Chapter 874: Got You

This chapter is a bonus update sponsored by the "Meeting You in My Deepest Moments" reward.

————

Night had fallen.

Through the spatial magic beacons, he could sense that all five dragons had returned to Hot Spring Island. He sent a magic message to the mages stationed on Hot Spring Island, instructing the rats to closely monitor the island's food shipments.

Liszt ceased his efforts and headed straight back to Black Horse Island to rest.

After a full day of exhausting travel over the sea, Bard was exhausted. He needed rest to face tomorrow’s challenges.

Early the next morning, Liszt continued to approach Hot Spring Island to monitor the five beacons. At the same time, he kept checking the smoke task.

"Task: Someone is spying on your routine, and danger lurks in the shadows, drawing ever closer. Even a Dragon Rider isn’t safe from ambush, and combat is the best solution. Please resolve the crisis in the shadows. Reward: Ogre traces."

The task stayed the same—the threat lingered.

This meant Alex and Alonso hadn’t given up and were still planning another attack. So Liszt stayed on alert; he needed to keep monitoring the five dragons.

However.

By late morning, the smoke task updated.

"Task completed. Reward: Ogre traces."

The task succeeded—likely because after some discussion, Alex, Alonso, Piero, and the others had abandoned their plans for the dragon-slaying battle.

"You quit—but did I agree?"

Liszt’s eyes flashed.

As if reading his mind, the smoke task slowly transformed into another line of serpent tongue: "Task: A dragon-slaying battle was resolved through your correct actions, achieving the shocking feat of slaying a Dragon Rider. Yet, 'Press the advantage—don’t let up like the Hegemon King.' Why not press on and achieve even greater glory in this dragon-slaying battle? Reward: Carnivorous tree grove."

"Press the advantage—don’t let up like the Hegemon King!"

That was his mindset.

When he noticed the five dragons’ beacons begin to move, he trailed them silently. Along the way, the beacons didn’t scatter but continued flying deeper into the Sapphire Archipelago. Liszt maintained a distance of two hundred kilometers, keeping a steady distance, waiting for the group to split up.

From afternoon until evening, the five dragons finally stopped in one place.

Cross-referencing the Sapphire Duchy’s map with his sextant, Liszt quickly identified their landing spot—a populated island.

A small island.

It was the territory of a viscount—Square Island, governed by the Viscount of Square Island, a vassal of Marquis Wallace Pineapple Green of Deep Throat Island.

"Was the viscount a traitor, or had the dragons gone unnoticed?" Liszt also found an island to land on and rest quietly.

Either way, the Viscount of Square Island was highly suspect—possibly a traitor.

...

Meanwhile, as Liszt tracked the Kingdom of the Eagle’s dragons.

Far away on Flame Island, Emily was leading the Giant Elephant Knights in building the second major highway—the Ember River Highway, connecting Ember City and Riverport City.

The Whirlpool River meandered wildly.

So the Xinhe Avenue needed to be built deep into the jungle. Over the past few days, the highway had already reached a dense forest, but along the way, many serfs transporting supplies had gone missing. Gradually, a legend about ogres erupted among the serfs of the Moon Killers, with the first to mention the ogres being the serfs of the "River Tribe."

According to the River Tribe serfs, they had once been a large tribe ten years ago, but after encountering formless ogres that killed invisibly, they declined to a small tribe of fewer than five hundred people.

Forced to migrate to another forest previously conquered by knights, they never expected the ogres to reappear after ten years. The ancient mage of the River Tribe also confirmed the serfs' account.

Originally, investigating the ogres was not part of Emily's responsibilities, but when a knight went missing during their encampment, it put her on alert.

After several days of close investigation, she finally discovered the reason for the knight's disappearance: "Is it this tree?"

"Yes, Captain. We saw it trap the serf used as bait with our own eyes, and then other similar tree-like monsters dismembered the serf. Unfortunately, these tree-like monsters ran too fast—we only managed to keep this one. It seems to have realized it couldn’t escape and just froze in place like this."

It was a slender tree, over three meters tall, with sparse leaves, a thin trunk, and even thinner branches—nothing particularly unusual otherwise.

Yet the knights swore that the tree could move like vines, uproot itself, and run across the ground.

"Set it on fire!" Emily commanded.

The torch ignited the branches, crackling as they burned, but the tree showed no reaction, as if it were just an ordinary, insensate tree.

Watching the branches burn away, she spoke in a voice that was childlike yet oddly mature: "Interesting."

......

After departing from Square Island, Alex and Alonso's dragon knight squadron passed two more deserted islands before finally leaving the Sapphire Archipelago three days later. The next leg was a nearly thousand-kilometer ocean crossing, but Liszt soon discovered that there were still some deserted islands along the way where they could rest.

It was precisely these islands that allowed the Kingdom of the Eagle's dragon knights to freely traverse the Sapphire Archipelago.

With allies within like the Earl of Hot Spring Island and the Viscount of Square Island, they successfully launched this dragon hunt involving as many as five dragons—unfortunately, the final result was still failure.

"They still haven’t split up yet," Liszt muttered, sitting on a seashell beside a massive ice floe. Bard lay on the ice, chewing unhappily on a few strands of Smokegrass.

"Woo-yah!" Bard responded, indicating that it hadn’t sensed the beacons separating.

Acheronides, meanwhile, swam joyfully in the sea. She had used magic to retract her cloak and was freely swimming as she used to, with only a watery covering covering the essential areas. Liszt's gaze followed her movements, a faint smile playing on his lips.

He then took out a steaming mug of *Half-Slope milk tea* from his spatial ring and slowly sipped it.

The sea chase was hardly strenuous for him—it was more like a relaxing trip.

A moment later, Bard stood up: "Woo-yah!"

It had detected the beacons moving, so Liszt and Acheronides immediately set off, continuing to track them. After pursuing for over a hundred kilometers, both man and dragon suddenly perked up—they sensed that the five previously grouped beacons had finally split, with four remaining together while one broke away.

"Who could the one who left be?" Liszt abandoned the four grouped beacons without hesitation, guiding Bard the Invisible Dragon toward the lone beacon.

However, he didn’t recklessly close in, taking care against a possible trap.

The chase brought them nearly to the coastline of the Kingdom of the Eagle, while the other four beacons had long since vanished—likely, those four dragons had returned to the kingdom from another direction.

Just then...

Liszt was once again filled with excitement.

Because he discovered that this stray dragon had flown near the Siren Reefs, where there was a natural node that would allow Liszt to teleport instantly.

"So what are we waiting for, Bard, let's go!"

"Raaawr!"

High-speed flight, tearing through the boundaries of matter, entering the world beyond the material realm, Mana Positioning locked on the natural node at the Siren Reefs.

Open.

Reality snapped back into focus.

The beacon signal showed just twenty kilometers, and the aura of that dragon had already been sensed by him: "A Grey Cast Iron Dragon, so it's Duke Piero of the Gray Iron Duchy. Making a beeline for his territory... An iron dragon... If it were Alex Bai Kou Tie, I'd think twice about fighting, but you're just a lone dragon without a knight!"

Drawing his dragonlance Thunder's Rage.

Liszt bellowed, "Bard, charge!"

https://

Remember the first domain name of this book: . Mobile version reading URL: