Chapter 1225: 212. Skeleton
“This should be the place.”
The sewers of New Tars were likewise dark and filthy. Even a place called “absolutely” beautiful needed somewhere to “hide filth and conceal grime.”
Following the topographical map, Muen passed through pipes as complicated as a spiderweb and finally arrived at the location Morton had marked.
“It doesn’t look like there’s anything unusual.”
Muen looked around. Apart from the dirty water flowing with a soft trickling sound, there was not even a single rat here.
At the end of the pipe, a ventilation fan was turning weakly, while above it was an opening Muen had directly smashed through.
The complexity of the terrain here was no less than that of Belrand, but it did not possess the grandeur of Belrand, where almost the entire area beneath the city had been hollowed out. Many of the pipes were extremely narrow, and Muen often even needed to forcefully open a path.
Perhaps it was because the difference in population was right there.
Or perhaps...
“This sewer system seems to have never been designed, from the very beginning, with the intention of being used for very many years.”
Muen casually pressed lightly against one of the pipes, and an obvious dent immediately appeared in the pipe wall. This degree of cutting corners clearly could not support the operation of a huge city for dozens or hundreds of years, even under circumstances of long-term maintenance.
More than that, it was...
“Concealing something?”
Muen lowered his head and looked beneath his feet.
This was a main passage where pipes intersected. The ground had been constructed from some kind of stone material, and no problem could be seen.
Muen bent down and ran his fingers across it, but he still did not discover anything unusual.
It could be said that, without Morton’s topographical map, even if Muen had inspected this place, he would only have suspected that the builders here had cut some corners. It would have been very difficult to suspect that there was actually something beneath it.
He had to admit that, after hiding for eight hundred years, those Tars survivors truly had some skill when it came to playing “hide-and-seek.”
“But who can they blame for forcing out a traitor from among their own people?”
Recalling Morton’s lonely figure as he charged forward, Muen’s feelings became somewhat complicated.
At that time, Morton had of course known that the evil dragon was no longer an evil dragon... but what could he have done?
For the sake of the people of this city, he still had to draw his sword and launch a charge at the “evil dragon.”
He had merely been carrying out the duty he represented.
“I will accomplish your goal and take revenge for you.”
Muen murmured and smoothly drew Elizabeth.
“Sorry. I’ll have to make you suffer for a while.”
Buzz—
The pure-white blade trembled slightly, but it was not expressing dissatisfaction. Instead, it conveyed a trace of comfort toward Muen.
“Such a good girl. Afterward, I’ll definitely give you the complete premium maintenance package.”
Clang.
The blade pierced the ground and lightly swept across it.
Under this absolute attribute of sharpness, the ground was cut open by Muen as though it were tofu, then divided into blocks of stone, which Muen quickly moved aside.
As the process repeated again and again, a pit extending straight downward quickly took shape.
Muen continuously dug downward without stopping for even a moment. After digging several meters, what was being cut out was still only ordinary stone, but Muen could clearly feel that the stone was becoming harder.
Finally, as Muen swung the pure-white blade with both hands, he felt a trace of resistance.
“Have I reached it?”
Muen quickly lay down and gently brushed away the dust with his palm.
“Magitech material? How extravagant.”
A gleam flashed through Muen’s eyes. The layer of resistance he had felt was astonishingly a layer of magitech material. Its range should have been extremely large, covering a vast area, because once he reached this point, his perception could already detect a faint magical aura.
Its thickness, however, was ordinary. Rather than saying the purpose of these magitech materials was to protect something, it would be more accurate to say that, through the precise formations engraved within them, they concealed something.
At the same time, Muen also sensed some kind of special power within this layer of magitech material.
“Heh. Was this concealment also created with the help of the so-called Goddess of Light? How strange. How come I never knew that woman was so warmhearted?”
Muen tightened his grip on Elizabeth. Without wasting a single word, he directly slashed open the layer of magitech material beneath his feet.
Very quickly, as soil and stone fell away, an enormous hollow space appeared before Muen.
The moment the hollow appeared, an ancient aura immediately surged toward him, carrying a familiar pressure that caused Muen’s heart to jolt.
“Dragon pressure?”
Muen frowned and asked in confusion:
“There’s actually dragon pressure down here?”
Of course he was extremely familiar with this kind of pressure. During this period, he had been staying beside that damned dragon every day. That damned dragon had a violent temper and was always glaring at him with her golden eyes. He had almost been completely marinated in dragon pressure, so naturally there was no possibility that he would mistake it.
