Two days past since Rem advanced into the mythical realm of Rank-A. Lux founded herself fetching some grocery for Cy. This was where the nightmare known as the Smog-Fill Night began.
Like days ago, the town was rich with activity yet the air seemed to be offed. Lux's instinct tingled. Year of hunting in the wood alone combined the experience from getting brain-jack by the Paracyst Corrupter had taught her how to read the air and the situation like a wild animal. This very same instinct allowed her to master moves and skill that was far above her pay-grade and allowed her to hold her own against Scathach. It was a core part of who she was--a compensation from spending her puberty in the wild. Right now, as she was shopping for high calories bread that would gave a self-conscious girl a heart attack, that sense of her finally got something to direct toward
Something ominous was growing. She didn't feel it at first. The noise, the crowd combined with the factor of Ebony's place being so far away from the Frontier Town's Center dulled her animal instinct but, right here, she felt something... a breath.
Lux gulped. Her hand holding onto the bread and she turned on her Mana Perception. A month of long experimentation had greatly improved her understanding of mana. So far the project to re-engineer the body with mana had been frozen but area such as Sixth Sense had evolved. Auto-attack detection was developed at rapid steps. Rem and Cy believed they could turned sixth sense into an ID worthy skill soon. But Lux used another subclass of this technique--Mana Scan.
Mana Scanned read the mana flowing around and inside objects. And by annalyse and separating each categorizable strand of mana, they could determine the object origin. Lux turned on her magic vision and nearly dropped her sugary supplies. Something that rarely happened unless someone ate her cake.
...
"This ore is really strange?" Ebony said looking at the golden ore we got from Satholia. After a day of negotiating she agreed to forge Lux personal sword. But they ran into a massive problem...
They barely knew anything about it.
"So far the test I ran indicate that it was semi-organic, " Ebony said tapping the ore. Her small and messy workshop scattered with book. Behind her Melodina was completing one of the shop project and Scathach was looking over Cy's record on Mana Art.
"Advance analysis technique on its microstructure gave us a very strong and tough material with great magic conducting. There is a phase in here that I do not understand. Some kind of organic-metal solution. It was a good thing you come to me. Most blacksmith who could do anything about this ore already got snap up into major factions. And trust me, they didn't know how to keep quiet or think of the big picture." Ebony droned on.
"Can you forge it?" Scathach asked.
"I don't know, " Ebony replied. "The problem is constituting this ore into an ingot without destroying the organic phase that made it so unique."
"What about an ancient Druid Ritual," Melodina Solarmaria suggested .
"You, mean the ritual of consecration that worked by growing ingot like a plant and used an alloy and additive as fertilizer." Scathach asked.
"Yes, that might work," Ebony said. "But we must find the material that augmented the organic phase enough for it to survived all the hammering and forging it must go through. I had to ran some heating test with the fragment of this ore and investigate the sample...geez what a material. Shame there was too little of it to used for research purpose."
Rem listening to that while putting a finishing touch on fine-tuning his skill with CentRal help. Meanwhile, Cy was fuzzing over her newly planted flower bed and watering it with mothery care.
Without warning, Lux burst into the room. She had to ran all the way here, yet, as a proof of her competency, somehow managed to buy all the good on the shopping list.
"Guys!" She yelled. "WE ARE IN TROUBLE!"
The voice was so loud our useless goddess jerked up, tripped over an anvil and landed on her head. Melodina threw a spanner in Lux's distraction. As for Ebony and Scathach, they looked at the elf catching a flying spanner barehanded and blinked.
As for I, well, where is that pillow.
...
Lux took me and Cy to highest viewing spot in the town and told us to use Mana Scanned.
Oh boy, this was not good.
Cy gulped.
"What is that?" She pointed at the black smoke rising from the Frontier Town. If I had to compare the situation, it was like the entire Frontier town was participating in mass Salem witch hunting causing a hundred wisps of smoke rising from the ground. The smoke dissipated in the air attempting to tainted the town but only to be low away by the atmosphere of the town.
Now its clicked.
