Chapter 884 — Returned to Its Rightful Owner
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
What happened next was so unexpected that Gao Yang did not react for a full half minute.
He stared wide-eyed at the large chest Noretta had opened. There, resting quietly amid cushioning material made of some unknown substance, lay a shield of peculiar design, roughly the size of a medium one-handed shield. A flood of memories concerning that shield surged up at once—of course he recognized it, though he had long since given up on ever finding it; the shield had, after all, once been the personal equipment of this body of his, and the impression in his mind was deep and vivid.
He had never imagined the thing would appear before him now, in this manner.
Noretta's voice drew Gao Yang out of his brief daze: "This is yours, isn't it?"
"Ah, that's right," Gao Yang blinked and nodded. "The Anselm—the Shield of the Kingdom's Guardian. I thought I'd never see it again in this life. It was in the Mithril Vault's hands?"
"If that were so, we would have returned it to you long ago," Metzen shook her head. "We too only came across its whereabouts recently—by accident. The Mithril Vault has always done business in good faith, and you are, after all, an important client of ours, so we returned it to its rightful owner at the first opportunity."
There was no need for a dragon to lie about such a matter—Gao Yang knew this well, and so he quickly believed Metzen's account. Then he frowned and looked at the two agents with considerable curiosity: "Where did you find it?"
"In the Elemental World, within the domain of Fire," Metzen said. "An elemental lord had secretly hidden it away, and even made it part of the inner shell of his own element. If that elemental lord had not happened to owe the Mithril Vault a debt, I fear several more centuries might have passed before anyone found it."
Gao Yang was startled on the spot: "The Elemental World?! How did it end up there?"
Metzen spread her hands: "That is difficult to say—we never expected that what the elemental lord had secretly hidden would turn out to be your lost possession, and so we were not prepared to ask in advance. By the time we discovered the thing and thought to question him, that debtor elemental lord had already, owing to a trifling bit of regrettable force majeure, become unable to answer questions..."
Gao Yang could work out with his biceps what Metzen's elegant, literary words were getting at, and he cast the agent a look of considerable admiration: "When it comes to the art of language, you dragons really are unmatched."
Metzen accepted the praise without demur, and behind her veil there was even an elegant, reserved smile: "Although we did not investigate the details, we can still broadly infer that this shield must have been stolen from the battlefield by that elemental lord—during that civil war among you humans a hundred years ago. Perhaps some bungling wizard on the battlefield opened a rift into the Elemental World; or perhaps the elemental lord had long schemed to bewitch some elemental mage and secretly reach out his 'hand.' Your shield carries powerful forces, and it naturally attracts those creatures that covet magic."
Gao Yang could not help but sigh: "In the Gondor era, such things would never have happened... Elemental creatures, too, had to abide by rules."
Metzen shook her head: "But the Gondor Empire, which once awed even the Elemental World, is gone, and the elementals of today do not much respect a humanity scattered like loose sand."