King Ghidorah walked out of the palace gate. The sun poured down from the gaps in the clouds, spreading a flowing golden color on the red granite wall.
Three heads were raised at the same time, six vertical pupils narrowed into thin slits in the sunlight, and the golden scales reflected the dazzling light.
He stood on the highest platform of the palace, overlooking the entire Valerilus City. The city is located at the junction of mountains and plains, surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing water on one side.
The streets radiate outward from the palace, like a half-expanded spider web, becoming sparser and more chaotic as they go outward.
The nearby blocks are filled with mansions of nobles and wealthy businessmen, with red walls, golden roofs, and garden fountains. Each one is as exquisite as a piece of porcelain carefully placed in a display cabinet.
The civilian area in the distance is not so beautiful. The gray and black roofs are crowded together, like a pile of tiles randomly stacked in the corner.
Farther away is the city wall, and outside the city wall are large areas of farmland, scattered villages, gray-green fields and gray-blue ridge lines.
King Ghidorah looked at it for a while.
By the way, is there something missing?
The three heads looked at each other, as if something was missing, but he couldn't remember it.
Sangis stood one step behind him, with his hands folded in front of him and his head slightly lowered.
She saw King Ghidorah's three heads looking at each other and understood the hesitation.
"Your Majesty, you can send a notice to the countries in the mainland to let them know about the new ruler of the Vagrian Empire."
The head in the middle of King Ghidorah turned around, and the golden vertical pupils fell on Sangis's face.
Sangis's expression did not change at all, but she quickly reviewed in her mind all the countries and forces that could, should, and must be contacted.
Some are the empire's traditional allies, some are opponents that the empire needs to deter, and some are intermediate forces with which the empire has never formally established diplomatic relations but maintains subtle ties in certain areas...
No matter what the relationship is, they must be notified and let them know that Vagrian has been replaced. It is not a discussion, but a notification that the new ruler of the empire has decided to use the title Caesar.
"Okay, send it."
Sangis nodded, giving this matter the highest priority in his mind, and drafted the beginning of the document in his mind...
She also drafted the signature in her mind - "Vagrian Empire Senate cum Caesar His Majesty's imperial edict."
The wording must be appropriate, and the tone must be humble but not condescending. The countries that receive the document must know that the empire has a new owner, and the forces that are eyeing the empire must know that the empire has not become weaker because of the change of owner.
She mentally lined up the people she could use and selected a few who were good at writing, had a strict mouth, and were reliable in their work.
"By the way, Voraksa, come here." King Ghidorah didn't look back, and his telepathy spread behind him. A few seconds later, there was a burst of rapid, heavy, hard claws stepping on the stone floor, and the sound of running footsteps from the arch of the side hall.
Voraksa ran out. His speed was so fast that the right wing almost failed to keep up with the rhythm. The new wing membrane on the left wing trembled slightly in mid-air, like a sail blown inflated by the wind.
Four dark red eyes blinked rapidly in their orbits, their pupils contracted and dilated, dilated and contracted, like four unstable sensors receiving signals.
He braked suddenly behind King Ghidorah, plowing four shallow claw marks on the stone slab with his front paws, leaving four parallel, equally spaced white marks with small cracks on the surface of the stone slab.
"Your Majesty, please tell me."
"You have a colleague named...Valeria. Go find him."
Voraksa's breathing paused. Four eyes blinked at the same time, and the pupils shrank simultaneously at that moment.
"Okay."
Voraksa turned around and walked towards the edge of the platform. His pace was steadier than when he came, no longer so hurried, his right wing slowly unfolded, and the edge of the wing membrane glowed dark red in the sun, like old blood.
The wing membrane on the left wing has also been completely restored, and the color of the new tissue is lighter than the surrounding tissue, like a newly patched patch, but at least it is no longer a small section.
He walked to the edge of the platform, leaned forward slightly, shifted his weight from his back paws to his front paws, and then kicked off the ground violently. His wings flapped simultaneously at that moment, and a strong wind blew across the platform, making Sangis's long skirt rustle.
