Outside the city, the morning light spilled across the earth.
The corpse of the white dragon lay across the wilderness. Its charred black scales still emitted wisps of green smoke, and the air was filled with the burnt aroma of dragon meat.
Soldiers carrying saws and ropes shuttled back and forth beside it, stripping away the usable parts. The sound of tool blades striking scales clinked and clanked, occasionally mixed with a shout or two.
Inside the city, in the courtyard of the main keep, the Sword Saint Puchi crouched on the stone bricks. Its tentacle curled around its sword hilt, slashing and retracting, its movements unhurried, doing its daily practice.
Inanna sat under the corridor, a small cluster of flames dancing on her fingertips as she conversed in low tones.
Deep within the main keep, Lorenzo sat across from No. 10.
He had been sitting here for a long time. Several open tomes were spread out on the table, and notes with wet ink were scattered aside.
He asked many questions; No. 10 didn't answer many, but every single sentence made him ponder for a long time.
The door finally opened.
Lorenzo walked out from inside, heading toward his bedroom in a daze, seemingly not having gotten what he wanted.
Seeing this, Inanna quietly asked in the mycelial network: "No. 10, didn't you teach Uncle Lorenzo?"
No. 10 shrugged its mushroom cap. "It's not that I won't teach him, but that I can't."
"That is a power one must see with their own eyes and experience personally to be able to use. Just listening to others talk about it is useless, no matter how much is said."
"Furthermore... I haven't fully mastered it yet either. Something is still missing."
That ball of lightning that descended from the sky back then brought the true essence within it, but not the entirety.
It was like teaching you all the necessary formulas, but the final answer still required you to use those formulas to calculate it yourself.
No. 10 felt there was an underlying meaning: if one still couldn't find the answer even with this, then they were unworthy of knowing the true essence.
And right now, it was striving to find the solution.
Because of this, the already low-profile No. 10 now preferred to maintain an invisible state daily, thoroughly becoming a transparent mushroom.
If they weren't fighting a dragon, many people in the team wouldn't even know there was such a Puchi.
Suddenly, a cheerful shout came from the mycelial network: "No. 10! Fourteen!"
Accompanied by the pu-ji, pu-ji sounds of trotting, No. 9 and Fifteen appeared in Inanna's line of sight.
Fifteen had come to help, only to not expect that the white dragon hadn't even lasted a day before being dealt with; he had made the trip for nothing.
However, No. 9 clearly didn't think so.
It first ran excitedly toward No. 10, wanting to bump mushroom caps.
Wind picked up under No. 10's feet, lifting it vertically into midair.
Below, No. 9 tilted its mushroom cap up, confirming that it was a height it couldn't reach even if it jumped.
Thinking about it, it then ran toward Fourteen, only to be held back by a scabbard pressed against its fungal body, preventing it from getting close.
Rejected twice in a row, No. 9 slumped its mushroom cap, shuffling its little short legs, muttering something like, "If only No. 4 were here."
Inanna felt bad seeing this and was just about to step forward.
But Fifteen beat her to it, picking No. 9 up and placing it on top of his head, then immediately stepping back, putting distance between himself and the Sword Saint Puchi.
Having returned to its throne, No. 9 instantly regained its form: "I'll count you guys as fast this time! Fifteen and I will also take down a few dragons very soon!"
Since they hadn't arrived in time for the dragon slaying, there was naturally no need to stay.
Fifteen took No. 9, said their goodbyes to Inanna and Lorenzo respectively, and left.
And the direction they headed was Dragon Roar Valley.
While the Dukes were pouring all their efforts into constructing the new defensive line, Fifteen hadn't been idle either.
After the great war, suspected to be due to the Mist, the mana concentration had risen.
At first, it was only on the western coast which the Mist had shrouded, but as time passed, the mana concentration of the entire world was slowly increasing.
The proportion of the increase wasn't much; to spellcasters, this bit of enhancement was minuscule.
But monsters were different. Those low-tier monsters, originally only fit for novice adventurers to practice on, reproduced rapidly and fiercely under the nourishment of the mana.
Those wastelands and woodlands left desolate by the chaos of war had now become their breeding grounds.
Extermination quests filled the bulletin boards of the Adventurer's Guild, hanging from the beginning of the year to the end, never seemingly cleared out.
