Chương 99: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 99 - Dragon's Eyes

But the crisis Anna faced didn't end there. From the rear of the Dragon's Nest, a sudden clamor erupted, the clash of weapons, the roars of monsters, all tangled together in a burst of chaos. The Harpy leader understood the common tongue of the continent, and her hearing was razor-sharp. She knew immediately what had happened. The human soldiers stationed at the Experimental Field had mutinied. They were turning on a Dragon's Nest that had fewer and fewer defenders left to stop them.

The Dragon's Nest was surrounded on all sides.

"Little girl, you're so adorable." Mei Magogoko held her staff with practiced elegance, looking down at Anna with contempt curling at the corner of her mouth. But behind that sneer, buried in her eyes, was a flicker of jealousy.

"Do you really think you can stand against me with a few Waterball and Illumination spells?" How could this little girl be so exquisite? That pale, dewy skin looked almost too perfect to be real. She ran Appraisal Art over Anna and found nothing more than a lowly magic apprentice. She had no idea how someone at that level was managing to control so many spells at once. Maybe the natives of this world had unusual constitutions? She supposed that wasn't out of the question. The players leveled at a ridiculous pace.

If the locals had no advantages whatsoever, what would be the point? The threat was right in front of her. The enemy was insufferably smug. Anna gritted her teeth and said nothing. She knew she was weak. But weakness wasn't a reason to run. Even now, even like this, she still had something worth fighting for. The water orbs and light orbs behind her swirled once around her body under her direction, then launched with precision toward the mass of soldiers crowding the Dragon's Nest entrance.

"Yoshi, the little girl is attacking us~""Aiya, so scary~" The Sakura Players thought this was hilarious. The Waterball spells were large enough to look impressive, sure. But at the end of the day, it was just water. Could water actually kill anyone? As for the light orbs, barely the size of a baby's fist, they were ignored outright. The players sneered at the incoming spells. Then their eyes found Anna. And something in their gaze shifted, replaced by greed and something darker.

They hadn't really looked at her before. Not properly. Now they did. The elven girl was delicate and lovely, clutching her staff with both hands as she trembled, fragile as a porcelain figure, like something that had walked out of a painting. In the modern world, she would have put every so-called "once-in-a-hundred-million-years beauty" from their home country to shame by a country mile. Skin like fresh cream. Features too refined to be accidental. A cascade of snow-white hair.

Beast ears and a fox tail crowning the whole impossible picture. All of it together. The Sakura players' collective attention drifted, almost on its own, away from dragon-slaying and toward something else entirely. Capture her. Imprison her. Do whatever they wanted with her. This was another world. And it was a "game." No laws. No consequences. No one to stop them. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Might made right.

As long as they were strong enough, they could give free rein to every dark impulse they had. Exactly like Mei Magogoko, she did whatever she needed to achieve her goals, and no one would ever hold her accountable for it. With Gougouzi's influence guiding them along, these players had unlocked something primal in themselves ahead of schedule. They were well on their way to becoming proper invaders. PFFT PFFT PFFT, the Waterball spells hit and burst. Exactly as expected.

The orbs looked threatening but amounted to nothing but wet clothes. The light orbs, though, were a different story. THUMP THUMP THUMP, a series of dull concussive pops, and then the players' entire field of vision went white. The flash hit like a wall, snatching sight right out of their eyes. Only Mei Magogoko, tucked inside her shield, fared any better, still able to make out the rough shape of things inside the Dragon's Nest. Rapid footsteps closed in from multiple directions.

She tracked the sound and spotted the Snake-Chicken Beast leader and the Harpy leader sprinting toward them, seizing the moment for a counterattack. A last desperate move. Nothing more. She was Mei Magogoko. She was a Great Mage now. The elven girl's spells had a strange edge to them, yes. But strange wasn't the same as unbeatable.

