Chapter 1208: 195. Concern

Cold.

A cold that froze the soul.

It was as though he had stood for a very long time upon an ice field that had not thawed in a thousand years, allowing the frigid wind to pierce through his skin and seep deep into his marrow.

Muen’s consciousness was still hazy, suspended between sleep and wakefulness. Everything he perceived carried a vast and hollow sense of emptiness. Only the cold and pain were so painfully clear.

Instinctively, he wanted to leave this frozen place, but no matter how he struggled, his entire body remained completely frozen to the ice field, transformed into an ice sculpture and unable to move.

Something terrifying surrounded him, gnawing away at his flesh and blood, making him colder and colder, more and more miserable, and increasingly powerless. Even his already hazy consciousness seemed to be eroded and shattered by the cold...

Suddenly.

A trace of warmth approached him.

At first, that warmth was extremely faint, like a tiny flame swaying wildly in a blizzard, liable to be extinguished at any moment. It was weak and dim, enough to stir pity.

But as time passed, it grew stronger and stronger. The tiny flame gradually became a leaping bonfire, illuminating the night across the boundless snowfield and driving away all the cold around him.

Those terrifying things also seemed to be devoured by it.

The ice began to melt, and tender green shoots emerged from the frozen ground. But the warmth did not remain for long. After driving away the pain within Muen’s body, it quickly departed.

Muen was deeply drawn to it. He immediately took control of his now-mobile body and chased after the warmth.

The form created by that warmth changed endlessly. A moment ago, it had been a bonfire, but now it had transformed into something else. At times it resembled white flowers swaying beneath a gentle breeze, at times an autumn maple forest in October, and at times freshly polished jade reflecting the softest ray of sunlight.

It was impossible to grasp.

Taking advantage of its inattention, Muen suddenly reached out and grabbed it.

But the warmth was far too mischievous and did not remain in his palm for more than a moment.

It slipped through the gaps between his fingers and suddenly transformed into a pair of soft hands, gently caressing every corner of Muen’s body.

The sensation was unbelievably comfortable.

If possible, Muen even hoped it would continue touching him like this forever.

Unfortunately, the warmth soon escaped from his body once again.

Muen continued chasing it and savoring that warmth until...

Splash.

He stepped into a puddle.

Muen instinctively lowered his head, preparing to step over the small puddle...

But then he suddenly realized that it was not a puddle at all.

It was...

A pool of blood.

Bright red blood soaked rotting severed limbs. A powerful stench rushed straight into his nose. Half of a face floated within it.

Muen had thought it was a lifeless object, but the yellowed, clouded eye suddenly rolled and stared directly at him.

The warmth and light abruptly vanished.

Muen raised his head in confusion and tried to search for them, but he could find nothing.

He could not even distinguish one direction from another.

He stepped forward, intending to leave, but the moment he moved, he collided with something cold.

It was a girl.

A girl dressed in white, with long hair falling loosely down her back.

The girl should have been very beautiful, with large eyes, long eyelashes, and small cherry-red lips.

Unfortunately, no trace of beauty could be seen now...

Because only half of her face remained.

The other half was completely hollow. The structure of her nasal and oral cavities was visible, along with brain matter that continuously flowed outward.

“Wh... y...?”

The girl stared at him and produced an eerie, terrifying voice from the remaining half of her cherry-red mouth.

“Why did you...”

Muen did not listen at all.

He immediately changed direction and continued preparing to flee...

But after taking only two steps, he was forced to stop.

One after another, more and more figures emerged from the depths of the darkness and gradually drew closer.

Most of them were mutilated, covered in blood, and dressed in torn, ragged clothing.

Some could not even stand and could only writhe across the ground.

Yet they stubbornly and relentlessly approached Muen, like ants drawn toward honey.

“Why...”

“Why...”

“Why...”

The eerie voices echoed again and again.

Muen moved left.

Right.

Forward.

Backward.

He even tried to escape from above, then wondered whether he could dig into the ground and flee...

But every attempt failed.

There were simply too many of those mutilated, ruined people.

So many that they formed an endless mass, impossible to count.

He could not even see the end of the crowd.

Muen struggled in vain.

One cold hand after another gradually seized him and dragged him toward an even colder place...

As though they intended to drown him in an ocean formed from piled corpses.

Warmth and light suddenly flashed once more, briefly making his surroundings clear.

Muen saw that these people wore all kinds of strange clothing, as though they came from different eras.

And in the final instant before his vision was submerged beneath broken arms and mutilated remains, Muen noticed a different figure among the crowd.

That figure looked somewhat familiar.

She held a pinwheel in her hand.

A paper pinwheel.

The pinwheel was stained with blood and turned with a creaking sound.

“Why?”

