His voice became shrill and piercing due to extreme fear, and he couldn’t even manage the flattery he usually kept on his lips.
“No… can’t go… can’t get any closer…”
“Klar… recognizes it… recognizes it!”
“…Over there… that is… the ‘Dead Land’!”
Klar tremblingly raised a claw, pointed at the mountains shrouded in black mist in the distance, and then quickly withdrew it as if afraid something would bite it off.
“The ancestors… left word… that is… a place where even gods would die…”
He swallowed hard, the suffocating blackness reflected in his cloudy eyes.
“Before… there was a large tribe… hundreds of them… went… not a single one returned… not even bones… were left…”
At this point, this usually cunning Kobold leader actually started crying, large tears and snot mixing with the dust on his face.
“Please… change the location… even if it’s to go… go to a human city to die… it’s better than going there!”
Balthazar narrowed his eyes, his gaze passing over this lowly creature to the distant mountains that the Kobolds regarded as a forbidden zone.
Forbidden zone?
Dead Land?
Not even bones left?
Hearing these fearful words, Balthazar turned his head to look at Olga with a questioning gaze.
Even on such a refugee-like journey, the former queen maintained the elegance etched into her bones.
She tilted her head slightly, an inscrutable smile playing in her amber eyes.
Her gaze swept over Klar, who was kneeling and shaking like a sieve, before settling on Balthazar’s ferocious dragon face, which was filled with confusion.
“Oh my, this truly is… an unexpectedly ‘loyal’ suggestion.”
Olga’s voice was soft and lazy, carrying a hint of undisguised mockery.
She didn’t step down from the sedan chair, merely resting her chin on one hand as she looked at Balthazar.
“Great King Balthazar, you possess strength enough to crush steel and a dragon’s majesty that makes mortals tremble…”
She intentionally drew out her words, her peripheral vision glancing at the dark mountains in the distance, her lips curling into a playful arc—a look that was almost a provocative invitation.
“What? Do you really intend to listen to the mad ravings of a lowly rat about ‘gods dying’ and stop at your own doorstep? Or perhaps…”
Olga chuckled, a sound as clear as silver bells but hiding subtle thorns.
“You too have been frightened by this so-called ‘Dead Land’ legend? If that’s the case, I might have to re-evaluate… my expectations of you.”
Balthazar’s dark red vertical pupils constricted slightly, and a blast of hot white steam snorted from his nostrils, scattering the dust on the ground.
He heard the goading tone in the woman’s words—a blatant provocation—but he didn’t dislike such a challenge.
As the future Dragon Emperor, if he didn’t even have the courage to step into his own future territory, how could he speak of conquering the world? You are reading on novelping . com, the official source.
“Hmph…”
A low cold snort like rolling thunder rumbled from deep in his throat, making the surrounding pebbles tremble.
Balthazar slowly turned his head, no longer looking at the shivering Kobold, but locking his gaze onto the domain shrouded in black mist to the north.
“Put away your… reverse psychology, woman.”
He opened his massive maw full of fangs, every syllable carrying a metallic rasp and magnetism.
“Since… you want to see… then I will… let you see… what… true… fear is.”
Before his words even faded, Balthazar suddenly lowered his body, and then his hind legs, covered in thick scales, erupted with staggering power.
“Boom—!”
The giant rock beneath his feet cracked and collapsed in an instant, and a violent current of air swept outward from him, uprooting the surrounding withered grass.
Massive dragon wings suddenly unfurled in the sky, blotting out the sun.
With a suffocating sense of pressure, Balthazar’s enormous body shot into the air like a black cannonball.
This time, he didn’t bother to restrain his presence.
A dragon’s roar echoed through the clouds as he turned into a streak of black light, tearing straight through the air currents above the wasteland.
With an indomitable and overbearing aura, he sped toward the black mountains that the Kobolds considered an “absolute forbidden zone.”
He wanted to see for himself what exactly was buried there that could cause so-called “gods” to fall.