Conflict

"You—" Hearing Lucia's mockery, Godrick's expression changed dramatically. A powerful aura unique to a demigod burst from him, bearing down on Lucia across from him!

Lucia's gaze turned cold. In an instant, a presence no weaker than his surged up in defiance and collided with it invisibly in midair!

Unlike Godrick's grand, oppressive aura, the force blooming from Lucia was slightly weaker in scale, but far more violent and savage, filled with a cold, domineering ferocity.

In the ignorant, chaotic age of barbarism before civilization had even begun to sprout, the countless living beings that crawled before the ancient dragons had shared one name for this presence—Dragon Breath!

After an exchange that was brief yet fierce to the extreme, Godrick let out a muffled grunt. A flash of shock suddenly appeared in his eyes, which had been brimming with shame and anger—against this frail, immature ancient dragon, he had not managed to gain even the slightest upper hand!

One had to know that the so-called aura of the strong in The Lands Between was no mystical concept. It was a tangible pressure naturally produced once the mental power of the strong reached a certain level. If an opponent's mental power was too weak, they would not even be able to approach such beings before the pressure shook their soul, causing them to lose control over their body.

Those powerful demigods born with divine blood had an innate advantage in this regard. Their mental power was often naturally far beyond that of ordinary people, and after being refined into divine power and magic power, it far surpassed the limits of mortal beings in both quantity and quality. It was precisely because of this that the demigods had been able to take the power of the fragments of the Elden Ring—the Great Runes—for themselves during the Shattered War, and under their enhancement, each displayed world-shattering might.

Having suffered successive defeats in both words and aura, Godrick felt as though he had been gravely humiliated. Hot blood rushed wildly to his head, and just as he was about to rise and lash out, he suddenly sensed two gazes like cold lightning shooting toward him. In an instant, they made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cave, and he no longer dared move even the slightest bit!

Directly opposite him, Lansseax narrowed her long phoenix eyes slightly. A faint pressure emanated from her. Though it seemed far less visibly powerful than the clash of auras between the two demigods just now, in actual effect it surpassed them by countless times, as if it would completely freeze his soul!

Godrick groaned inwardly. Luckily, this was inside the Hall of Eternity, and Lansseax had restrained much of her Dragon Breath out of respect for the two majesties. Otherwise, whether he could still be standing right now was another question entirely.

In the vast royal capital, there were very few people he could not afford to offend, but the two priests of the Ancient Dragon Temple were definitely among them. Fortissax addressed his father Godwyn as a brother, and if he ever saw Godrick behaving improperly, he would certainly punish him in the name of an uncle.

And this Priest Lansseax was even more terrifying. During the Ancient Dragon War, she had forcibly beaten more than half of Leyndell's heroes into submission, and over the years she had preached in the royal capital, her fame and authority had only grown heavier. Even within the Ancient Dragon Temple, from Fortissax above to the hundreds of Ancient Dragon Knights below, all obeyed her without question and did not dare offend her in the slightest.

At this moment, he only hated himself for mistakenly believing the rumors that had come from within Sky City, wrongly thinking that this ancient dragon priest, who should have had the greatest hope of inheriting the Dragon King's position, would be at odds with the newborn Ancient Dragon Prince.

Earlier today, when he heard that Priest Lans had traveled all the way to Dectus to get Lucia out of trouble, his thoughts had originally wavered somewhat. However, when he entered the hall and saw that her seating seemed faintly above Lucia's, he concluded that everything that had happened at Dectus was nothing but a political performance to avoid giving others a handle.

Otherwise—at a banquet between the highest levels of the two great dynasties, Lucia, as an ancient dragon demigod with exalted status but insufficient strength, did you not need to borrow momentum to display your stance and establish who was above and below? Or were the two of you, after meeting barely twice, already united as ruler and subject, so close that you were practically calling each other sister and brother, making it completely irrelevant who sat in the higher seat?

Who would believe that!

Yet faced with the situation before him, Godrick, not daring to move in the slightest, felt only bitterness in his heart.

Seeing that Lansseax had no intention of letting him go, and that the two majesties were clearly displeased with him as well, he could only take a deep breath and look at Lucia. "My apologies. That was only a joke just now. In any case, welcome to the royal capital. If you need anything in the future, I will do my best to help."

Lucia shrugged noncommittally, but he showed not the slightest intention of taking back what he had said.

Seeing this, Godrick wisely stopped dwelling on the issue of seniority. After all, his father was generally twenty or thirty years older than these demigods, which meant he was naturally a generation below Miquella and Malenia, let alone the Dragon God and Dragon King, who had been continental co-rulers far more ancient than his grandparents. If he insisted on arguing, he would not be in the right no matter how he put it.

"Enough. Let the jokes stop here. Because of you, the banquet has already been delayed by twenty minutes," Marika said, her tone slightly heavy.

"Yes." Godrick hurriedly lowered his head and answered.

"I have made a fool of myself before you, Lucia," the queen said, turning to Lucia apologetically. "Godrick's father has often been away campaigning and suppressing rebellions over the years, and even now he is still far off on the Weeping Peninsula. The two of us are usually busy with state affairs, so we have been lax in disciplining him. And today is a family banquet, so the child became somewhat excited and lost his sense of propriety."

"Your Majesty is too serious. It is a good thing for young people to have some energy." Lucia lightly passed over the topic, while ignoring the hatred hidden in Godrick's gaze.

He could more or less understand the logic behind Godrick's pointless provocation. As the legitimate son of the Golden Prince Godwyn and the most orthodox heir of the Golden Dynasty, he was probably, first, inherently dissatisfied with the ancient dragons, who stood outside the Erdtree system, and second, used to throwing his weight around. He could not stand seeing someone else steal even more of the spotlight. Judging from the meaning between his words, perhaps that incident at Dectus had something to do with him.

Speaking of which, Godrick in Stormveil in his previous life had already been beaten down by society who knew how many times, yet he still ran his mouth nonstop upon first meeting the Tarnished, let alone now, when he was still in his high-spirited youth.

So Lucia did not care about this kind of harmless provocation. His verbal counterattack had already landed, and his Dragon Breath could perfectly handle the other party's demigod aura. Sister Lans had surely considered this as well, which was why she had not acted from the very beginning. As for anything else, before a deeper conflict arose, he had neither the need nor the interest to fight to the death with this brainless fool over such trivial nonsense.

"Since everyone is here, let us begin," Radagon said, picking up the conversation. "Knight Moongrum sent a letter saying they encountered some mishaps on the road and will arrive a few days late. Once those three children reach the royal capital as well, we will have a proper reunion."

"Moongrum..." Lucia paused slightly when he heard the name. "So the Carian delegation is being led by him this time?"

Thinking of that Carian Knight who, even after the Shattered War, had still stood guard before the doors of Raya Lucaria's Grand Library, watching over the Queen of the Full Moon with his life, Lucia then glanced imperceptibly at the Elden Lord seated at the head of the table—the man who had abandoned his wife and children and betrayed the Queen of the Full Moon... Tsk, tsk, tsk. For some reason, he had a bad feeling about this.