Chapter 387
Chapter 387
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 387
Chapter Title: The Shadow Dragon Lord's Warning
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“Are you awake?”
Belnoa frowned.
It was late at night. Belnoa, who had been dozing lightly in her barracks, slowly rose at the whispering voice in her ear.
“Yes, I’m awake.”
Rubbing her eyes, Belnoa lit the lamp. A soft crimson glow illuminated the barracks. After blinking a few times, she looked toward the source of the voice.
“It’s been a while since I’ve appeared to you like this, hasn’t it?”
On the desk in the barracks.
A goddess was perched there. Gone was her usual shabby appearance. In the same mystical form as when they first met, the Shadow Dragon Lord smiled.
Her hair, resembling the night sky, cascaded down beneath the desk. Each time she swung her legs, the hem of her dress—like a piece cut from the night sky—billowed, revealing her pale white skin.
“Hmm, the air isn’t good here after all. It’s not that cool, clear air from the old days. It’s murky.”
Even her voice was different from usual.
The voice resonating through the air had substance. Gazing at the goddess who existed here with form, Belnoa mentally counted the days.
“Ah, it’s today, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She whispered with a seductive smile.
“The day when shadows stretch the longest—the day my power as the Shadow Dragon Lord is at its peak.”
A majestic presence.
Belnoa silently rummaged in a corner of the barracks and pulled out a dessert, as the goddess shrugged her shoulders as if inviting praise.
“Would you like some?”
“My contractor knows her stuff.”
The moment the goddess stretched out her arm contentedly to take the dessert from Belnoa—whoosh, Belnoa raised her arm high. The goddess’s eyes narrowed as she grasped at empty air.
“...What are you doing?”
“If you’re going to eat, get down from the table first. And don’t sit on the papers.”
“Are you giving me orders right now?”
“Yes.”
“...Hah, well now.”
The goddess pressed hard between her brows.
From the way she groaned, it seemed she was deeply pondering whether the dessert before her or her own dignity was more important.
The deliberation didn’t last long.
She gracefully stepped down from the table and sat primly in a chair, extending her hand to Belnoa once more.
“There, happy now? Hand it over.”
“Yes, good girl.”
It feels like raising a pet, Belnoa thought suddenly.
2.
Once a year, on the day when shadows stretch the longest.
Thanks to having a contractor, the Shadow Dragon Lord could manifest a physical form once a year. She couldn’t wield her powers or perform miracles, but she placed great value in materializing.
A brief span from sunset to sunrise.
That short time, once a year.
Only during that time could the Shadow Dragon Lord take form and move without anyone’s aid.
“Let’s go out first.”
Whenever the day came, the goddess made one request of her contractor—a wish so modest it seemed unworthy of a great primordial deity.
To walk with her and keep her company in conversation.
That was all the Shadow Dragon Lord asked of her contractor once a year. Today was no different. Late at night, Belnoa walked the fields near the battlefield alongside the goddess she served.
“I breathe. I stand on two feet. I feel the earth beneath my bare soles. Something you could do anytime you wished... but for me...”
She smiled as her bare feet pressed into the ground.
“It’s difficult.”
As if savoring even the smallest things.
“Things I once did so naturally I never thought them special... to me now, they’re profoundly precious.”
Crunch.
The sound of dry grass underfoot echoed around them.
“Isn’t the sound of grass crunching just wonderful?”
“Is it?”
“Yes. The crunch of grass. The feel of bare skin against the earth. All these sensations have become so foreign to me. Familiar yet fresh. After eons of existence, you learn to crave things like this.”
Under the moonlight, she spun in a circle.
Her dress billowed in the breeze. Peering through her flowing hair, the goddess looked back at Belnoa following behind—her third contractor.
“Child.”
“Yes.”
“Shall I give you some advice?”
Starlight poured from the heavens, soft moonlight bathed her. She brushed back her wavy hair, closed her eyes, then opened them. Her usual pitch-black pupils slowly turned red.
Dragon Eyes.
The eyes of the god who shaped the first lifeforms, who created the most perfect beings. The crimson dragon eyes stared straight at Belnoa.
“My eyes see many things. Even now, having lost most of my powers and divinity, I can’t pierce all as in ancient times... but once a year, when a fragment of my power returns, I see something.”
She tapped the corner of her eye.
“Flows. Branches of possibility.”
Reading possibilities from countless flows.
Some call it this:
“Futures born from the premise of ‘perhaps.’”
Future sight.
“I see such things.”
Most of the current stars’ powers originated from what the Shadow Dragon Lord once held. The prophecies the stars called forth were part of that.
The god’s dragon eyes.
Her gaze pierces all things, reads the flows, and divines futures from them. Futures that might happen. Uncertain futures.
“Of course, I’ve lost most of my power, and even when a sliver returns... it’s so faint I can only sense the flows, not truly read them. That’s why I couldn’t offer you much help.”
So the goddess thought it would be the same today.
But, she continued.
“However, today was a little different.”
“Different... how?”
“I tried divining the future with my briefly returned power, and a clear vision appeared. It should have been hazy...”
With faint power, futures can’t be divined clearly.
That was how it should have been.
But this time, something was off. Amid the haze, something sharp came into view.
“What I saw this time was vivid. As if it weren’t a ‘perhaps,’ but something certain to happen.”
A definite future.
A future that would certainly occur without intervention—visible even with her faded power.
“In that future, I saw...”