“That Kran previously said they had killed an earth dragon underground. Don’t tell me that, besides that earth dragon, there are other dragons here?”
Muen murmured while raising his head and glancing upward.
There was no movement.
Heh. And she still said she had not been poisoned.
The disguise here had already been broken open. If it were that woman under normal circumstances, how could she possibly fail to sense such a clear aura from one of her own kind?
“I really shouldn’t have acted so pathetically eager to help. I should have let your stubbornness teach you a lesson.”
Without the slightest hesitation, Muen jumped into the hollow.
He landed steadily.
“Illumination.”
Muen snapped his fingers. Light instantly drove away the darkness, and a space even broader than his rough estimate immediately appeared before him.
There was no dragon.
Or rather, there was no dragon now.
There did not seem to be any living creature within the entire space. Some damaged objects were scattered across the ground. Judging by their patterns and designs, they should have been extremely ancient.
“This place... seems to be a ruin?”
The range of the Illumination continued to expand. Muen began to see several enormous supporting pillars, while on those pillars were styles and patterns Muen had never seen before.
And on the walls on both sides, Muen saw an enormous mural.
The patterns on the mural were extremely abstract...
Abstract in the literal sense.
It was very difficult for Muen to interpret what it described through these images that had clearly undergone artistic processing, but there was one figure among them that Muen still recognized at a glance.
Dragons.
Many dragons were painted on the mural.
Almost all of the patterns had undergone artistic processing, but only these dragons had been outlined with lifelike detail and were extremely realistic. Muen could even clearly see scales like refined iron, sharp claws like blades, and...
Majestic golden eyes.
It was very obvious that the mural depicted a story about dragons.
“Hm? There are words here.”
Muen continued looking downward and soon saw some writing at the other end.
At the very top was a script Muen could not understand at all. It was even somewhat different from the ancient script commonly used a thousand years ago, resembling some kind of even older evolutionary form.
Below it, however, was a modern script that Muen was far more familiar with and could barely interpret.
“A very long time ago, the dragon race once ravaged this world.”
Muen slowly walked forward, reading the writing one word at a time.
“They were powerful, mighty, cruel, ferocious, cold, and bloodthirsty. Not only did they possess bodies comparable to those cast from refined steel, but from the moment they were born, they also possessed an extremely terrifying talent for magic.”
“They once attempted to rule this world, using absolute power to turn every other race into their slaves.”
“Many races submitted. Humanity was unwilling, and thus launched a war of resistance.”
“That war continued for a very long time. The power of the dragon race caused everyone to fear them.”
“In that even more distant era, magic capable of **** had not yet been developed. Humanity possessed an innate disadvantage when facing the dragon race.”
Hm?
Muen raised an eyebrow in confusion.
There were very obvious traces of deletion and alteration in this sentence. Those words, “magic capable of ****,” were very likely some kind of important information.
But now they had already been erased.
“How strange. Magic capable of doing something or other... If this refers to some category of magic, is it really that important?”
Muen did not understand, but he did not remain entangled in the matter for long and continued reading further.
He could already vaguely feel that what followed was the content he was looking for.
“Humanity possessed an innate disadvantage when facing the dragon race.”
“What reversed the balance of the war was a special poison.”
There it was!
Muen’s mind tightened. He became even more focused, unwilling to miss a single character.
“It was a poison that only affected creatures such as dragons. It was created by an ancient mage whose name has already been lost to history. Using the bones of a great dragon as material, that mage constructed a special formation, then refined the souls of the dead within that formation.”
“Those refined souls would ultimately transform into a bone-eroding poison, causing immense harm to any dragon creature contaminated by it.”
“None of the great dragons had imagined that their own bones would be transformed by souls filled with resentment into a weapon aimed at their own kind. Nor had they imagined that humanity, for the sake of final victory, would refine the souls of their own kind on a massive scale.”
“In the end, with the assistance of that poison, the outcome of the war was completely rewritten. The dragon race was defeated. Its remaining forces left the continent from then onward, wandering only among certain isolated islands, and the age belonging to humanity arrived.”
“And the name of that poison was...
“Wrath of Hatred.”
Muen’s expression was solemn as he softly spoke the final words:
“Rage of Hatred.”
Using hatred as the catalyst to manifest rage.
That was the essence of this poison.
“So that’s how it is.”
Muen suddenly understood.
In that case, the actions of those Tars survivors could be completely explained.
They had lured Miss Dragon here and then forced her to begin a massacre.
Afterward, they could refine the souls of the people of New Tars, filled with resentment after death, into a bone-eroding, deadly poison.
