Claire did not know how long she had been wandering through this damned underground.
The passages built of limestone were pitch-black; in the darkness only the weak light from the cup candles lit on both sides of the passage remained.
According to the plan provided by Sibyl, Flora’s task was to wager large amounts of gold coins to interfere with the account reconciliation; Liz had gone to the casino in advance to keep watch and was responsible for protecting the princess’s safety.
Ophelia and Claire’s task was to infiltrate the underground of the casino through the sewage canal and search for the location of the three thousand pounds of gold that the Cult of the Dragon was transferring.
Flora had temporarily decided to be drawn by the gathering in the underground plaza, and Claire naturally could not refuse to accompany her, so the class-monitor classmate who did not wish to be a third wheel had gone ahead to scout the path.
Yet Claire had already wandered through the underground space of the casino for at least half an hour or more without seeing Ophelia who was supposed to meet her.
The scent of burning incense came rushing toward her face; a strange and mysterious fragrance filled the passage.
Claire pulled the brim of the hood on her head, covering her eyes.
The passage grew broader.
Tall stone sculptures stood in the darkness; by the weak light of the cup candles one could vaguely make out that they were standing statues with snake heads and human bodies.
The vertical pupils unique to reptiles looked down upon Claire who had stepped in here, making her heart feel a little creepy.
She could not help adjusting the position of the gun handle in her holster so that she could draw and fire at the fastest speed.
She groped along the stone wall and advanced at a slow pace until an oil lamp illuminated her eyes.
Ahead was a tall stone wall; upon the smooth stone surface was a mural painted with pigments of sharp colors.
It was not an imagined religious painting.
This mural was actually a map—a world map of the era more than seventeen hundred years ago under the rule of the dragon race!
In the sacred texts of the Church of All Saints, dragons were an arrogant race that enslaved humans, and the Great God Ein had specially designated the hero Leman to end their sinful and fallen rule.
Yet what the mural presented was an age of flourishing civilization.
The map outlined the territories of the five Dragon King nations, as well as the main cities and major transportation routes of that time.
The dragon race had built giant towers that soared into the heavens upon the two continents and had constructed cities surrounding these giant towers.
Within the cities lived small humans who lived and worked in peace and contentment.
Broad roads connected cities that were far apart across this wild land.
In fact scholars had long pointed out that the Church had misunderstood the dragon race, regarding them as large lizards that loved to eat people, when in reality the dragon civilization had formed morality and law far earlier than humans, and many of humanity’s early cities had been built upon the ruins of dragon cities.
Claire noticed that the pigments on the painting were already mottled; clearly the mural was an ancient object with a long history.
This indicated that this underground hall had already existed long ago, and that the deformed giant-insect-like Ant Nest had merely been built upon it; it also indicated that the Cult of the Dragon was by no means an ordinary heretical sect.
Unlike those self-proclaimed holy mages or cults that fabricated gods out of thin air, the followers of the dragons transmitted the history and civilization of a thousand years ago in the form of religion, and their organizational structure and methods of operation advanced with each passing day along with the development of human society.
Just as Claire was immersed in that mural, suddenly viscous liquid dripped onto the hood on the top of her head.
Claire looked up in puzzlement—why would limestone seep water?
“Child of the dragon… it is a child of the dragon…”
Someone was speaking, yet it was not a tone that a human could produce; it was hoarse like the hissing of a snake.
The voice echoed in the narrow passage as if coming from all directions, and for a moment Claire found it difficult to distinguish from which direction it originated.
This thought flashed for only an instant before being replaced by intense pain.
The arm she had braced against the wall was pierced by something.
Claire immediately activated her ability to freeze time and only then discovered that it was a sharp claw covered with pale fine scales.
She realized what had dripped onto the top of her head earlier—it was the attacker’s saliva!
That creature had been clinging to the roof like a greedy lizard, carefully crawling down to approach her while letting greedy drool flow and emitting that hair-raising hissing sound.
Claire covered her arm and flashed to the side, drawing the revolver from her waist with one hand and continuously pulling the trigger.
Even while situated in darkness, Claire had confidence in her marksmanship.