“...What?”
“My contractor meeting her death.”
Belnoa flinched.
“You died a gruesome death. Protecting that child you cherish. Stalling for time against someone soon to arrive on that battlefield.”
“...Me?”
“Yes. But the reinforcements never came. In the end, you held out alone and met a horrific end.”
Belnoa’s expression hardened.
The goddess had called it a definite future. Frowning, Belnoa slowly spoke.
“You mean that’s the future awaiting me?”
“No, the future that should have awaited you.”
The future that should have been.
Belnoa didn’t grasp the meaning right away. Before she could, the goddess explained.
“What I saw was closer to the past than the future. Hard to explain in words, but it was a mix of future and past. From now, it’s the future... but from the future’s view...”
“That explanation makes it even harder to understand.”
“Fair enough. It’s confusing even for me.”
The goddess chuckled and let out a short breath.
“To put it simply, what I saw... was the future that should have befallen you. But due to some intervention, it became a future that ‘never was.’”
An unknown something had intervened.
A foreign entity had deeply meddled in the flow, twisting the path to the future.
“Now, no one can tell what will happen.”
The flows were tangled.
No one could foresee the future anymore. The goddess now realized why the past three years of divinations had always been hazy.
“Then that future won’t happen?”
Belnoa tilted her head, her face saying she struggled to follow. To one living by human common sense, the notions of transcendent beings felt distant.
“It won’t happen, but...”
The goddess said.
“From what I saw and realized in that future, I want to give you advice.”
“Yes, please speak.”
The goddess took a step toward Belnoa.
She extended a slender finger and poked Belnoa squarely in the chest.
“If you truly wish to protect that child—if you truly cherish her.”
The red dragon eyes glared at Belnoa.
“Live a long life. By her side.”
“...Pardon?”
“Don’t throw away your life for her sake. If you leave her side, she’ll break. Just like that.”
...Break?
Belnoa blinked. The goddess offered no further explanation. She simply spun around and resumed walking ahead.
Crunch.
As the sound of grass underfoot spread,
the Shadow Dragon Lord silently recalled the future she had seen. The future that should have come to pass. It was the process of one world hurtling toward destruction.
She hadn’t seen it all.
But within that flow, the goddess had witnessed it.
Her contractor’s death, the calamity born from that death, the calamity’s end. The contractor’s sacrifice, rendered utterly meaningless in the end.
And.
The being standing at the ruined world’s close.
Remembering that bizarre entity, the goddess shuddered faintly. The intervener was void. Void and horrifically alien. She had seen it laughing atop an elder dragon’s corpse.
...That liar must have seen it too.
The goddess let out a long sigh.
She clicked her tongue, thinking the bystander liar might finally make a move.
3.
Raniel exhaled shortly after incinerating wave after wave of demon king’s forces, then took a step. Heading back to her barracks, she halted abruptly with a thud.
“......”
There was a presence inside the barracks.
A massive aura seeped through the tent fabric. Sensing she had stopped, a voice came from within.
“What’s the holdup? Come in already.”
A voice she recognized.
Raniel’s expression soured in an instant. With a long sigh, she swept aside the tent flap.
“It’s been a while.”
A man sat inside the barracks.
A young mage with blue hair. But his eyes gazing at Raniel gleamed gold, with slit pupils more reptilian than human.
A mage with dragon eyes.
The ancient mage who had lived for tens of thousands of years, revered as a god among mages. Raniel opened her mouth and named the being.
“Senile lizard.”
“Yes, I am the ancient drag—what?”
“Senile lizard, I said.”
Yormun van Draconic, the ancient dragon mage.
He swept a hand over his eyes and muttered.
“...You call me that too? Looks like Cardi, that bastard, really spread some nasty rumors. It’s a misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding my ass. Flirting with someone thousands of years younger than you—not even an adult by worldly standards...”
“That’s why it’s a misunderstanding.”
“Not convincing at all.”
Raniel sighed and removed her robe.
She shook off the dust and ash-covered robe toward the ancient dragon mage several times—pat pat—then hung it haphazardly on a hook.
“Cough, hack!”
“So why are you here? All the way out here.”
“Why else? To see you.”
Yormun whispered with a sly smile.
“My beautiful Le...”
Boom!
A bolt of lightning struck without warning, piercing straight through the chair Yormun sat in from above. He stared at the impact site with trembling eyes. The lightning had embedded itself right between his legs. A slight misalignment and...
“Gasp...”
Cold sweat trickled down Yormun’s spine.
“I’ll ask again. What’s your business?”
Raniel’s blue eyes glared at Yormun.
If this old lizard, infamous for his stubbornness, had come all the way to the battlefield, there had to be a good reason.
“Can’t even joke around anymore.”
The ancient dragon shrugged and rested his chin on his hand.
“Business, business...”
Will she get it if I say this?
Muttering to himself, Yormun spoke.
“The Goddess of Ashes.”
Raniel van Draconic.
“It’s about the future altered by the intervention of a sinner who broke taboo. Don’t you bear some responsibility too?”
The ancient dragon’s eyes grew cold.
A gaze that had once chilled Raniel to the bone. Before that pressure-laden stare, Raniel dipped her head slightly. When she raised it again.
Raniel.
Raniel van Trias burst into coarse laughter.
“What bullshit, you senile lizard bastard.”
With her vulgar tongue returning after so long, Raniel clenched her fist.