734. Seeking the Master

South of Dragon Roar Valley, an outpost used to monitor changes in the valley had now become a ruin.

Charred beams lay across shattered stone, and the ground was muddled with the footprints of humans and all kinds of nonhumans.

Several Dragon Beasts crouched beside a collapsed tower, heads buried as they tore into the soldiers' corpses.

Kobolds wove through the ruins, digging out the dried mushrooms stored as provisions in the outpost.

In Dragon Cliff Dungeon, not every dragon liked flying out to hunt in person.

Therefore, the dragons' servants, the kobolds, raised and tamed some Dragon Beasts in the area beneath Dragon Cliff to satisfy their masters' appetites. And now, these Dragon Beasts had become part of their fighting force in the raid on this human outpost.

Amid the thudding footsteps of the Dragon Beasts came the kobolds' not-so-fluent Draconic:

"Master... must find Master..."

Earlier, atop Dragon Cliff, kobold servants who had once belonged to different dragons had crowded together in the same patch of shadow.

They no longer distinguished between one another. There were no titles like "servants of the Red Dragon" or "servants of the White Dragon" anymore.

All their masters were gone, and all identities had lost meaning.

Lost and broken, they curled up on both sides of Dragon Cliff's empty stone paths, staring dully at the sky, hoping to see the soaring figures of dragons. Yet only a few flying Dragon Beasts crossed the heavens.

When the dragons left, they had not taken them along.

That was no surprise. Dragon Strife did not allow outside help, and those proud, insufferably arrogant dragons would never think these kobolds, who could barely speak Draconic properly, could be of any use in Dragon Strife.

In fact, dragons willing to mention "Dragon Strife" to their servants were already