Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 149: The Sad Dragon Fae
Myss sat in the waiting area for a while, his patience draining away faster than the sand in an hourglass.
Big Nose, who introduced himself as Laird, fussed around for quite some time, saying he needed to go to a “special room” to communicate and send the letter. He led the group to the waiting area beside the counter but didn’t even pour them a cup of hot water, much less offer any refreshments.
Myss found the whole thing utterly baffling.
Big Nose was nothing more than a frail human. At worst, they could simply knock him unconscious and toss him aside, then head to Gemstone Lake as planned. Ordinary humans couldn’t enter that place anyway, so it was unlikely they would attract pursuers.
Even if they absolutely had to find that Marcela, it would be better if each of them swallowed a “Resolve to Elope” and conducted a carpet search. It was one thing for the Dragon Fae to be delirious, but why was Salaar being so obedient to the rules too?
He couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at Salaar.
Salaar was sitting perfectly straight, but his shoulders were somewhat stiff. He stared at his interlaced hands, his expression subtly grave.
The instant Myss’s gaze swept over him, Salaar reacted within a single heartbeat, as though the tip of a feather had brushed against him.
He turned toward Myss and lowered his voice. “We don’t know the situation at Gemstone Lake, and Tass is in bad condition. If we go there like this, there are too many uncertainties. Seeking help from that Archmage nearby is currently the most efficient option… theoretically.”
There was a rare trace of hesitation in Salaar’s voice.
It was faint, but Myss caught it immediately.
In truth, Myss hadn’t particularly wanted an explanation. He simply found it novel.
Salaar didn’t care about his own life or death, nor would he waver because of a companion’s death. Yet now, for the sake of a Dragon Fae he had known for only a few months, Salaar was actually agonizing over whether he had made the right choice.
“Do whatever you want,” Myss said indifferently. “But you, this time…”
Halfway through, Myss suddenly realized that Salaar had actually been born alongside him in the depths of darkness.
The amount of time this human Hero had truly spent as a “person,” troubled by falling in love with his enemy and worrying over trivial matters involving his companions, was probably only these few short months.
If the wicked Archdemon remained unshaken by the bright human world, what about this remarkable Hero…?
…Thump.
In one insignificant heartbeat, a thought slipped into Myss’s mind. As long as his true body remained unharmed, he wanted this journey to last a little longer. Just a little longer. He wanted to see what else might make his heart tremble.
Whether his goal was to toy with Salaar, hurt him, or simply satisfy his curiosity, Myss didn’t think too deeply about it.
He simply…didn’t want it to end yet.
“What is it?” Seeing Myss staring straight at him, Salaar instinctively touched his face.
“Nothing,” Myss said. “When the Dragon Fae is about to breathe his last, I’ll tell you.”
“Bastard…” came Tass’s weak protest from inside his pocket.
Myss poked the bulging pocket. “Fork, keep an eye on him.”
Fork quietly acknowledged him and, while he was at it, draped his warmed tail outside the pocket to cool it off.
“That Laird really has some nerve.”
Two seats away, Earl couldn’t help complaining.
“We aren’t from Atla, after all. Even if he offends a noble from Aufon, there won’t be much consequence,” Kai casually consoled him. “At least we got our entry documents. In Atla, you can’t get anywhere without proof of entry.”
Suddenly, the door opened again, and a young man carrying a food basket walked in.
Calling him a “man” wasn’t entirely accurate. He looked under twenty, with traces of boyhood still lingering in his features. He had the same large nose as Laird, though his features were much more harmonious, and he didn’t have any strangely shaped facial hair.
He wore an employee uniform slightly too large for his frame and bowed to the group, greeting them politely.
“My name is Lawler. I’m Laird’s nephew. Uncle Laird went out to take care of something, so I’m covering for him.”
As he spoke, he lifted the cloth covering the basket, revealing cold pies baked to perfection. “These are syrup pies my family made. If you don’t mind, you can have them with tea…”
He glanced at the completely empty table, his eyebrows twitching. “…With hot tea. I’ll make some for everyone right now.”
Myss gave this Lawler a few extra glances from the corner of his eye.
To him, Laird’s strength was on the same level as an earthworm after rain. Lawler’s aura didn’t quite reach the level of a genius, but it was still decent. He at least counted as a person.
His Magibase was a tall, sturdy bull. It obediently followed behind Lawler, looking thoroughly easy to bully.
Lawler remained oblivious to Myss’s scrutinization. He hurriedly boiled tea and placed the pies beside the cast-iron fireplace to warm them. Once the smell of baked pastry began drifting through the room, Lawler, who had been spinning around like a top, finally stopped.
