the flow of his body. The wounds on his body, including the massive one on his chest, began to close at a rate visible to the human eye.

Las had no idea how long this pain lasted, unable to focus his attention on anything but the pain within his body. Just as he was able to pass out from the pain, it suddenly started to lessen.

Just as his chest was finally done healing, Laz closed his eyes for the first time in days and drifted off to sleep, unable to keep awake any longer.

Laz dreamed of fire and war, dripping blood and broken bones.

When he at had last awoken, he no longer knew what time it was, just that there was no sun light rushing through the curtains on the window. Although there was a little bit of blood in the bed, it was no where near the amount that was on the floor. Still, Laz felt itchy and disgusting, as such he made for the bathroom again to clean himself off. While in the shower, Laz was again cleaning his body as he noticed, to his immense surprised and relief, the cuts and gashes on his body were gone, cover over by nothing more than a few pink strips of flesh. Absently rubbing himself, the blackened skin that covered his his body also peel off at a miraculous rate, the scorched skin falling away like ash in the wind as the skin underneath it was again whole and unblemished, if a little pink.

With expectation, Laz turned to his attention to his arm, only to find it unchanged. It felt slightly better, but he could still barely move his fingers and his arm itself still looked like it had the life sucked out of it.

Looking inside his body, Laz could feel the blood rushing to it, a sign of life still present, but the cells barely moved, mired in something dark and thick, almost like death itself had entered his arm and refused to leave. Laz could tell it would heal, but it would take a long time as well since even the molten energy of the dragon crystal did little to affect it.

Once Laz was done and dry, he snagged all of the towels and bedding that could be linked with him while burning the floor with some of his newly refreshed black flames to destroy the blood deep within it. Even such little action as that exhausted his energy. What came now would be a waiting game, but he couldn’t do it here just in case someone reported sounds coming from this room.

He needed to leave and find another room to dwell in until he got to land while also trying to find out where exactly he was.

Laz could sense it was a big ship and therefore he wasn’t worried he wouldn’t find anywhere else to bunk for the trip. With one last look at the messed up room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, Laz opened the door and entered the cruise ship life.