Arrival

They found Zheng Yichen's old, abandoned lair. The captain needed no explanation from his men to see that a dragon had indeed been here. The claw marks on the cave walls were far too obvious.

But the cave clearly wasn't large enough to hold an adult dragon. Did that mean the young dragon had been living here alone all this time?

He couldn't help thinking of the signs of battle they had found earlier. If a young dragon really had been here without its mother to protect it, it was only natural that someone would try to seize it. A dragon was worth too much.

"What's this? An incantation?" The captain noticed the tally mark Zheng Yichen had carved into the wall and turned to a nearby team member. None of them could read Chinese.

"Doesn't look like one." The team member shook his head, then hurriedly copied down the markings. They couldn't read them, but the Church had learned people who might discover something if they took them back.

After all, the markings followed a pattern. They were certainly no random scribbles.

The team searched the cave a while longer but found nothing. They left the cave, which held no further useful information, and returned to town. The mages who had stayed behind had made some progress breaking the seal on the Mercenary Guild branch. Once resilient, the seal was gradually fading under their efforts.

They could make out the interior of the branch and even probe for information about what lay inside. What they discovered left them stunned.

The space inside the branch had been forcibly expanded several times over, and every resident of the town had been crammed into it, held motionless.

The captain's expression turned grave. Anyone capable of this was no ordinary person. Only after confirming that none of the residents had died did his face ease a little.

Powerful as this technique was, the person behind it had spared their lives. That suggested they were not evil—or at least did not like causing trouble. Either way, it was good news. They would learn more once they rescued the people inside and had time to question them.

Elsewhere, Zheng Yichen trudged along with a long face. Lolise still sat on his back, showing no intention of getting down. She wasn't heavy, but her fingers brushed the back of his neck now and then.

She was enjoying the feel of touching a living creature.

As for other living creatures?

After Zheng Yichen watched a rabbit decay into flying ash at the touch of Lolise's finger, he never brought up the subject again. She was dangerous, no doubt about it. Yet when she wasn't giving off her "intimidating presence," living creatures seemed to love approaching her.

Even when she made no move to touch them, they would touch her of their own accord, like moths throwing themselves into a flame! It was downright strange, and Lolise offered no further explanation.

She only said that as long as Zheng Yichen wasn't affected, there was no problem. She was harmless to him...

"Where are we going next?"

"The Illusion Demon Forest."

"Uh, doesn't sound like a nice place." Zheng Yichen swallowed his urge to make fun of the name.

"It isn't, but it's not too bad," Lolise explained. "I have a home there."

"...You make it sound like you have a lot of homes."

"Live long enough, and you naturally end up with plenty of places to stay."

The Illusion Demon Forest wasn't named for any devils or demons living there. The forest itself possessed a peculiar power. Ordinary people who entered it easily fell into hallucinations, then lost themselves in them and died without realizing it.

Even some professionals struggled to resist that power if they lacked a firm mind. Once someone fell into a hallucination, escape was difficult, even for those who came in groups.

For someone alone, the hallucinations were the sort that drew them in. With others nearby, they were more likely to drive a person mad and make them attack everyone around them indiscriminately. Over time, the place had come to be called the Illusion Demon Forest.

The longer someone remained inside, the more likely they were to be affected by the hallucinations!

Could anyone really live in a place like that? Zheng Yichen sat on a large rock, leafing through a book he had borrowed from Lolise. His tail swayed behind him, and every so often he glanced at her as she poked it with a small wooden stick.

Could someone's appearance keep influencing their state of mind? That behavior was nothing like what he expected from an old monster more than a thousand years old.

"Are you really twelve hundred..."

"Is that a problem?"

The unfriendly tone caught Zheng Yichen off guard. He quickly shook his head. "No."

"Then keep moving." Lolise tossed aside the stick and hopped back onto Zheng Yichen's back.

Zheng Yichen clicked his tongue. Lolise surely had a way to reach their destination quickly, but she refused to use it. Instead, they kept traveling on foot. A dragon-brand vehicle—what a ride. All along the way, he kept trying to see whether he could fly.

The good news was that, as his strength grew, he could finally fly when freed from the weight of the gravity spell... after more than half a month on the road!

Young dragons couldn't fly. That had been Lolise's explanation.

Dragons did not take to the air so easily through wing strength alone. Once they passed the young-dragon stage and completed their transformation, their wings gained a special power that let them flap and fly with ease.

Young dragons, on the other hand, were weak in both body and strength. Their bodies had yet to grow fully, and their small wings could not support flight through sheer muscle. Dragons were far from light, and their bones certainly weren't hollow, so flying by strength alone demanded a great deal of power.

Even after he became able to fly, he seldom got the chance to try. Most of the time, Lolise still used a magic item to weigh him down with added gravity. Under that pressure, Zheng Yichen couldn't fly even if he wanted to. Besides, they had reached their destination.

"I'm just saying, if we'd flown, we would've gotten here ten days ago, right?" Zheng Yichen stood atop a hill, gazing at the vast forest in the distance.

Lolise glanced at him without a word. Easy for him to say. Without that half-month of travel, he truly wouldn't have been able to fly.

In the more than half a month they had spent on the road, word of what had happened in the town beneath the Tot Mountains had spread. The incident was so unusual that news of a young dragon without its mother's protection had become widely known as well...

Starting tomorrow, two updates a day...