Chapter 62: Intelligence |
“You are about to be granted an audience with the True Sovereign of the Star Mist Archipelago, the Thousand-Island King of the vast seas, the supreme Jade Wing, the great Dragon Lord!”
A powerful bullywug warrior, challenge rank six, stood on the sailing deck and read the proclamation to the humans on the merchant ship, including Jim, his face grim: “Answer whatever the Dragon Lord asks! Under the Dragon Lord there are dozens of true dragons. If you anger the great Dragon Lord, you will either be sent to the glacier to be eaten by the Governor of the Glacier, or executed by the Lord of the Mire with the Mud-Eating penalty!”
The bullywug warrior spoke the Common Tongue so fluently it sounded like his mother tongue, and he even knew some Northern human languages. That made the ship’s captured humans, including Jim, feel a strange flicker of familiarity, but that feeling was quickly crushed by the content of the bullywug’s words.
“Thousand-Island King, Jade Wing, the great Dragon Lord?!”
Jim, who had grown a little soft from eating fish every day for the past month, went pale and muttered the name with trembling lips, his face hopeless.
There are elite figures?
He had assumed the Black Dragon was the lord of these bullywugs.
But he hadn’t expected that above the Black Dragon, there was a true evil dragon.
A dragon…
Good gods above, what a terrifying being this must be.
Thinking this, Jim’s body trembled.
But things had already come to this, and he had no recourse.
He was just a small ale vendor who had taken the risk of selling his beer in dwarven lands—how had he ended up like this?
Soon, two strong bullywug warriors roughly hauled Jim out of the hold.
Jim watched in terror as the other sailors and wandering knights were led off in different directions, a sense of dread swelling in his chest.
Cold fear coiled around his heart like a sea serpent, making it almost impossible to breathe.
“Oh gods…”
Jim could only pray desperately inside his heart.
Jim was shoved onto the soil of White Pearl Island, but the scene before him made him instantly forget fear and be left only with pure shock.
The entire island was covered in lush, thriving primeval forest!
This was unimaginable in the North.
Dense canopies blocked out the sky, and the air was thick with an undissolvable scent of foliage.
This was nothing like the desolate dragon lairs he had pictured; it felt more like an impossible, sacred place.
Following a path trampled through the woods, a grand structure of huge black stone rose up.
A heavy stone gate yawned open like the mouth of a great beast.
Jim was pushed inside, and a predatory aura hit him, making him tremble instinctively.
Light fell away.
The throne hall was vast and empty; veins of faintly glowing ore were set into the stone walls.
Jim’s eyes were immediately fixed, terrified, on the silhouette coiled at the hall’s end.
That massive body, like a living emerald mountain, was covered in dark, sumptuous scales. A huge head rested atop the throne, two cold vertical pupils lighting up in the dimness like twin abyssal lamps, emotionlessly locking onto this tiny intruder.
Jim’s legs went weak and he nearly collapsed. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, his mind blank, reduced to the most elemental terror.
This was…
the Thousand-Island King of the vast seas, the supreme Jade Wing, the great Dragon Lord?!
…
[Growth Task · One: Reach Level 15.]
[Growth Task · Two: Capture a noble human or elf lady and collect ransom exceeding 100,000 Gold Coins.]
On the throne, Xia'er stared at the new growth tasks and was momentarily speechless, not sure what to say.
A classic: an evil dragon abducts a princess, the king sends a knight to slay the dragon and rescue her…
It was a storyline that deserved appreciation, except this one was suddenly a bit more difficult for Xia'er.
A human princess—too high a difficulty.
As for an elf…
To be honest, whenever elves were mentioned, Xia'er almost drooled.
It was imprinted in the Dragon Inheritance.
Every elder green dragon spoke about how delicious elves were, how delectable.
Like a soft little pudding, utterly scrumptious. In Xia'er’s inherited memories, one ancestor, a super-legendary green dragon, had once enslaved an entire elven kingdom and loved nothing more than waiting for the daily elven offerings to taste the finest elf.
“Sigh.”
Xia'er drew a deep breath, slightly restraining her impulse.
After all, up to now, Xia'er had not been cruel enough to casually eat her vassal races.
Some evil dragons, in extreme hunger, might treat vassals as emergency food, but that did not mean Xia'er intended to do so.
One step at a time.
Xia'er shook her head, deciding to spare a kingdom princess for now and see if she could snatch the daughter of a grand duke, or a wealthy countess in a count’s domain.
