Chapter 150: Havoc in Salt City 1

“The City Lord’s estate, huh? Hmph. Officials really are the same wherever you go. Fine, I’m done interfering. Do whatever you want.”

Kent had finally confirmed who was behind the soldiers.

He had already guessed that anyone bold enough to seize people openly in the street must have powerful backing, but he hadn’t expected them to be connected directly to the City Lord’s estate.

Having lived two lives, Kent was no stranger to the darker side of society.

Still, he wasn’t afraid.

And those last words had not been directed at Captain Martin.

They were meant for the Dragon Turtle.

Since someone had willingly volunteered to become an outlet for the creature’s pent-up anger, Kent saw no reason to stop it.

People who walked on two legs were hardly rare in this world.

In truth, if Captain Martin hadn’t given the order to kill them if they resisted, Kent might not have let the Dragon Turtle do as it pleased.

But now that the other side had made it clear they were willing to take his life, Kent certainly wasn’t going to stand there meekly and let himself be slaughtered.

“Brat, what are you muttering about?”

Captain Martin had heard Kent speaking under his breath and assumed he might be chanting a spell.

Yet he couldn’t sense even the slightest fluctuation of magical energy, so he barked the question suspiciously.

Kent smiled pleasantly.

“Captain, you kicked over my magical pet’s wine. He’s very unhappy about it.”

His smile widened.

“So he thinks you should compensate him.”

“Wahahaha! Wahahaha!”

Captain Martin froze for a moment, then burst into loud laughter.

“Brat, you go on ahead. My brothers and I will butcher this worthless pet of yours and use it as drinking food. We’ll join you soon enough!”

Laughing uproariously, Martin raised his greatsword and casually slapped the flat of the blade against the Dragon Turtle’s shell.

“Is that so?”

A deep voice suddenly sounded beside his ear.

“You said you were going to butcher me for drinking food?”

The Dragon Turtle was already furious enough about becoming Kent’s magical pet.

Kent called it a “magical pet” every other sentence, and now Martin had started doing exactly the same thing.

Its temper had been building for quite some time.

The moment Martin finished speaking, the Dragon Turtle slowly raised its head and stared at him.

“That’s right. We’re going to butcher you for—”

Martin answered without thinking.

Then his voice faltered.

“For… for…”

His face suddenly went rigid.

The magical beast had spoken.

A magical beast capable of human speech was generally a ninth-rank creature.

Martin stood frozen in place.

The unfinished words seemed trapped in his throat, while his eyes widened so much they looked ready to burst from their sockets.

The Dragon Turtle was furious.

This insignificant human had not only insulted it, but had actually threatened to butcher it and serve it with wine.

The pressure radiating from its body began to rise.

Higher.

And higher.

At the same time, its body started expanding.

Some of the sharper soldiers immediately realized something was terribly wrong.

They threw down their weapons and ran without hesitation.

Most of the others, however, remained rooted to the spot, staring blankly at the creature before them.

“Die, insignificant human.”

By now, the Dragon Turtle had returned to its true size.

Its massive body stretched nearly a hundred meters in length and towered dozens of meters high.

It had no intention of killing Martin with magic.

No.

It wanted to crush the human who had dared kick over its wine barrel with its own claw.

The Dragon Turtle raised one enormous foreleg.

Then brought it down with terrifying force.

At that exact moment, several overwhelming auras suddenly erupted from different parts of Salt City.

Most of them came from the direction of the so-called inner city.

That was the district where nobles, wealthy families, and high-ranking officials lived—something like an exclusive luxury residential quarter back on Earth.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion shook the entire street.

The Dragon Turtle’s claw smashed deep into the ground, sinking several meters into the stone.

A violent shockwave erupted outward.

Nearby buildings collapsed one after another as though struck by an invisible battering ram.

People who had failed to retreat in time were hurled dozens of meters through the air.

Crash! Rumble!

Broken stone continued cascading into the crater as the Dragon Turtle slowly lifted its claw.

The surrounding ground had been shattered into fragments.

In its place was now an enormous pit, dozens of square meters across and several meters deep.

As for Captain Martin, who only moments ago had been swaggering about with absolute confidence—

he was nowhere to be seen.

“Hmph!”

The Dragon Turtle sensed the powerful auras rising from within the city and gave a cold snort.

In the very next instant, its already enormous body expanded once again, nearly doubling in size.

Then, in complete defiance of gravity, it slowly began to rise into the air.

That alone was enough to reveal its true level.

This was the mark of a Domain.

Apart from wind-element mages, no mage below the tenth rank could simply suspend themselves motionless in midair. Hovering was fundamentally different from ordinary flight.

