Chapter 309: Counterattack Begins (3) |
Serati stared dazedly at the chain-bound white dragon. It was unmistakably a white dragon, a type of dragon that ruled over snow and ice, inhabiting the northernmost reaches of Dragon Land.
Judging by its size, it hasn’t gained sentience yet, Serati thought.
Dragons were born as beasts and, upon reaching maturity, would awaken as sages. The white dragon before her was around 20 meters long, about 150 years old by her estimation. Since dragons typically gained full intelligence at around 200 years, this one was clearly still in its beast phase.
Of course, that didn’t mean the dragon was harmless. Even without sentience, a dragon was a terrifying force of nature. Its body, saturated with draconic mana, was a living weapon, and its breath, a powerful attack, could rival or surpass most high-tier spells. Even this one alone could probably wipe out a small city or two.
And yet look at the state it’s in…
As Serati struggled to process the absurdity, four archliches descended lightly before her. With skeletal hands still clutching the heavy chains, they bowed respectfully before Karnak. Kalaf and Demphis reported in a composed tone.
"Our master."
"We have done as you commanded."
Meanwhile, Maloka seemed slightly flustered. "Why is Brother Charlie here?"
Desteran stepped in to answer. "Ah, that’s my alias."
"Well, that's about as generic as it gets," Karnak quipped.
Realization dawned on Maloka as she turned to Desteran with wide eyes. "Brother Charlie… you were Sir Desteran all along?"
"Indeed. My apologies for concealing my identity," said Desteran.
Desteran remained perfectly calm. After all, Maloka had revealed her true appearance as an archlich during several past Twilight Church gatherings. There was no reason to be particularly shocked now.
In fact, Serati was the most surprised by their interaction. "How did you know which one was Maloka? I mean, there are four of them."
Desteran offered a humble yet satisfied answer. "She’s the only one with a feminine skeletal frame. My eyes aren’t that dull."
And so Serati thought to herself, Yep. He’s one of them too.
He was just like Karnak and Varos, another one of those people one absolutely shouldn’t associate with if they valued their sanity. Meanwhile, the other archliches were curiously examining Desteran.
"So you’re the Sir Desteran of this era?"
"So this is what you looked like when you were alive."
For once, Desteran’s expression shifted slightly. This era? When I was alive? What the hell does that mean?
The atmosphere was starting to grow strange.
"A-Alright, enough chit-chat!" Karnak raised his voice to steer the mood back on course. "Let’s deal with the dragon first."
Serati snapped back to attention and urgently asked, "Wait, Lord Karnak! Just hold on a second!"
"Hmm? What is it?" Karnak asked her.
"What is this?!" Serati questioned.
"Didn’t I say I’d bring dragon bones?" said Karnak.
The only problem was that dragon bones were massive and heavy. It was too much work for anyone to carry around.
"But if it flies here by itself, there’s no issue, right?" Karnak shrugged as he gestured toward the white dragon. "It’s got bones. All I have to do is peel off the wrapping."
The dragon flinched at the word wrapping, and a muffled cry of unmistakable dread escaped its muzzled mouth.
Looking away with effort, Serati pressed again. "I thought you meant you’d raise an undead dragon and have it fly here!"
"Come on, that’d be ridiculous." Karnak waved his hand as if dismissing the most absurd idea imaginable. "Can you imagine how freaked out people would be if an undead dragon flew overhead? Serati, do you even have common sense?"
And for a moment, Serati truly wanted to scream. Who’s the one talking about common sense here?
That being said… he wasn’t technically wrong. If an undead dragon started flying over Zestrad’s territory and blanketing the skies in death energy, every branch of the church would come running.
He’s not wrong, but still…
As she watched the great white dragon writhe helplessly in its chains, its silvery eyes damp and pleading, she couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t it either. Only the pitiful, muzzled whimper of a bound beast echoed through the dark woods.
***
Diogres continued to stare blankly, his expression vacant. "Archliches…"
And not just one. There were four of them. Here were four masters of the ninth circle standing before him. Even when he had been at the peak of his power, Diogres would have found such a force anything but laughable.
I can’t believe the Twilight Cult had monsters like these under its belt…
It was, without a doubt, a cult. Sure, they had to work together for now, with the Cult of the Black God posing a greater threat, but there was no way this alliance could last forever.
Still, first things first. I need to recover my strength.
Regaining some measure of calm, Diogres composed himself and addressed Karnak with a measured tone. "You actually managed to capture a white dragon alive and bring it here?"
He’d only said it to sound composed, but the more he thought about it, the more impressive it seemed. "How did you even manage that?"
He wasn’t asking how they had fought and defeated the dragon. Diogres himself, when at full strength, could have captured an elder dragon or two with little trouble. There was a reason he was called an archmage. And if four archliches, each a master of the ninth circle, teamed up against an adolescent dragon that hadn’t even awakened intelligence yet, it wasn’t much of a stretch. The real question was how they had brought it here.
"No way you got it from Dragon Land, right…?"
This wasn’t some small bird. It was a dragon. Even if they’d tried to move in secret, flying from one end of the continent to the other without being spotted should’ve been impossible.
"Wait, are there white dragon habitats in the Seven Kingdoms I don’t know about?" Diogres speculated.
His assumptions were soon proven wrong.
"We brought it from Dragon Land," Karnak said.
"All the way from there?" Diogres asked.
"It’d be far if we flew west to east." Karnak shrugged. "You know the world’s round, right?"
Diogres nodded. "That’s basic knowledge for a mage, yes."
There had been a time when people believed the world was flat, back when humanity still wielded stone axes. But once civilization advanced even a little, the roundness of the world became obvious.
