Biocores: The Legendary Weapon Designer-Chapter 96: Larva Dragon

Nioh froze.

"Shit."

Akron burst out laughing, the sound bouncing off the stone walls.

"I said the same thing — shit!"

"But it’s not just any dragon," he continued, scrolling through the file.

"An ancient one. Woken up by the recent leyline disturbances. Third-years have been avoiding it for months. No one wants to get near it unless they’re desperate."

"And Magnus thinks we’re desperate?"

"Magnus thinks we’re crazy," He said with a wink. "And he’s right."

Nioh studied the holo-screen. The beast’s skeletal structure alone was the size of a small village.

-

Steel pipes ran through the ceiling, softly humming. Arcane glass vials pulsed with bioluminescent fluid on the back wall, and a long table in the center was covered in tools, parts, enchanted metals, and about three different cups of unfinished tea. The heart of the lab, though, was the holoprojector—an old but highly modified core that could simulate real-world biocore signatures.

The table in the middle of the lab lit up as Akron pressed his thumb against the activation rune. A projection flickered to life—topographical layers folded, twisted, and then unfolded, revealing the jagged terrain of the Molten Maw.

"Alright," Akron began, arms crossed. "Here’s where we’re going to die, if we don’t do this right."

Althea smirked. "You’re in a good mood."

"I’m always in a good mood when someone’s trying to kill me." He tapped the eastern ridge. "This is Aspar, the outer edge of the Gold Monarchy. Specifically, Magnus’s stretch of dirt. Technically a merchant province, but rich in rare ores—onyx, mythrilite, volatile sapphire cores. Normally stable. But..."

"The Cradle Zone," Nioh said, stepping beside him.

Akron nodded. "Exactly. A living biodome buried beneath the valley. Untouched. That’s where the trouble starts."

He zoomed the projection in further. Lava veins shimmered like blood vessels under cracked obsidian. The terrain pulsed with geothermal breath.

"This is the Molten Maw Cradle. One of the last unconquered zones in Magnus’s territory. He’s been trying to expand the extraction grid. Terraformers are installed, but one problem keeps resetting the clock."

The projection shifted to a dome-like ecological bubble nestled between volcanic ridgelines—humid, steaming, alive with shifting pressure systems and unstable terrain. Great vents exhaled gas every few minutes, and the air itself shimmered from heat.

From the shadows of a cave mouth, something massive uncoiled.

The Larva Dragon.

It slithered slow, steaming with fury, its shell layered with hardened volcanic plates, mouth a glowing furnace. Its tail dragged magma along like ink from a broken pen, leaving trails of fire wherever it passed.

"This bastard," Akron said plainly thinking about Magnus. "A Feral Biocore. No known origin. No leash, no containment. Just pure instinct and adaptive evolution. It reacts faster than any beast I’ve seen."

"Any ranged attacks?" Althea asked, analyzing the movement pattern.

"Thermal jets from the chest vents," Nioh replied. "And sonic displacement waves from the tail. Think of it like a furnace crossed with a living tectonic fault."

Akron moved to the next phase of the map. "It guards the deep chamber. That’s where Magnus’s terraformer core is stuck. If we don’t kill this thing, his expansion efforts stall—and by extension, the trade lines in Aspar choke out."

Althea blinked. "So we’re not just killing a dragon—we’re securing Magnus’s economy."

"Bingo," Nioh said. "And more importantly, he owes us steak dinners for life if we pull this off."

Althea raised her hand. "What’s the weak point?"

"During vent cycles," Nioh explained. "The dragon builds up internal heat and ejects it through spinal flues. During that window, the chest core softens slightly. But it’s still armored. We need a crack team—pun intended." frёewebnoѵēl.com

Akron turned to Althea. "You’re the spearpoint."

She raised an eyebrow. "You want me to punch lava?"

"I want you to become the thing that cracks it. Nioh’s designed something special for this mission."

Nioh stepped forward, holding a containment case etched with freezing runes. "Cryo-Breaker Module. Syncs with your transformation physiology. Once integrated, it’ll enhance your absorption limbs with a kinetic-freeze effect."

Althea opened the case slowly. Inside was a set of silver-veined bracers, pulsating faintly with cold energy.

