A searing pain shot up from Ye Tianxie’s finger. Before he could even register his surprise, what came first was confusion and bewilderment. In the world of Fate, the pain tolerance setting he’d chosen was the lowest available — 5%. At that setting, even being cleaved clean in half would register as no more than the light prick of a needle, and one that hadn’t broken the skin at that.
But what he felt in his hand now was exactly what a savage bite felt like in the real world — teeth sinking into flesh, the pain arriving at its full, undiscounted strength… And in the next moment, an even more astonishing sight appeared before him. He looked at the finger that had been bitten, and there was blood welling from it.
Blood…
Hadn’t the world of Fate screened out blood and gore entirely? Apart from what daily life required, nothing of the sort was supposed to appear in field combat. So why had his finger actually been bitten open, and why was blood actually running out of it?
The Mystic Spirit Snow Fox drew the blood on his finger into its mouth — and in that instant, a hazy, complicated light passed through those diamond-black eyes…
“Ding… The Mystic Spirit Snow Fox has formed a Soul Blood Pact with you and has forcibly taken you as its master! The Soul Blood Pact is an exceptionally cruel master-servant contract that may be forcibly formed by the servant party unilaterally. Once formed, the master gains total dominion over the servant’s freedom and life, and may sever the Soul Blood Pact at any time. Should the Soul Blood Pact be severed, the servant will be destroyed in both body and spirit. Furthermore, should the master die, the servant perishes with them; should the servant die, the Soul Blood Pact is naturally severed, with no effect whatsoever on the master.”
“Ding… The Mystic Spirit Snow Fox has become your pet. As a special pet, the Mystic Spirit Snow Fox cannot be renamed, and will never betray you.”
The little snow fox finally released his finger, gave him one last look with those eyes, and then its body dissolved into a beam of white light and attached itself into Ye Tianxie’s pet space — leaving one old man and one young one standing there in complete stupefaction.
Every player’s pet space could hold ten pets, but only one pet could be summoned into a fight at a time. The sole exception was the Summoner, who could summon two pets into battle after the first class change and three after the second. Players generally obtained pets by capturing monsters, and a small number through the rare pet eggs monsters occasionally dropped. But in either case — whether the creature came willingly or under compulsion — the “contract” formed on becoming a player’s pet was a relatively balanced one. The master could give the pet orders at any time, but the pet could equally break away or run off whenever it was displeased.
The contract the Mystic Spirit Snow Fox had forced upon Ye Tianxie, however, was one of terrible cruelty — a contract that could damn it beyond all redemption. From the moment it formed, its freedom, its life, everything about it belonged to Ye Tianxie. From then on, even in existing, it would not exist for itself, but for its master… It wasn’t that it didn’t want an ordinary player-and-pet relationship with him. It couldn’t have one. It was, after all, fundamentally unlike ordinary creatures; it simply could not allow a human to become its master, and no human was qualified to be its master. And so, to acknowledge Ye Tianxie as its master, the only thing it could choose was this Soul Blood Pact.
Because only this way could it live. With the contract formed, it could enter Ye Tianxie’s pet space, where Long Moya could not harm it. And Ye Tianxie, being a player, could revive infinitely after death in this world; he could never truly die. And so, its fate now bound to his, even if it died, it too would revive along with him.
And of course, there was another, deeply important reason: Ye Tianxie’s protection of it in its moment of despair, which had convinced it that even under a Soul Blood Pact, a master like this would treat it well. That was, equally, a form of recognition — otherwise, given its origins, its power, and its pride, it would sooner have perished than casually offer up a Soul Blood Pact to a human simply to save its own life.
The pain in Ye Tianxie’s finger vanished entirely, and even the wound healed, miraculously, leaving not the faintest mark behind — as if the wound had never been anything but an illusion.
Caught off guard and wholly unprepared, he had been bound tightly to this fox of apparently enormous origins by the name of a strange contract he had never heard of and never imagined. And, just as unprepared, he had acquired a pet — an extraordinarily special one.
A pet. He wouldn’t go so far as to claim he was the first player with a pet, but he was certainly among the very first. Given the strength of players at this early stage of the game, almost none of them had the ability to capture one.
The turn of events left Ye Tianxie and Long Moya looking at each other in silence. At last the old dragon slowly lowered his hand, exhaled a long, stale breath, and sighed. “Perhaps this is the will of heaven… Very well. The Mystic Fox could never have taken a human as its master; the only possibility open to it was the cruelty of a Soul Blood Pact. But since it has offered you such a contract of its own accord, everything about it is now under your command. It lives if you say it lives, and dies if you say it dies. Even if it is an irredeemably wicked fox, and even if it recovers its former strength, it cannot escape your hold, and can raise no storm. So long as you are not an evil man, then what I feared will not come to pass.”