He served everyone the freshly brewed tea, rubbed his hands together, and said apologetically, “Uncle said he was going to contact that Archmage. I can more or less guess what happened… I’m very sorry. He shouldn’t have charged you that much…”
He looked awkward and ashamed, as though he wished he could squeeze himself into a crack in the floor.
Earl glared irritably at Lawler for a while.
Unfortunately, Lawler’s clothes looked thoroughly shabby, and he was around Earl’s age. The young master of the Nebula family sulked for a while, then ultimately changed the subject.
“He often contacts Lady Marcela? Just a… pardon me… just a border employee?”
At the name “Lady Marcela,” Lawler’s expression dimmed for an instant.
Then he took a deep breath. “Yes. It’s a long story… What he did was indeed wrong, but he also truly wasn’t lying.”
“Ah, the syrup pies are about to burn.”
Earl had just been about to ask more when Lawler hurried away again like a startled bird.
Big Nose Laird returned quickly. When he entered, Lawler had just placed the pies on the table.
Laird gave Lawler’s messy black hair a disgusted glance and directly took the pie Lawler had saved for himself. He finished it in a few bites.
When he spoke again, steam was still coming from his mouth.
“Lady Marcela has read the letter. She’s willing to see you.” He lifted his chin. “You’d better leave now. Her time is extremely valuable.”
Myss bit down on a syrup pie and stood up as though he had been granted a pardon, only for Salaar to pull him back down.
“Then where does she live?” Salaar asked.
Only then did Laird leisurely continue. “Her residence is extremely remote. I can take you there. Of course, as for the fee…”
“Uncle!” Lawler couldn’t help blurting out. Before Laird could prepare his wording, Lawler spoke faster than he had at any point since entering the room. “The road is hard to find, but there’s no danger along the way. I’ll take you there. For free.”
Laird sneered, shook his head, and shifted his backside back onto the stool behind the counter.
“Foolish,” Laird muttered loudly enough for all of them to hear. “You have no idea how to deal with that lady.”
Lawler acted as though he hadn’t heard. With an apologetic smile, he opened the door for the group.
……
Tass curled up inside Myss’s pocket, jostling with every step Myss took.
No one knew what material Myss’s ranger coat was made from. It felt tougher and softer than the finest silk, yet it always retained a faint coolness and could never be warmed no matter how long it was held.
Right now, Tass was hotter than a fish frying on an iron plate, so that sensation suited him perfectly. Tass tried hard to bury his face into the seam of Myss’s pocket so the coolness could sink deeper into him.
“Do you have to lie like that?” Fork complained. “You’re crushing my tail to the point it has gone numb.”
Knife shifted its body and tilted its head. “Are you uncomfortable? I can switch places with you.”
Compared with the lively Fork, Knife sounded listless, as though he were forcing himself to stay energetic.
Fork flicked its tongue. “I just want to know when this is going to end, and what’s wrong with you acting like this.”
Knife: “Maybe Salaar is subconsciously unhappy.”
Fork almost flicked its tongue into Knife’s face. “Unhappy? Him?… I thought he was born without enough sense to worry. What’s wrong with him now?”
Tass’s body trembled. Half-delirious, he turned himself so that both ears were exposed.
Unfortunately, Knife was far too honest. “I don’t know either. I’m only affected by him. I’m not actually him.”
“Maybe he’s worried about Lord Tass.”
“I don’t believe that. He didn’t even act like this when he was worrying about the human world.”
“Still, this guy’s condition really is frightening. Do you think these black scales might be contagious?”
Fork rubbed at his silver-like scales, sounding genuinely alarmed.
Knife hesitantly moved closer. “Probably not. I don’t want to turn black…”
“If it were contagious… you’d already have caught it… stupid snakes…” Tass muttered weakly.
Perhaps because his fever was too severe, Tass’s mind was a haze. The two little snakes’ whispers drifted near and far.
His homeland was close now, and fragments of memory kept surging up.
“Dark red scales. Such a pure shade of red.”
A voice echoed from the depths of his memory. “Excellent. Children with red scales are usually lively and strong. This child shall be called Tass Ga.”
Dragon Faes had no parents, so naturally they had no surnames to inherit.
By convention among Dragon Faes, any Dragon Faes whose wings had anything to do with the color red bore the surname “Ga.”
But his wings were no longer red now, Tass thought hazily.
Strangely enough, every Dragon Fae was born with the appearance of a young adult. They instinctively knew how to use gemstones and how to communicate with others of their kind.
It was precisely because this inheritance resembled the dragons of legend, combined with their beautiful scales, that humans called them “Dragon Faes.”
Although Dragon Faes looked somewhat human, they didn’t reproduce like humans, nor did they age in the human way.