"So this is what bring us here," I said tucking my hand in my jean. "Now everything made sense. Satholia sent us here for two reason. First to stop potential carnage from Melodina's ambition. But taking priority over that is this (Rem pointed at the smoke). My guess was that the Emma enterprises somehow found out that there are a massive source of Dragonic Obsidian on the premise of the Frontier Town and believed they could make a fortune out of it."
"Yes," Cy added sticking out a green paper into the black wispy mana rising to the ground nearest to us. To none of us surprises the paper quickly withered into purple ash in an instant. "The special litmus paper I coated in a 1:1 mixture of Dragon-cowering plant extract and sacred water at 100 times the recommended concentration displayed the result that match what I read exactly. There are a massive amount of curse dragon mana running below the town surface. If I had too throw a random guess. There were a massive dragon corpse right underneath the Frontier Town."
"It's not a corpse," Lux said, trembling from head-to-toe.
"Again?" Cy looked at her incredulously.
"I know how exactly does the predator's corpse felt like." Lux said. "Living in the forest around carrion animals gave me a pretty good instinct to associate the dead from those playing possum. And trust me the awe this thing gave does not spell dead."
I combined my Mana Scanned and my [Existence Comprehension]. The traits I receive was not boding well for any of us and our fighting chances.
"
...
Later that evening the 'I-don't-want-to-be-Dragon's-food' coalition was born and so far our daily mission was simple: brainstorm a way to avoid ending up on a giant flying lizard's menu.
Yet, again our goddess displayed her unrivaled confidence, wisdom and knowledge.
"I suggest we packed our bag and run the heck out of here!" She said slamming her sweating hands on Ebony's table which began to tilt annoyingly on its side.
Seriously, someone need to fix the table's leg. Are there any licensed carpenter out there.
Lux stood up.
"Not good enough," the elf said. "I suggest we warn the entire town. Then hightail the hell out of here."
"Truly disappointing," Melodina stealing Lux's muffin and popped it into her mouth. "What type of..."
"GIVE ME BACK MY MUFFIN!!!!!!!!!" Lux jumped on top of Melodina. The girl collided in a fury of blows and they rolled across the ground throwing punches at each other like a ragging kitten who watch too many Bruce Lee movie.
I looked at the girls. We need to recruit saner people into the fold. My restocked Aspirin would run out at this rate.
"Order!" I announced. "Order to court!"
No such luck. Lux was still trying to pried Mel's mouth opened while Mel was trying to put our elf into the ground with the raw power from her knees.
Fed up with the immaturity, Scathach threw an axed that narrowly missed their heads and embedded itself on the wall.
Lux gulped at the axe while Mel eyed the badger as if she was assessing the threat-level. There was a long silence as the girls got up and walked back to the table.
Order quickly resumed.
"Thank you Scathach and her axe," I said grabbing a steel mug as a improvise hammer. "Now what do we know about the D-thing."
Ebony cleared her throat.
"According to a legend, Frontier town was once a home to a religious tribes of Dark magician who held a rite here due to abundance of dark type mana. The Holy Order started a joint operation with Grand Empire Military to purge them under the guise of heretic."
"In other word they wanted this land," Scathach snorted. "The Holy Order are a bunch of greedy sissies as bad as the Astellic--except for the fact that they want to be a good guy during the plundering."
"Anyway the Holy Order purge all the tribe to the last child and gave this land to the Grand empire at a certain price. GIven that this was the Holy Order I expected they destroyed most of the 'heretical' artifact and painting during the raid but there was still some recorded of legend."
Ebony threw same photograph of a pottery shard with a picture of wounded black dragon landing on the ground. Some detailed human and horned demon drinking a red liquid and one guy sat on a throne of bone worshiping a mountain of dirt and another is cities getting destroyed in a meteor storm. The photograph looked like a work of a potter who loved Chinese's engraving but somehow prefer ancient Greece style red clay. Pretty elegant craftsmanship if I would say so.
"From what I researched about the legend it appeared that in ancient time a dragon from Smu'ag crashed landed here. This photographs indicate humans and demons used that dragon's blood to gave themselves some of its power and began worshiping its as they started their own civilization. It appeared they buried the dragon under a consecrated ground during the height of their society that abruptly ended from some kind of natural disaster."
