Had the Count been careless? No.
But at this moment, father and son needed no exchange of glances to reach a tacit understanding—they would treat it as the Count having been careless. Liszt did not say he had won, and the Count did not need to admit that he had lost.
Each of them found his mount and led it along at a leisurely pace.
The Count gradually calmed his emotions. Whether he could accept reality or not was another matter for now. The one who had defeated him was not some outsider, but his own son. That alone meant he could not remain despondent forever. Every father hoped his son would become a dragon, wished for his descendants to surpass him.
Liszt had done it.
He had no reason to feel dejected.
But making him happy at once was no easy task either. After all, he had long been accustomed to being Coral Island's strongest. Other than the Grand Duke, who might have succeeded in becoming a dragon rider, he feared no one—not even a Sword Saint at the perfected level. If he could not win, he could always run.
What was unbelievable was that, before Liszt, he had not even managed to run away.
"Your growth is already beyond my ability to judge... I am forty-six this year, in the prime of my life; you are eighteen, and have not even had your birthday yet... I remember you once said that your goal was to ride a dragon. Every young man dreams of riding a dragon, only abandoning such impractical fantasies when he reaches middle age. As for you..."
The Count looked at Liszt, graceful as a jade tree in the wind. He wanted to say something, but did not continue.
He felt that Liszt had hope of