Aurina still remembered her own heroic might, remembered her own great deeds.
That was a beautiful day; over the ocean, she passed through the territory of the Deep Sea Queen—that always-temperamental deity—through tsunamis and storms, catching a whale that was supposed to be offered to Him.
The Deep Sea Queen was furious, a half-kilometer tsunami trying to knock the dragon down.
But easily, she passed through the tsunami, ate her fill, and drank her content.
Patrolling the coastline, she saw the glow of treasure, and arrived at the imperial capital.
At first, Aurina had planned to directly airdrop, but the little bugs in the bug nest biting the dragon would be quite troublesome.
So she made a U-turn, transformed into human form, directly dug a hole in the suburbs, dug for an hour, and directly dug to the bug king’s treasury.
Swallowed all the treasures inside into her belly, and conveniently left her mark for him.
A genuinely beautiful day.
Gah, her days were never not beautiful; after all, she was the Dread Dragon.
Aurina proudly puffed out her chest, thinking of her own great deeds again—even the strongest little bug should be amazed by it.
Thinking so, Aurina’s eyes glanced toward Richard.
Richard politely said, “Oh, do you have an acceleration spell?”
From the start, he began running; Aurina was fine with it, making Frostsilver have to stride her long legs to run behind.
“You’re in such a hurry?”
Frostsilver said. “Precious mana—how can it be casually used for hurrying?”
“How far?”
“About a kilometer.”
Seeing that Richard hadn’t noticed her great achievement at all, Aurina ran while scraping the cave wall with her nails, making a piercing sound: “Wow! The cave walls are all glass—so amazing.”
Frostsilver covered her ears: “Don’t scratch like a cat on a blackboard.”
Richard said: “Aurina, run properly; this is just an ordinary cave wall.”
Ignorant little bug.
Before Aurina could teach Richard, imparting wisdom to him through her mouth.
Frostsilver then said: “Ignorant, you’re less curious than a child; think carefully why the cave walls are like glass?”
Richard just wanted to resolve the imperial capital’s conflict sooner, so he said: “Who knows how the Dread Dragon dug the cave? Maybe swallowed it, so the cave walls are smooth.”
Aurina’s tail angrily lifted up; as the Dread Dragon, how could she use such a stupid method to dig a cave?
“This is dragon breath,” Frostsilver said. “He… ha… ha… used dragon breath to directly burn through the earth.”
This female is increasingly charming.
This king will reward her with two dragon seeds later.
Richard said: “Oh.”
“You don’t know how terrifying this is?”
Frostsilver couldn’t help but say.
“To vitrify sand and stone requires very high temperature, and besides, even if it can melt, where did the original material go?”
“How would I know so much? I don’t even know where the world’s end is.”
Richard said while running: “I guess it’s magic; dragon magic is very miraculous.”
Frostsilver said: “You haven’t realized at all how terrifying this is; this is even more terrifying than battling an erupting volcano in the Doomsday Volcano.”
Richard said: “I don’t want to nitpick so much about magic matters.”
Frostsilver said: “So you’re stupid, because you leave your brain unused.”
“Right, right!” Aurina strongly agreed.
“Aren’t you a dragon-vein sorceress?”
Richard said. “And you greatly disdain mages who need to use their brains to learn.”
“Naturally,” Frostsilver said.
“Unlike those pathetic arcanists who need to wear thick glasses and drown themselves in seas of books, we sorcerers just need to excavate the potential in our bloodlines.”
Richard said: “I thought you also studied spells meticulously.”
“Not at all,” Frostsilver said.
“I wouldn’t waste precious time deciphering the weird symbols invented by arcanists, nor read their so-called papers to develop spells.”
“I’ve always been curious,” Richard said while running.
“As sorcerers, mages can invent new spells; how do you learn their spells?”
“By feeling,” Frostsilver said. “This is their pathetic part; they need to learn to cast spells.
As long as they cast a new spell, sorcerers will get the feeling.
And when sorcerers have a burst of inspiration and cast a new spell, they have to put on thick glasses, carefully analyze, observe, and learn.
Truly pitiful.”
Aurina also echoed: “Truly pitiful.”
There was no light in the cave at all, but for a true dragon who could see in the dark, this was nothing.
The world just turned black and white; Aurina saw the cave ahead collapsed and blocked.
“Stop, mount.”
Aurina hugged Richard’s waist, and made a “whoa~” sound from her mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see it’s a dead end ahead?”
“It’s too dark; without any light, I…”
Richard raised his hand, his palm emitting a white light, illuminating the completely blocked road ahead.
“What’s going on? Frostsilver, can you use a spell to let us pass through?”
“How many times have I told you, don’t treat casters as wish-granting machines.”
“But this is a dead end.”
“Of course it’s a dead end,” Frostsilver leaned against the cave wall to rest.
“Even the Emperor could think of blocking the cave; are you surprised?”
Richard urgently said: “Frostsilver!”