"Great," I facepalmed. "Do we had anything else to go on?"
"Holy Order burned most of it down." Ebony answered.
"Great," I repeat. "Anyone else had any ideas?"
"I had one," Cy's hand shot up. "Please! This is a great idea!"
"Any idea that doesn't involve running to the hill and let the Emma Enterprise handled this by dumping a massive dragon on the poor bystander's lawn."
"Oh," Cy's hand sunk. "Yeah, they would totally do that."
Scathach coughed.
"Sathach you don't have to do the Dolores Umbridge just put it out on the table."
Scathach sighed.
"I am confident I could handle the dragon," Scathach said. "But the treaty I signed force me to submit a document to act against major power like Emma Enterprise. A document that would expose Cy and you guys to the them's prematurely. And trust me, knowing them, they would attempt to either recruit or neutralize all of you at all cost. This is not counting Melodina and Ebony. This mean (Scathach nearly gagged as she forced the word out) running for the hill is the best option."
"Yes!" Cy cheered. "Here is a deal we just left some rumor behind about massive dragon waking up. Then the town people will chase Emma out or ran away from the area. Either way, the citizen was saved and Emma got the dirt..."
"A great idea for a naive fool," Melodina said. "Do you happen to forget the fact that they already had half the town in their pocket."
"Eh," Cy starred blankly.
'Yeah," Lux shifted uncomfortably. "Emma Enterprise didn't go halfway when they want to take over. They went full on economic siege. They bought allies, like my father for example, strong-armed the neutral parties into joining their folds and then bankrupted enemies into thier terms. All this happened while the bystander is none the wiser."
"Provide them food and wine and everything will be fine," Melodina looked outside the window in nostalgia. "Those spineless cowards. As long as they are not the victim, as long as they are not prosecuted and lynched, they would betray anyone and everyone. I don't blame them thought. For such is the nature of the weak."
I sense some history there. Maybe a key for recruiting her into our fold but for now decision time.
"It appeared we had no choice..." I said silently. "Given the three-to-one vote...the answer is obvious."
Melodina laughed.
"For the person who once spoke his ideal with such a bravado," Melodina started mocking me airily. "I am truly disappoint in myself to be afraid of your fervor. In the end you cannot back up your ideal. No worries, I don't blame you for such weakness folding such is the puny nature of..."
"We had no choice but to stand and fight!!" I raised my voice cutting of the speeches. "If we with a power ran away, who will save those with nothing to protect them!!"
"Eh," Mel blinked, looking at me in the eyes. "Are you insisting that you are planning to fight a dragon if it wake up? I must misheard you. May I asked you repeat that again to make it clear."
"I am saying if worse come to worse we will fight and win against that dragon," I said with a sense of emptiness. "We had to."
"You are either arrogant beyond belief or courageous beyond comprehension," Melodina said. "What lead you to believe you can accomplishes such a thing?"
"The same thing that you had," I said triggering [Foresight] and [Humanity Reconstruction]. "Pride isn't it. You are truly full of pride. So full of it you can't trust someone. Not that it was baseless thought. You are talented and powerful...yet due to that power you are a pretty tragic person."
Melodina clenched her hand and then unclenched it.
"May you perhaps be pitying me?" Melodina said. "My life is not yours to pity. What is in my life and how it define is up for me to decide?"
"Go ahead it won't change the truth," I said. Finally, I started to get the reaction out of her. "And you two, especailly you Cy, I am fine with you running but not before you prepared something for me."
"But...but," Cy stuttered. "Why do we have to fight a dragon! I mean it a dragon! From the Forbidden ground! Do we even had a chance?"
"Taking on the strong is what the weak had been doing for generation," I picked up the photograph and showed it to everyone. "If this thing bleed, it mean it could die."
I looked at the crowd.
"So is anyone with me or is the elves knight and a goddess are going to sneak out of this house while this mortal me do your job."
That settled it. We would be fighting a dragon.
Oh may god help us all.