The Dragon’s Lair
The Dragon’s Lair.
A place where the true dragons reside, a palace of sorts. While people often refer to the nests of lesser dragons as dragon lairs, they pale in comparison to the true lairs of the mighty dragons. The abode of a true dragon is a realm of its own, guarded by countless magical creatures and golems crafted by dragons themselves. The environment within is tailored to the unique ecology of dragons, utterly alien to mortal beings. In some cases, the lair can resemble a hellish landscape, depending on its master’s nature.
“Even the lair of the Azure Dragon was like that,” Dalen mused, recalling the bone-chilling cold that pervaded the Azure Dragon’s lair—a place where an ordinary person would freeze to death in no time. Despite the dragon’s downfall due to a curse and its eventual death at Dalen’s hands, its lair remained formidable. If a living true dragon resided there, the harshness would be unimaginable.
Dalen’s temples throbbed with the weight of this realization.
“So, the ruins this friend of ours discovered aren’t ruins at all, but a true dragon’s lair?” he asked.
“That’s right,” came the reply.
“And the lair belongs to one of the thirteen servants of the Dragon God?”
“From what I know, it’s one of the top three,” the man replied, sighing deeply and rubbing his forehead. The merchant leader beside him grew increasingly pale.
[To think I’d see the form of the Earth Dragon, Tateaankart Parzium, here,] murmured the red spear, sharing Dalen’s vision.
“Do you know it well?” Dalen asked.
[Know it? Of course. It’s the right gauntlet of the Dragon God, the one that lured me into a trap. I’d love nothing more than to tear its heart out with my teeth,] the spear replied with a low, menacing laugh, its murderous intent causing the distant mountain cliffs to tremble.
Dalen nodded, stroking his chin thoughtfully. This discovery would undoubtedly disrupt their plans.
“What will you do?” asked Craig Bidroff, an officer from the Tsar’s special forces, his eyes alight with an irrepressible excitement that belied his serious expression. His eyes, filled with curiosity and enthusiasm, seemed more suited to an explorer than an agent.
“You’re quite the romantic,” Dalen remarked.
“Excuse me? What does that mean…?”
“It’s a compliment in my homeland. Anyway, once you’ve disturbed the Earth Dragon’s lair, there’s no going back. Soon, thousands of magical creatures will pour out onto the surface.”
“Th-thousands…?”
As the two officers turned pale, Volkmann collapsed to the ground in shock. This was the southernmost border of the Tsar’s territory, a nation just beginning to rebuild after a war with the dark gods. The appearance of another army of magical creatures would spell disaster.
“The only solution is to negotiate with the Earth Dragon,” Dalen said.
“Negotiate…?”
“Either with words, or if that fails, with force.”
And with ancient dragons, older than the empire itself, words rarely suffice. More often than not, teeth and swords become the language of choice.
For Dalen, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though it would delay their schedule, the Earth Dragon was an old adversary of his, just as it was for the red spear.
“The dragonslayer character was killed by it,” Dalen recalled. The owner of the dragon-scale armor and the sharpest dragon-bone sword, a transcendent who crafted weapons from the remains of slain dragons, had met his end in the Earth Dragon’s maw while fleeing from the Dragon God.
From the moment Dalen decided to recover the bodies of the transcendent characters, the Earth Dragon’s lair had been on his list of destinations. However, the entrance to the lair appeared randomly across the continent in the later stages, making it a time-consuming and labor-intensive task to locate. Thus, it had been put on hold.
“Dalen’s right. We have to negotiate somehow. Leaving an awakened dragon’s lair unchecked is madness,” Felber agreed.
“While there are dragons like Akasha who are friendly to humans, they are rare. Most dragons align with the Dragon God, who is a dark god. An awakened dragon’s lair is no different from a demon’s hell gate,” Lucia added.
With Felber and Lucia’s words, the rest of the group seemed to agree. Now, the most important task remained. Dalen extended his hand to the merchant who had discovered the ruins-turned-dragon’s-lair with significant investment.
Volkmann, caught off guard, shook his hand, and Dalen grinned.
“The treasure from the dragon’s lair,” Dalen said.
“Huh?”
“Let’s split it eight to two. Naturally, you get the eight. On the condition that the Galios Trading Company handles the sales without any profit margin.”
“Huh? What are you…?”
“No, nine to one seems fairer. After all, it’s a failed excavation, isn’t it?”
“Wha…what?”
Despite the tension in their handshake, the deal was struck.
The group split into two.
The two officers, being envoys delivering gifts from the Tsar, had to proceed to Falcion as planned. Craig, the romantic, suggested that one envoy might suffice, but his colleague Roman quickly put an end to that idea with a smack to the back of Craig’s head.
Bjorn needed to visit the workshop to craft weapons to kill demons, and Akasha had to see Bourbon again due to her rapid growth. Lucia, uneasy about sending the dwarf obsessed with gunpowder and the young dragon alone, decided to accompany them to the labyrinth city, setting the number of people heading there at six.
Naturally, Dalen, Felber, Tommy, and Volkmann were the ones to head to the dragon’s lair.
Caw—
‘Ah, the crow too.’
So, it was five, not four.
Whether to count the crow sent by Sienna as a person was a bit ambiguous. The witch, who had spread her information network across the continent, couldn’t possibly keep her consciousness linked to a single crow all day. Without the connection, the crow was just a well-trained bird, one of the many information gatherers under the Feathered Witch’s command.
“Caw—Ahem, ahem. I get the gist. You’re planning to raid the dragon’s lair, right?”
“Since when have you been linked?” Dalen asked.
“Not long. But I must say, the Galios merchant leader has a keen nose for money, discovering the Earth Dragon’s lair.”
Volkmann, leading the way, flinched at the comment. Dalen chuckled.