“Damn… now that is impressive.”

Kent stared at the enormous Dragon Turtle as it slowly floated upward, excitement surging through him.

“It looks like an aircraft carrier… No, forget that. It looks more like a space fortress!”

An indescribable thrill filled him.

The surrounding district of Salt City had already been almost completely destroyed. People were fleeing in every direction, though fortunately most of those wealthy or powerful enough to live on the city’s second tier possessed at least some degree of strength.

As a result, the number of actual casualties remained relatively low.

Daphne, meanwhile, stood with her mouth slightly open.

She stared at the enormous creature she had spent half a month casually riding as a “mount.”

Only now did she finally understand why Kent had been willing to trade away an entire vial of dragon blood for the Dragon Turtle.

A magical beast that had reached the Legendary realm was worth far more than a single vial.

Even several vials of dragon blood would have been a bargain.

“Hehe. Speechless, aren’t you?”

Kent grinned when he saw Daphne’s stunned expression.

At that moment, a powerful voice rang out from across the ruined district.

“May I ask who Your Excellency is?”

An elderly warrior stepped forward.

“My name is Wood. I am one of the guardians of Salt City. If our city has offended Your Excellency in any way, perhaps we can discuss the matter properly.”

Wood was a swordsman at the very peak of the ninth rank.

Several other ninth-rank experts stood beside him.

Yet as they stared at the Dragon Turtle’s gigantic figure hovering in the distance, none of them felt confident.

More than anything, they were furious.

Who in the world had been foolish enough to provoke a monster like this inside Salt City?

After a brief discussion, Wood had been chosen to speak on behalf of the group.

And in truth, his words were already an admission of fault.

The very fact that he addressed the other side as “Your Excellency” said enough.

As a peak ninth-rank swordsman, Wood might not have used such a respectful title toward anyone in hundreds of years.

More importantly, he had used the word offended.

That alone made his position clear.

He was acknowledging that Salt City had been the party at fault.

“Hmph! This city of yours is nothing but a den of bandits!”

Kent slowly floated upward with Daphne beside him.

He had cast a sixth-rank wind spell—Levitation.

“Call your City Lord out here. I want to hear exactly what we did wrong that justified sending soldiers to arrest us and ordering them to kill us if we resisted!”

Kent understood one principle very well—

if you were going to eliminate trouble, you had to remove it at the root.

And so far, the person truly responsible for the attack had yet to reveal himself.

“I am the City Lord.”

A man finally stepped forward under the murderous stares of the experts around him.

“My name is Gohanni. May I ask where Your Excellency heard that I personally ordered anyone to arrest you?”

Gohanni was also a ninth-rank swordsman, though he had only recently advanced into the ninth rank.

Facing the situation before him, even he could only force himself to speak.

“So now you want evidence?”

Kent’s temper immediately flared at the City Lord’s attempt to distance himself from the matter.

“Take a look at those soldiers below.”

He pointed toward the ruined street.

“And take another look at that Captain Martin—or whatever his name was—in the crater.”

Kent’s voice turned cold.

“That’s your evidence.”

“If you can’t give me a satisfactory explanation, then perhaps Salt City has no reason to continue existing.”

One of the nearby experts immediately frowned.

He was a ninth-rank fire-element warrior.

After taking a closer look at Kent and realizing that the young man himself appeared to be only sixth rank, while Daphne was merely second rank, his confidence returned somewhat.

“What family do you belong to?”

He shouted sharply.

“You dare speak such words? Aren’t you afraid of the Council of Elders?”

Kent looked at the group with obvious impatience.

Then he casually reached out and patted one of the Dragon Turtle’s horns.

“I wonder…”

His voice was calm, almost lazy.

“If my magical pet were to cast a few earth-element forbidden spells, would Salt City still be standing afterward?”

He paused.

“And I should probably mention—my magical pet happens to be earth-aligned.”

Kent spoke as though he were discussing the weather.

But everyone in Salt City heard him clearly.

For an instant, countless people felt their scalps go numb.

Those of lower rank immediately turned and ran.

Even the stronger residents began putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the Dragon Turtle.

Within moments, the entire city descended into chaos.

A Legendary-class magical beast.

An earth-element one.

And this was the Underdark.

In an underground environment like this, the destructive power of earth magic would be at least twice as great as it was on the surface.

Worse still, magical beasts required far less time than human mages to unleash forbidden spells.

The implications were terrifying.

If the Dragon Turtle truly decided to cast even a handful of earth-element forbidden spells—

Salt City might genuinely cease to exist.