Tears flowed from her eyes as she asked Muen:

“Why did you do this?”

The world was swallowed by darkness.

...

...

“Hiss... What is this...?”

Muen woke with a start and opened his eyes.

An unfamiliar ceiling stretched above him, pale and blank. Only an old-fashioned chandelier decorated with a pale-yellow magic stone broke the monotony. The light was not especially bright, but neither was it dim enough to feel uncomfortable.

A faint fragrance drifted through the air, seemingly coming from some kind of medicinal herb. It quickly pulled Muen’s consciousness out of the confusion of waking and brought him back to clarity.

“A dream?”

The painful and freezing experience from a moment ago still seemed vivid before his eyes, and he continued to yearn for that warmth.

As for the vague nightmare from the latter half, strangely enough, he could no longer remember it very clearly.

Muen tried to recall it carefully, but then realized it had only been a false dream. Perhaps it had simply been a nonsensical nightmare without even basic logic.

He quickly shook his head and drove the remaining inexplicable emotions from his mind.

He looked around and discovered that this was a plainly decorated but exceptionally clean room.

He had no impression of it in his memories.

It was probably somewhere within New Tars.

But none of that was important.

What mattered was that not far from Muen, practically beside the window, sat a fiery-red figure that was incomparably familiar, in complete contrast to the unfamiliar room.

Her vivid fiery-red hair formed a sharp contrast with the plain and dull decorations around her.

She was like the brightest stroke of color in an oil painting, instantly drawing the eye.

Muen even suspected that the reason the room’s light was not particularly bright was not because the magic stone was of poor quality, but because that figure was simply too dazzling.

“Miss Dragon.”

“You’re awake?”

Her tone was as cold as ever, like a formulaic greeting.

But Muen did not feel offended.

After all, a mighty calamity was personally sitting beside his bed, waiting for him to wake up.

Over the past thousand years, there were probably very few humans who had ever received such treatment.

It was already enough to leave him overwhelmed by the honor.

Was this the treatment one received for being a faithful lackey...

No, a pendant attached to a powerful thigh?

He loved it.

At least it was better than being forced to work in the dark for a certain old loli.

“How long was I unconscious?”

Muen rubbed his temples.

Between the deep sleep and that dream, he had completely lost his sense of time.

“Not long. Only a few hours,” Hamreign answered.

“Is that so? Then it really wasn’t very long...”

Muen was somewhat surprised.

He still remembered the miserable state he had been in after being poisoned.

That terrifying poison had continuously eroded his body through the dragon blood within him. Although it had not reached a lethal degree, he had assumed it would take much longer for him to endure it.

“Did Miss Dragon help remove the poison from my body?”

Muen quickly understood.

Since his recovery did not match common sense, an external force must have been responsible for allowing him to recover so quickly.

“I did.”

“How did you do it? Does Miss Dragon possess some method of neutralizing the poison?”

“No. The poison inside your body is indeed extremely powerful, and it only affects dragon blood. I have no method of neutralizing it.”

Hamreign casually tapped a small crystal container placed on the table beside her.

“I merely used purer dragon blood to draw it out of your body.”

Muen looked over and discovered that the crystal container did indeed contain some dragon blood.

However, that dragon blood was not the pure golden color Muen knew.

Instead, it resembled sludge, continuously bubbling with multicolored foam.

It was utterly disgusting.

“Purer dragon blood...”

Muen suddenly understood.

Since the poison only affected dragons, it would naturally be attracted toward dragon blood of greater purity.

As expected of a thousand-year-old dragon.

Her experience in this area was indeed extensive, and her reactions were fast enough for her to find an alternative solution in such a short time.

However, Muen’s attention was not focused on that.

After learning that Miss Dragon had drawn all the poison from every part of his body, he suddenly remembered the warmth from his dream...

And the touch that had felt like gentle little hands.

Muen secretly glanced at Hamreign’s fair hands.

His gaze moved downward, and he quickly lifted the blanket covering his body for an instant.

He really was completely naked!

Which meant...

“Did Miss Dragon remove my clothes? And also...”

Muen felt that he should consider Miss Dragon’s dignity, so he did not mention anything more explicit.

However, a shy expression still appeared on his face.

“To think I troubled you to personally do such a thing. This truly is...”

“What are you talking about?” Hamreign asked in confusion.

“Huh? Wasn’t it you...”

“Ah, Lord Muen, you’re awake?”

At that moment, Morton suddenly entered through the door, carrying a folded stack of clothing in his hands.

He quickly placed it beside Muen.

After looking Muen up and down, he clapped his hands and smiled.

“Wonderful. It seems I arrived just in time. I have already washed and dried your clothes for you. Please use them, and do not catch a chill.”

“...”

