I Received System to Become Dragonborn-Chapter 770: Laston’s file

Erend and Eccar exchanged a brief glance, the silence between them filled with a mutual understanding. Just as they had expected, these engineers weren't fighters. They weren't soldiers or zealots who would throw their lives away for some hidden agenda or secret buried in this facility.

They were brilliant minds but ultimately just people caught in the gravitational pull of something far bigger than them.

Erend stepped forward, his presence alone enough to make the nearest technician recoil. The heat rolling off his Dragon Scales seemed to warp the very air around him.

"You won't die," he said calmly. "Not unless one of you gets funny. If I catch even a whisper of a plan behind my back..."

His eyes flared, a flicker of fire lighting his irises with a terrifying intensity. The words trailed off but the message landed harder than anything.

Some of the engineers visibly flinched. One of them audibly gulped, the sound cutting through the quiet like a shot.

Even those who had tried to stand their ground now looked down or away, their confidence evaporated.

The lead engineer gave a slow nod, his hands still raised. "Yes. We'll tell you everything," he repeated, as if needing to affirm it to himself as much as to Erend.

Erend scanned the room with stern expression. Despite the power he held, he didn't come here to kill. And in truth, he didn't want to.

He could see it in their eyes. Most of them weren't here for power or loyalty to Laston, they were here because they were dreamers or innovators. People fascinated by the unknown, who saw Magic not as danger but as a new frontier. Their own world, whatever advance it is, wasn't enough for them.

Because it never is. People always want more.

"Then start talking. Has Laston ever mentioned another world? One with a threat or danger even he took seriously?" Erend's voice dropped. He said in quieter voice now but no less firm.

For a few seconds, no one answered.

Then, a younger engineer—barely in his twenties, by the look of him—stepped forward hesitantly. His gaze flicked nervously between Erend and Eccar.

"He did… once. Not in full. But we heard him talking through the comms. Said something about a world where 'even the gods couldn't survive.' He didn't name it. Just said it was the reason he accelerated the fusion tech with Magic. He planned to go to that world after defeating the Elf Palace, he said."

Another engineer that looked older, nodded. "He believed something was coming. Something worse than the Elves or your kind."

That's when one of the technicians finally asked, his voice trembling: "Is… is lord Laston really dead?"

Erend turned to face him, his red and black Dragon Scales catching the light from the cracked ceiling above.

"Yes," he said without hesitation, his voice heavy with finality. "He's gone. And the world's better for it."

The room fell silent again, but this time the tension began to ease, ever so slightly. Some sat down. Others breathed in a long sigh. The lead engineer lowered his hands, still cautious, but nodding in resignation.

"Then… we'll show you everything," he said. "Every prototype, archive, or portal schematic. Whatever he planned, we'll give it to you."

Erend didn't answer right away.

He looked around the ruined chamber, at the frightened faces and shattered machines. Then he glanced at Eccar, who gave a simple shrug, his claws already retracting.

"Good," Erend said at last. "Start working."

The engineers moved quickly, their earlier fear now channeled into focus. No one needed to be told twice.

They scattered to their workstations, the soft clack of keyboards and the low hum of machinery filling the tense silence.

Fingers flew across interfaces as encrypted files were decrypted, digital folders opened, and classified archives extracted from deep within the facility's network.

Screens lit up with schematics, formulas, blueprints, energy signatures. That was data streams that outlined Laston's obsession with fusing Magic and Technology and everything else.

Others brought over bulky devices that looked like compact engines with glowing cores. It looks like some kind of hard drives that forged to withstand digital interference and physical destruction alike. Their exteriors were reinforced with alloy plating and humming with internal power.

Whatever was in those drives, it wasn't simple research.

Erend stood unmoving with his arms folded, eyes sweeping across the room with a watchful intensity. Beside him, Eccar paced in slow steps. His claws now retracted but his posture still sharp like a predator at rest, not relaxed.

