Chapter 1244: 1. Realm

The mist once again covered the entire sky.

The roaring of the world returned to calm. Everything seemed as though it had just undergone purification. Even the air was unbelievably clean. Aside from the faint bodily fragrance emanating from Dragon Lady, not the slightest trace of any other mixed odor could be smelled.

Muen lay quietly on the two soft and comfortable “pillows” like this, admiring the towering peaks while looking at the rolling mist, and could not help beginning to think......

“How long are you going to keep holding on like that?”

On the opposite side of the peaks, a pair of golden eyes like blazing suns slowly rose. Although that flawless white-jade face no longer held its former coldness, another inexplicable kind of annoyed anger had already faintly begun brewing......

“Ah......sorry.”

Only then did Muen remember that after they had just finished shaking hands, he had never let go.

Of course, this was not because he was so shameless that he deliberately held on to a girl’s hand and refused to release it. Rather, when people were thinking, they always easily overlooked certain things, especially things with which they were already extremely familiar.

For example, Dragon Lady’s hand. He had already held it more than once before. Whether its size or its shape, both were very......

“Mm?”

“I’ll let go right now.”

Muen quickly released her hand, regretfully savoring that trace of warmth, while Hamreign seemed to have already lost patience with him and gently pushed his shoulder.

“Get up.”

“Huh? So quickly? I’m an injured person, and seriously injured at that.” Muen said solemnly: “I think I should lie down a while longer. Otherwise, it would be bad if I were left with some kind of lingering aftereffects.”

“Judging from the strength of your handshake just now, you have recovered quite well. You should not be so weak that you do not even have the strength to stand.” Hamreign’s golden eyes glanced at him coldly.

“......”

Damn it, he had been too careless.

Muen sighed and reluctantly got up......it was not because he was lustful. As a famously good man throughout Belrand, he naturally would not have any other thoughts toward Dragon Lady, this companion with whom he had already made a promise.

It was just that......a lap pillow from the strongest dragon herself, even across a thousand years, there was probably only this one chance. It truly made one want to remain there a little longer.

After all, if word of something like this got out, it could probably be engraved into human history.

“Hiss——it hurts.”

The moment Muen got up, even a tiny movement interrupted his fantasy about leaving his name in history. Moving his body was as difficult as expected. Although the severe pain throughout his entire body from when he had first awakened had eased slightly, it had not yet reached the point where it could be completely ignored.

According to his tolerance for pain, this was roughly the kind of suffering that only came from having every bone in his body crushed little by little. Fortunately, Muen endured the pain and moved around slightly, discovering that aside from the pain, there were no other problems with his body.

His strength and speed had even improved enormously compared to before. Muen felt that with one punch, he could now beat more than ten Zagus to death.

“Mm, it seems the dragon blood was very effective in stitching your physical body back together.” Hamreign looked him up and down, then nodded in satisfaction.

“Dragon blood?”

Muen lowered his head and looked at his hands. Sure enough, beneath his skin, he could faintly see golden patterns somewhat similar to Dragon Lady’s.

The pain did not come from injuries to his body, but from the faintly appearing and disappearing golden patterns. They seemed to be constantly tearing Muen’s body apart and reorganizing it. During this process, even those deeply hidden internal injuries were rapidly recovering.

This was a method of treatment even more thorough than Muen’s black flames. Continuous recovery alone would only accumulate mutations. Only within a cycle of destruction and recovery could this flesh and blood be perfectly reborn in the direction it was originally supposed to take.

“Thank you.”

Warmth rose in Muen’s heart. How could he still fail to realize what had happened at this moment?

To help him, Dragon Lady had once again given up some of her dragon blood. Moreover, this time was clearly different from the one or two drops before. For golden patterns to wander all across his entire body, the amount of dragon blood could not have been small.

“There is no need to say such things between us.”

Hamreign’s tone carried slight displeasure, “After all, we are fellow travelers who promised to continue walking together. How could I possibly let you die so easily?”

“So that’s how it is......”

Muen raised the corners of his lips, deeply moved: “But what did Dragon Lady mean just now by stitching my physical body back together? It does not sound like a very comfortable description.”

“It means putting your physical body, which had already been smashed into piece after piece, back together. Is that difficult to understand?”

Hamreign clenched and opened both hands, then clenched and opened them again, as though demonstrating the process to Muen:

“After all, to rescue you from that state, I first had to forcibly smash that pitch-black sun apart. However, since that was, in a certain sense, you, after the Black Sun shattered, it was equivalent to your physical body shattering along with it. To restore you to your original state, I spent a great deal of effort putting all that flesh and blood back together.”

“What?”

Muen’s expression changed drastically, and he immediately began feeling all over his body.

A terrifying scene immediately appeared in his mind. After Dragon Lady smashed him apart, she had collected his flesh and blood from the ground little by little......this piece, that piece, just like restoring a vase, first collecting the fragments, then carefully putting all that flesh and blood back together.

Actually, if it had only been like that, it would still have been fine. But if, during the stitching process, some piece had not been found......

“Relax. How could I possibly make such a minor mistake? Naturally, I found every piece of your flesh and blood.”

