The City of Peach Fire - (6)
I was elegantly sipping a cup of tea. First, I lifted the teacup with my fingertips. The gentle aroma of coffee brushed against the tip of my nose, and I took a sip. Gulp... The warm liquid wrapped around my tongue and slid smoothly down my throat. Along with the bitter taste of the coffee, I somehow regained my composure.
Even if another son of the Black Dragon had awakened in the outside world, stirring up chaos, I was grateful to have these small moments of peace in my daily life. That was exactly when it happened.
Some creature deep below had simply let out a single breath, yet the one listening from above instinctively let out a fucking hell. A truly pitiful dragon, one who could make his servants curse just by sighing puuuu in his sleep. But as his butler, Cube, who had served him for hundreds of years from the lair several floors above, I had every right to curse.
Again.
The low, resonant sound erupting from deep underground made the earth vibrate like thunder. I instinctively covered my ears and lowered my head. But it was merely the sound of the dragon below tossing and turning in his sleep, shaking off dust. It wouldn’t sound this bad from the sky, but right above him, it was quite noisy.
“Ah, I want to move out!” I muttered, shaking my head. This wasn’t just noise between floors—this was practically a catastrophe. The ground felt like it was splitting apart, magma boiling beneath. The words of the region’s geographers came to mind: that Mount Yugna could become an active volcano and erupt at any moment. It was proof that the volcano, quiet for the hundreds of years my master had slept, was now vigorously active.
“That demonic dragon bastard… why did he wake up so soon? The good days are over.”
As the palace butler, I grumbled as I headed to the dragon’s lair. It was true that I, as his servant, should treat my master—who had awakened after two hundred years—more kindly. But even after two centuries, it seemed I hadn’t shaken off my old rascal nature.
That was because my master… even when the sun was high in the sky, he would sleep in, and he’d wake up at night when others were sleeping and torment me, his butler. I sighed as I looked at Dragonai.
“He doesn’t sleep when he should, and every night he gets up and…”
It was true that Dragonai had disturbed my hibernation every night. I had become seriously nocturnal, waking up at night and being active as if it were midday. So whenever I looked at my master, I would send him this kind of resentful glance.
“What sin did I commit in my past life…”
At that moment, Dragonai suddenly flung the door open and stepped out.
“Hey!”
I flinched and curled up, letting out a scream.
“H-hiiiiiihiiiiiik… Dragonai-nim! Did you enjoy a pleasant night with excellent health and boundless vitality? Is your noble body in perfect condition?”
At my awkward phrasing, my master burst into a snort of laughter.
"Puhahaha, what kind of speech habit is that? Did you visit the Eastern Kingdom of Courtesy while I was gone?"
When I hit the nail on the head, Cube made an awkward face. It occurred to me that he might have actually gone to such a place while I was away. But I wasn’t satisfied with just that.
“Hey, did you find the ‘Kaleido Heaven’ yet?”
When I asked, Cube rolled his eyes, not knowing what to do. I had ordered him to find the holy relic called Kaleido Heaven, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to obtain it. In truth, that relic was something even a Lord Dragon would find difficult to acquire. It was a mirror that reflected the world of the dead and allowed one to see the past and souls of all living beings on the surface—a divine artifact. If I could have obtained such a thing, I would already be in another world.
Kaleido Heaven — Mirror that illuminates the realm of the dead and reveals the past and souls of all surface life.
Even a Lord Dragon would struggle to obtain it.
“Kaleido Heaven… I don’t need it anymore. The dead are just dead!”
When I said something unexpected, Cube looked at me with a shocked face.
“T-then… have you forgotten about that young lady now?”
I snorted and shook my head.
“The living are far more important than the dead. The dead are illusory beings we cannot see, while the living I must care for over thousands of years are precious beings right before my eyes.”
Cube’s face brightened as he nodded vigorously.
“That’s right! Exactly! Hahaha!”
“Hahaha hahaha hahaha!”
Cube and I burst into laughter at the same time. For a moment, Cube seemed to think I had finally grown up; his eyes sparkled as he looked at me. It felt rather satisfying to have him gaze at me with such admiration.
