Chapter 246: Janina’s Task
Helen’s eyes continued searching for an accomplice in the middle of the silent room.
The black-haired warrior looked around in desperation, searching for someone who would at least take her side even a little in that tense moment. But she found no support whatsoever on her teammates’ faces.
Mirian averted her gaze straight toward the hard gray wall, completely refusing to make eye contact with the infuriated warrior.
Beatrice simply maintained her usual cold and neutral expression, staying completely out of the internal conflict.
And Alicia was too focused on her king’s well-being to pay any attention to a simple complaint from Helen.
Helen opened her mouth several times, trying to formulate some coherent sentence to defend herself. But she couldn’t find a single word to shield herself from the harsh, crude truth Ryan had just thrown in her face.
Ryan remained very serious in front of her, maintaining his firm and authoritative posture from his spot. And without him realizing it, his dense magical energy continued to flow freely through the refuge’s atmosphere.
That dark and threatening mana filled every corner of the dungeon’s one hundredth floor with a dense heaviness.
Alicia and Karol were the most affected by that physical pressure floating in the air.
Unlike the S-rank heroines, they didn’t have such a high resistance to that kind of intimidation. Both girls looked visibly suffocated and trembled under the dark aura Ryan was releasing uncontrollably.
Upon noticing his own companions’ genuine physical discomfort, Ryan reacted immediately so as not to hurt them.
He let out a long, heavy sigh, closing his eyes for a brief second to calm his own energy.
Ryan relaxed his body’s muscles and cut off the flow of his threatening power, projecting his usual tranquility once again. The air in the room lost that suffocating feeling, allowing Alicia and Karol to breathe normally again.
"Good, now stay quiet right where you are," Ryan ordered with a very sharp and cold voice.
He looked at Helen one last time before slowly turning around. "We are not done with this meeting yet."
Ryan sat back down in his wooden chair, retaking control of the situation and the group.
Helen gritted her teeth, feeling the bitter taste of defeat and exclusion from the war, but she stayed still in her spot. From the other side of the table, Ivis let out a very mocking and highly defiant laugh in the middle of the silence.
The dragon woman looked at Helen with an evident expression of superiority and mockery.
She enjoyed seeing the loud and arrogant human being humiliated and punished in front of everyone by her own leader. And Helen glared back at her almost instantly with a deep, burning hatred shining in her eyes.
The black-haired warrior wanted to draw her weapon and cut off Ivis’s head for daring to laugh at her misfortune. But, remembering Ryan’s recent and clear order, Helen didn’t dare say a single word to start a useless fight.
But then, Karol decided to intervene quite naturally, completely ignoring the previous argument. The beautiful blue-haired mage decided to calm the waters by dropping a very important question that had been hovering in her head.
"If I am not mistaken with all this information," Karol said, pacing calmly around the room.
"The demon queen Ophelia has two dragons in total at her service."
Karol approached Ryan and, without asking for any permission, sat casually on the arm of the chair where he was resting.
She crossed her legs elegantly, adjusting her large mage robe while staring intently at Ivis.
"So, if you are going to fight alongside us in the north," Karol continued with a lot of curiosity and doubt in her voice.
"Will the other dragon stay in Ophelia’s castle this whole time to protect it from possible enemies?"
At Karol’s question, the other girls quickly snapped out of their shock. Alicia and Mirian leaned their faces forward slightly, showing clear and genuine interest in that particular topic.
They had already shown a lot of interest in knowing the lethal secrets of dragons like them before. And certainly, the name of the female dragon Janina had not been mentioned in this entire long tactics conversation.
Ophelia also hadn’t said absolutely anything about her to Ryan when she explained the details of the invasion. It was a loose end that could prove vital to the success or tragic failure of the entire mission in the cold lands.
So even he himself planted his serious green eyes on Ivis’s tall figure.
Ryan looked at her with clear interest in her answer.
Ivis, feeling so intensely observed by the whole curious group of mortals, reacted with great annoyance. The dragon woman let out a long sigh of annoyance.
"Janina will take care of very different matters," she said with a sharp and evasive voice. Ivis settled into her own chair and crossed her legs, trying not to give more details than necessary.
"But if Ophelia’s powerful Abyssals are going to stay locked in the castle to defend it," Alicia murmured from her spot.
The loyal wolf assistant frowned.
"Shouldn’t they immediately take advantage of the darkness dragon’s enormous power in this battle once and for all?" Alicia asked.
It was a major doubt. If they were going to kill the demon king Rigal on his throne, they would need all the brute strength available on the frontline of the attack.
"Fuu..." Ivis let out a massive amount of hot air from her mouth, as if she were about to unleash a burst of flame.
The water dragon openly demonstrated her immense exhaustion at the constant, annoying doubts of the lower-ranking humans. Then she lifted her face with evident laziness to answer the insistent wolf girl directly.
"Yes, yes, she will help in the war," Ivis accepted, finally revealing her companion’s important role.
"If the demons Rigal sends to invade Rohan’s continent manage to survive that territorial battle."
Ivis smiled very coldly, baring her fangs. "She will be in charge of hunting them down and killing them all on their way back."
The dragon woman explained Queen Ophelia’s secondary plan with overwhelming confidence.
"In fact, once all those annoying soldiers are wounded and very tired from the tough fight against Rohan’s generals. She will massacre them without any mercy," Ivis stated, confirming the brutal death sentence for that enemy army.
"Only a lethal monster like Janina could do something that massive quickly enough and without leaving any visible trace for the rest."
Ivis crossed her arms, looking exceedingly proud of the darkness dragon’s terrifying and unfair capabilities. It was a dark mission of total annihilation that required a perfect and highly stealthy predator in the enemy’s rear guard.
"Do you understand it more clearly now, mortals?" Ivis asked the attentive girls present in the refuge.
"Even if that massive army of Rigal’s turned back halfway due to some sudden suspicion about their home. Even if they backed out of fighting the demon king Rohan’s generals to return to their castle to defend their leader."
Ivis maintained her dark and predatory smile on her face.
"Janina would have to stop them from returning at all costs to save him. She has strict orders to block their path immediately and face them all by herself if necessary."
The group fell silent as they assimilated the task the darkness dragon would carry out all on her own.
"Wait a moment," Mirian intervened very suddenly, breaking the calm and certainty of the moment.
The slender archer raised her hands right in front of her, moving her fingers as if she were mentally counting the pieces on a chessboard. Mirian’s face shifted from simple curiosity to evident worry and high alert for the group.
"Rigal has three dragons in total entirely at his service," Mirian enumerated, recalling Ryan’s earlier clear explanation about the defenses.
"And as you are saying right now, one of them will be personally leading those attack troops toward Rohan’s distant lands. From that distance between continents, if I am not mistaken about how your powers actually work."
Mirian stared intently at Ivis, feeling her own heart begin to beat much faster.
"The members of your race can communicate instantaneously through telepathy from one place to another, isn’t that right?" Mirian asked with great urgency.
The yellow-haired girl swallowed hard with a lot of difficulty, feeling a very cold knot quickly form in her throat.
Ophelia’s apparent perfect master strategy suddenly showed a gigantic and utterly fatal flaw for them.
"That will cause our awaited surprise attack on his castle to be noticed from the very beginning of the invasion..."