The flag of Vagria swayed violently in the wind, and the red dragon pattern on the flag rolled and stretched out in the sun. Voraksa rose from the ground, circled in the sky, adjusted its body, and flew in a distant direction.
Sangis brushed away the hair that was blown by the wind on his face and watched the black dragon's figure getting smaller and smaller until it turned into a blurry black dot and disappeared into the gray-blue skyline.
He once warned Valerirus to be careful, and now he heard the news that Voraksa was going to find Valeria. Those ancient existences and ancient threats will not sleep forever, they will wake up.
Now, that "ancient" era has opened his door in the most direct way and sat on his throne.
"Hmm." The middle head of King Ghidorah nodded, the right head yawned, and the left head stared at the direction where Voraksa disappeared for a few more seconds.
The three heads retracted and landed on the city in front of them again.
King Ghidorah thought for a while and decided to go out and see his own empire. You can't not even know what your own country looks like. That would be too shameful.
King Ghidorah opened its wide wings, and the golden wing membranes unfolded in the sun. The bioelectricity on the wing bones suddenly burst out, golden arcs jumped between the wing membranes, and the smell of ozone filled the air.
The wings flapped, and the air flow lifted up from the platform. The loose tiles slipped from the roof and smashed against the palace walls, making a crisp and crackling sound.
Sangis's long skirt was blown up again. She held down the hem of the skirt with one hand and supported a stone pillar with the other hand. She barely stabilized her body, squinted her eyes, and looked at King Ghidorah with a helpless expression like "I knew this would happen."
"Your Majesty, there are still a lot of documents." Sangis's voice trembled in the strong wind.
"You can handle it yourself." King Ghidorah had already left the ground. The three heads were shining golden in the sun. The wings were beating faster and faster. The body was getting higher and higher, and soon it was hundreds of meters above the palace.
Sangis stood on the platform, holding on to the stone pillar, watching the golden three-headed dragon flying further and further away. He
The figure is like a floating island in the air, a moving, golden, flying island. The shadow slides across the platform, across the palace, across the city, like a huge hand gently brushing the dust on the table.
"Alas..." He sighed for a long time.
"Who is that? Go and inform the Foreign Secretary to come over."
The wind is very strong at an altitude of thousands of meters. It is not the kind of warm wind that blows up from the ground and smells of earth and flowers, but the kind of cold, dry, knife-like wind that flows forever at an altitude of 10,000 meters.
King Ghidorah's scales are slightly cold in this kind of wind. When the wind blows by, it will produce a subtle, almost inaudible whistle sound on the edge of the scales, like someone blowing a very soft whistle from a very far away place.
King Ghidorah did not wrap himself up in the storm. This time he was just flying, his wings beating rhythmically, neither fast nor slow, like walking, with the golden wing membranes drawing arcs in the air.
He overlooked the entire city from an altitude of several thousand meters. It was not too big. He estimated that it was only a few dozen square kilometers. Viewed from a high altitude, Valerilus City looked like a carefully cut gem. The palace was the center of the gem, the streets were the sections radiating outward from the center, and the city wall was the boundary line of the gem.
Outside the boundary line is gray-green farmland, like a piece of velvet spread on the ground with uneven edges. Farther away are gray-blue mountains, the folds of the mountains looming in the shadows of the clouds.
Below the city, many people looked up to the sky in surprise. A huge shadow passed overhead, from east to west, flying from the direction of the palace. The speed was not fast, but the sense of oppression was unmatched by any bird, any airship, or any pterosaur.
People in the city stopped on the streets, stopped working on the roofs, stopped drinking tea on the balconies, and raised their heads in unison. Some opened their mouths, some squinted, some put their hands on their foreheads to block the dazzling sunlight, some held their children, and the children pointed to the sky.
"That's... the new emperor?"
Someone whispered in an uncertain tone, as if he was asking the people around him or himself.
"It seems, what is it called?" "Caesar... Your Majesty." Another voice picked up the answer.
