Thud…!
The Resentment Spirit’s wail was drowned out by the mysterious vibration that resonated once more. No, it wasn’t just a vibration. It was the sound of a dragon’s heart, long dormant, beginning to beat again. And as time passed, the intervals between the beats were subtly shortening.
‘Areolus? A golden dragon?’
He’d never heard that name before. However, just knowing that the being named was a dragon foretold a calamitous situation.
An ancient dragon’s resurrection?
That was an event unprecedented even in the main questline. In the current era, the number of living dragons could be counted on one hand, and even the appearance of those two had catastrophically increased the game’s difficulty.
Dragons were such entities.
They were the most nearly perfect beings in this world. Their mere presence attracted myriad monsters, creating dreadful calamities, capable of tearing thousands of lives apart with a single wingbeat and reducing the impregnable imperial capital to ashes with a single breath. Even at the final stages of the game, they were near-impossible foes, leaving little chance of victory even with the highest level characters.
Even immature dragons were that formidable….
‘There’s no time to measure anything else.’
It wasn’t just Khan who grasped the gravity of the situation. Anyone could tell there was something extraordinary about the cause of Princess Delphina’s convulsions.
“Maxime, aser, and Pashantu. The three of you, get the princess away from the source of this vibration.”
The aura of the ‘golden dragon’ was clearly agitating the transcendent gene inside Princess Delphina. Staying here could result in a mutation like Alan’s. Considering the uncertainties ahead, they couldn’t proceed while bearing such a variable.
“B-boss…”
Alejandro’s eyes quaked as if an earthquake was happening. Even for someone like Alejandro, who had thrown himself into the underground prison out of a sense of honor, the current phenomenon was excessively surreal. Humans naturally feel instinctive fear toward what they cannot comprehend.
“You go with them too.”
Khan, seeing no need to keep Alejandro who wouldn’t contribute to the fight, assigned him to guard the princess. Ideally, he would have also sent Maya, who had a human body, to protect Delphina, but—
“My heart is pounding. As expected, my lord has a knack for attracting dreadful things.”
What a cursed knack, indeed. Khan grimaced at Maya’s sardonic joke as he clutched Draupnir, which was emitting the curse of dragon-slaying.
“I’ll cut through anything that blocks our way and press on.”
“Wait a moment.”
Clip-clop—
Aries, with her hair tied back, approached briskly and grabbed Khan’s hand.
Just as Khan was about to give her a perplexed look, the transcendent being’s voice, now familiar as a neighbor’s, filled his mind without the oppressive pressure it usually carried. Instead, it felt warm, reminiscent of being cradled in parental arms, a memory long forgotten.
『You bear a truly tragic fate. There isn’t another mortal like you on the continent, apostle of the Warrior God.』
In accordance with the rules, divine beings are forbidden from interfering privately in the affairs of the continent, but this time is an exception. The variables in this situation are enough to twist the fate of the world. To prevent this unforeseen disaster, such interference must be allowed.
The image of the goddess with scales in one hand and a sword in the other shimmered like a vision.
It was the Goddess of Justice.
『Sending my child to you was the right choice. Without her, I wouldn’t be able to offer even this slight help.』
The Goddess of Justice drove her reversed sword straight into Aries’s crown. Whatever flowed through the sword into Aries then spread throughout her entire body.
Lastly, the Goddess of Justice offered her scales to Khan.
『Noble warrior with an indomitable spirit, even in the face of any trial. If you never lose that heart, this power will aid you.』
With those words, the vision of the Goddess of Justice dispersed. Khan’s hazy mind quickly returned to normal. Instinctively, he checked his stats. But to his surprise, there were no changes in his stats. Instead, a new skill had appeared in his skill window.
『Courageous Scales』
─To those who do not give up, opportunities shall be given.
No rank, no detailed description, no visible effects—just something that took up the bottommost spot in his skill window, making him doubt if it even qualified as a skill.
‘Hah, unbelievable…’
It felt as if he had just awoken from a dream, but everything he experienced was indeed real.
“Goddess of Justice…”
“What the…”
Leo and Maya also seemed to sense the presence of the Goddess of Justice, looking rather bewildered. When Khan glanced down at the gaze he felt from below, aries was staring up at him with her usual expressionless face, but her eyes conveyed a message.
‘I told you I would help next time,’ they seemed to say.
“You might be short, but you have grown up.”
Stomp.
Khan had meant it as a compliment, but Aries stomped on his foot and turned away briskly. Watching her walk away quickly, Khan couldn’t help but chuckle.
‘Yeah. When hasn’t it been like this?’