Just watching a ship vanish beyond the horizon was proof enough. Even if one wasn’t a mage, anyone with a shred of geographic knowledge knew that.
"So, while it might look far on a map…" Karnak mimed a square in the air, clearly referring to a flat map, and then mimed rolling it into a sphere. "What if you imagine that map as a globe?"
When laid flat, the Seven Kingdoms and Dragon Land seemed impossibly distant, as if positioned on opposite ends of the world. But on a globe? Draw a line from the northernmost point of Eustil’s Broken Lands to the far reaches of Dragon Land, and it turned out… they were surprisingly close.
"I see," Diogres murmured, nodding. "So they passed through the polar region. But that area’s so bitterly cold, no living creature could survive it."
Not even Diogres himself could cross it. Even if he were an archmage of the tenth circle, he couldn’t maintain a protective spell continuously for days on end.
Karnak agreed. "No living being could."
And indeed, there hadn’t been any living beings. The group was composed of four corpses, undead liches, and a dragon whose kind thrived in extreme cold.
"Hah… That was a blind spot in my thinking," admitted Diogres.
Karnak raised a hand toward him. "Well, what’ll it be?"
A sinister aura of mana rose between his fingers. "Want to use it as-is? Or should I go ahead and debone it for you?"
Diogres answered calmly. "I’m not very confident in extracting draconic mana from a living dragon. Mind chopping it up first?"
The white dragon shrieked in terror once more. Watching the scene unfold, Serati had a sudden realization. Diogres had looked stunned earlier, but only because of the archliches.
So he didn’t find the live dragon weird at all?
Four skeletons were holding the chains of the dragon. Karnak was asking if he should peel the bones out of a living dragon. Diogres was calmly requesting it be chopped into pieces. Varos looked like he was wondering if he was supposed to do the cutting. And Desteran looked like he was spacing out.
Not a single one of them found the situation strange. No one but her.
Wait… am I the weird one here?
***
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t exactly a bizarre situation. The subject in question wasn’t human. It was a dragon. Moreover, it wasn’t a sentiment, intelligent dragon, but an adolescent beast yet to awaken sentience. Killing the white dragon, then, was closer to hunting than murder.
Serati had hunting experience herself. She’d skinned and gutted her share of animals. She had bled them out and tanned their hides. It had all felt natural. And the deer and rabbits she’d hunted had cried out mournfully, just like that white dragon. So what made the dragon’s death tragic, but the deer’s acceptable?
Logically speaking, Lord Karnak’s not really wrong…
And yet, despite herself, Serati found the words spilling out of her mouth. "Do we really have to kill the dragon?"
"Huh? Why?" Karnak turned to her with a puzzled look.
With little confidence, she continued, "I just thought… maybe there was a way to extract the draconic mana without killing it."
"Well, that’s not really for me to answer…" responded Karnak.
The one extracting the mana would be Diogres, not Karnak. So naturally, it was a question Diogres would need to address.
"But why would we keep it alive? Wouldn’t that just be a headache?" Karnak continued.
"What do you mean? Are you worried other dragons will come to rescue it or something?" Serati asked him.
"No, nothing like that," Karnak said with a dismissive wave. Dragons didn’t share a sense of kinship. "Serati, if you heard someone named Charles got kidnapped in Ethriel, would you want to go save him?"
"Who’s that?" Serati asked him.
"That’s exactly how dragons feel," Karnak said confidently.
"Oh."
So there would be no retaliation, no vengeance from its kind.
Karnak’s concern was far more practical. "There’s no point keeping it alive. It’s not like we can tame it and ride it around."
Sure, the archliches had ridden it all the way to the Zestrad territory. But that hadn’t made the journey easier. They’d had to continuously suppress it with magic, burning through their power far faster than if they’d just flown themselves.
"And we can’t exactly just let it go either."
The image of a white dragon screaming across Zestrad’s skies, unleashing breath attacks, wasn’t exactly idyllic.
"Telling them to take it back to its homeland? I couldn’t ask that."
The four archliches already dragged the thing all the way here. Now asking the archliches to haul it back across the continent would be pushing it.
"Yeah… I get that." Serati lowered her head. Even she could see her logic had holes in it.
"Then why do you want to spare the dragon?" Karnak asked.
"I don’t know… I just feel bad for it," admitted SErati.
"Feel bad? Why?" Karnak asked her.
"I… I mean…" Serati faltered, and Karnak found himself curious.
Usually, when she stopped him from doing something, she did so with righteous fury. She scolded him, argued with passion, and called him out without hesitation. There was always a common thread in those moments: conviction.
Even when she didn’t explain it well, she always believed—without question—that Karnak was being an absolute scumbag. But this time, she looked uncertain.
"So if I kill the dragon, does that mean I’m not living like a proper human?" Karnak wondered.
"No, that’s not it," replied Serati.
"Then if I spare it, is that what it means to live properly like a human?" Karnak continued.
"That’s not it either," Serati said with a self-deprecating smile.
It wasn’t about justice or goodness or morality. It was solely for the sake of Serati’s peace of mind.
"Got it." Karnak nodded, then pointed at the white dragon. "Let’s try to spare it, then."
"What?"
"I said, let’s try to spare the dragon," Karnak repeated.
Serati blinked. "It feels weird asking after you’ve already said it, but… why?"
Karnak shrugged. "Because you want to."
He still didn’t quite grasp what it meant to live like a proper human being.
But there was something he had learned. "Life’s easier when you take care of the people close to you. And I’ve only got two. Varos and you. So this much, I can do. It’s not even that big a deal."
Serati’s expression shifted strangely. "You would say we’re close?"
"Are we not close?" Karnak said.
"Well, that’s not the case, but…"
A faint smile touched Karnak’s lips. "Then I guess we are."
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