Golden dragon? A middle-aged man with short horns on his head frowned and squinted at the golden, huge, shadow-moving figure in the sky.
In a corner of the city, there is an old building with an exterior wall covered with vines. The leaves of the vines rustle in the wind, and sunlight leaks in through the gaps in the leaves, casting countless small, irregular light spots on the indoor table.
Kaidezi stood in front of the window, holding a palm-sized, delicate metal prop inlaid with light blue crystals in one hand, and pressing the side of the prop with his other hand, applying slight pressure on his fingertips.
The crystal on the top of the prop began to glow, and the light was very faint, so faint that it would not be visible at all if it were not in a dark place. But the crystal was indeed bright, capturing the image of the golden figure in the sky frame by frame, and storing it inside the prop.
"Remember?" The captain's voice came from next to him. The captain was sitting on the chair opposite the table, holding a cup of tea that had been completely cooled.
The tea in the teacup has never been drunk from the beginning. The tea leaves slowly unfold in the cool water, like a flower with an unsightly color blooming in the water.
"Forgot it." Kaidezi's voice was very soft, her eyes did not leave the viewfinder, and her fingers were still adjusting something on the side of the prop. She was transferred here urgently.
Due to the accidents of many colleagues in previous operations, Western Mine was severely short of manpower. She and the captain were temporarily transferred to replace those colleagues who could no longer work.
Before she came, she thought she was going to face those ancient relics crawling out of the ground, dangerous existences that had been sealed for countless epochs.
She never thought that she would be here, standing in an old building in the capital of the Vagrian Empire, recording the ascension of a new emperor to the throne.
"That's the giant beast from the Karelia Empire Western Mine." Kaidezi moved the prop away from her eyes and turned around to look at the captain. Her expression was calm and her tone was steady, but her fingers holding the prop tightened slightly.
She remembered the scene she saw at Western Mine a few days ago. A golden three-headed giant emerged from the storm. It was so big that she had to raise her neck to the limit to see the whole thing. It was such a huge monster that people didn't even have time to feel fear, and their brains had already shut down.
"It became the emperor of Vagrian?"
There was a trace of confusion in Kaidezi's voice that she was not aware of. Vagrian is an empire ruled by dragons. The change of the throne does not require elections, succession, or coups.
All it takes is a powerful enough dragon to appear in the palace, drive the old emperor off the throne, and then sit on it himself. To outsiders, this process is no different from wild beasts fighting for territory.
But Vagrian is an empire with a population of more than 13 million, more than 50 cities, a complete administrative system and a history of thousands of years.
"There is no similar thing in ancient books and documents..." she added.
The captain put the tea cup back on the table. When the bottom of the cup came into contact with the table, it made a slight, almost inaudible collision sound. "This is a good thing," the captain said.
He looked at Kaidezi, and Kaidezi looked at him. He continued to speak, with Silence Society's unique calmness of "we only state the facts" in every word.
"This shows that... His Majesty the Emperor can communicate and is not a god of destruction. Next, we can try to contact it."
Kaidezi was silent for a moment, looking at the props in her hands. The crystals in the props had stopped glowing, and the images stored inside needed to be exported, sorted, and analyzed until she returned to a safe place.
She carefully packed the prop into a special, padded box, like a botanist who had just collected a rare specimen from the wild and gently placed it back in an incubator.
"Same." Kaidezi said, "How about that piece of Forbidden Land?"
"Valerirus is already on his way back. Forbidden Land should be fine for the time being," the captain said.
Kaidezi nodded. After all, Silence Society is just a "scholar" who is responsible for exploring the information. He has no ideas about Evil God's seal and death.
Their identity is recorders, not participants. Those ancient seals related to the survival of the world, those ancient beings sleeping underground, those dangerous things that once out of control will plunge the entire continent into war...
They are responsible for recording, responsible for analyzing, and responsible for passing the intelligence to those capable of handling it.
But he will not interfere, nor try to take advantage of those powers, nor think that he can control things that are beyond the scope of human cognition.
Silence Society's existence for so many years depends on this self-knowledge.