The World Dragon's Heir - Chapter 673: Good Timing

Chapter 673: Good Timing

Dominic wasn’t sure how to answer the General’s question. He didn’t know any other dragonkin who could do what he did. But he also didn’t know any others who were as much dragon as he was.

John and Sheriff Nate only had a few draconic features at most, and it wasn’t an issue for them.

“The only thing that I can’t reliably hide is my horns.” Dominic explained.

The General smiled. “That is understandable, Your Highness. The horns are sacred.”

“Please, do come in. Dave, help the others get settled, and get them some breakfast. General, I do hope that your giants don’t have any special dietary requirements.”

The black winged dragonkin shook his head. “No, they will eat what the Trolls eat.”

“Excellent. I must say, you have excellent timing. The King just departed, so we don’t need to go through as much of a security assessment.”

Marshall laughed. “You’ve got fifty Mountain Trolls, at least three Archmages, a team of Paladins, and a Dragonkin Prince present. How much of a threat could anything be to you? The Giants are tough, and magic resistant, but they’re not going to take on fifty Mountain Trolls in that most lovely battle armour.”

Dominic shrugged. “We all get a bit protective. Are you aware of my family situation?”

The dragonkin nodded. “Both the tragedy, and your current situation. Though, my nose tells me that celebrations are in order. You are aware that your wife is expecting, right?”

Dominic nodded. “Indeed. We just finished celebrating the news.”

“How about we sit in the back garden? The sun is quite nice this morning, and it doesn’t put you out of sight of your people while they eat over by the barracks.”

He led the way to the garden, followed by two of the Daves and John Mackay, who had managed to appear in the Manor without anyone noticing.

The maids already had tea and snacks out by the time that they sat, and the General sighed in longing as he looked at them. Northeastern Burlish was not quite a desert. It was considered badlands, full of steep valleys. But there was little rainfall, scarce cropland, and an abundance of monsters that constantly reappeared, no matter how often you cleared them out.

This sort of luxury was beyond anything that they could offer, and it was only a light snack in Wistover.

“Now, how about you explain the whole situation with your Burlish Resistance Army to me? I am sure that you can see how it would be problematic for me to be assisting a foreign army.”

Marshall took a hesitant bite of a salmon salad sandwich square, his eyes opening wider in shock.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“No need for the formality. I am the Duke of Wistover, and Governor of Stansia Province, my functional titles are fine, but I don’t stand on protocol.”

“My apologies. Lord Dominic, then. The Burlish Resistance Army is a grand title for what we are.

To most of the world, we would be considered a small nomadic tribe, a group of local survivors of monster attacks who banded together for safety. The two Giants are the last of their clan, who were wiped out after five thousand Ogres descended on their village one morning.

The Mountain Trolls heard that you had more of their kind and insisted on coming along.

I was originally going to bring just a few of the more human appearing mages.

Our group is about half Sorcerers and mixed blood sorts, the other half human, you see. Our goal is to reclaim northeastern Burlish from the monsters.

Once upon a time, three centuries or more ago, there were great cities in the region. They’re all destroyed now. Razed by monsters and dragon fire. Now, not a single city is left in the region, and the monster population has gotten out of control.

It has driven the population of Burlish to the shores. And even then, they still suffer attacks and can’t properly farm without armed guards and walls.

We aren’t a large force, but we’re not willing to abandon our ancestral lands to the monsters.

For that purpose, we’ve been looking for you since we first heard the rumours of dragonkin crafted weapons being used in the Dagos Cygnia war a season ago.

We don’t have any master smiths left, Burlish as a whole barely has any.

At best, we might be able to buy a handful of uncommon grade weapons from the pirate fleets on the coast. But with so many monsters, the cores are worth far less in Burlish than they are here in the northeast.

Unfortunately, we also suffer a shortage of properly trained mages, and the Elders to teach more.

The Ogres target them, and a few years back there was a Beholder nest that started to aggressively target the towns on the coast. They took out thousands of mages, entire Mage Sects fell to them.

And don’t get me started on the damned vampires.”

Dominic nodded. “Got it, Burlish is in bad shape. Bad enough that it’s nearly abandoned by the civilized species. But you think that you can start to take it back?

At best, if I give you a bunch of weapons, you’ll be able to hold a bit of territory for a few years until something targets you, and then you’ll be arming the Vampires with magitech weapons.”

Marshall smiled. “Fortunately for us, their magic is incompatible. They can’t activate even a magitech lantern. We’ve got a bunch of them that are blessed by the church to give off faintly holy light.

It is wickedly effective against the vampires, and they’re incapable of turning them off.

That’s part of why the Beholder invasion was so deadly.

A Beholder monster has no issues using magitech. Even overriding and nullifying spells cast by others.

So, they simply turned off the lights and the defensive barriers, and let their allies invade in the dark. Only the groups with strong enough mages could stop them from simply deactivating the town defences.”

That was brilliant. Evil, but brilliant.

Dominic decided that he would have to get Amie to have one of the Elders teach him how to deactivate other people’s bonded magitech items later.