"Everyone — turn around and get down, now!" The plan came to her in an instant. She shouted the order. The players obeyed on reflex. Their vision was still swimming in white, but reddish shapes had started bleeding into the center of their sight, a sign things were clearing.

"Alahoraoscura......" Mei Magogoko chanted the syllables one by one, steady and precise. A mage-level area spell. Called the Darkest Hour. The opposite of Illumination, it worked by absorbing ambient light elements to generate a shroud of darkness. It was indiscriminate, and since light existed everywhere, it couldn't produce true darkness unless cast in a sealed, lightless space. In most situations, this spell was spectacularly useless.

Like pulling down someone's pants only to produce the world's most anticlimactic fart. But right now? It did exactly what she needed. Mei Magogoko couldn't help but feel a grudging appreciation for Mesent's breadth of knowledge. The man hadn't mastered many powerful spells. He had, however, accumulated an impressive collection of garbage ones. The shadows swallowed the Illumination. The two effects canceled out. The light inside the Dragon's Nest settled back to normal, slightly dimmer than before, but functional.

The players' vision returned. And with it came fury. Being made fools of by a single minor light spell was unacceptable. They'd been played.

"Baka! Stop wasting time — slay the dragon first! Watch out for that light spell!"

"Today we snatch you, lock you in the little dark room, show you what the big goldfish can do!"

"Totsugeki! Follow me, clean up the monsters first!"

"Everyone, dragon first. The elven fledgling isn't going anywhere. We'll have all the time in the world with her afterward." That last line landed to a chorus of agreement. Weapons came out. Ugly smiles spread across ugly faces. They advanced, one slow, deliberate step at a time, toward the black dragon and the girl standing in front of him. Anna looked at those smiles. At those weapons. At everything closing in. The fear inside her had reached its limit. And she had nothing left to fight it with.

She had thought about commanding the monsters to carry Su Nian out of the Dragon's Nest, to run. But the black dragon's body was impossibly heavy. No one could lift him. Brother... I'm sorry. Anna couldn't protect you. But Anna will stay right here. Whatever comes. Life or death. She bit her lip. She turned around. Her small hands curled into fists. Her whole body was shaking. The bright, smiling eyes she normally wore, full of warmth and mischief, were swimming with tears now, held just barely behind the edge.

She felt useless. Completely, utterly useless. In the Elven Forest. In the Dragon's Nest. It didn't matter where she was or how hard she tried. She could only stand and watch the people she loved disappear. Father. Mother. Sister. And now... brother too. She closed her eyes. She wrapped her arms around the black dragon's enormous head and held on. Grief and agony worked through her chest like something with teeth. Tears slid down the corners of her eyes and fell, one after another, onto the dragon's nose.

Onto his face. She turned her thin back toward the enemy. She pressed her chest against the sharp point of a dragon horn. If they tried to take her, she would drive that horn through her own chest herself. If death is coming anyway, then we die together. The Sakura players pushed forward, louder now, feeding off each other's energy. Brother Chicken and Chicken Too Beautiful fought desperately to break through and come to her aid. But they were already surrounded.

Blades, spears, clubs, cheap magic, it all came down on them without stop. In moments, they were battered and bleeding, barely standing. The players' laughter. The dying cries of the monsters outside. Together, they wove something that felt like a symphony of despair, though to the players, it sounded like a victory march. Hopelessness thickened. The air turned heavy and still. Then the music stopped. A dragon's roar split the world open. Deep. Resonant. Vast.

It swallowed every other sound like a thunderclap swallows silence.

"ROAAARRR—" Everything went still.

"Vile insects." The voice that followed was low and molten, the sound of a mountain deciding to move.

"How dare you invade my domain." Rage like magma. Killing intent coiling beneath the surface, barely contained, building, gathering, about to become fire that would reduce everything in its path to nothing. In the dim light of the Dragon's Nest. A pair of pale golden eyes opened. Right on cue. ➤ Next: A Dragon Has Its Reverse Scale