What was more troublesome was that every so often, one or two exceptionally difficult and powerful individuals would pop up. Ordinary adventurers only had the option of running for their lives if they encountered them.
Fifteen's time was almost entirely spent on these commissions.
Wherever a troublesome monster popped up, he would hurry there with No. 9.
Tempered through one actual battle after another, his swordsmanship had grown several degrees sharper than before, and his coordination with No. 9 had gradually gained a systematic approach.
This trip to Dragon Roar Valley was originally part of the plan; helping deal with the white dragon was just a temporary detour.
Although Dragon Roar Valley was easy to defend and hard to attack, and had played a massive role in the war, the humans still chose to abandon it after the war because it was too close to High Keep Fortress.
Recently, there had been multiple traces of new monster species on the border of the new defensive line, most possessing quite decent strength.
According to the Guild's analysis, their nest might be near Dragon Roar Valley. However, the previous group of adventurers who took the quest had gone and never returned, so the Guild had no choice but to entrust it to Fifteen.
On the way, No. 9 sat atop Fifteen's head, its tentacles draped over his forehead, swaying back and forth.
No. 9 was still brooding over its experience of being given the cold shoulder.
"Fifteen, let's go find a dragon after we finish this business!"
"I can't beat one alone, can I?"
"You have me!" No. 9's tentacles patted the top of his head. The force wasn't heavy, but it made soft *thwap* sounds. "Together, one or two dragons will be a piece of cake! When the time comes, we'll drag the dragon back and let those two guys, No. 10 and Fourteen, take a good look!"
"Even if we really kill a dragon, I can't carry it."
"Then we'll just carry a dragon horn?"
"That's too big too." Fifteen thought for a moment. "At most, I can carry a single dragon nail on my back."
No. 9 fell silent for a while. It retracted its tentacles from Fifteen's forehead and twisted them together above its mushroom cap, as if weighing the difference in weight between a single dragon nail and a whole dragon.
Then it lay back down, its tentacles draped over his forehead once more.
"That... works too, I guess."
One person and one mushroom carried on this kind of casual daily conversation, chatting on and off.
Although the content had no nutritional value, Fifteen actually quite liked this way of killing time during a boring journey.
At a certain moment, No. 9's originally soft fungal body suddenly tensed up.
Fifteen, already familiar with this reaction, immediately asked, "What's the situation?"
"Over there," No. 9's tentacle pointed forward, "a group of big things is coming this way."
After saying that, curling around the Telepathy Stone, it slid down from the top of Fifteen's head, grabbed his shoulder, and within two or three moves, drilled into the iron canister on his back.
The mouth of the canister had a soft lining, and the edges were polished smooth. The noise it made slipping inside was very small, only making a soft click when the lid closed.
There were several tubes on the side of the canister, winding their way down to the half-mask covering Fifteen's chest. At the moment, the mask was still hanging at his side; he hadn't put it on.
The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
At first it was very light, like someone beating a drum in the distance, beat by beat, transmitting upward through thick layers of earth.
Then it grew heavier and heavier. Gravel bounced on the road surface, and the dry grass by the roadside trembled along with it.
Fifteen looked up. Below the distant horizon, a cloud of dust and smoke billowed up.
The dust cloud was very thick and very wide, pressing down overwhelmingly, as if something was running within that grayish-yellow mist.
Thick limbs, bulging backs, short and thick heads and necks, bodies covered in mottled scaled armor—dragon beasts.
Fifteen's brow furrowed slightly. He roughly estimated their numbers and rested his hands on his sword hilts.
"Nine, Plan No. 4."
"No problem!" A short response came into his mind. Immediately after, red and blue spores surged up from two separate tubes and drilled into the mask.
Fifteen clamped the mask onto his face. Just as the click of the tightening straps fell, that familiar sensation surged up.
The red was heat!
Burning from his chest to his limbs, burning so much his blood vessels throbbed and his muscles tensed like drawn bowstrings. His entire person felt as if he had been ignited; every inch of his skin was brimming with explosive power.
The blue was cold!
Pouring down from the top of his head, it extinguished that restless heat, suppressing all excitement, nervousness, and fear into the deepest depths of his consciousness.
Fifteen's breathing slowed down, and the world became exceptionally clear behind the mask's filter.
With a push of his feet, his figure appeared directly in front of the dragon beast herd.
Twin swords drawn, one left, one right.
"Slash!"
(End of Chapter)
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