As if a thought had just struck him, Christine looked up under Daviel's puzzled gaze and asked, “The mutant beast tide is getting quite serious. Are you sure you don't want to go back to the Empire and check on things?”
After a moment's hesitation, he added, “Especially Black City. It's the closest to the Ersencielo River, which means it faces a much higher risk of being hit by the beast tide. Isn't your sister still sleeping in the city? If the beast tide breaks through the gates, the losses will probably be catastrophic.”
As he spoke, Christine's gaze drifted downward, as if looking right through Daviel's wall-like, massive frame toward some unknown distance.
In that direction lay Black City.
It was also where his daughter was sleeping.
After all, both children were precious to him. The sentimental, half-white dragon couldn't help but worry about his daughter's safety.
Even though he and Daviel would sneak back every now and then to check on her, he still couldn't shake his anxiety.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You elves are just too narrow-minded.”
Daviel curled his lip, crossing his claws over his chest with a haughty expression. “Learn from us dragons. Be more broad-minded.”
“What's a measly beast tide? In the face of the Empire my sister and I built, they're nothing but a bunch of paper tigers.”
“As for my sister... uh...” Daviel trailed off, reaching up with a claw to scratch a scale on his head with a single digit.
“Oh, right!”
Daviel slammed one clenched claw into the palm of his other.
“My sister is just sleeping, not dead. Don't worry about her. Besides, we aren't that far from Black City right now anyway. I even left them a communication scale. If anything goes wrong, they just have to call me, and I'll fly right over in a flash!”
“Hmph, hmph.” Daviel grinned, baring a mouthful of fangs. “A measly mutant beast tide is nothing. When the time comes, I, Emperor Daviel, will descend from the heavens to save the damsel in distress...”
“Uh, wait, no. Ptu!” Daviel spat, as if recalling some unpleasant memory, and quickly corrected himself. “I mean, save the hero! Yeah, that's it!!”
“But...”
Christine knitted his beautiful brows, his long eyelashes fluttering slightly.
“No buts!”
Daviel bared his teeth in frustration, showing a glimpse of a dragon's ferocity, before suddenly switching faces to clasp his head in his claws, begging, “Stop talking, big sister! Please don't force me to go back!”
“Ever since my sister went to sleep, everyone in the Empire reports everything to me! They want me to handle this, handle that!”
Daviel wailed in tragic indignation, “Is that what a dragon is supposed to do?!”
“No!!!”
“No normal dragon would ever do that!”
“Phew...”
Having vented his frustrations, Daviel felt much better. He exhaled a long breath, slowly letting his claws slide down his face.
“Only a dragon with a loose screw in her head like my sister would be so obsessed with those weird projects all day long.”
“Yeah! That must be it.”
His tone gradually calmed down.
“In short, working a job is out of the question. I will never work a job in this lifetime. The only way to get by is to slack off and wander around.”
“So hurry up and shuffle the deck.” Daviel looked back at Christine and curled his lip. “Are you just stalling because you're afraid of losing to me...”
Mid-sentence, Daviel suddenly shut his mouth. After digesting the fire elemental core and advancing to the Gold Rank, his senses had been enhanced across the board.
Just now, he had keenly detected a strange fluctuation coming from behind him.
It felt like... a spatial ripple.
Christine had detected the fluctuation as well. The white dragon disguised as an elf suddenly tensed up, and the freshly shuffled cards in his hands scattered across the stone table with a clatter.
He sensed an aura... one that was deeply familiar, yet left him entirely unsure of how to face it.
Because the owner of this aura was...
...his daughter.
Creak, creak, creak... Daviel stiffly turned his head, his neck making popping noises like a set of rusty gears.
When he saw those familiar figures and the shrinking portal not far behind them, Daviel's lips twitched.
And when he saw the leading figure—one so incredibly familiar that she often haunted his dreams—
Daviel stiffly turned his neck back.
With a look of absolute resolve, he said to Christine, “Charlotte, where was I just now?”
“You said working a job is out of the question,” Christine answered subconsciously, his mind racing to figure out what his first words to his daughter should be.
“Oh, right!” Daviel looked up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, his face full of solemn gravity. “The working dragon... the working soul... working makes you... the top dragon...”
“I must learn from my sister and become a successful, hardworking dragon...”
By the time he reached the last few words, his voice was practically a sob.
Because he realized that his tail had been grabbed by a small, incredibly powerful hand.
Amid the agonizing groan of scales under immense pressure, Daviel was dragged down with a loud boom, his chin slamming into the elegant stone table and shattering it to pieces.
Shards, dust, and cards flew everywhere, exposing Christine sitting behind the wreckage.
“Sister... give me a break...” Daviel clawed at the ground, but he couldn't stop the pull on his tail. Irene dragged him away by his tail, raw and unyielding.
He left a long trench in the ground, accompanied by a series of shocking... claw marks.
“I want to be a good dragon!!!”
Having been dragged over a dozen meters away, Daviel's final words finally drifted back...
Witnessing this scene, Christine's racing mind ground to a complete halt. Watching Daviel get dragged further and further away, he felt a bone-chilling cold wash over him.
A powerful sense of déjà vu suddenly rushed into his heart.
He had also been dragged... back into a lair just like this...
It was a summer day...
He had met a completely shameless and ridiculously powerful dragoness...
That was his lost youth...
Tap, tap, tap... Tap, tap, tap... Tap...
A steady, unhurried set of footsteps pulled Christine back from his distant memories.
By the time he snapped out of it, he found himself surrounded by three beefy figures standing in a stable triangular formation.
They were a lich, a kobold, and a green-skinned beastkin.
A flash of surprise crossed Christine's beautiful face.
But it lasted only a fraction of a second before vanishing. The gentle, older-sister persona he had maintained while talking to Daviel disappeared like a mirage.
He first stored the knit hat resting on his fair thighs into his storage ring, then rose gracefully from the stone chair, his shiny black leather shoes stepping onto the soft sand.
His movements were so gentle that not a single speck of dust settled on his shoes.
Rate on N.U.