Hamreign seemed to see Muen’s concern and wore a disdainful expression. But as a gust of wind blew past and raised the dust, from the corner of his eye, Muen faintly caught sight of something resembling a dragon’s tail reaching out from beneath her skirt, then directly sweeping away a lump that was still dripping blood and looked very much like flesh.

“Dragon Lady......th-that was?”

“What?”

“Why did I just see something that looked very much like a piece of my flesh......”

“You saw wrongly. It was probably some remains from the monster summoned by the Love God before.”

“I-is that so?” That object turned into a shooting star and disappeared at the end of the sky, leaving Muen with no way to pursue it.

But precisely because of that, it became even more suspicious.

“Relax. Even if one or two pieces were lost, it would not matter.” Hamreign spoke with complete seriousness, her golden eyes radiating a majesty that made one not dare disobey: “With your regenerative ability, together with my dragon blood, as long as you are not dead, recovering from any kind of injury is an easy matter.”

“......”

The corner of Muen’s mouth twitched. Could those really be considered the same thing?

She said it so casually, but that was his flesh, a part of his body!

Whether it could recover was one matter. Just watching some unknown but possibly important part of himself disappear before his eyes was already enough to cause phantom pain!

Moreover, even if nothing had been lost, the feeling of being put back together piece by piece was already humiliating enough.

Muen glanced downward......did this mean Dragon Lady had completely seen him naked?

“So......was it because of this that Dragon Lady suddenly moved so far away from me?”

Muen raised his eyes again. From the corner of his eye, the object that looked like a dragon’s tail secretly slipped back beneath Dragon Lady’s skirt. The reason Muen could only say that it “looked like” one was because ever since he had gotten up, Dragon Lady had suddenly moved very far away from him.

Had they not both been powerful and possessed keen senses, they would have had to shout to communicate across this distance.

“What do you mean, far away from you?”

Hamreign still showed no expression. Even her tone seemed to be tending back toward the coldness familiar to Muen. But as her willow-like brows lifted slightly, the red eye shadow seemed to leap like flames: “Is this distance far?”

“From the perspective of a hundred-meter race, it is not far. But from the perspective of two people interacting normally......it is extremely far.”

Muen’s expression was strange. He once again tried to see something on Dragon Lady’s face. Yet even without the mist concealing it, her ability to control her emotions, developed through a thousand years of continuous suffering, was undoubtedly still extremely powerful.

Muen stared for a long time and saw nothing. Instead, he made Dragon Lady retreat another stretch of distance.

“......”

Why did this make him look like some kind of pervert?

......So what exactly was going on? Ever since he had awakened, Dragon Lady had seemed strange.

If she had simply changed somewhat because her gentle nature had been exposed, that would still be understandable. But Muen kept feeling that within Dragon Lady’s current changes, there was some other meaning hidden as well.

He did not understand.

Even though he considered himself someone who understood women very well, when facing an ancient being like Dragon Lady, who possessed a thousand years of life experience and had also mastered all kinds of human knowledge, Muen felt that his experience was simply not worth mentioning.

It was like how a three-year-old infant could never fathom the schemes of an evil adult.

After all, Dragon Lady had suddenly run so far away. It could not possibly be because she was shy, the kind of reaction only a little girl would have!

Back when he shamelessly held her hand and hugged her leg, she had not been like this at all.

At that time, those golden eyes had been frighteningly cold.

“Forget it......”

Muen sighed softly. Feeling that he could not think of any explanation, he simply stopped thinking about it and returned his attention to the present.

After experiencing something that could be called coming back from the dead, there were far too many things he currently needed to confirm.

“First of all......”

Muen held his breath and focused, attempting to summon the thing he had once longed for day and night......the Heaven-Bestowed Crown.

However, no matter how hard he strained, aside from holding a bellyful of breath, there was no reaction above his head.

“As expected......”

Muen smiled bitterly: “My crown......is gone?”

Not long ago, he had unexpectedly donned the crown. To him, that naturally held extremely great significance. After all, he had been chased around like a dog countless times by the Witch of Repentance, a Crowned one. He could be said to have longed desperately for the Crowned realm......

But afterward, in order to awaken Dragon Lady, he had not hesitated to self-destruct and transform into the true Black Sun.

Although he did not retain most of the memories from after that, he could still vaguely remember......

That crown had been eaten by him......or rather, by Him.

It had simply been eaten just like that. Chicken-flavored and crunchy.

“So, what realm am I considered to be in now?”

Although his body was still in severe pain, Muen could clearly feel that his physical body had already completed a sublimation. Whether its toughness or its strength, it could no longer be spoken of in the same breath as his former self.

His perception had also become extremely clear. If he wished, even from such a great distance, he could easily count the scales and hairs on Dragon Lady’s body.

However, without a crown, there was no way to use the 【Domain】 that symbolized a Crowned one.

That was precisely what distinguished a Crowned one from all the martial realms before it in a single leap, and even allowed them to crush mages of the same level.

What did this count as, a bird that could not fly......a fish that could not swim?

Half-step Crowned?