Aurina followed Richard, hands on hips, shouting: “Unicorn!”
“What did you say?”
Whether it was an illusion or not, Richard noticed Frostsilver’s originally pink face suddenly reddened a notch.
“This king’s mount has spoken,” Aurina said. “Have basic respect for the strongest little bug, unicorn little bug!”
Frostsilver directly stood straight, hands gripping her staff tightly: “You rude wild bastard, if I don’t give you a taste of my power, you won’t learn your lesson?”
Richard blocked between them, raising his hand to stop: “Alright, Aurina, don’t expose shortcomings, or I’ll hit your head.
Frostsilver, now’s not the time for riddles.”
“Shortcomings?” Frostsilver said.
“My dragon horn isn’t short at all.”
Aurina used her two small hands to touch her own dragon horns; her dragon horns weren’t shorter than Frostsilver’s, even though she was only 1.4 meters tall including dragon and horns.
Aurina looked at Frostsilver’s horn, shook her head, and sighed regretfully.
Richard directly heard Frostsilver make a teeth-grinding sound, like biting a block of ice in her mouth.
“Alright, great King of Ten Thousand Dragons Majesty,” Richard first coaxed Aurina; he bent down, hands extended toward Aurina: “Please come to your throne.”
“It’s King of Kings!”
Aurina smiled happily, immediately climbing onto Richard’s head; Richard straightened his waist, and Aurina bumped her head.
“Gah, the Dread Dragon should have dug it higher back then.”
She now no longer needed a second to replace “I” with Dread Dragon.
“Frostsilver, I know you must have arranged this long ago,” Richard said. “With your wisdom.”
“Of course, this hardly counts as praise, because the opponent is the Emperor,” Frostsilver said, waving her hand.
The dead end ahead, those collapsed earthy yellow stones, all became semi-transparent, then in the white light from Richard’s palm, disappeared into the air.
A narrow passage that could only accommodate one person appeared before the two people and one dragon.
Frostsilver: “I dug this open long ago, left an illusion as an escape route.”
Richard stepped forward and said: “It should be an entry route; Aurina, come down.”
Aurina shifted her butt: “No! This is this king’s throne; I’m still a little girl.”
So, Richard could only crawl in.
Frostsilver followed behind and said: “Strange yet reasonable way of getting along; barely fits the red dragon’s nature.”
Richard said: “Tell me about it.”
“You can defeat her, use violence on her, so the dragon reveres you and thinks you’re very valuable,” Frostsilver said. “At the same time, red dragons have no concept of human family or friendship, but letting her ride on you, for a dragon, is a concept of thorough conquest, meaning she sees you as her possession.”
Aurina listened and got confused: “So sleepy; such a simple thing, only fools make it so complicated.”
Frostsilver remained utterly calm; she had extreme confidence in her intelligence.
“Makes a lot of sense,” Richard said while crawling. “Then regarding my relationship with her, should I use violence later?”
“No comment,” Frostsilver said. “Knowledge isn’t free, dragon-slaying hero.”
Dim light came from ahead; soon they crawled out of the cave mouth.
A treasury spacious enough to be two courtyards appeared before them.
Aurina’s smile, originally expecting to see gold coins, quickly disappeared.
Richard said: “What the hell? Such a big pile of… shit.”
The Emperor’s treasury was very high, high enough to kill an adult from a fall.
But in this treasury, there was a huge black pile of feces, the feces shape still very perfect, circle upon circle, the tip at the top quite symmetrical in the center.
Originally falling from a height that could kill, landing on this huge black feces, at most pat the butt and say really disgusting.
Frostsilver said faintly: “This is why I gave you breathing bubbles.”
Richard looked disgusted: “The Dread Dragon’s shit?”
“Yes.”
“So disgusting,” Aurina pinched her nose, though she didn’t smell any odor.
“That porcelain-white actually didn’t shovel away the shit; can’t tell he actually likes shit so much.”
Saying so, Aurina looked left and right.
The treasures were pitifully few; altogether barely reaching 8471 gold and 6 silver.
How do treasures grow so slowly; this is still one of the masterminds who divided her treasure.
Aurina commented: “Truly a noob Emperor.”
Having received part of the Dread Dragon’s treasure as reward, Frostsilver remained silent.
She said: “He hates this… black hill; I think more than his daughter falling in love with the Dread Dragon, he hates it. I heard every once in a while, he enters the treasury to look, to make himself remember the hatred.”
Richard said: “No wonder he’s so extreme.”
“Must be he got addicted to eating the Dread Dragon’s shit, so he kept it.”
Aurina swore confidently; after all, this was what she pulled after eating a whale. “Truly a maggot little bug.”
“Let’s get out of the treasury first,” Richard said. “Seal the treasury before leaving, take spoils later; don’t waste time.”
Aurina glanced at the “gift” she left in her previous life, nodded: “Quickly off the Emperor.”