When a Dragon Fae approached the end of their lifespan, pitch-black wounds would appear on their body that even gemstones couldn’t heal. Those wounds resembled cracks in gemstones and would gradually spread from the limbs and wings toward the heart.
The symptoms could appear anywhere between one hundred and two hundred years of age.
Dragon Faes called this incurable condition “Wither.”
In the later stages of Wither, a Dragon Fae would lose their limbs and wings.
Before becoming completely incapacitated, most Dragon Faes chose to return to their homeland and quietly live out the final stretch of their lives, eventually shattering within the lake that had given birth to them.
…Tass had seen a Withered Dragon Fae before. He knew what it looked like when black marks covered the body.
There had never been a Dragon Fae with black wings, just as humans couldn’t naturally have corpse-like bluish-purple skin.
To Dragon Faes, “black” was the most ominous color. It referred to only one thing: death.
“Child, make peace with your wounds. They will destroy our hearts only at the very end.”
The elder’s warning still echoed in the depths of his mind. “But if wounds appear on all four of your limbs, remember to return home as early as possible.”
The Dragon Fae suddenly felt a little sad.
He wasn’t even forty years old, still young by any measure. There wasn’t a single black mark on his fingers, so how had his entire body turned black?
Maybe he had become a living corpse, some legendary Dragon Fae zombie, or perhaps someone had cursed him for killing too many people.
Half-delirious, Tass even sniffed the tip of his wing to see whether it smelled strange.
Suddenly, Myss’s pocket shifted. Caught off guard, a joint on the Dragon Fae’s wing jabbed painfully into his nose. Even with his consciousness blurred by fever, Tass still let out a loud yelp.
“I’ll take a look!” Fork instantly perked up and raised his body to peek outside.
The next second, there was a cry of “Ow!” and Fork was yanked straight out of the pocket.
“Give him back,” Myss said coldly.
Suspended in midair, Fork twisted in terror like a freshwater eel thrown into the ocean. “Myss! Salaar! Save me!”
The person holding Fork was an elderly woman with a face full of wrinkles. She had ash-gray eyes, and her hair was arranged in an immaculate bun.
Black-and-white strands were plastered tightly against her scalp like a cold helmet.
The old woman wore no jewelry at all. She had only a pair of matte black leather gloves and a long, oppressive black robe, as though she were on her way to a funeral.
At the moment, her hands were crossed. Set into the back of her right glove was an enormous black opal covered in vivid flashes of color.
Without question, that was her “staff.”
Behind her loomed a gloomy mansion.
It stood deep within a crowded, dense forest, utterly lacking the sunny atmosphere of the other mansions. The building’s exterior showed only the dull natural gray of stone bricks and ghastly white walls.
“Lady Marcela!”
Earl hurried forward two steps. He obediently lowered his head, adopting an extremely respectful posture. “You misunderstand. They are my, uh, traveling companions.”
“This is Kendrick Karns. A child of the Karns family. I’m sure you remember them.”
The Kingdom Archmage, Marcela Memi. It seemed that after winding their way through this boring forest, they had finally found the right place. And before Myss had even reacted, this “Kingdom Archmage” had used magic to snatch away Fork the moment it stuck its head out.
Myss cared nothing for social niceties. The fact that he hadn’t attacked immediately already counted as consideration for this visit.
“Give me back that snake.” Myss interrupted Earl and repeated himself with a dark expression.
Marcela slowly turned her face toward him, her movements even stiffer than a puppet’s.
She studied Myss expressionlessly for a while, then slowly smiled. Even Myss could tell that her eyes weren’t smiling. Only the wrinkles on the lower half of her face moved.
“This snake is interesting…”
“Archmage Marcela!”
Lawler suddenly stepped forward two paces, even farther than Earl.
“Archmage Marcela, it’s me, Lawler.”
“These people are all my guests. They only want to ask you for a small favor. Please don’t make things difficult for them.”
Marcela’s smile vanished.
Her face became rigid once more as she lowered her eyes. After a long moment, she flicked one hand, and Fork was thrown toward Myss. Myss caught him effortlessly, his blood-red eyes still glaring at Marcela.
“Before sunset,” she said sparingly.
Then she turned away without acknowledging Earl at all. Myss stabbed at her back with his gaze for a while.
“Hey, Salaar. Are we really going to let this person treat the Dragon Fae?”
Salaar was also staring at Marcela’s back, clearly evaluating something.
Myss continued on his own. “Forget it. If the Dragon Fae dies here, the funeral is already prepared. She won’t even need to change clothes.”
Such a thoughtful remark. Salaar pressed at his temple.
“It’s nearly sunset. Let’s go inside first.” He let out a long breath.
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