Before entering the Intelligence Academy, Herta had trained her to aim at human-shaped targets and shoot using only one hand.
Such repetitive training had long caused Claire to form the inertial motions of “raising the gun” and “hitting the skull.”
The muzzle fitted with a silencer continuously spat six tongues of flame; sparks burst upon the limestone ceiling, illuminating a gaunt and deformed face.
The bullets directly sheared away the upper half of that thing’s skull; it did not even have time to emit a dying whimper before heavily falling to the ground.
Claire walked to its side, kicked the corpse to confirm it was thoroughly dead.
Reptilian scale skin wrapped a human skull; from the withered lips protruded teeth as sharp as a snake’s.
The term “sub-dragonkin” appeared in Claire’s mind.
It was said that extreme believers of the Cult of the Dragon would drink dragon blood in the hope of becoming closer in body to their masters, yet the success rate was terrifyingly low.
Only a small number of fortunate ones would retain human consciousness; they called themselves dragon descendants.
The rest of them would all become monsters between human and dragon and were called sub-dragonkin, no different from wild beasts.
Even more terrifying was that Claire detected that beneath the scent of the burning incense a heavy smell of blood was actually permeating.
She could feel that some liquid was quietly spreading across the floor beneath her feet; stepping upon it felt slightly sticky.
She knew it was blood that had not yet coagulated.
If a coal lamp were lit at this moment, the entire floor would probably reflect a shocking crimson.
Claire silently prayed in her heart that Ophelia was not among the victims.
After simply treating the wound, Claire quickly circled past the mural and stepped into the deepest part of this level.
Her nose was filled with the smell of blood; from time to time sub-dragonkin corpses entered her vision.
Claire returned the revolver to its holster, let out a long breath, and squatted beside a corpse.
Ophelia was squatting on the other side of this corpse, wiping the edge of a straight sword with a handkerchief, finally allowing Claire’s suspended heart to settle.
“Did you kill all of them?” Claire raised her head and looked at Ophelia.
Ophelia shook her head.
“No… the previous two were killed by me; this one was not.”
Claire recalled that the previous two corpses both had a wound at the heart—that was thrust by Ophelia’s straight sword.
Yet the wound upon the corpse before their eyes was terrifyingly large; some heavy weapon had violently chopped downward, beginning from the sub-dragonkin’s shoulder and continuing all the way until it shattered the heart, nearly severing its shoulder and arm together.
Blood was still trickling out from the shattered heart, indicating that this slaughter had ended not long ago and the culprit might still be near them.
“It’s good that you came, Claire. With you here at least we don’t have to worry about being ambushed…” Ophelia murmured in a small voice.
“So where exactly are we? Where are those three thousand pounds of gold?”
“Perhaps it is a chapel or memorial hall of the Cult of the Dragon. This level’s great hall is used to display these murals; the vault is in other areas.”
Ophelia stood up and lit a staff inlaid with light-attribute crystal stones—the same kind of creation Miriel had used at the hearing.
Afterward she raised the staff high above her head; upon the wall before them were more than ten murals connected together, depicting that history forgotten by humans.
Like the map Claire had seen earlier, upon the wall were ancient paintings drawn with bright pigments.
Scale-clad dragon-descendant priests led at the front of humans prostrating themselves in worship, forming a worship procession that stretched beyond the eye’s reach; what the procession surrounded was a white-and-gold giant tower.
“The Platinum Tower…” Claire softly uttered these few words.
She recognized at a glance that tower located in the imperial capital of the Southern Continent, because the imperial palace she had lived in as a child stood beneath that tower.
Yet in this painting that tower was the residence of the Chen King; a winding dragon body coiled around the towering giant tower, and a majestic dragon head protruded from the clouds to look down upon all things, its mane and long whiskers floating with the wind.
“Look quickly—does that figure somewhat resemble Flora?” Ophelia pointed toward the female human form at the very front of the priestly procession.
Bright-gold pigment outlined her hair; indigo pigment dotted her pupils… golden hair and blue eyes—those were indeed features unique to the Lucis imperial family.
She was the only human form among all those in this mural that had been colored, indicating that her status far surpassed the other dragon descendants and was second only to the Chen King who was worshipped as a deity.
