Titan King: Ascension of the Giant - Chapter 1155

Chapter 1155: To Hatch or to Eat

The little girl popped all three world essences into her mouth at once, crunching down on them like they were candy.

“Yummy! So good!”

In truth, Orion had no idea what world essence tasted like. That was a joy reserved for unique life forms like Elara.

“How about it? Still hungry?” Orion asked, testing the waters.

Little Elara nodded vigorously, her big eyes fixed on him, shining with expectation.

Heh… Orion couldn’t help but chuckle. So, his daughter was finally learning how to lie.

She was hungry, of course. For a being like Elara, there was no such thing as too much world essence. She was laying the “poor, starving child” act on thick to score some more.

Orion reached out and ruffled her hair. The simple movement, however, made Elara’s little nose twitch.

And once she started sniffing, she didn’t stop. As if she’d discovered the most delicious thing in the universe, she began sniffing every inch of him, starting with his hand and working her way up.

Heh… “Since when did the great lady of the Stoneheart horde become a gnoll?” Orion asked, bemused as Elara scrambled over him like a puppy on a scent trail. He wondered, half-seriously, if hitting the Legendary level had unlocked some kind of shapeshifting for her. He couldn’t be blamed for the thought; her little nose was now practically pressed against his face, and it was ridiculously cute.

“Daddy, Elara’s not a gnoll! Anubis is!” she protested, then corrected herself. “No, wait, he’s not either. He’s a Hell-Drake Hound.” She looked up, wrinkling her nose in an adorable expression of defiance.

“Alright, so what is my little treasure hunter looking for, then?” Orion reached out, intending to pinch her nose playfully, but his hand was too large, so he settled for a gentle tap.

“Daddy smells like something Elara likes,” she explained seriously. “A taste you can eat. It smells like… the world.”

A taste you can eat? The smell of the world?

Her description left Orion baffled. He was beginning to realize that his adopted daughter had changed after her slumbering ascension to the Legendary level. Her senses were clearly far more acute. And yet, despite her new power, her own aura was completely concealed. If he hadn’t felt the momentary flux of energy when she broke through, he would have never known.

That was the difference. Compared to his own children, Elara was light-years ahead in lineage, talent, and potential. The only one who even came close was Caelus, still trapped within the World Tree. After him, perhaps Kaelen, lost on another continent in the Emerald Dream Realm.

“Is this it?” Orion asked, pulling his wandering thoughts back to the present. He materialized another world essence and held it out to her.

Elara opened her mouth, catching it between her teeth and chewing contentedly. But just as Orion was about to call her a “little glutton,” she shook her head.

“The smell is much, much stronger than the snacks.”

Snacks. So that’s what world essence was to her now. The words died in Orion’s throat. He stared at her. “You’re saying Daddy has something on him even better than world essence?”

“Uh-huh!” Elara nodded, her eyes growing wide as saucers, her gaze a silent, powerful demand: she wanted the good stuff, and she was far from full.

Orion’s eyes narrowed in thought. In his entire collection, only two things were more potent than world essence. One was the World Fragments he’d been saving to rescue Caelus and Violet. The other was the pair of World Dragon eggs.

After a moment’s consideration, he retrieved the luminous dragon egg, the one aligned with light. “Is this the thing you’re smelling?”

Wow!

Before Orion could even finish his sentence, Elara launched herself at the egg. She hugged it like a giant watermelon, gnawing at its surface with all her might. But it was a demigod-level artifact; her teeth couldn’t make a single scratch.

“Daddy… Daddy… this is it! This is it!” she squealed. “It smells so good… so good! I can’t bite it!”

Realizing her efforts were futile, Elara flopped onto the egg and started wailing. It wasn’t real crying; it was a performance, a piteous, teary-eyed tantrum with a very clear goal: get Dad to crack open the giant, delicious-smelling candy he was holding.

Orion hooked a finger under the collar of her shirt and lifted her off the egg. Holding the squirming Elara in one hand and the egg in the other, he looked back and forth, trying to understand the connection.

“You can eat this?” he asked her. She just dangled from his grip, kicking her feet, trying to swing herself back toward the unobtainable prize.

Can this thing even be hatched?

To his complete surprise, Elara nodded. This stunned him. He’d had the eggs for a long time now and had never found a way to incubate them. He’d even asked Arthas, who had confirmed that for them, it was a slow process of eroding the shell with divine power. It meant that the eggs his friends—Arthas, Edward, Alexander, and Leonidas—possessed hadn’t hatched either. But they were making progress.

Only Orion had been completely stuck.

“My sweet girl, do you know how to hatch this egg?”

The drooling Elara nodded again. She pointed at the dragon egg, then pointed at herself.

“Daddy…”

Orion held the egg out to her. Elara reached forward with a small hand, and a strange, gentle energy flowed from her fingertips into the shell.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It was faint, but Orion felt it with perfect clarity: a rhythmic heartbeat. His pupils contracted. The piece of his soul he’d placed within the egg for safekeeping… in that instant, it truly bonded. It took its first step toward life.

Hm?

Feeling the heartbeat, Elara tilted her head in confusion. She recognized the faint aura emanating from within. It was familiar. It was Orion’s.

“Daddy?” she asked, her voice small. “Is this your egg?”

As she sensed his presence inside it, her ravenous desire to devour the egg evaporated completely.

Orion managed a wry smile, shaking his head. She had definitely misunderstood. “Daddy’s soul is connected to this one,” he explained gently. “So I can’t give it to you.”

He carefully stored the now-developing egg and took out the other one, the Lunar Dragon Egg, handing it to Elara. He had already withdrawn the sliver of his soul he’d placed in this one.

“Since you can hatch them, this one is for you.”

He smiled down at her. “So, Elara, what will it be? Are you going to hatch it… or eat it?”

Elara hugged the egg, completely torn.