“Did you know the Earth Dragon’s lair was full of treasure?”
“Not from my network. The entrance to the Earth Dragon’s lair appeared over a thousand years ago… Bourbon told me.”
The first roar of the Dragon God, Kylebercus Arburn, or Bourbon for short. A true dragon who had contracted with the first Feathered Witch thousands of years ago, he had infiltrated the Crow’s Nest as a bartender to protect his distant descendant, Sienna. After revealing his identity to Sienna following the battle in the Western District, he now served as both bartender and informant. With his ancient knowledge, he was a treasure trove of information for Sienna.
[T-treasure…?! The Azure Dragon’s nest had no gold coins, did it? Dragons without human contact don’t hoard treasure…]
[That’s because the Earth Dragon once interacted with the Sandstorm Dynasty. Remember, before you were cut down, the Dragon God hadn’t yet fallen, and dragons actively engaged with the surface races.]
[Oh…! So this time, a dragon’s lair full of gold and jewels…! Master!]
The little demon clapped its tiny hands over its mouth in glee. Dalen silently reached into his pocket dimension and gave it a squeeze, reminiscent of the stress-relief toys sold on Earth. The chronic throbbing in his temples eased away.
’…Come to think of it, Deltarion mentioned you tried to prevent the Dragon God’s fall.’
[Did you hear that while fighting for your life again?]
‘Was the Dragon God not originally a dark god?’
In the game’s lore, there were five dark gods, each ruling over a great hell. But if the Dragon God had fallen to become a dark god, then there were originally only four. It was a lie to say he wasn’t curious about the origins of these apocalyptic dark gods. Perhaps in uncovering their roots, he might find a weakness to exploit.
[Indeed. Our dragon race was originally neutral, and so was the Dragon God. If you go back far enough, there were no gods for dragons. Each was a demigod in its own right. Who would dare rule over them?]
‘The Dragon God didn’t originally exist?’
[Correct. Just like the other four dark gods. We dragons once mocked how mortals, starting from good, inevitably converged to evil. Yet, our vaunted immortality proved just as futile against the passage of time.]
’…’
A story tinged with a hint of regret.
Who else but a mysterious being could weave such a tangled tale, yet its meaning was surprisingly clear.
According to Jeokchang, the Dragon God was the last of the evil gods to be born. Unlike the eternal nature typically associated with deities, this one had a definite beginning.
If it wasn’t the ruler of the Great Hell from the very start, then perhaps the other evil gods weren’t either…
“We’re here.”
A single phrase broke through his thoughts.
Looking up, Dallon saw Volkma slowly bringing his horse to a stop.
The merchant dismounted and pointed to a sinkhole-like pit.
A strange energy surged upward from the pit, not far from the main road.
“Only three hours from the highway? This could’ve been a disaster.”
Felber, who had followed him down, shook his head. He wasn’t wrong.
This area was the southernmost border of the Tsar Kingdom.
If a horde of monsters emerged, the border guards and the bustling trade between allied nations would be the first to suffer.
Moreover, with the northern front recently half-destroyed, the Ironblood Army couldn’t afford to extend its reach to this distant frontier.
At the very least, there would be major unrest in the southern region, and if things went awry, it could escalate into a diplomatic conflict between the city-states and the Tsar Kingdom.
“Indeed. If it weren’t for a treasure-hunting merchant poking around, this national crisis might have been averted.”
”······.”
“In exchange for solving this, a nine-to-one split seems too cheap, don’t you think, old man?”
“N-no! We had a deal!”
Volkma hastily waved his hands, and the wizard chuckled heartily.
Of course, if the entrance to the dragon’s lair had appeared this close to the highway, someone would have discovered it soon enough, even without Volkma.
Had that happened, the situation would have been truly dire. With the thought that crisis often brings opportunity, Dallon stepped into the pit.
“D-Dallon! Without a ladder…!”
Whoosh—
The sound of wind brushed past his ears.
Thud!
It took several seconds before he felt the dull impact beneath his feet.
The pit was quite deep, just shy of a hundred meters.
Because of its depth, the sunlight from above appeared as a mere dot. It was nearly impossible to see anything with the naked eye.
Of course, Dallon’s vision was far from ordinary, allowing him to make out the wide floor of the pit and the grand entrance to the ruins ahead.
And the three figures blocking that entrance.
[…Are you the intruder who disturbed my rest?]
The man in the center spoke. Dallon shrugged.
“Wasn’t me who rang the bell and ran.”
[Bell, what?]
“Rang the bell and ran, you know.”
[······.]
The man clearly didn’t understand but didn’t ask again.
Instead, he pulled back his hood. In the darkness, his vertically slit amber eyes gleamed brightly.
Spreading his elaborate robe wide, he raised his arms and spoke.
[I am the Devourer dwelling below. The one who claims the throne of the Abyssal Lava. The predator who consumed the ancient desert dynasty, the master of ten thousand dwarves. All dragons praise me, the right hand of the god… Ugh!]
The man’s head snapped back violently. A sharp sound of something slicing through the air followed.
Dallon flexed his outstretched right hand, satisfied with the weight of his newly acquired axe.
The man, his head twisted as if broken, staggered back a few steps before coming to a trembling halt.
[Y-you…! How dare a mere mortal, just because you’ve trained a bit, dare to…]
Oh, he can still talk with that weight on his head? Dallon thought, impressed, as he snapped his fingers.
Crack!
The artifact axe embedded in the man’s skull shattered into dozens of pieces, reducing his body to a mere splash of blood.
A gruesome scene created in an instant. The two people standing beside the man looked back and forth between the scene and Dallon in bewilderment.
“What are you staring at?”
Dallon scratched his chin and said.
“Your boss is dead. Aren’t you going to attack?”