No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

After successfully securing the Liferoot Orchid, Damien, Blackie, and Rage Monkey quickly moved on toward their next objective: the Bloodroot Ginseng.

The air around them still pulsed with lingering excitement and traces of battle, but Damien's eyes were already set firmly on his next goal. Yet, their rapid advance slowed as they encountered something entirely unexpected on the plains ahead.

Massive dragons, blue and black, intertwined in battle against dragons of white, green, and red hues, filled the sky. The sheer scale of the clash was breathtaking. Lightning crackled from blue dragons' claws, slicing the sky into jagged shards. Black dragons roared with fury, belching corrosive black flames that melted rock into molten streams.

"You dare gang up on us? You risk an all-out war among our dragon clans!" roared a particularly massive black dragon, its wings blotting out the sun.

A powerful red dragon snarled back, eyes blazing like twin suns, "You think us fools? It was you who plotted to annihilate us first! We know that your Matriarch ordered you to kill the human who entered here with your General Heitian, and then to ambush us.

If not for our spies embedded in your vile clans, we would already lie dead! Your treachery is at an end!"

A white dragon, radiant yet terrifying, hissed, "Did you truly believe your plans would go unnoticed? Arrogance blinds you!"

The black dragon thundered furiously, "Lies and slander! When we finish here, not even ashes will remain to tell the tale of your folly!"

Their words quickly turned into roars and howls of battle fury.

Spells erupted in cataclysmic bursts, tearing apart the earth and sky alike. The dragons' forms swelled and twisted, shedding their humanoid disguises and blossoming into their true, monstrous shapes. Massive wings unfurled, stretching wide enough to cast entire fields into shadow.

The battle escalated rapidly into an apocalyptic scene. Dragonfire of every color imaginable painted the sky, blue lightning danced wildly from cloud to cloud, and scorching beams of emerald energy tore massive fissures into the land. The earth itself shuddered violently beneath the explosive might of their combined power.

All other creatures, from seasoned warriors to lowly beasts, fled rapidly, giving the dragon clans a wide berth. No one wanted to be caught within the devastating range of this titanic clash.

Damien, Blackie, and Rage Monkey watched from a safe vantage point, initially bemused by the sheer spectacle of the devastating dragon war.

Yet, Damien's amusement quickly vanished.

Amid the chaos, his eyes spotted a figure on the ground, a heavily wounded Li Qingshan, the Grand Marshal of China himself, kneeling amidst devastation. Li Qingshan cradled a lifeless woman in his arms, tears streaming silently down his bloodied face, anguish radiating from him.

Damien's breath froze.

His heart clenched as clarity struck like a hammer. The woman in Li Qingshan's arms was clearly dead. The Grand Marshal's broken figure was more than grief, it was a mirror, reflecting the suffering of China itself.

In that moment, every buried emotion surged back. The brutality inflicted on the innocent. Families torn apart. Futures stolen. Hopes shattered.

All of it had been momentarily dulled by his pursuit of strength, power, and survival.

But now, anger surged again, raw and unfiltered, rising from a place far deeper than before.

Jiang Xiao Yu's dying moments appeared in his mind with startling reality.

Ba-dump.

He could feel the broken shards of her mana core nestling quietly within his own.

His fists clenched until his knuckles went bone-white.

"That's right," Damien muttered, voice low and shaking with restrained fury. "Europe still has to pay for her sins. The beasts still have to die."

His gaze turned to the fighting dragons. Though they were not the cause for his pain, they were still guilty of trying to kill him, kill Grand Marshal Li Qing Shan.

And in his state of anger, those were crimes punishable by death.

Damien's voice deepened, resonating with pure wrath. "All these dragons... they must die."

His death mana exploded outward like a wave, a vast and hungry storm of dark intent, rippling through the earth and sky.

His death energy reached outward, sensing the countless fallen warriors littering the devastated plains, the remains of powerful adventurers, ancient Zerg beasts, and even formidable dragons, long deceased but well-preserved by powerful mana.

"Master!" Blackie's voice cut urgently through Damien's rage-filled concentration. She instantly recognized his intent. "Not the ancient one! It's far too dangerous. Even you might lose control!"

But Damien's eyes blazed with stubborn defiance. He didn't falter. "They deserve no less than the worst nightmare I can summon," he growled. "And I intend to grant them exactly that."

Damien found his target, a colossal, ancient dragon corpse, its bones protruding starkly, half buried beneath rubble, weathered but still resonant with power. The corpse twitched as his death energy wrapped eagerly around it, curling like vines of black flame through marrow and ruin.

But then… Nothing.

He pushed harder, pouring complex death energy runes designed to summon even the strongest being into undeath into the remains, but the dragon didn't respond.

Its remnant soul was there, he could feel it, but it was too weak, a flicker barely clinging to the scraps of its former glory. Not nearly enough to fuel a full Temporal Revive.

"Dammit," Damien muttered, sweat forming along his brow. Even with the full strength of his Core and refined runes, the spell wouldn't hold. It would fail halfway. The soul just didn't have the fuel.

Unless...

Damien's mind raced. An idea sparked, wild, dangerous, but possible.

He opened his palm, death energy spiraling into a new shape. A glyph of [Soul Flicker] flared into being, but he didn't stop there. He modified it on the fly, pulling from fragments of forbidden runes he had glimpsed inside the Living Library.

The spell twisted. Shifted.

It became something new.

[Soulbrand]

Not just a flicker. A fusion.

Instead of recalling the final moment of a soul, Soulbrand would imprint the essence of one dead soul onto another, forcefully integrating the target's final will into a second vessel. In other words, he would take the soul of one dead dragon, and brand it into the ancient one's dying core. The result would be temporary. Violent. Painful.

But it would work.