She raised her other hand to tuck a stray strand of black hair behind her ear, simultaneously smoothing the collar of her cloak.
“‘As long as wisdom can keep up with power,’ is it?”
The proud Olga talked to herself, her gaze falling on the distant sky.
“What an… arrogant fellow.”
She lifted the crude palanquin curtain and looked at Chloe on the stretcher moving alongside her palanquin.
Chloe’s eyes were still closed, her breathing even, as her rising chest and bulging belly trembled slightly with the swaying of the stretcher.
Olga shifted her body slightly, leaning closer to the sleeping knight.
She extended her index finger and lightly poked Chloe’s somewhat warm cheek.
“He might be a monster, but he’s surprisingly interesting, isn’t he? Chloe.”
There was no response, but Olga didn’t mind.
She withdrew her hand and took a handkerchief from her small pocket, slowly wiping the fine beads of sweat from Chloe’s forehead.
“A proud dragon doesn’t want a dog wagging its tail for pity; he wants a blade.”
Olga murmured as she wiped, as if speaking to someone in a dream, or perhaps to herself.
“Since permission has been granted, I won’t stand on ceremony.”
With her back ramrod straight and her chin slightly raised, she nodded with a smile toward the empty space ahead.
“When the time comes… just don’t regret giving me this kind of authority, Balthazar.”
In the sky, as Balthazar flew further away, the terrain gradually changed from a wasteland to a forest near the black mountains.
From high above, Balthazar also discovered traces left behind by the scouts of the Black Dog Mercenary Group.
Thus, his massive dragon wings stopped flapping forcefully, and he began to glide steadily at this altitude like a kite.
Balthazar restrained his entire presence, even deliberately suppressing his signature high temperatures within his body.
His dark iron-colored dragon scales were not conspicuous against the desolate, grayish-yellow sky; from the ground, he looked like nothing more than a slightly large shadow from a dark cloud.
Occasional glints of cold light flashed from the withered yellow bushes below.
Those were scouts deployed by the Black Dog Mercenary Group, searching for traces of the attacker like headless flies.
They never imagined that the culprit who had escaped Black City with two Dark Elves and destroyed their vanguard was hovering a hundred meters above them, silently watching everything.
On the ground, a strange migratory group was trudging across the wasteland.
Over thirty Kobolds carried large and small bags, sticking as close as possible to the shadows of rocks and ravines.
In the middle of the group, four strong male Kobolds carried a rickety makeshift stretcher and a simple sedan chair, bearing Olga and Chloe as they moved slowly forward.
Balthazar only needed to slightly adjust the angle of his wings, and the little green dot wearing a skull at the head of the ground party would immediately adjust its direction.
As if guided by invisible puppet strings, the party precisely avoided all routes where they might encounter humans, heading toward the increasingly close black haze to the north. New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
However, as the distance to the black mountains closed, the speed of the ground team noticeably slowed down.
“Woof… ugh…”
Klar’s two short legs began to tremble, and his tail was tucked tighter than ever before.
The closer they got to those black mountains, the heavier the sense of oppression in the air became.
It wasn’t just the treacherous terrain, but an instinctive fear of a high-level predator’s territory engraved in the genes of these low-level monsters.
Until he could no longer take another step, his hunched figure collapsed onto the ground, letting out a desperate wail toward the sky, forcing the group to stop.
Balthazar frowned, spiraling down and landing on a giant rock beside the group as lightly as a falling leaf.
Although there was no loud crash, his sudden, massive presence still sent the surrounding Kobolds scurrying in terror, clutching their heads.
“Why… stop?”
He looked down from above at the shivering Kobold leader, a flicker of displeasure crossing his dark red vertical pupils.
Klar almost buried his face in the dirt, his claws scratching frantically at the ground as if trying to bury himself.
“True… True Dragon…”