In reality, I was a member of the Elemental Dragon race. Beings who live for thousands of years, are reborn upon death, and inherit all previous memories and souls. People called me immortal.
— You ambiguous races that are neither dragons nor snakes. You are the bugs among bugs!
— You crawling wyrms who cannot even speak. You are livestock, no doubt about it!
— Ah, but there were those too. The filthy hybrid servants between humans and dragons! The Draconians!
— But even our Metal Dragons are merely commoners. Nothing more!
— What do the true knights of the Pantheon say? Only the Elemental Dragons!
— The nobles among nobles, only attainable by Elemental Dragons—what of the Dual-Element Dragons?
— And the ‘King’ who commands and leads all those knights—
— The one called Radiant.
— Our love, our sacred sovereign. Lord Dragooooon~~ ♥♡
In the chapter where this song appeared, the author performed a miraculous feat that cut the simultaneous reading rate in half. Anyway. After that, the various humiliating scenes Seira went through were so filled with despair that the miracle of the ten-thousand-strong loyal army was maintained until the very end. The novel concluded with great success. It was so popular that a game based on this very fantasy world was even released!
And among the ‘precious Elemental Dragons,’ of which there were only about a dozen on the continent, I was the dragon said to be the first to awaken Dual-Element powers.
Among all the dragons in the empire, the only ones who had awakened Dual powers were me—Red-Silver DragonDragonai—and that guy Solaris, the White-Gold Dragon.
In other words, the only one among all dragons to receive the honor of ‘noble’ status—free from the absolute royal decree of the ‘Lord’ and able to enjoy independent authority—was none other than me, Dragonai.
In dragon terms, it was like holding the position of a Grand Duke.
Yet even I, such a noble and divine being, had my heart stolen by a single woman—a mere human girl at that. Because of her, I suffered from lovesickness for hundreds of years, and that was why I had ordered Cube to find the Kaleido Heaven.
However, the girl I had been searching for had somehow returned as ‘Seira.’ The woman this dragon in the original story had sought was the princess of the Lusa Kingdom, and coincidentally, she too was a modern person from South Korea who had possessed the body, just like me. The last two letters of her name were also similar.
In the original work, Dragonai believed that Seira was the reincarnation of his fiancée and searched for her desperately instead of the Kaleido Heaven. But Seira was different from what the dragon thought. She kept running away, and I tried to protect her. Yet the other Elemental Dragons were also drawn to Seira’s charm and tried to claim her. All the dragons plotted for Seira, and in the end, even I was swept into that vortex and met my death.
But my death was the path to true awakening. When I was resurrected, the world was already walking the road to ruin. I set out to find Seira again, but she had already become a victim of a horrific war and died. Seira’s death enraged Dragonai, and he resolved to destroy the world. When Dragonai brought ruin to the continent, the author ended the story, and the novel was over.
I replayed the story in my head and burst into laughter. I was certain the author must have been on drugs. She was a good writer… even if there was a bit of madness mixed in. She was pretty, after all.
At midnight, I possessed the body of a dragon, and during the day, I returned to Seira’s body. Until now, this lifestyle hadn’t been uncomfortable. But now it was different.
Once, I stayed awake through the night, enduring without sleep. Then my body switched so that Seira was active during the day and Dragonai at night. I found this strange phenomenon fascinating.
“Hoo, this is an interesting ability.”
When Cube saw me being active during the day, he was startled and stammered.
“H-hiik. Did you enjoy a pleasant night with excellent health and boundless vitality?”
I burst out laughing at Cube’s words.
“Yeah, and did you also enjoy colorful nights with ten thousand fragrances?”
Cube looked at me with a flustered face.
“I-I don’t have a partner, so…”
“Me neither. I only have a pink slime, so it’s lonely.”
At that moment, Cube and I nodded, thinking the exact same thing. It was the first time our opinions had aligned so perfectly.
“S-so… would you like to kidnap someone after such a long time? A woman?”
At Cube’s suggestion, I smiled and nodded.
“Sounds good.”
Now, the kidnapping spree of the Empire’s Virile Great Demon King Dragon would begin once more.