Chapter 24: Chapter 23: Andra

[City of Andra]

While the ship made its way into the harbor of Andra, Darganth stood at its bow and let his gaze wander over everyone on land. As he watched the workers haul cargo of different types around, he noticed that most higher ranking personnel glanced towards a group standing on the pier they were directed to.

While thinking about how to deal with them, he noticed Allaire walking over to him. Giving him a short kiss, she sat down on the railing before following his gaze.

“It seems that we are expected. Well its probably you who is being expected, seems like you already became famous around here.” She said with a smile.

“Probably the pirates.”

“You already expected something like this?”

“Not really, but it doesn't matter. I had planned to expose that I am a dragon no matter either way, this just speeds things up.”

Turning back to the group, she noticed that some of them pointed towards them.

“A group of humans and beastmen manage to do what an angel failed in and recognize that dragons traditionally use such a humanoid form. He is probably turning around in his grave right now.” Darganth said with a laugh.

“They knew that they are searching for a dragon on a ship full of beastmen. Isn't exactly the greatest feat to find you.” She said. After a few more seconds she furrowed her brows and asked:

“Turning around in his grave? Why would he be dead?”

“Because he broke one of Irsyr's rules and he is quite stuck up with them. It is largely the reason why most would rather go against the Tempust than the Locis. With Azeal you would at least have a chance as long as your excuse is good enough.”

“Then shouldn't he understand himself perfectly with the angel? Two people who follow every rule to the letter?”

“Not really. Angels may priorities their kinds rules, but as long as there isn't a contradiction between them they also follow the rules of others. Irsyr only cares for his own rules, to the point that despite being the most loyal to me, together with Azeal, he is the one who went against my rules the most.”

By the time he finished this explanation they had nearly reached the pier. Waiting for the ship to fully come to a stop Allaire stood up and wanted to make her way to the exit. After not even a full step she stopped upon seeing the crowd of her tribesmen filling up the ramp, obstructing each other.

While she was thinking about a good alternative way to get off the ship, Darganth snaked his hand around her hip, holding her. Before she could ask him why he had already started levitating. Giving him a quick kiss, she held onto him tightly. Flying over the railing, they descended onto the pier a few meters away from the members of the city's council.

“It seem that I really need to learn how to reinforce the ground quickly enough for a landing. Falling onto the pier from just a few meters height would have caused me to fall right through it.” Hearing her words Darganth nodded and wanted to tease her, but he noticed the council walking towards them.

“Lord dragon, I presume.” The groups leader, Marcus, said while lowering his head in a slight bow.

“Yes. And you are?”

“Marcus Burlow, the current representative of the city council and these are my colleges. We were informed about you a short moment ago and had hoped to” he started and made a short pause to think about his choice of words one last time before continuing, “inquire about some things.”

“You need my help for something and want to know what my plans are, am I right? If so, then get to the point.” His bluntness stunned Marcus for a moment.

“Y-Yes, of course. We had hoped for help with the kingdoms army near our city and, if possible, would ask of you to help us with a beast lord that recently arrived in the area.” Hearing about the presence of a mythical rank beast intrigued Darganth.

“A beast managed to reach the mythical rank in such an environment? That is definitely worth a look. As for that army, I would need more information than just that it exists to know whether it can be done.”

“Then I will have to ask you to follow me, while it isn't much we have reports with a rough estimate on its numbers in the council hall.”

After waiting for Darganth to agree, he turned around and lead the way. Following behind him, Darganth and Allaire looked around the city.

Upon seeing how crowded the streets and houses are she frowned. After living on the beast continent for twenty years it was hard enough to grow accustomed to the confinement of the ship, but in this city the citizens lived on even less space per person.

Darganth was meanwhile growing more and more disappointed by the council. While he didn't expect to see many of the techniques city's in Vunreon use, some of the things they lacked undercut even his already low expectations. After a short moment of thought, he found that by simply implementing all ideas that are possible the population that can be housed and fed could be nearly five times its current amount, even if it is modeled after the average standard of living in those city's.

“Are all city's like this?” Allaire asked him after a few minutes.

“No, the city's I know are a far cry from this. While I already expected the standard to be lower, I am quite sure that any third order being that visited a city in Vunreon once could increase the capacity by around three times. But while it would be fun to watch, I don't plan to introduce any grand ideas for now.” While saying these words he noticed Marcus and the other members of the council sigh in disappointment.

“Wait, they are even more crowded?”

