Chapter 108: A Dragon?!

‘Son of a bitch!’

Vincent finally fell to the ground.

For a while, the only sounds around them were broken branches falling, stones rolling across the ground and everyone’s rough breathing.

The fight was finally over.

Probably.

Vincent looked toward Celeste again.

She had been hit hard, but he didn’t know whether she would suddenly get back up after a minute or not.

He and Anastasia were definitely not in a state to fight again.

If the Highland monsters appeared, they might die to those too.

‘This is bad. Really bad. I need to get up.’

Anastasia was in her most vulnerable state.

He had to at least get to her side.

Vincent tried putting pressure on his legs and getting up without using his hands.

Nothing happened.

His leg almost folded beneath him again.

He looked down at his hands.

Something was definitely broken there too. Putting his entire weight on them was probably going to make things considerably worse.

But did he have a choice?

Vincent slowly lowered his palms toward the ground.

Before they touched it, pale fragments appeared around his fingers.

His movements stopped.

One pale fragment became several.

The air around him suddenly grew cold.

Not the cold of the Highlands.

It felt like he had suddenly been brought into a graveyard during the darkest part of the night.

More pale fragments gathered before Vincent and began forming a human figure. Before the body had even fully appeared, a pale hand reached through them and caught his wrist.

“I’d advise against it, my dear.”

Vincent heard the familiar voice and slowly raised his head.

The final fragments came together.

A wide-brimmed black hat over flowing lush black hair, and a pair of serene blue eyes…

“Mom?”

Vincent genuinely thought he might be hallucinating.

Vivienne was here.

The cold feeling disappeared almost immediately when she bent down beside him.

Her gaze first fell on his face, then moved to the arm he had almost put his weight on.

She glanced at his chest, injured leg, bloody bare feet, and finally toward the axe lying nearby.

Her brows gently knitted as she found the damage much worse than she initially thought.

Vivienne then looked at his feet.

Blood, cuts, dirt.

“Why are you barefoot?”

Vincent was about to open his mouth when Vivienne shook her hand.

“Don’t answer,” Vivienne said and placed her hand against his cheek.

“You can explain everything once you’re healed.”

Vincent nodded lightly.

A pale rupture was still present behind Vivienne and a figure rushed through it before it could close.

Linda.

“Madam.”

“Vincent first.”

“Yes.”

Vivienne placed two fingers against Vincent’s forehead and quietly began chanting.

A thin veil of mist gathered around him and entered his glabella.

Vincent immediately recognized the feeling.

The ringing inside his ears slowly became quieter. His hazy vision cleared and his thoughts stopped feeling like they were floating around in his skull.

His head still hurt, but considerably less.

Meanwhile, Linda knelt beside him and began checking the rest of his body. The moment her fingers pressed lightly against his ribs, Vincent’s face twisted.

“The injuries are quite serious, young master.”

“…yeah.”

Vivienne glanced at him.

She extended one hand toward the empty space and a small vial appeared between her fingers.

Linda accepted it, gave Vincent one of the pills inside, then began wrapping and supporting his damaged arm. His leg was checked next, followed by the cuts on his feet.

Warmth spread from the medicine.

For a brief moment, Vincent felt much better.

Then the numbness started disappearing.

Feeling returned to his hands.

His feet.

His chest.

And with it came all the pain he previously couldn’t properly feel.

“Ah… fuck…”

Vincent’s face twisted.

Maybe numbness hadn’t been so bad after all.

“The medicine is stabilizing you,” Linda explained while tightening the support around his arm. “It isn’t repairing every fracture immediately. Please do not attempt to stand.”

“Yeah, ok—aff.”

Vincent bit his tongue and cursed the nine generations of the curse in his mind.

Away from him, Anastasia finally started losing the strength needed to keep herself upright.

Vivienne noticed and disappeared from Vincent’s side.

She appeared beside the blonde girl and caught her before she could fall.

“Madam…”

Vivienne supported Anastasia by the shoulder and briefly looked over her injuries.

“You did well.”

Anastasia’s tense expression eased slightly.

Vivienne brought her over and handed her to Linda.

Vincent watched until Anastasia was properly supported and being treated before turning toward Celeste.

A bit farther away, the purple-haired lady remained on the ground, curled like a fetus and bleeding.

Vincent sighed.

This woman had given him so much trouble.

She couldn’t possibly die yet.

He needed answers from her on why she did what she did and so on.

“I’m fine now. Please treat Anastasia first and then see that lady there.”

“Your injuries are serious and haven’t been fully treated yet, young master,” Linda replied. “I suggest not moving for now.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Linda continued treating Anastasia.

Vivienne came back to Vincent’s side and sat down beside him. She extended an arm and pulled him into a side hug.