“In her hand is a stick… in folk paintings a stick means a scepter. She is the leader of these dragon descendants, the first Dragon Priest.”
The moment Claire finished speaking she herself felt a sudden surprise.
Because this meant that the ancestors of the Lucis imperial family—and also her own ancestors—had perhaps once served the Chen Dragon King, which completely ran counter to the family history she had learned in childhood.
“The imperial family of the Lucis Empire was once Dragon Priests… this is truly explosive material. If this painting were transmitted into the Empire’s territory it would probably throw the world into chaos,” Ophelia said softly.
Claire took the staff from Ophelia’s hand and advanced at a slow pace, no longer speaking a single word.
The two of them looked at the murals one after another; these paintings roughly depicted the dragon race leading humans to reclaim wasteland, lay roads, and construct a brilliant civilization.
“Have you noticed anything?” Ophelia had followed behind Claire’s backside for a good while and finally could not help asking.
“I think these murals are the history in the hearts of the believers of the Cult of the Dragon as they recorded it.” Claire stopped before one mural and illuminated the entire painting.
At the very bottom of the mural was a small human form holding a golden sword, while above it were the five Dragon Kings of varying forms.
The content of this painting did not require Claire’s interpretation; Ophelia could also understand it, and even most ordinary believers were familiar with this stretch of history.
The Dragon-Poem War—the second hero named Leman raised an army from the Northern Continent and declared war upon the Dragon Kings in order to liberate the enslaved humans.
The Wind Dragon King, the Water Dragon King, and the Sand Dragon King successively died beneath the holy sword; the despicable Fire Dragon King betrayed his allies and subjects, took his clan, and fled flying toward the mountains.
Regarding this stretch of history alone, what was depicted in the painting did not differ greatly from the history described in the sacred texts.
The portion of history concerning the Chen King in the painting, however, differed greatly from what the sacred texts stated.
The solitary and lofty Chen King floated in the sky above the imperial capital and, with the Platinum Tower as the center, cast a spell that covered the entire city.
It was a city wall constructed of disordered time; the moment the hero’s army stepped into that wall they would be swept up by temporal turbulence—either turning into eternally frozen statues or being accelerated in aging until death.
The radiance of the holy sword could not cut through the wall of time; the battle situation fell into a stalemate.
Yet that golden-haired, blue-eyed priestess earlier destroyed the foundation of the spell within the city; the wall of time collapsed in an instant.
The hero entered the city and severed the Chen King’s dragon head; the dragon descendants embraced the winding dragon body and wept bitterly.
From then on the dragon civilization completely headed toward extinction.
What a beautiful painting it was—anger, violence, and death intertwined and blended under the painter’s brushstrokes, ultimately presenting a soul-stirring sorrow.
“In other words, the Chen Dragon King was betrayed by the ancestors of the Lucis emperor and was only then killed by Leman? This unofficial history is truly wild enough…”
Ophelia gazed at the mural for a long time and murmured.
Claire fell into silence.
A tremendous shock exploded in her mind; her head was filled with information that was difficult to comprehend.
The family into which she had been born was the descendant of a usurper, and the authority over time that the Chen Dragon King in the painting controlled was so similar to her own ability…
Thinking of this she slightly shivered.
“The next painting is the last one. Let’s finish looking at it.”
Ophelia gently patted Claire’s shoulder, waking her from the shock.
Claire raised the staff high and illuminated the final mural.
It was a bloody painting that recorded buried history.
The wall of time had taken a great number of lives; the enraged hero did not intend to easily forgive the Chen Dragon King even though it was already dead.
In order to prevent the Chen King’s rebirth, the hero ordered the craftsmen to throw that severed dragon head into a gigantic furnace.
Flames burned within the dragon king’s skull, fusing its resentment and power together into the molten iron.
With the craftsmen’s hammering, a curved scarlet sword gradually took shape; upon the body of the sword were carved dragon characters that rolled like ocean waves, as if the low chant of a dragon soul were coiling around it.
Ophelia said in surprise, “I recognize that sword. It is Queen Christine’s accompanying sword. Its name is Gram… meaning the sword that swallows the dragon soul!”