“Not really. Most city's have far more space efficient farms, so while this city still needs to import food, they would need barely half the space to produce adequate amounts to fill the demands of all of its citizens. Coupled with better city planning and architecture they house more people while giving each one more space. While still rather crowded, the streets are normally way clearer through good use of portals. And sufficiently powerful or wealth people can simply teleport directly to their target as most formations to restrict it are build to only stop people from teleporting into the city, not inside it.” Hearing her sigh of relieve he chuckled slightly. He had already expected someone like her who grew up on the beast continent to feel suffocated in a city like this.

“If you want I can ensure that we have some breathing space?” He asked. Seeing the color drain from the faces of the councilmen she knew they also understood what his idea was.

“Only when it gets too bad. Besides, isn't using dragons fear in the middle of a city slightly overkill when you only want some breathing space?”

“Yes, but when it makes you happy I'll gladly do it.” He said with a warm smile.

 

After this short conversation that gave the council members the fear of their life, the group continued towards the council building. Once they reached there the were greeted by the councilmen that had stormed out previously, waiting for them with his face full of anger.

“How come I wasn't informed of whatever this is!” He shouted while gesturing towards Darganth and Allaire.

“You would have been had you not stormed out of our meeting.” Marcus replied calmly.

“But you still held official business without notifying me. Now tell me what this is about.”

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“We simply greeted a distinguished guest, we have yet to talk about any business. You are free to attend our meeting, there you will learn everything.” Marcus said, causing the man to calm down significantly.

“Then lets hurry, I can't wast much time hearing what a commoner has to say.” He said, walking away without noticing the short twitch from his colleges at those words.

“Randal's family once had near total control over the city, so he is difficult to deal with. The only reason he still holds any power is that despite being quite incompetent he still has the support of a majority of the nobles.” One of the councilmen explained to Darganth.

With a roll of his eyes in annoyance Darganth followed the others. During the walk to the council room the others would nervously glance at Randal from time to time. While the man himself was ignorant to this, Darganth quickly pieced together the information and came to the conclusion that they he was a lot worse than they had implied.

Upon reaching the council room they sat down, with Darganth conjuring a crudely made chair with wood magic. Forced to wait for Reinold to return from his office with the documents, Darganth held a small conversation with Allaire, completely ignoring the others much to the annoyance of Randal. Initially looking at them in contempt, his gaze slowly shifted to a lecherous grin after looking at Allaire for a bit.

The other council members quickly noticed this and nervously looked at each other, some even sweating in fear. Silently communicating between themselves they decided to give Darganth a pleading look and to hope for the best after directly discarding the idea to stop Randal due to his rampant personality and hubris.

Allaire herself also noticed his gaze, causing her to clench her hands around the armrest. With a grit of her teeth she ignored him after seeing and misunderstanding the council's pleading towards Darganth.

'When it annoys you too much you can deal with him any time no matter what they want.' Darganth said to her via thought transmission. Before she could respond they were interrupted by Reinold walking into the room. Upon seeing Randal he let out a small sigh before giving Darganth the documents. They weren't many, consisting of only seven pages of paper with the different estimates of the army's size.

“What are those?” Randal asked.

“Our estimates on the size of the army near us.” Reinold answered him.

“You give a random civilian such information?” Randal shouted.

“Yes, because we approached him and asked him to deal with them as well as giving intelligence on the beast lord.”

“Councilman Marcus, you decided to entrust some random civilian with a task that even our good Commander here can't fulfill? Are you out of your mind?”

“No, of course we didn't do such a thing.” Marcus said, looking towards Darganth and receiving a shrug of indifference prompting him to continue, “We entrusted the task to a dragon that our three partners on sea informed us about.”

This caused Randal to nearly fall over backwards. While he initially wanted to shout at Marcus to not say such ridiculous things his reasonable side prevailed for a second and he looked towards Darganth. Seeing the calm smile on his face he gulped slightly before calming down.

“Then I apologize for my actions, I wasn't aware that we are in the presence of an esteemed dragon.” He said, causing the other council members to look at him in surprise, something that caused him to grow red due to a combination of anger and shame.

'You think this low of me? To think that my reputation is bad enough that they think I would willingly cause a conflict with a dragon.' He thought to himself.

The rest of the council was meanwhile each in their own thoughts, changing their evaluation of him slightly. This caused a silence that was only broken when Daranth put down the papers onto the desk, giving him their undivided attention.

“A peak second rank and cannon fodder, that is all there is to this army?” He asked them, receiving a nod from Reinold.

