Chapter 876 — Lost Property
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Noretta? Another senior agent of the Mithril Vault?
Metzen had gone off to carry out a "collection assignment"? So this temporary stand-in, Noretta—was she a dragon too?
Listening to the voice coming through the ring, several thoughts flashed through Gao Yang's mind in an instant. Then he suddenly frowned as something occurred to him—
This time he couldn't make a My Little Pony joke!
Suppressing that fleeting odd notion, Gao Yang cleared his throat twice, gathering his thoughts as he addressed the "Miss Noretta" on the other end of the ring. "It's like this—I need to consult you about a few matters. They may involve the dragon race, so I'd prefer to speak face to face."
"Dragons... I understand," Noretta's voice paused for a second. "Please wait a moment. I should be able to see you in about an hour."
Gao Yang blinked—an hour to arrive, again. Whatever else might be said about the senior agents of the Mithril Vault, their on-call service attitude truly commanded respect. He wondered where these dragons holed up while carrying out their agent duties; thinking it over carefully, there really were quite a few suspicious points about it...
...
Dark red lava wound its way across a dry, scorching land. Cyclones of astonishing heat carried ever-burning flames within them, and burning tornadoes swept across a crimson sky like serpents of fire, ceaselessly scattering hot ash and rain of fire—this was a world ruled by flame. Here everything, soil and stone alike, existed in a state of fire-element saturation, maintaining unbroken agitation and transformation, and vast numbers of "creatures" with fire elements as their principal substance lived in this place that to mortals was nothing short of hell, each possessed of its own bizarre and fantastical "life form."
Lava fleas leaping amid the molten rock, fire imps breeding in the cracks of stone, living heat waves riding the wind and moving with swiftness—all manner of fire elemental creatures burned blindly in this blazing world, fought, and consumed their own lives, whether long or brief. Yet suddenly a tremendous crash, as though it might shatter space itself, and a roar that struck terror into the heart rang out across the entire realm, sending the agitated elemental creatures of the earth and the lava lakes scattering in an instant—
"Damn you! You damned reptiles!!"
Amid the deafening roar, the crimson sky suddenly split open in a shocking rift, and a colossal entity composed entirely of burning boulders and viscous magma tumbled ignominiously from the fissure down toward the earth. It smashed a crater a hundred meters in radius beside a lava lake; then those boulders writhed and rumbled, crawling up from the bottom of the crater and little by little reassembling into an awe-inspiring giant of flame.
The giant raised its burning head and roared at the sky once more, and in the sky that ceaselessly shed rain of fire and ash, several equally colossal figures were circling—seven dragons.
The giant lifted its arm, and a blazing bright spear of flame took shape. Yet before it could hurl the spear, a dragon's roar came down from the heights, and the balance of elemental power was shattered in an instant by that roar. The fiery spear burst apart, and then lightning, frost, gale, and arcane force descended from the heavens like a furious storm, pinning the giant helplessly to the surface of the cracked earth.
Those low-tier elemental creatures that could act only on instinct had fled utterly clean at the very outbreak of this dreadful battle. Rising from the fissures of the cracked earth now there was only mindless, pure flame.
"You... you dare, in the domain of the elements..."
A blue dragon descended from the sky and planted its foot directly on the flame giant's head. A deep, majestic voice issued from the dragon's mouth: "No one may be in debt to the Mithril Vault—including Elemental Lords."