It didn’t say the captive had to be a princess, anyway.
Meanwhile Jim lay limp on the cold stone of the throne hall.
His teeth chattered uncontrollably as if every bone were being pulled out.
Jim could feel the naked hunger emanating from the throne, that salivating, ravenous sensation.
He had no doubt that in the next moment that great maw would swallow him whole, leaving not even bone fragments!
He did not realize that this fatal appetite was Xia'er recalling the memory of how elves tasted from the Dragon Inheritance, and that this human ale-seller had merely walked into the focus of a dragon’s gaze.
Just when Jim thought himself surely dead and his mind entirely blank, the great dragon on the throne seemed to remember this small role.
“Hmm…”
A deep voice thundered, echoing through the empty hall: “Human, are you from Eastern Sea Port?”
Jim shuddered like he’d been whipped, immediately alert, and knelt, saying respectfully, “Yes, Your Majesty, the True Dragon Emperor!”
“Tell me everything you know about Eastern Sea Port—its walls, troop strength, defenses, the harbor, garrison positions, patrol routines, warehouses, wealthy districts… everything you saw, heard, or can think of, without leaving out a single word.”
Xia'er opened her mouth calmly. “Your companions are currently being interrogated separately.”
“If any of your accounts conflict…”
At this point Xia'er deliberately paused, and a sly malice flickered through those cold vertical pupils: “Everyone involved will be executed without exception, to become dinner for other dragons under my command.”
“Gasp…”
Jim inhaled sharply, feeling a chill shoot from his soles to the crown of his head!
Separate interrogations, cross-verification!
If anything went wrong, everyone would die.
This was nothing like the greedy, foolish dragons in the tales he remembered.
Fairy tales ruin people!
Jim silently cursed the bards and then poured out everything he had seen and heard at Eastern Sea Port as if emptying a bag: “Th-that’s a bay! A very large bay! The harbor… there are several wooden piers… lots of ships… big and small…”
“……”
Half an hour later, Jim had revealed everything he knew.
Xia'er considered it briefly and only nodded slightly.
In the next moment, two armored kobolds stepped forward from either side and carried the limp Jim away.
Soon the kobold chieftain Valentine also approached with the confessions from the others, speaking with due respect: “Dragon Lord, these are the statements of the other humans.”
Xia'er inclined her head slightly and scanned the dragon-scripted testimonies at a glance.
They matched Jim’s accounts closely.
Human mercenaries drank heavily, warehouse guards were lax, wealth concentrated in the rich district…
The light in Xia'er's eyes grew brighter and brighter.
“Dragon Lord.”
Saga’s figure also appeared at the throne hall entrance and addressed Xia'er respectfully: “Your Black Dragon Saga offers you his most sincere greetings.”
“No need for that, Saga.”
Xia'er smiled faintly, then said, “Tell me what the bullywug trade caravan saw at Eastern Sea Port.”
“The bullywug caravan faces discrimination at Eastern Sea Port. One bullywug deliberately caused trouble at the port, inciting unrest. He was jailed in a guarded prison and released after paying thirty copper coins.”
Saga spoke: “They closely observed the layout, and according to—”
Saga went on at length.
The bullywug caravan had seen far more than the simple merchant Jim.
With both sources corroborating, the merchant guild’s intelligence had not falsified their report.
Hearing this, Xia'er fell into deep thought.
There seemed to be no issue: based on Jim’s testimony and the bullywug caravan’s observations, Eastern Sea Port lacked the conditions to set up large formation arrays or to station a full army.
If there were to be an ambush, it would require a high-tier Paragon mage, warlock, or warrior lying in wait…
But that was stretching it.
In the Northern Frontier, a high-tier Paragon was the strongest combatant below Legendary.
Without a Legendary present, for a Paragon mage, warlock, or the like to coordinate an ambush with dwarves would be a cost the Duchy of Shao Yi could not bear.
Such high-level mages were local magnates.
For example, would the Dwarf King Jandres casually head to a foreign city alone to assist?
The probability was no greater than some Legendary mage just happening to be missing a green dragon material and coming to hunt them.
A low-probability event.
Still, Xia'er decided to be cautious.
“Send the order. Recall Tyrone; don’t let him wander around the Karugu Highlands. Prepare to do something big with me!”
The rough, front-line scouting and enemy probing work still needed a coarse dragon to do it.