Balthazar’s voice exploded deep within her mind without warning.
This warning carried an echo that seemed to come from an ancient abyss; every syllable was like a heavy hammer, ruthlessly striking the Mental tendrils Olga had just extended.
“Ugh…!”
Olga snapped her eyes open, her body jolting violently as if struck by an invisible electric current.
The obsidian mirror in her hand grew hot enough to sting, nearly slipping from her fingers.
Having accumulated vast experience in mental power skirmishes with her own kind, Olga almost instinctively prepared to deal with an incoming Counter-attack formula.
Then Olga quickly realized that there was no sophisticated counter-attack, nor any fluctuations of a mental defense formula; it was entirely a pure, brute outpouring of willpower.
In fact, Balthazar wasn’t defending at all; he was like a giant beast coiled over a treasure, who, even while dozing, would open an eye with bone-chilling intuition the moment a mouse approached.
That was the innate intuition of an absolute powerhouse, a sensitivity that bordered on cunning.
In other words, he had simply thought that idea in his heart, and that was all.
[Damn it… this dragon… was he bluffing me?]
Olga’s heart pounded violently, and her breathing became rapid and erratic.
She quickly severed those probing Mental tendrils, retracting her mental power back to the most basic communication state, trying her best to calm her momentary loss of composure.
Outside the palanquin, the sound of whistling wind could be heard, and the black shadow in the sky continued to circle, leading the Kobold party forward without any unusual actions.
The thunderous warning from Balthazar that Olga had heard in her mind seemed to be merely her hallucination.
“Whew…”
She turned to glance at Chloe, who was still fast asleep beside her.
The knight’s sleeping face appeared incredibly peaceful, completely unaware of the thrilling psychological gambit her Queen had just experienced.
Olga rubbed her somewhat stiff cheeks and sat upright once more.
“Truly… an unpleasantly sharp intuition.”
She murmured softly, her fingers unconsciously tightening around the edge of the cloak that covered her whole body.
Flying in the sky, Balthazar watched Olga’s minor movements on the ground and snorted white smoke from his nose and mouth.
The high-altitude currents were like countless invisible files, scraping against Balthazar’s hard, dark iron-colored dragon scales with a faint, continuous “sizzling” sound.
[As expected… you couldn’t help but reach out your claws after all, Olga.]
He let out a low chuckle from his throat, a sound that vanished into the howling wind, heard only by himself.
He had anticipated all of this.
How could that once-unrivaled Dark Elf Queen be content to be a mere subordinate who only produced offspring?
Her deep-seated desire for control and arrogance were like a venomous snake lying in wait; even if its spine were broken, it would instinctively want to coil around and search for the opponent’s weakness.
But it didn’t matter.
To the Balthazar soaring high in the heavens at this moment, that tiny figure curled up in the palanquin on the ground was nothing more than a spider trying to use a web to snare a dragon.
Such overconfident schemes were not a threat in his eyes; instead, they became a unique sort of diversion.
The more violently the prey struggled in the trap, the more intoxicating the look in their eyes would be when they finally submitted.
Her little bit of cleverness in trying to turn the tables was merely a bit of “boudoir amusement” for this future Dragon Emperor to pass the time during his long conquest.
“Whoosh—”
Balthazar slightly adjusted the angle of his wings, his massive body tracing an elegant yet oppressive arc in the sky.
In his heart, he issued a challenge to this Dark Elf Queen.
[No need to be in such a hurry to retract them, my… ally.]
[Keep your ambition, and keep your schemes. A blade without a sharp edge… is worthless to me.]
[As long as you are certain… that your wisdom can keep up with my power.]
Having said that, he suddenly flapped his wings, creating a violent thunderous crack of air.
The massive dragon shadow instantly accelerated, tearing a rift in the clouds and leaving that tiny migrating party far behind in the shadows.
Olga’s fingers paused for a moment on the obsidian mirror’s surface.
After the voice in her mind vanished, only the whistling wind outside and the heavy footsteps of the Kobolds remained in the palanquin.
She gripped the mirror in her palm and leaned her body back against the cushion sewn from animal skins and stuffed with straw.
“Heh…”