“Of course,” Frostsilver said. “I’ll send her a short message spell in a bit.”
“Good thing we were once teammates.”
“You have something behind your words, paladin.”
The short message spell wasn’t something you could send to just anyone; both parties needed to agree in advance.
Frostsilver briefly chanted a spell, her words turning into text, then disappearing into the air.
Almost simultaneously, in the hidden torture room on Frostsilver’s ship far away, a ping sounded beside the ear of the sleeping blonde girl.
Sophia didn’t move at all, only the slight movement of her nostrils indicating she was asleep.
“No response?”
Richard asked, “What did you do to her?”
“Just tied her up nicely with golden ropes—magical constructs, they won’t hurt anyone,” Frostsilver said.
“I’m a very rational person; I wouldn’t do anything unnecessary to harm your precious fiancée. Unlike that foolish mortal, the Empire’s Emperor, who loves acting on whims and lacks rationality—they’re not the same at all.”
“Keep contacting her.”
Frostsilver continued to cast the spell with her mouth open.
Aurina saw her distracted and eyed the treasure glow on her body covetously, so she tiptoed closer. Richard didn’t even look, directly reaching out to grab her dragon horn.
On the other side.
“Ping pong ping pong ping pong….”
Beside Sophia, it was as if someone were playing ping-pong, the sharp ringing continuing nonstop. Sophia forced her eyes half open, still groggy and dazed as she slowly came to her senses.
Frostsilver turned her head and said to Richard, “Alright, Richard, stop acting like an angry beast all the time—your dear fiancée has been contacted.”
“Maybe because you have no family, you don’t know how tormenting it is to be kidnapped.”
“I do have blood relatives, though I despise him, he’s my kin.”
Frostsilver deliberately emphasized the words “blood relatives.”
As she spoke, she raised her hand and tapped the characters floating in the air; the characters rippled like a serene lake.
From over there came Sophia’s half-asleep, half-awake voice: “Stop making noise, I want to sleep.”
Then everything returned to silence.
“Not bad,” Frostsilver said. “With the whole city in turmoil now, Sophia can still sleep. Last time we slept at the inn, the enemies almost burned the inn down; we dealt with the enemies, went back, and she was still in dreamland—her sleep quality is really good.”
Richard said, “At least in the wilderness, she doesn’t sleep that deeply; she never lets her teammates fight alone.”
Frostsilver said, “Another example of the renowned dragon-slaying paladin being unfair—it seems we can award Sophia the title of Sleep King without controversy.”
Aurina said unconvinced, “When it comes to sleeping, this king is the world number one—hers is ineffective sleeping; when this king sleeps, she gets stronger, bigger, and sturdier.”
Frostsilver said, “Even a true dragon admits that, aside from sleep gains, Sophia surpasses her in all other aspects.”
“Alright,” Richard said. “Now’s not the time to quibble over this; we have to hurry. Can you notify your subordinates on the ship?”
“That won’t work; I didn’t leave anyone qualified to communicate with me on the ship.”
“How is that possible?”
“After all….”
Frostsilver glanced at Aurina; this little dragon was staring at her “lecherously,” her eyes gleaming with greedy light—truly inheriting from her father; this greedy virtue was really dragon-enticing.
“I don’t have a contingency for being accidentally defeated by prisoners in my own mobile base and hastily retreating.”
“Then you can use this magical item to notify your subordinates; have him go to the ship and bring Sophia out.”
A message popped up on the phone: “Supreme my lord, we have now arrived at the periphery of the temple district; the military nobles are starting to prepare the first wave of attack. Do we need to help, or find an excuse to delay and not intervene?”
Frostsilver showed the phone, which carried a dragon saliva scent, to Richard and said, “Time is really plentiful—plentiful enough for me to send someone to notify your sleepyhead fiancée, and then we agree on a place to meet up.”
“You can teleport over.”
“Do you think my mana is unlimited? Use precious teleportation just for this? Then when we attack the palace later, don’t blame me if I can’t teleport around. After all, I need to leave myself an escape route—if things look bad, teleport away directly, taking Aurina with me,” Frostsilver said. “Your face is all written with ‘I’m irrational and proud of it’—looks like you don’t care much about your fellow believers and brothers and sisters either.”
“Isn’t that because I find it hard to trust you?” Richard said. “Sign now; I demand command rights over the squad.”
“Fine,” Frostsilver had no major objections. She raised her hand, snapped her fingers, and a white paper fell between her fingers.
“You can take your time writing; I don’t mind.”
Richard took the paper, then took the pen Frostsilver handed over, and quickly wrote neat words on the white paper.
Aurina directly jumped onto Richard, her own throne, and lowered her head.
Her red hair flowed down, covering Richard and falling onto the white paper’s surface.
Frostsilver also watched from the side.
“Spoils of war are divided into three equal shares; Frostsilver must get the dragon-slaying sword’s blade—if obtained, deduct from her share of spoils value, appraisal done by Aurina.”
Frostsilver asked, “You’re actually planning to give Aurina a share of the spoils?”
“What?” Aurina knocked on Richard’s helmet in dissatisfaction and said, “It’s actually refusing to give this king twenty out of twenty-one shares.”
Richard said, “She’s also one of the team members, and I acknowledge her performance in battle. Alright, just the three of us?”
“For this kind of thing, the fewer people, the better,” Frostsilver said. “One more person to teleport means one more effort from me; in the palace, I can still use short-range teleport to avoid getting surrounded by a sea of people.”
Amid Aurina’s dissatisfied muttering, Frostsilver signed the agreement quite readily.
Richard asked, “So now, how do we get to the palace?”
“You guess.”
Richard said, “Based on my understanding of you, there must be your informants arranged in the palace; you lured and threatened them to serve you anytime, anywhere, secretly taking us to the palace, right?”
“A foolish idea,” Frostsilver said. “The more complex the arrangement, the more likely it is to go wrong—especially outside one’s sphere of influence.”
Aurina put her hands on her hips and said, “I know—it’s definitely this king; this king will fly you there right now.”
“Wrong—forget it, I shouldn’t pay attention to your words at all. And stop sneaking closer to me; don’t think I don’t know you’re trying to steal my stuff again. Richard, pull her away from me a bit.”
“Stop wasting time, Frostsilver.”
“Teleport—come hold my hand; the three of us form a circle. Richard, keep an eye on this little dragon, otherwise….”
“I understand.” Richard grabbed Aurina’s hand that was reaching toward Frostsilver; Aurina said rather regretfully, “Finally saw a target that’s weak and loaded with gold coins.”
“Hmph, I don’t argue with children,” Frostsilver said as she put away the magic circle, gripped Richard’s large hand tightly, held Aurina’s small hand, and before chanting the spell, said, “Guess where we’re teleporting to?”
“I trust you.”
“No curiosity at all—boring.” With that, Frostsilver chanted the spell once more.
Twisted blue light appeared, enveloping the two dragons and one human.
When they opened their eyes, they were already in a tunnel.
Aurina adjusted slightly to the darkness, then saw the cave walls clearly—smooth like glass. The tunnel was straight; they seemed like ants crawling into a straw.
Aurina immediately recalled—this wasn’t the tunnel she had made?
Frostsilver chanted another spell; oxygen bubbles covered the three’s heads.
Richard tapped the cave wall with his knuckles and said, “What is this? Seems like it was melted by high temperature? Did you make it with magic?”
“It leads straight to the palace treasury—a straight line,” Frostsilver said. “This is the work of the Dread Dragon.”
There was a faint dragon saliva scent in the air, but due to the oxygen bubbles, no one smelled it.