“Then consider it already done. I will make my way there as soon as possible, on my way back I will also search for the beast lord you want to know about. As payment I want you to let the tribe stay here and to prepare some magic treasures for me. Decide yourself how many and of which quality, I will decide how much information about the beast lord they are worth.”

Hearing his offer the members of the council looked at each other for a bit. Receiving a nod from every one of them, Marcus turned back to Darganth.

“Then it is decided. We will start preparing for your return as soon as possible, should there still be anything we can do for you we would be happy to abide.”

Walking out of the room, Darganth teleports himself and Allaire back to the pier.

“Do you want to come with me?” He asked her.

“I would love to but I want to help my tribe to adjust a bit. Call me once you are back.” She said before leaning in for a kiss. Returning the kiss he pulled her into his embrace. They stayed like this for multiple minutes until she pulled away.

“See you soon.” She said with a loving smile before giving him another short kiss before making her way towards the rest of her tribe. After letting his haze linger on her for a few moments Darganth teleported towards the city wall.

 

Arriving on one of its towers, he ignored the shocked guards and watched the surroundings. Letting his gaze wander around for a bit he found a good target for his next teleportation.

Arriving near the peak of one of the nearby hills, he undid his transformation before spreading his wings. His body had grown to over fifteen meters by now, meaning he was close to the second order. Pressing against the ground he reached nearly ten meters high with his jump alone before spreading his wings to increase his current height even more.

Making his way through the air, he absentmindedly flew towards where he was told the army camp was. Finding only a handful of beasts in the third rank, with all of them being at the first order he became intrigued. Unleashing his dragons fear and focusing it on one of them, the beast became momentarily stunned. This time was more than enough for Darganth to hit it with a barrage of metal spikes, killing it instantly.

Slightly stunned by the fight being far easier than expected he landed next to the body of the beast. While he expected the fight to be easier than against the sea serpent, it shouldn't have been to this extend. He may have gotten stronger and the beast didn't have any terrain advantage, but he expected his dragons fear to hold at most two seconds. Instead the beast remained frozen for four seconds, not even reacting after the first spike pierced its skin. While his spell had been flying far faster than normal for a peak second rank mage, it still took nearly an entire second to cross the distance between them.

Normally a third rank beast should have been able get away not even a quarter of a second after the first hit, most of the time being due to the aftereffect of dragons fear. Instead the giant ant in front of him stood there for four seconds, giving him enough time to finish it off with a follow up attack.

Inspecting its body, Darganth found hundreds of wounds all across it. While most of the skin had closed up by now, there were clearly still some internal wounds that had yet to heal. Spreading his senses, he inspected the two closest third rank beasts, finding both of them in a similar condition. With an annoyed expression Darganth pulled out the dead ants heart with telekinesis of the psychic element, before eating it.

While he as Viktor would have found this disgusting, he was long accustomed to such things. Besides, how good something tasted to a dragon was influenced mainly by its mana saturation. Once he finished this small meal, he turned his attention to the ants mind. Searching through its recent memories, he searched for its attacker.

Finding that whoever did this simply pelted the ant with an untold amount of stone projectiles awithout showing himself mad him frown. This information made him quite sure that the attacker was the beast lord, but the lack of information annoyed him. After a moment of thought he decided to make his way towards the next third rank beast.

Dashing though the forest, he had already crossed over half the distance when he felt a mana disturbance to his left. Recognizing this phenomena as a beast advancing to the third rank, but not undergoing an evolution, he jumped into the air and flew toward sits source. When after about two minutes another burst of mana came from the same place, he became shocked. While it had the same signature as the beast that initially underwent advancement, its current mana was far above what a third rank should have, indicating it to belong to an even higher rank species.

Arriving at the source of the mana burst his eyes grew wide. About a hundred meters in front of him was a crater around thirty meters deep and sixty wide. In its center stood a hydra with four heads, clearly the newly advanced third rank beast. Around it coiled the six heads of another hydra protectively, with the seventh one being on the lookout and quickly spotting him. But the reason for his surprise wasn't that the beast lord he had searched is a hydra, instead what drew his attention was the child’s bloodline.

The hydra had meanwhile spotted him with its seventh head, causing two of the six that coiled around its daughter to turn to him. This made the younger hydra's gaze follow them, with its eyes widening in surprise upon seeing him. The two heads that eyes him soon also widened their eyes in surprise, though clearly for reasons beyond him being a dragon.

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