Leaving aside whether Muen’s constitution was even capable of catching a chill, at this moment, he stared blankly at Morton.

Then he looked at the clothes in Morton’s hands, which were indeed his own...

He suddenly realized something, and his expression became horrified.

“Wait. Don’t tell me these clothes were...”

“Cough, cough...”

Morton cleared his throat twice.

A faint blush appeared on his cheeks.

“There was no other choice. Originally, I intended to find someone more professional to handle it. But everyone currently has a poor impression of you, Lord Muen. To prevent anyone from doing something improper to you, I could only handle it personally.”

“Why the hell are you blushing while saying that?”

Muen nearly punched that old face and shouted angrily:

“I think you’re the old bastard planning to do something improper!”

“No, no, absolutely not!”

Morton hurriedly waved his hands and explained:

“Although every piece of clothing was personally handled by me... I had no intentions of that kind! Absolutely none!”

“Stop, stop, stop! Enough!”

Muen’s sphincter tightened, and his face became even paler.

“Don’t say anything else. If you keep talking, I really won’t be able to take it...

“I’m scared!”

When Muen imagined that the warm scene from his dream might actually have been a man doing that to him...

He felt a wave of revulsion!

He wanted to vomit!

He almost wished he could peel off all the skin from his body and wash himself again from the beginning!

“Huh?”

Morton was clearly stunned by Muen’s reaction.

“Scared? I merely washed your clothes personally. Although it was my first time doing such a thing and my technique may not have been very good, was it really so frightening?”

“...?”

Muen was also stunned.

“Wait. You only personally washed my clothes? You didn’t change...

“You didn’t mean anything else?”

“Y-Yes. What else did you think I meant?”

Morton frowned.

“What other sort of thing could I have done?”

“I thought...”

Muen closed his mouth.

He could hardly say that he had been afraid of encountering yet another pervert with some special fetish.

After all, when the current situation was combined with the sensations from his dream...

It truly was far too terrifying.

And he had always found it unusually easy to attract perverts.

He had to remain cautious.

“In that case...”

Muen secretly glanced toward Hamreign beside him.

Although she had remained silent the entire time, for some reason, Muen had the strange impression that she had deliberately been watching the show.

Damn it.

Did even calamities enjoy playing deliberate pranks?

Or perhaps...

“Is this really the time for your foolish imagination?” Hamreign suddenly spoke, interrupting Muen’s thoughts.

“Don’t you have something more important to say?” ℯℯ𝘭.

“Something more important? Right!”

Muen suddenly reacted and jolted upright.

“What happened to Avik? What about Kran? And the other members of the Dragon-Slaying Team? How are they?”

His memories rapidly returned.

The scenes before he lost consciousness replayed one after another.

The final image remaining in Muen’s mind was the strange smile at the corner of “Kran’s” mouth.

At that moment, crimson lightning had descended from the sky and blasted “Kran” apart.

Right in front of every member of the Dragon-Slaying Team.

Those Dragon-Slaying Team members did not know that Avik had occupied Kran’s body.

From their perspective, the truth was extremely simple.

Miss Dragon had killed Kran himself.

That was all.

Therefore, even as Muen had been on the verge of losing consciousness, he had clearly sensed the rage surging from their eyes.

Muen could not imagine how intensely the anger of seeing a friend and family member killed before their eyes would be inflamed in a city filled entirely with the innocent and naive.

He could not predict what the result had been at the time, so he hurriedly asked.

“You’re worried about those humans?”

Hamreign glanced at Muen.

“Yes.”

Muen answered honestly:

“I’m worried about them.”

“Hmph.”

“But...”

Muen suddenly leaned closer to Hamreign and grabbed her hand.

“I’m even more worried about you, Miss Dragon.”

“...”

Her molten-gold eyes lowered and glanced at Muen’s offending hands.

Perhaps his repeated attempts to push his luck had already given Hamreign enough resistance.

This time, she actually did not slap this increasingly audacious human to death.

“Worried about me? Are you joking?”

“No, I’m not joking.”

Muen answered seriously:

“You saw it too, didn’t you, Miss Dragon? That poison...

“That poison specifically designed to target dragons is terrifying.”

While Muen had been poisoned, Hamreign had used purer dragon blood to draw the poison out of his body.

Where had that dragon blood come from?

Naturally, it had come from her own body.

But even the blood of this calamity, the Dragon of Death and Doom, the strongest creature beneath the heavens, had been polluted by that poison.

Muen’s previous guess had been correct.

That poison truly could affect Miss Dragon.

The filthy impurities inside the crystal container were proof.

“Although I still don’t know the exact connection, it’s obvious that those survivors have continuously been trying to lure you into carrying out a massacre. And the result of you carrying out a massacre...Is very likely connected to this special poison!”