"You’ll turn every strike into an anti-thermal shockwave," Nioh continued. "If we time your hit with a vent cycle, we can destabilize the chest region."

"And that’s where I come in," Akron said. "Once the shell cracks, I go in and slam the resonance core. One clean hit should fracture it, but if it doesn’t..."

"I’ve got explosives for plan B," Nioh said, tossing a vial onto the table. It hissed blue fire through the glass.

Althea pulled on the bracers. They fused instantly, reshaping over her skin. Her fingers shimmered like cold steel. She gave an experimental jab into the air. Frost bloomed in the motion’s wake.

"Perfect fit," she said.

"Let’s go over movement," Akron said, pulling up the tactical map. "We’re deploying via drop gate two clicks east of the Maw’s entry cavern. The dragon sleeps in four-hour intervals, feeding on geothermal flux. We land thirty minutes before a vent cycle begins. That gives us one shot."

He tapped a red triangle. "I’ll draw its attention first, play the tank. Althea, you loop in from the canyon side once it locks on me. You only strike once. Don’t waste energy testing it."

"And if I miss the window?" she asked.

"Then Nioh drops the backup plan. He’ll be on the overwatch ridge, running decoy resonance and setting up signal jammers. I trust his timing."

Nioh gave a lazy salute with two fingers. "You should."

Althea crossed her arms. "And Magnus?"

"He’ll be managing the terraformers’ pulse grid," Nioh said. "He’s not a frontliner, but he’ll buy us power surges and pulse delays so we can move through the lava fields without dying instantly."

Akron snorted. "Typical royal work. Let the peasants punch the lava worm."

Nioh smirked. "May I remind you that you are a royal, too. But don’t underestimate Magnus. He’s one of the few. I expect not to shoot me in the back."

Althea tilted her head. "That’s a short list."

"The list is just him," Nioh replied. "And you." He said to Akron.

For a moment, the lab fell quiet. Everyone staring at the map. At the stakes.

"This thing," Akron finally said, "it doesn’t act like a beast. It defends territory. Sets heat traps. It chooses engagement points. If we screw up, it doesn’t just run—it buries us."

Althea cracked her neck. "Then we don’t screw up."

"Right," Nioh said. "We go in clean. We hit hard. We don’t make it personal."

Akron touched the map again. "We deploy in five days. Get your gear calibrated and let run some simulation."

Nioh turned away toward the forge.

"Where are you going?" Althea asked.

"To finish the one thing that’ll make this mission survivable," Nioh said without turning. "I’m making the dragon a gift."

Akron blinked. "A gift?"

Nioh grinned. "You know how we noble are. We need to keep up the good maners."

—

The trio moved to the next room—an equipment hangar where crates were labeled by mission codes. Their cases were stacked and marked with the red sigil of Magnus’ personal seal. They opened their packs while a pair of instructors watched from behind a reinforced glass wall.

Althea slid her gauntlets on first. They hissed and clamped onto her forearms, metallic plates shifting as tiny turbine cores activated inside.

"Redirection pulse active," she said. "Synapse link stable. Arm blades deployed."

Two thin blades emerged along her forearms, humming faintly with kinetic charge.

Nioh pulled out a small warhammer-shaped device from his bag, about the size of a fist. It shimmered with violet circuits.

"This is the Cryo-Binder," he said. "I’ll plant five of them around the dragon’s lair. Once armed, they’ll sync through the relay node and emit a zone-wide suppression pulse."

"Oh, and I’ve got one more trick," Nioh added, reaching into his coat and tossing down a handful of small, needle-shaped devices.

"These are Spine Cracks. They embed into the ridge lines and explode into shrapnel anchors. We’ll use them to box in the dragon when it tries to escape to the deeper magma tunnels."

They spent the next hour running mock drills in the simulation field—using a projection model of the Larva Dragon. Timing was everything. Althea dodged mock flame-bursts, dancing like a specter between the jaws of death. Nioh tested different resonance pulses, finding the one that made the dragon’s movement stutter for even half a second. Akron planted anchors under pressure, diving and ducking like a sapper in a warzone.

By the end of it, they were drenched in sweat but moving in perfect rhythm.