And indeed — as Ye Tianxie’s servant, the Mystic Fox had no freedom to work any harm on anyone unless its master willed it. And was Ye Tianxie an evil man? From so brief an encounter, Long Moya couldn’t be certain he was a good one. But he was absolutely certain he was not an evil one. The fact that he had defied the enormous temptation of a Divine Mystery weapon and a threat to his own life in order to protect a single living creature made that plain enough. Perhaps he really had nothing left to worry about. Looked at from another angle, this was as fine an ending as one could ask for. Ye Tianxie was half-human, half-dragon, and leaned far more toward the human — but dragon blood ran in him nonetheless, and he was a member of the dragon race. The Mystic Fox, sealed at the cost of a Dragon God’s life, surviving to this day only to become a dragon’s servant, was in fact rather a beautiful outcome.
Ye Tianxie let out a slight breath, a faint smile surfacing on his face. “Heh. I didn’t see that coming — but it seems the heavens are rather fond of me after all. Sometimes, holding to what you believe really is a wonderful thing.”
Long Moya blinked, then shook his head with a laugh. “You are not only astonishing, you are an interesting man. Perhaps this is simply what a character between darkness and light looks like. However…”
He raised the Godslaying Dragon Sword, his face full of regret. “I have never taken back a word I’ve spoken. It seems this sword is not fated to be yours.”
“Thank you for the thought.” How could Ye Tianxie not see that Long Moya had wanted to use his own power to help him grow quickly — all because of the Dragon Soul in him that fused light and darkness at once? He had refused that Divine Mystery sword for the sake of the snow fox, and had kept up an unruffled front the entire time he faced it, but inwardly his heart was bleeding. That was no scrap iron. That wasn’t silver or gold gear. That was a Divine Mystery sword that no amount of money could buy, a blade that would let its wielder walk the world unchallenged!
He paused, then said with a perfectly straight face, “Though if you’re feeling badly about it, sir, you could always compensate me in some other area. Another Divine Mystery weapon, say… Oh, and if you’re fresh out of those, eight or ten Heaven-Severing weapons would do in a pinch. Or a hundred-odd Immortal Spirit pieces, that’d be fine too.”
Three black lines etched themselves onto Long Moya’s forehead. He fought down the urge to bellow and worked to keep his voice level. “…There are only ten Divine Mystery weapons on the entire Lost Continent. The Godslaying Dragon Sword is a supreme treasure of my race, and it came into my hands solely because I guard the Dragon God’s Stone. Do you imagine such things can simply be produced on demand…? And Immortal Spirit weapons, Heaven-Severing weapons — every single one is a priceless treasure. A hundred-odd! Do you take them for junk lying by the side of the road!”
Having vented, and without waiting for Ye Tianxie to open his mouth, Long Moya suddenly shot him a glare and tossed out two objects, one black and one white, landing them right in front of him. Ye Tianxie’s hands shot out and caught them.
“These two are likewise supreme treasures of my race. The Holy Dragon’s Fang and the Demon Dragon’s Fang. The Demon Dragon’s Fang was formed from a tooth of the mightiest Dragon God of the dark power, long dead. The Holy Dragon’s Fang was formed from the tooth of a Dragon God who held the holy power of light. Darkness and light repel one another; by rights these should belong to two different people. But you — you freak whose Dragon Soul power holds both darkness and light — can possess them both. And for that reason, they will produce their greatest effect in your hands. Looking at it now, they seem more like things that should have belonged to you all along.”
What lay in Ye Tianxie’s hands were not two dragon teeth, but two dragon heads, one black and one white! Both were posed almost identically, jaws flung wide in a roar, draconic eyes glaring in fury, an aura of dragon-majesty radiating faintly off them that raised the hair on the back of the neck. And the two heads were set into a matched pair of gauntlets. Ye Tianxie’s gaze shifted, and he extended both hands — and at once the Holy Dragon’s Fang and the Demon Dragon’s Fang equipped themselves of their own accord onto his left hand and his right.
The gauntlets clung firmly to his hands, covering the backs and palms all the way up to the wrist, but with no finger-guards; his fingers remained bare and free. One gauntlet was black as ink, the other holy and immaculate white, matching the two dragon heads on their backs, each in its own unbroken color. As Long Moya had said, these gauntlets could not be worn by any dragon that lacked an attributed power. The Holy Dragon’s Fang could only be equipped by a dragon with light dragon-power, the Demon Dragon’s Fang only by one with dark dragon-power — and Ye Tianxie alone could wear both at once, gaining double the bonus abilities of a dragon with only a single element!
He looked down, his gaze burning as he studied the first gauntlets he had owned in the world of Fate. Never mind their stats — the sheer, obscene coolness of their appearance alone was enough to obliterate anyone’s eyeballs. He could already picture it: if he showed up in public wearing a pair like these, they’d cause a commotion of no small size.
(End of Chapter 114)