The silence between them wasn't comfort, it was the kind that comes before a storm.

They weren't just thinking about the data being collected. They were thinking about what had been said by the engineers.

That Laston had spoken of a world even them couldn't survive. That he accelerated his hybrid experiments not just out of ambition of taking the Elf Palace, but out of fear.

Fear of something worse.

"Even the our kind couldn't survive…" Erend muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. His voice was low, but the weight of the words hung in the air.

Eccar stopped pacing, arms crossed now.

"He always thought too highly of himself," Eccar said, trying to sound casual. "Maybe he was bluffing. Making things sound bigger than they were to justify his madness."

But the doubt crept in even as he spoke.

Because he had fought them too—those gods from the invaded world. Gods who wielded another kind of black lightning and golden flame. Their strength wasn't a joke.

He remembered the strength of one in particular. A being who wielded golden flame, who moved like divine judgment incarnate.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

If there were more like that andif there was a world of them…

Erend could feel it too. That gnawing unease clawing at the edge of his thoughts.

What could frighten a man like Laston? A man who thought he could dominate worlds?

That fear wasn't built from fantasy. It had to come from something real.

One of the engineers, the younger one from earlier, turned and spoke. "We've almost decrypted the rest. There's a sub-directory tagged as Contingency. It's locked, but we're close."

"Good," Erend replied, his gaze fixed on the screen. "Get it open."

The seconds ticked by. The air was heavy, and even the humming of machines felt like distant thunder.

Then a sharp chime was heard.

"It's open," the lead engineer said.

A file popped up, surrounded by layers of security protocols now cracked and bypassed.

Eccar stepped forward, eyes narrowing at the title. It read:

'PRAETORIS: THREAT BEYOND ALL THREATS'

Erend's gaze hardened.

This was it.

Not ambition or conquest.

But fear.

The lead engineer tapped the screen. The file opened with a flicker, the interface warping slightly as if even the system itself was reluctant to display what lay within.

Then, text began to scroll—accompanied by a voice log. Laston's voice filled the room.

"The Web is real."

"It's far more intricate than I ever imagined. Not merely a corridor between worlds or a breach or rift. It is a structure that almost living and shifting. It was a lattice of threads that pulsing with intent. Whoever created it... no longer answers. The God of the Webway is either dead, vanished, or... hiding."

"But their design still lives."

Eccar frowned, head tilting slightly. "The Webway?" he asked, low and puzzled.

Erend nodded toward the screen. "The Webway. I've heard he said it before. The Elves mentioned it, once."

The screen shifted again as new text scrolled into view, faster now. A diagram briefly lit the screen—an impossibly vast spider-web of glowing strands, each thread ending in a tiny glowing orb. Each orb had names underneath: some familiar… many not.

"Each orb is a world. Some primitive. Others is advanced than this oone. Many... beyond anything we can currently understand. And every strand is a path, a potential link. But few know how to use them. Few even believe they exist."

"But I know now. I see it."

The file paused to load the next segment. The room stayed silent, save for the pulsing hum of the interface.

Eccar rubbed his chin, eyes darting between lines of data and Erend's unreadable expression. "Is this how he got here before when you almost killed him?"

Erend gave a slow nod. "But that's not what scared him."

More content loaded, skipping past massive strings of data logs and energy equations. They'd need to review them later.

The next section finally appeared. Title: The Praetoris.

Then, a new segment of Laston's voice played—lower now, almost haunted.

"In the beginning, I thought they were myths. Ghosts whispered by ancient Magical scripture I've read hundreds of years before. But I've seen traces and echoes left in a decimated worlds. Realms that collapsed not from war, but from something far worse."

"The Praetoris are not gods. They are older. Not born but oven. That's what I read in that record."

Text filled the screen again.

"I believe that those Dragonborns are no match for them. I'm planning on taking the Elf Palace, then defeating the Dragonborns and take their power so that I can be prepared to fight those Praetoris, and take their power."

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