Chapter 61
What the heck was that!
How did one hammer strike from me make it stop moving?
It must have been on its last legs already. Charging at me was just a final death throe. But… this way, everyone’s going to misunderstand and think I’m the one who finished it…!
I looked around— everyone was staring at me in terror, completely stunned.
Uwaah…! It really wasn’t me…!
I blushed and quickly hid the hammer behind my back.
Immediately, a tsunami-like cheer erupted around me. Everyone shouted as they rushed toward me, nearly deafening me.
“Sister Fei’er! You were this strong all along?” Sister Mouyue pulled me into her embrace. “N-no, that’s not it…! It’s all thanks to everyone wearing down its stamina that I was able to take it down so easily~”
Sister Mouyue is hugging me so tight I can’t breathe…
In short, I just happened to land the final blow on the monster. Mmm~ That’s it~ If everyone thinks the credit all belongs to me, it’s so embarrassing…
“Oh, right, how is Sister Liwei?”
“I’m fine. I’m from the Enchantment school, I’ve got a thick hide.”
Sister Liwei walked toward me out of the crowd, dragging her broken giant sword with one hand. Her clothes were all tattered.
“Dammit. I was careless. Got hit with a breath attack when I wasn’t expecting it.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” I said with a smile, secretly sighing in relief. She was hit head-on by the breath attack just now. It was really scary.
“You’re careless every time,” Nono said flatly.
“Shut up! Hey, someone come help me pull twelve million out of the dirt!”1 Sister Liwei yelled to the others.
Everyone worked together to drag General Dakisatharos out of the ground. Ahem, the reason it was stuck in the dirt wasn’t because my hammer strike was that powerful. It was because it had burrowed out like a gopher in the first place. I just hammered it back into the hole.
“How are we going to bring such a huge monster back to the Adventurers’ Guild?” I asked.
“We just need to cut off its dragon head to bring it back to the Guild and collect the bounty. But the dragon scales on its body are worth a lot of money.” Sister Liwei gave a dark smile. I think she’s terrifying.
The image of a fishmonger scraping scales off a fish popped into my head, and I couldn’t help but shudder.
“It’s very convenient to bring it back with my teleportation magic,” Nono said flatly.
“Alright…”
I get goosebumps just thinking about how Nono’s pink boudoir is always used to transport monster corpses.
I won’t think about it! I won’t! Anyway, the cleanup is their business. Phew~ My “support” mission this time is successfully complete. I can finally go back to Lian Qi and explain things clearly. I hope she’s not mad at me.
At this moment, I noticed Sister Liwei was looking around.
“What are you looking for?” I asked curiously.
“Sister Fei’er, do you know why this Dragonoid was wandering around this swamp and not going anywhere else?”
“Why? Isn’t it because the swamp is its home?”
Speaking of which, this place was a swamp before it was frozen in permafrost, right? Even after being frozen for tens of millions of years, it returned to exactly how it was after thawing. That’s pretty amazing.
“You’ll know if you come with me,” she said mysteriously.
I was skeptical, but I didn’t want to stay here and watch them process the corpse of their spoils anyway, so I followed Sister Liwei into the jungle.
“Do you smell that stench?”
I sniffed. “Mhm… There is an unpleasant smell.”
“That’s the smell of sulfur. There should be a hot spring nearby. Follow me.”
“Ah?? A hot spring?”
“Correct. Dragons usually lay their eggs in sulfur springs, relying on the heat from the hot spring to incubate the hatchlings.”
She explained dragon lore to me while scouting the path.
“And Dragonoids are attendants to the Dragon race. Their status is like that of worker ants in an ant colony. Generally speaking, their main duty is to guard the dragon eggs.”
“Dragon eggs?”
“That’s right. Look.” Sister Liwei pushed aside some reeds. What came into view was a golden-yellow hot spring wafting with steam. Walking closer, I was amazed to find dragon eggs soaking in the sulfur spring. A quick count showed about a dozen of them, each one a bit larger than an ostrich egg.
“See? To be guarded by such a powerful Dragonoid, these can’t be ordinary dragon eggs. Once these eggs hatch, the nearby villages will suffer. Once they grow a bit bigger, it’ll be the towns’ turn.”
“Is it that terrifying!?”
“Therefore, once they hatch, it’ll be a dozen scourges. We must nip them in the bud.”
I watched Sister Liwei raise a large rock.
“It seems a little cruel.”
I remembered the red dragon lady who scammed food and lodging at my house for a while. She also hatched from a dragon egg when she was born.
“Cruel?”
Sister Liwei gave a cold snort.
“Mercy to dragons is cruelty to humans.”
As the rock smashed down, Sister Liwei muttered to herself, “101, 102, 103, 104…”
Footnotes
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The original text has
**. Context (pulling a 12-million-bounty monster) suggests拉(lā) or拔(bá), “pull” or “drag.” ↩