After collecting some useful items from the cave, the man and the dragon embarked on the dark path leading to the cave entrance.
Ed could even see Seraphina's dragon horns glowing red and hot in the darkness; they looked so hot that Ed gradually gave up the idea of reaching out to feel their temperature.
Seraphina, who was walking ahead, suddenly turned her head, Ed saw those black and golden eyes locking onto him in the darkness:
"I've discovered a problem I hadn't noticed before."
The Red Dragon girl said:
You seem to lack the respect you should have for me.
Ed's face immediately showed a wronged expression:
"I respect you a lot, how could you think that way?"
Seraphina shook her head:
"This has nothing to do with respect. Although I am just a Initial Tier, not fully grown Red Dragon, you have absolutely no chance of resisting my attack. Yet everything you did before seemed too confident. I can't sense the slightest bit of fear from you, as if you had already anticipated my actions, which is impossible."
"It's because I've been isolated from the world for too long that I didn't think of this problem at the beginning, but now that I think about your previous behavior... if my response had been a dragonfire, it seems you would have had a way to deal with it?"
Ed's expression slowly changed from initial grievance to a smile. He looked at Seraphina, but did not directly answer her question:
I never place my life on the kindness of others.
As for my backup plan... it's not appropriate to ask that given our current relationship.
After a moment of eye contact between the woman and the dragon, Seraphina suddenly said with a sigh of relief:
"Very good, at least someone as cautious as you won't let my money go to waste."
"As for the secret... don't be nervous, everyone has secrets, it's nothing."
After saying that, she turned her head and continued forward, and both of them remained silent as they continued walking towards the cave entrance.
Ed's expression remained unchanged, as if Seraphina hadn't been talking about him, but he felt a slight sense of relief, thankful that he had passed the final hurdle and that his backup plan for resurrection was no longer necessary.
He walked slowly behind the dragon girl, ostensibly because it was inconvenient to carry things, but in reality, he was slowly retracting the vines extending from his feet where Seraphina couldn't see him.
After confirming the deaths of the Tree Worship Church priests with the Dragonborn Village, Ed began preparing his own escape plan.
Neither side's words can be completely trusted, so nothing is truly certain until an agreement is reached between oneself and the dragon.
At the cave entrance, Ed was ostensibly obtaining genetic samples from the pile of corpses, but in reality, he was leaving a seed in the nutrient-rich environment created by the decaying flesh.
From the moment they entered the cave, a vine extending from the seed slowly meandered through the weathered sand, eventually reaching Ed's feet and connecting with him.
This explains why Ed's activity area in the cave was limited, and even when threatened by Seraphina, he showed no intention of escaping.
Because if he moves too much, he might expose the existence of the life-saving vine, while if he remains calm, even if he is roasted to a crisp, he can be reborn among the pile of corpses outside.
So Ed genuinely wanted Seraphina to cook him medium-rare, giving him at least some time to process the situation and make the whole plan more thorough. Of course, there was no risk if she preferred high-heat cooking...
This is the real reason why Ed remained calm when facing Seraphina. The actual plan did not deviate from his expectations. The only unexpected thing was that when Seraphina in her dragon form closed the stone door, she happened to squeeze the vine. Fortunately, Ed had greatly reduced his pain, which allowed him to maintain his composure.
Since killing the Rat King increased the proportion of Little Green in his body, Ed has clearly felt his tendency towards a vegetative state becoming more and more serious.
However, this did not affect his normal actions. The level increase gained from killing monsters just offset this anomaly, preventing the balance within the body from being disrupted.
Now it seems that becoming a vegetable isn't so bad, at least in terms of resilience, it far surpasses that of ordinary animals.
When the man and the dragon arrived outside, it was already dusk, and there were still a full thirteen hours until the player could log back in.
Ed showed Seraphina the way to the castle and then they went their separate ways.
Even in human form, dragons are faster than most people can imagine.
As Seraphina disappeared into the night, Ed looked once more at the pile of corpses.
His recycling efforts are not over yet.
Under Ed's watchful eye, the seed that had been so well hidden among the pile of corpses began to sprout rapidly.
After deciding against using it as a vessel for resurrection, Ed began to exert influence on it in another direction, through the Aberration rats that Ed had wiped out.
Thorns resembling rat tails began to sprout from around the seed. They burrowed into the not-yet-completely-rotted Hoofed Beast carcass, using the rat's sense of smell to search for usable parts, and began to cut and assemble them.
In the silent darkness, a "horse" that happened to have four legs slowly stood up.
Ed took two steps forward and found the final piece of his plan near the body—a robe of a Tree Worship Church priest.
With a flick of his wrists, the dark green robe unfurled, shaking off the dust that had accumulated over the past two days.
Ed draped the cloak over his shoulders, revealing a large, emerald-green tree pattern in the center of his back.
As night fell, he mounted the somewhat uncomfortable, half-rotten skeleton horse.
"Set off!"
Where are you going?
Little Green asked in her mind.
"The appointed baron!"
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
The sound of the pear-shaped bronze bell, used by the tax collectors of the Tree Worship Church, echoed in the Upperstream Village at midnight.
Even though they knew that the tax officials had just visited two days earlier, the villagers dared not slack off in the slightest. As soon as they woke up, they began to prepare to harvest the fruit from their bodies and pay their taxes.
But soon they heard an even louder bell ringing again, and it was a continuous sound. Some of the older people vaguely remembered that this meant the villagers needed to go out and gather at the village entrance.
Ed, of course, didn't know what the number of rings meant, but he knew that if some scoundrel kept ringing it in the middle of the night, anyone would want to go out and see what was going on.
Sure enough, after about five minutes, nearly a hundred villagers arrived one after another at an open space near the village entrance. For people like them, who are loosely structured and physically weak, this was already considered fast.
At this moment, two or three bonfires had been lit around the open space, and they saw a figure sitting high on a horse standing in the very center of the open space.