Vincent could smell chrysanthemums and it was quite comforting.

He sighed again as he thought of everything that happened and was happening.

‘Is this what they call plot armor? Being saved at a critical time?’

Maybe luck was finally turning in his favor and giving him some protective protagonist shield.

Maybe it wasn’t Anastasia who was the main character but him.

Then Vincent remembered her final attack and that crazy hundred-times amplification buff.

He gave up thinking in this direction and got humbled quickly.

“So…”

Vivienne’s words pulled him out of his stupor.

“What exactly happened?” She asked while looking at him. “Why are you two here? Who were you fighting, and what made you stupidly fight someone far above your rank?”

There were so many questions…

“Which one do you want answered first?”

“Hm…”

Vivienne thought about it.

Her gaze moved forward.

Vincent thought she was looking at Celeste, but then Vivienne raised her head and stared at the gigantic dark wall behind the unconscious woman.

“How about we start by addressing the elephant in the room first?”

“What?”

Vivienne gently squished Vincent’s face and turned his head toward the right.

Vincent looked at the dark wall.

Now that his vision had cleared, it appeared even stranger.

Its surface curved instead of continuing straight like a cliff.

He stared at it for a few seconds.

The wall moved.

“Eh?”

Dust shifted across the ground.

The surface rose slightly before lowering again.

Vincent stared.

‘Did it just… breathe?’

His brows slowly furrowed.

The dark surface wasn’t smooth stone either.

There were thick lines across it.

No.

Not lines.

Individual sections overlapping one another.

Scales.

Huge black scales.

Vincent’s gaze moved upward.

And kept moving.

His neck tilted farther back as he realized the wall did not end where he thought it did.

A gigantic folded shape rose from the ground farther ahead.

A wing.

The black wall was connected to it.

The huge thing that had shifted earlier and knocked Celeste back was also visible now, stretching across the broken ground before curving around the creature’s body.

A tail.

Vincent’s mouth slowly opened.

The body continued farther into the ruined valley, so large that rocks, uprooted trees and parts of the creature blended together from where he sat.

Then he saw its head.

Enormous.

Two dark horns extended from it while its eyes remained shut.

Every slow breath moved enough air to stir dust nearby.

The suffocating pressure Vincent had felt from the moment he arrived was coming from this thing.

And beneath its curled body, protected between its claws and tail, was an egg.

Vincent’s eyes widened.

Anastasia had stopped paying attention to Linda’s treatment as well.

Her gaze travelled across the gigantic creature and her expression changed visibly.

“A dragon?!”

“Wha—aff!”

Vincent bit his tongue.

He trembled from the pain and covered his mouth.

Vivienne frowned slightly and rubbed his back.

“Careful there.”

Vincent recovered after a few seconds but couldn’t take his eyes off the creature anymore.

A damn dragon of all things!?

He had been fighting beside a dragon and thought it was a wall.

His attention suddenly moved toward the cracked scale where Mountain Slash had struck earlier.

Only a small corner had been broken.

Vincent’s tenfold Mountain Slash had split the ground apart and missed Celeste by such a small distance that it could have probably killed her if it landed properly.

Yet against this creature, it only managed to crack and chip one scale.

‘What the hell is this thing made of?’

Then, suddenly, Vincent remembered why he had entered the Highlands in the first place.

“Wait.”

He quickly reached into his clothes and took out the compass-like artifact Leona had given him.

The moment it came out—

TACK!

The needle slammed against the edge of the glass.

Vincent almost dropped it.

The needle stayed pressed there and trembled so violently that the entire artifact shook in his hand.

It had never reacted like this.

Not even when they followed the mutated monsters through the Highlands.

Vincent looked at the detector.

Then at the dragon.

His brows furrowed deeply.

This thing was connected to whatever they had been searching for.

Only after the initial shock settled did he start noticing other details.

The dragon was terrifyingly enormous.

Its aura was still thick enough that breathing around it felt difficult.

But it had barely moved.

Even after Vincent’s attack struck one of its scales and three cultivators fought right beside its body, the only thing it had managed was shifting its tail around a bit.

Vivienne had noticed much more.

Her serene blue eyes moved across the overlapping scales.

She showed the strangeness to Vincent and only did he notice that there were several dark gaps that he had mistaken for shadows, but were actually wounds.

Some were old and had partly closed.

Others were so deep that the flesh beneath the scales disappeared into darkness. One section near its side looked as though something enormous had torn through several layers of protection and never allowed the wound to properly recover.

Seeing those injuries did not make the dragon look weak.

It made Vincent wonder what the hell was capable of doing this to something so gigantic.

Vincent and Vivienne watched the dragon’s slow breathing for a little longer.

Vincent then frowned and asked, “It’s dying?”

Vivienne nodded lightly.

“It is.”