And just as the words on the wall stated, Miss Dragon might never have imagined that, in order to “hunt” her, those Tars survivors would actually be capable of going this far.
“It seems this scheme goes back even further than I imagined.”
Muen raised the light, illuminating the higher parts of the entire space.
Only then could he completely see the enormous, sinister skeleton among the soil and stone.
Above this vast space, a genuine dragon skeleton had actually been buried. It was precisely the source of the dragon pressure Muen had sensed earlier!
The dragon had spread its wings and raised its neck high, as though, at the final moment before death, it had still attempted to fly into the sky...
But it had failed.
It had fallen here, and even its bones had become a weapon aimed at its own kind.
Everything on the mural had, after an unknown number of thousands of years, been perfectly reproduced once again.
One could only say that history had always been a circle.
Filled with irony.
“However... in that case, breaking the current situation is also very simple.”
Muen raised his head and stared into the dragon skeleton’s deep, hollow eye sockets.
“As long as I destroy this skeleton, or the special formation engraved here, then the souls filled with resentment belonging to those killed by Miss Dragon will not be transformed into the Rage of Hatred.”
The poison was powerful and effective.
But its creation required a series of complicated preconditions.
No wonder those Tars survivors had planned for so long and even rebuilt the city an entire three times before finally reaching this step.
“I hope that, after this, a certain short-tempered damned dragon will stop being stubborn, recognize her mistake, and apologize for the things she said earlier.”
Muen lightly leaped upward and arrived at the top of the space. He inserted one hand into the soil and stone to support his body, while holding his blade in the other hand and aiming it at the dragon skeleton.
“Of course, I don’t need any special compensation from her. As long as she can lower her head and promise that, whenever she flies with me in the future, she’ll let me sit in the first-class seat on her back, I’ll temporarily forgive her.”
“Mm. Who told me to be such a gentle and considerate good man?”
Clang.
The blade trembled.
Blade light condensed into brilliance.
Muen did not hold back in the slightest, nor did he hesitate at all. After all, he had already realized that, in the current situation, every minute he delayed meant another minute of danger for Miss Dragon above.
Even without considering emotions and looking at the matter purely from the perspective of利益, he would not sit by and watch Miss Dragon truly fall here.
After all, he had never been a dragon rider before and did not know what it felt like to sit on a dragon’s back.
He was looking forward to it.
Therefore—
Slash!
Dazzling blade light replaced the Illumination and drove away the darkness throughout the entire space.
Then, extending from below to above, it moved toward the dragon skeleton’s skull.
He had never cut down a dragon before and did not know where he should strike first, but cutting the head first definitely could not be wrong...
Muen even directly activated Time Delay. More layers of accumulated force converged into this attack, ensuring that it could destroy the target in an instant...
“Hm?”
Muen’s heart suddenly contracted.
An intense warning of death abruptly rang within his mind, causing him to instinctively change the direction of his blade and slash the already fully condensed blade light toward another direction.
The blade light tore through space and collided with something.
Boom!
The violent impact stirred up a fierce wind. The entire hollow space trembled because of it, and countless pieces of soil and stone fell with rustling sounds.
As the dust stirred up by the impact dispersed, Muen finally saw clearly what had just ambushed him.
It was...
An enormous pale claw made of bone.
The dragon skeleton’s claw!
“What the hell?”
Muen was somewhat dumbfounded.
“It’s been dead for who knows how many years. It can still rise from the grave?”
The sense of danger struck again. Without the slightest hesitation, Muen quickly left his original position.
Rumble!
The hollow space began trembling even more violently. A large amount of dust was swept up, while what fell from above was no longer small fragments of soil and stone, but enormous rocks!
The earth shook and the mountains trembled.
Muen hid at an angle and watched as the entire ceiling of the hollow space collapsed with a deafening crash. From among the countless shattered rocks, an enormous figure slowly raised its elegant long neck.
A dragon.
Or rather, a dragon skeleton.
It truly seemed to have come back to life. It was freeing itself from the ancient rock layers and stretching every one of its bones!
“No. This isn’t a corpse coming back to life.”
Muen quickly reacted, because the skeleton before him still possessed no vitality whatsoever.
Rather than saying it had come back to life, it was more like...
“Oh? So you are Muen Campbell?”
The elegant long neck turned. The hollow skull looked toward Muen, but the one meeting Muen’s gaze was not the dragon skeleton.
It was...
The strange face that had appeared at some unknown point on top of the dragon skeleton’s skull.
“To think you were actually able to find this place. Priscilla was right. You truly are very troublesome.”