The lady was feeling very pleased with herself at that moment.
"How much does a single Shadow Lord go for on the Dark Auction?" She asked her companion.
"Seven quadrillion stones of space." He quoted the most recent buy price.
She giggled uncontrollably while she began constricting the space so she could isolate it and transport them.
"Gonna get paid~ Gonna get paid~" She sang quietly to herself.
"To think that despite my progression, I still end up with people trying to sell me as a slave." A voice rumbled from inside the space she was isolating.
"Wha-HOW?" She checked her spatial bubble and felt it was intact, she checked the space around her and found it undistirbed, yet, somehow one of them spoke from within an isolated space.
As she checked, from within the bubble a black figure began expanding and started cracking the spatial barrier.
"What's going on?" Her companion demanded, pointing. "What's hapening to the people in the barrier?"
She looked up and saw a black figure that was expanding and slowly destroying the barrier she had erected.
"H-how?" She muttered. "They're just sh*tty Shadow Lords! HOW?"
"You humans never change." The voice came again, much louder than before. "Always taking, demanding, and destroying."
The spatial barrier was rapidly collapsing as the voice boomed from within.
"F*CK!" She turned and began sprinting away from her failing barrier.
As the barrier shattered completely, she risked a look back.
Standing proudly stood a enormous black dragon and the two other Shadow Lords sitting on its shoulders.
"THEY TAMED A F*CKING DRAGON!" She screamed hysterically.
Her companion glanced behind himself, saw the scene, and picked her up and used a skill to boost their speed.
The dragon's wings opened wide, obscuring the horizon with its inky black appendages, and began powerfully beating them.
THUD
"IT'S CHASING US!" She screamed in utter terror.
THUD
"This may very well be the end." Her companion stated.
THUD
"Since we're probably going to die, I have a confession." He said.
THUD
"NOW IS NOT THE TIME" She yelled.
THUD
"I feel that we won't have any other time." He responded.
THUD
"I have had a crush on you since we met." He said.
The flapping stopped after he said that, and was replaced by an eerie stillness, along with the slight ringing in their ears from the enormous sound.
"I..." She began calming down after she heard the wingbeats stop. "I always liked you too."
"Let's-" He was cut off by a low and piercing whistling noise rapidly increasing in both volume and pitch as it neared.
"We're f*cked, aren't we?" He asked her.
"Yeah." She looked sad. "Maybe we'll see each other in the next life."
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he was interrupted by a purple beam evaporating him just as he opened his mouth.
That was the last thing she ever saw.
....
Salem landed gently with Alina and Ruby.
"I didn't realize that my immunity to space debuffs applied to being trapped like that." Salem said as he morphed into his humanoid form.
"If it didn't, we'd be auctioned off to the highest bidder." Alina said.
"Humans never change." Salem sighed. "Even across cultures, continents, and even dimensions, they still act the same."
"It's strange, is it not?" Ruby asked. "You'd think that across all of these wildly different worlds that they would act differently."
"Perhaps it's in the human genome." Salem said. "Perhaps it's just an inherent trait of humanity."
....
"Family leader! Family leader!" A servant rushed in to the city lord's study without knocking, bending over to catch his breath.
''You had better have a good reason for barging in like that." The citly lord said menacingly.
"Our scouts have found a dragon!" The servant panted. "It was spotted just south of Ciudad!*"
"A dragon.." Oso rubbed his chin. "How many know of this?"
"As far as we know, the Naturae family in Ciudad and no one else." The servant caught his breath by then and stood erect. "Shall we prevent them from acting?"
"No, no." Oso waved his hand. "We'll let them weaken the dragon and then strike after both parties are exhausted."
Oso chuckled.
"We're about to get our world's first dragon heart." Oso rubbed his hands together. "And not a single family can stop us."
Ciudad: City in Spanish. (I couldn't think of a good city name. Sue me.)