He felt foolish for taking the situation so seriously and getting overly grim. Ever since he was thrown into this cursed world, every event always took a turn for the worst. It wasn’t new. In fact, not having something blow up would make him more anxious. At least he knew the source of the current crisis this time, which was better than usual.
Most importantly—
‘A golden dragon or whatever, no matter how powerful that ancient lizard used to be, how strong can it be after all this time?’
***
“Intruders!”
The Royal Knights and palace guards, who had been bewildered by the sudden disturbance within the palace, regained their senses at the mention of intruders. In fact, they appeared more united and determined to oppose the intruders than before. They had stopped thinking with their heads and instead relied on their ingrained training. This confusion had inadvertently worked in their favor, even if it was a bit too late.
“Forgive me, but please step aside!”
The blond youth, leo, shouted in a surprisingly polite tone for an intruder, advancing with a shield imbued with holy power. The palace guards braced themselves and adopted defensive stances, but Leo’s shield emitted a brilliant white light, pushing them back effortlessly.
It was a form of holy magic known as the ‘Shield of Protection.’
The guards, braced for a heavy impact, were gently pushed aside, creating gaps in their formation. It was Maya’s job to exploit these openings. Her spear, Yorun, unleashed waves of ‘Counterstrike Pulse’ left and right. The already disrupted front lines collapsed quickly, prompting the Royal Knights to step in.
However, the knights’ swords never reached Maya and Leo. From the outset, the duo’s role was simply to create a momentary gap.
The movements of these near-superhuman figures were too swift for the average knight of this border kingdom to respond to in time. Before they could react, the Paladin and the barbarian warrior closed the distance and effortlessly dismantled the knights in their path, clearing a straight route to the main palace entrance.
Though Argon was considered a border kingdom, its defenders were still elite soldiers trained at great expense. Individually, they couldn’t compare to those of the Empire, but they were far from being pushovers.
“Block them!”
The unique malleability of aura shone at this moment. A dozen knights combined their aura to create a thick barrier, a blockade that even the Black Wing Duke, the kingdom’s strongest knight, would struggle to break through.
“Don’t make this difficult. Move aside.”
But it soon became clear that this was a misconception. Following the ominous trajectory of his cursed sword, Khan shattered the aura barrier as if it were made of glass. The aura wasn’t sliced through or pierced; it simply disintegrated under the impact.
This was a combined aura barrier from a dozen knights, shattered purely through brute strength. Naturally, the Royal Knights began to suspect the barbarian’s sword of harboring some demonic energy. Of course, this too was a misconception. While Draupnir was indeed an extraordinary magic sword, against anything less than a dragon, it was merely a durable blade.
Ouch.
‘Not bad at all.’
Even though the obstacle had been essentially scarecrows, aura was still aura. Especially when it was emitted by a dozen knights. The recoil from the clash between his magic sword and their aura left a bitter taste of blood in his mouth.
But progress had been made. Khan and his three companions had broken through the numerous guards and knights, stepping onto the drawbridge leading to the main palace.
“Don’t let them through!”
“Raise the drawbridge… Quickly!”
Shouts and hurried movements ensued on the other side of the drawbridge.
Drdrdrdrdrk!
The intention on the other side was simple: raise the drawbridge to cut off the path. Anyone falling into the moat below would lose mobility, making them easy targets to surround and wipe out.
“Can you make the jump?”
“Naturally.”
The response from Khan’s group was equally straightforward. Grabbing Maya, whose physical abilities were less impressive, Khan sprinted and leaped through the narrowing gap of the closing drawbridge.
“What the hell… Did they just jump that distance?!”
While the stunned palace guards gasped, aries and Leo followed, successfully squeezing through the gap behind Khan. Having infiltrated the most critical location of the kingdom with surprising ease, Khan gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.
‘This is just the beginning.’
Thud──. Thud──. Thud──.
The heartbeat of the dragon continued, slowly but steadily picking up speed. The ‘curse of dragonslaying’ emanating from the Resentment Spirit grew stronger in parallel, leaving the creature devoid of its former sanity, as if it had been swallowed by its own curse.
However, in a twisted stroke of fortune, the curse now seemed to guide the way, slithering forward as if pointing them in the right direction. According to Aser, the remaining forces inside the inner palace were insignificant, so finding the mausoleum shouldn’t be difficult if they knew the direction.
“Well, it’s not like they’ll let us through easily.”
If someone orchestrated this, they wouldn’t want any interference now on the cusp of the dragon’s resurrection. At that moment, familiar monstrous faces emerged.
“Krurrrrk. Block them. That is. The order.”
“So, they talk now too.”
What, have they evolved or something?
These were the ‘Lizardmen’ Khan had previously encountered in the underground prison.