「He has been a little off since he heard the news of Lord Henry’s death. And now he’s throwing everyone out of the palace. He’s not trying to burn the palace down, is he?」
「We need to be careful, and if things go wrong, we could escape as soon as possible.」
Robert strolled through the palace in a daze. The doctors in the city had tried their best to help him recover, but he felt weaker every day. Today, he finally gained the strength to hold up his body. He asked the maids to clean up the palace before he kicked them out. He slowly followed the dark tunnel to the underground.
He leaned against the door and pulled out a fake tooth from his mouth. With a gentle squeeze, it turned into a key– This is what many men were searching around him but couldn’t find. Robert smiled and opened the treasure gate.
Those so-called Dragon’s Gifts were some ordinary dragon items, and some were given to him by Yig to protect himself. Yig used to bring him to the mainland secretly many times, and Yig’s human language was good enough to communicate. Thus Robert knew and owned many more than normal pet humans. He found a potion bottle on the shelf, and its label suggested that it had been out-of-date. However, Robert didn’t care and drank it. He lay on the floor and slowly regained his hearing, vision, and strength.
What an irony. He couldn’t help but recall his memory with Yig. That black dragon had changed his life completely. When Robert was seven, the store owner, Gilt, picked him out of his friends and told him that when he woke up from his nap, he would arrive at a cute fire dragon’s house and be his pet. To them, being a pet was a normal and exciting, so he waved goodbye to his friends and made promises to meet each other in the pet party and compare whose owner was more handsome.
However, he didn’t wake up to a gentle call from a dragon. Insufferable pain woke him, and the injury almost shattered his body. Robert could no longer be a normal man. Since Yig didn’t own a Human Cultivation Permit, Robert could not go to the pet hospital or any parties. All he had was a black dragon who couldn’t control his strength and those weird inventions or modifications created by that dragon.
Robert couldn’t live a life like that anymore, so he escaped. He was once satisfied with his life, but not he was curious– What would his life be before his fate was changed by Yig’s grip? What did that fire dragon look like? An outdated potion could heal a completely incurable illness among wild humans. What would the life of a real pet-human be like? If he was never injured, maybe he wouldn’t feel his time is close to an end, even without Grieve coming after for him
He held himself up, shook his head, despised his vulnerability under illness, and started to move as planned.
Perl, the city of Pearl, was the capital of Klein. Under Robert’s leadership, the city appealed to be more prosperous, but it was Robert’s property. Recently, a rumor said that Henry, the lord of Gaim, had been killed by Grieve had become so widespread that it could not be restrained. Even the guards themselves, who were carrying out the orders, were looking forward to the return of their former prince.
「I think something is wrong…」The closer they get to Perl, the more uneasy Slair felt,「The elements here were…Strange.」
He turned and asked Rhett, 『Daddy, did you find that the fire elements are extremely active?』
『The elemental activity is closely related to the environment. The element around a city is always more active than other places. I don’t know what the elemental activity was like here. Still, it does feel more active than other cities.』Rhett said,『But the unusual feeling you have now is probably because a dragon has come. 』
As soon as the words left his mouth, the sound of fighting came from the top of the carriage, and the resting phile birds chirped in anger.
「Wait! I am here to ask for cooperation! I am Mags, a member of Team 103 of the ATC Wild Human Protection Division!」
Grieve opened the window, and a girl hung upside down from the top of the carriage, his hair almost reaching the ground.
「Lady, this is very dangerous!」Grive pulled Megs in. He found that Mags seemed to be heavier than he thought.
「Ah, please don’t let the dressing fool you, cute wild human. I am not a girl; I am a male dragon.」Mags showed a standard smile and waved at Grieve,「The city ahead is in a bit of an emergency… which is a mistake on my part. How could I never find such a large amount…」
『What’s going on?』Alex’s instinct told him something was wrong.
「I don’t know if we can still call it a dragon item,」Mags scratched his head, 「The most crucial part is definitely a dragon item, but the human seems to know how to use the fire monster’s magic crystals to make explosives. The leaders of the enforcement team have enough on their plate by arguing about whether it would count as a dragon item or not… and now he seems to have set up a timing system. 」
「Boom–」They hear a loud noise from a distance where the trees fell one after another, smoke clouds rose, and birds flew out.
「Experiment succeeded.」 A thunderous voice came from Perl. It was Robert’s voice.
「OMG, He has a sound amplifier? How can this human have this many dragon items?」Mags let out a painful groan,「I am screwed; I am going to get a bad review for my work…」
「Grive Klein and the little guy by this side, did you see the explosion? I have buried so much of the same stuff under the Perl city, and you won’t have time to find them all, not even with the Dragon God’s help. One day, I give you one day to kill yourself in front of my palace. Else, I will let Perl City disappear from the map… The city gate has closed, but I am sure you can find your way inside, right?」 Robert let out a psychotic laugh. His breath was also amplified and clearly audible, 「Or maybe you could try to kill me. The moment you kill me, this place along with your people and your parent’s grave would be together–-Boom! Turned into ashes.」