Chapter 337: He Is Taken!
"The humans are no longer a fallen race?!"
The Dragon girl tilted her head, a mocking smile playing on her lips. She turned back to her five hundred kin, looking for a laugh or an explanation. All she received was a tense, awkward silence. "How peculiar. We have heard of no such news before."
"That’s because we are the news," Ricky cut in, his voice calm and measured. John relaxed his grip on Luke, sensing that Ricky had the situation under control. Ricky was far more self-controlled than Luke. "Our humans have recently conquered a zone, and we are merely the vanguard sent to map the surrounding territories."
Just as Ricky said his piece, the atmosphere shifted with palpable weight. The Dragons exchanged silent, knowing gazes that spoke volumes about their internal shock; the mere concept of humans walking these plains unchained was an affront to their understanding of the world.
Then, a fierce gleam of greed ignited in many of their eyes. They began to eye the small group of humans not as explorers, but as a rare, succulent delicacy that had foolishly delivered itself to their doorstep.
"And where is your zone exactly?" the Dragon girl asked, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous purr.
"None of your business," Ricky snapped, maintaining his position at the helm.
While the verbal sparring continued, John’s focus remained on the Dragons up front. He used his two abilities to dissect the Dragons’ compositions. They were, without a doubt, the top predators of this sector.
Their frames weren’t built from the standard white code of the environment; they were structured from shimmering golden codes, interlaced with intricate clusters of white, green, and blue.
The density of these clusters was terrifying. Back at the academy, John had been impressed by teachers who possessed fifty such clusters. Here, even the rank-and-file Dragon soldiers possessed at least fifty, while the girl in the lead pulsed with a complexity he couldn’t yet quantify.
"Oh, we have someone who can bark," the Dragon girl laughed, pointing a mocking, clawed finger toward Ricky. "But barking is a far cry from biting. Tell me, handsome boy, are you strong enough to back those words? Or are you just loud meat?"
Ricky was about to deliver a biting retort when he felt a firm, sudden tug on his shoulder. John stepped forward, silently signalling for his friend to stand down. Seeing John intervene for a second time, and seeing the two, Luke and Ricky, instantly and obediently fall back, made the Dragon girl’s eyes snap toward John.
The shift in her expression was instantaneous. The mocking amusement vanished, replaced by a sharp intensity. She looked at him not as a curiosity, but as a rival.
"So, you must be the one holding the leash," she said, her vertical pupils dilating. She looked as though she was physically itching to test John’s power against her own.
"I want so badly to challenge you right here, human, but my orders are restrictive. We shall bide our time until the protective period is over. And very soon, you’ll learn exactly why we wait."
Something about John’s domineering presence seemed to pique her interest beyond mere arrogance. She decided, in a fit of draconic whim, to offer a warning, perhaps because she wanted to ensure her prey survived long enough for her to be the one to kill him.
"Let me warn you," her face turned solemn, the scales along her neck fluttering. "There is a looming danger in these lands that your little vanguard is clearly ignorant of. We are not the only race in this grand sector.
There are natural dwellers, ancient horrors that belong to this world, and they are the reason you should never have ventured outside your walls in a group this small."
John glanced at his friends, seeing the flicker of worry behind their eyes. Yet, a strange sense of relief washed over him. If they hadn’t taken this risk, they would still be sitting blindly behind their Grand Wall, unaware of the predators stalking the shadows of the new world.
"Natural dwellers," John finally spoke, his voice steady. "Are they the Pirates you referred to before?"
The Dragon girl nodded. "Exactly."
"What race are they?"
"I can tell you," she said, her words causing a ripple of shocked murmurs to break out among the five hundred Dragons behind her. "But on one condition... You’ll date me."
"Hey! He’s taken!" Cissel suddenly growled, her hand moving to the hilts of her daggers. She looked ready to charge the entire draconic host if that girl didn’t take her eyes off John.
The Dragon girl erupted into a fit of raucous, booming laughter, joined by her kin. "Hahaha! That’s hilarious! Human girl, our date means something entirely different from what your primitive mind suggests. Rest assured, I only want him to fight me in a life-or-death ritual battle."
"Out of the question," Elena stepped in, crossing her arms and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Cissel. "He is off-limits. Dating or fighting, it’s all the same; find someone else to play with."
"Fine, fine. I was only joking," the Dragon girl said, but as she looked at John, an evil smirk played on her lips. "But you need to survive the upcoming disaster first. I’ll be watching from the safety of my zone. As for you... Hehehe!"
She didn’t linger. With a decisive flare of her massive primary wings, she signalled her group. They retreated toward their shimmering white dome with a speed that suggested they weren’t just leaving, they were seeking cover.
Seeing that sudden, disciplined retreat after such a long display of arrogance made John’s blood run cold. He didn’t need a system notification to tell him what that meant.
"Run!" he commanded.
He didn’t need to look behind him to know the Pirates were close; they were coming. The Dragons’ sudden retreat was the only warning he needed. However, John wasn’t running for his life in the way the Dragons expected. Their own Grand Wall was a twenty-hour march away; they wouldn’t make it back even at a full sprint.
The decisiveness he had seen in the Dragon girl was a clear omen: whatever was coming was something that even the top race in the ongoing apocalypse feared to face in the open. John gripped his sword, his eyes scanning the horizon for the first sign of the natural dwellers.