Chapter 949 — Who's the One Out of Character?

"For the next several months, it will be night here—the current hour, converted to Cecil time, should actually be noon," Metzen said with a laugh. "Ah... for outsiders, it really is hard to get used to."

The rest of the flight did not take long. Amid Amber's chatter and Metzen's tireless explanations, Gaoyang saw that the building on the mountain—with its dome and ornate palace walls—was already close at hand. He saw a portion of the building's outer wall slide smoothly open under the action of some large mechanical apparatus, and a large landing platform appear at the end of the mountainside, with lights and figures moving at its edge. Metzen headed straight down toward the platform.

During the descent, Gaoyang tensed instinctively—partly from the psychological scars left by the air disaster in his previous life, partly because of that bizarre incident he had experienced not long ago, and even more because he had witnessed more than once Miss Metzen's world-shaking manner of landing.

But in the end, Miss Metzen set down smoothly in the very center of the circular platform; the three riding on the dragon's back did not even feel much of a jolt.

"We're here," the agent said casually, lowering one of her wings to form a gentle ramp at her side.

Only then did Gaoyang breathe a sigh of relief: it seemed that even Miss Metzen Pernia could not crash twice in a single flight...

Then he walked toward the dragon wing that served as a ramp, and at the same time he had already seen the figures standing at the edge of the landing platform. He could not identify Tarrande's official attire or ceremonial arrangements, but at least from the neatly arrayed reception party and the "guards" in dragon form lining both sides of the platform passage, heads bowed low, he could tell that the dragons of Tarrande were giving him—"the guest personally invited by the god"—considerable face.

Dragons might not necessarily admire a human sovereign, but they clearly stood in greater awe of a command from their god.

Gaoyang walked along the "ramp" toward the platform, with Virodai following behind him with stately grace. Even Amber, the instant she stepped forward, shed all her giggling manner and put on every ounce of solemnity and rigorous airs, her little short legs scurrying along beside Gaoyang—even the shame of all creation knew to preserve the dignity of the "human representative" at a time like this.

Even though she was not human.

As Gaocenxing left the dragon's back, a piece of music in some classical style—one that had never appeared in the human world—began to play.

The moment Gaoyang stepped down Metzen's dragon wing and set his first foot on the platform, the leading elder among the welcoming party set forth at the same instant, bringing several attendants with him to greet them of his own accord.

Toward the connecting passage, the dragons stationed as guards or as the face of the gate let out a uniform, low-throated roar, while above another building opposite the platform, a great many lights began to surge like breathing, and upon that building's roof a welcome message was projected in the common script of the human world.

It was a most solemn welcoming ceremony, yet Gaoyang could not help but find it somewhat bizarre—ever since entering this continent of Tarrande, a similar sense of strangeness had kept welling up in his heart from every direction. And if he had to say where that strangeness came from... he could only say that these dragons were truly not the dragons he had imagined, and this kingdom of dragons was not the kingdom of dragons he had imagined...

But he hid these shifts of feeling well at the bottom of his heart, keeping a calm and smiling expression on his face. He walked toward the old man who had come forward to greet him, and the latter came to a stop just at the right distance—some two meters before Gaoyang.

This aged dragon, in human form, wore a pale gold robe of indeterminate material; set into the skin of his forehead were several diamond-shaped plates of silver-white metal, from whose seams a faint shimmering light emerged. Some of those streams of light spread along the old man's facial skin and finally gathered into the socket of his right eye—and Gaoyang, having just looked carefully, was startled to find that the eye was in fact a prosthetic. He could see an obvious mechanical structure within the eyeball, and the focal point at its pupil was still constantly, subtly adjusting!

...Mechanical implantation?

Gaoyang could not help but freeze for a moment. Then his gaze caught a dragon standing guard at the edge of the platform, and he saw an obvious mechanical structure at the creature's lower jaw, with tube-like things extending from the back of its skull all the way into its shoulder blades—the features of flesh fused with machinery, utterly unconcealed, exposed directly to everyone's eyes.

A line burst instantly into his mind—what the hell is this?

What timeline did this cyber-dragon come bounding out of?!

These giant dragons living in dense cities full of light pollution and giant factories is one thing, but what's this about them messing around with spare parts on their own bodies?!

Gaocenxiang had thought that by dragging a magitek industrial revolution into a medieval world of magic he had already derailed the entire aesthetic of this world; yet ever since arriving in Tarrande he had begun to doubt himself on that score again and again, and now his doubt had finally reached its peak—he suddenly realized that when it came to sheer strangeness of style, he really could not compete with these dragons who had been cooped up on a single planet developing for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years...

After a brief moment of astonishment, an inexplicable sense of relief welled up in him—

From today on, he no longer had to worry about whether he had derailed this world's aesthetic.

In the matter of aesthetics, he simply could not out-weird these cyber dragons...

Just then, the old man with the mechanical prosthetic eye extended a hand toward Gaoyang, and his voice cut through the thoughts racing every which way in Gaoyang's head: "Welcome to Tarrande, legendary hero of the human world, His Majesty Gaoyang Cecil—I am the Supreme Speaker of the Tarrande Council; you may call me Anqian."

(A friendly recommendation of a book, titled "The Legend of the Spirit Stele," a game-genre novel, written by a fan of mine. How should I put it... the resilience the author has shown while serializing this book reminds me of my own days of writing alone offline, so I feel I ought to give some encouragement. You all can go support it too.)