Author here, I have some news and have added them to the auxiliary chapters to not spam here.
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Minerva watched the woman leave. Her senses told her that this was a normal human of normal strength, but things weren't that simple.
She had initially stopped by Marinon to check on the activities in Tearwald forest. There they heard about the unusual mana reading in the town. The guard's suspected a dragon at work, and also described a woman that left the town that carried its mana scent.
She would have left it at that if Raos Luzeir Faramus hadn't been staying in town at the time. Her experience told her, that the matter went a lot deeper. Wherever he showed up, unrest would soon follow even though they could never prove his involvement.
She soon found that he had 'adopted' a new Faramus. To be introduced by none other than one of the family's founders held special significance. As usual, Raos was creating more work for her. They would need to investigate the new monster as soon as possible. Handling these types of investigations was her job after all.
But things got even more complicated when she found out that the new registree, a so-called Riva Faramus was none other than the one that was suspected to be the dragon that left the town earlier that day.
Dragons had a special kind of authority. Not only were they powerful beings in and of themselves, but they also commonly held powerful positions in both the civilized and monster society. Simply speaking, they were not to be messed with! A dragon's wrath was something few could survive.
The problem was that this dragon was seen heading in the direction of their mission location. Minerva dispatched some of her men for further cautious investigations. They couldn't anger the Faramus nor the dragons. And an investigation couldn't be avoided, after all, there was a need to assess their involvement with the relics!
That was when she received a message from her spies who already made it to the mission location. The adventurers that attempted the new dungeon didn't return even after a few hours and a new team had arrived at the location. And the enemy's puppet had somehow infiltrated the group. If they didn't hurry, they would lose yet another fragment!
While she was heading over to the location, her spy informed her that the person going by 'Riva' had arrived at the location but to her relief, she was said to have left after a few hours of just sitting around.
Minerva couldn't help but be surprised that she received a call from headquarters. They supplied a whole army's worth of reinforcements. They promptly arrived via her portal beacon and immediately set a tight perimeter around the new dungeon's entrance.
At first, she thought they were going way overboard, but the things that occurred quickly changed her mind.
An occurrence that had only been theorized about but never proven happened right then and there!
The dungeon's mana suddenly faded and as a result, its subspace became unstable and collapsed!
It spit its foreign content's onto the main plane… that and its boss!
It turned out that the dungeon was one of the rare cases, where it had a weak mana signature but was far stronger than it implied because the boss was the sole creature inside and had specialized abilities. Likely a result of the fragment's influence.
The theories had stated that anything tethered to the dungeon should have collapsed together with it, but for whatever reason, the boss had escaped its grasp.
So this was why they did a large-scale emergency dispatch like this. Headquarters must have predicted it!
But there was another problem besides the boss. There were two adventurers that escaped the dungeon's collapse. And both were problematic.
One was the hand of the Abyss, it would have been better had he fallen to the dungeon, but no such luck.
The other one turned out to be the new Faramus. It only proved her power, that she so easily slipped her spies' observation and entered the dungeon without their knowing.
Minerva left the boss to the army and acted according to protocol, this was her best shot because the Faramus made a deal with the humans, that they wouldn't interfere with each other and respect each other's laws. She had just one goal, apprehend the hand of the Abyss.
Easier said than done. It was at this point that things went wrong. Turned out the monster going by Riva had some kind of feud with the hand of the Abyss. And worse, the hand died from the backlash of a contract. The Abyss really was no better than monsters!
And then the worst happened, Riva, someone that was likely a dragon became enraged! It didn't show in its mana, not one bit, but her glare could very nearly kill people.
The mere fact that the Riva was capable of hiding her strength and pretend to be a normal human this perfectly was already more than scary! Her technique was already more advanced than Raos! No wonder he had taken a personal interest in her.
It was likely that Riva had intentionally revealed herself in Marinon. She knew that they would investigate her and did it to warn them that she wasn't to be messed with.
Minerva could do little but shiver in her boots. She would have, if not for her training. With it, she could at least retain her professional facade.
She had offended a dragon! She would be lucky to see tomorrow.
It appeared that Riva was barely holding back her anger and when she demanded the body of the hand of the Abyss Minerva had no choice but to agree, even if this was against protocol. It took all her courage to at least scan the body for relics, a scan that turned up empty. Her superiors would understand her decisions, she hoped.
Only God knew what the enraged monster would do with the corpse. She clearly said something about revenge before. She could already imagine the smoking charcoal. These idiots from the Abyss must have pissed off the monsters really bad! Did they not know the basic principle: If you want to live, never offend a dragon!
"How did it go on your end, I don't see either of the two survivors here?" The reinforcement's leader and husband at the same time had come to check on Minerva and pulled her from her thoughts.
"The hand of the Abyss didn't have a relic and killed himself, and the other person was a new Faramus introduced by Raos Luzeir Faramus and… likely a dragon." Minerva hesitated before mouthing those dreadful words. "She had a feud with the Abyss' hand and demanded his body so I couldn't do anything but hand it over," Minerva explained the situation.
"A dragon? Really?" Her husband asked with a mixture of surprise and horror. "You know, we found two Zombies with the boss. They were considerably nasty, one had this cursed blade." He showed her a blade that would have been ordinary mass-produced adventurer gear if not for the purple rune that decorated it. Its presence could only be described as unholy and overbearing. "And not just that, you know why the boss didn't die with the dungeon? It had been partially zombified! We were lucky, we could kill it before it fully turned."
"Wouldn't it be easy to defeat with just your strength?" Minerva knew that her husband could be considered at the peak of human strength.
"Defeating it is one thing, but a Zombie isn't killed that easily and this one had a very particular ability. It must have been a special skill bestowed by the dungeon. It could make weak-willed beings its puppets and absorb their strength. And a Zombie only dies when it completely runs out of strength."
Minerva shuddered from just imagining a Zombie with this kind of ability. It would be near impossible to kill and the herald of a new Zombie plague. Left alone it could easily grow into a world-ending threat! But this wasn't all, the implications of its infection were at least equally disastrous.
"So you think…" She started.
"I am certain we're dealing with a Zombie… and if you're saying we're also dealing with a dragon…" her husband followed her thought.
"We're dealing with a Zombie-Dragon!!!" She almost didn't dare to speak it aloud.
The last Zombie-Dragon in history had ended a whole era. Its reign had heralded the start of a divine war. The world just barely survived only because it was sealed in time.
"Maybe it's just a drake?"
"No way! I was in Marinon before I came here and that was a bonified dragon's mana! Though it didn't feel evil." Minerva objected.
"Didn't you say this thing has become a Faramus?"
"Yeah!"
"Don't they advocate coexistence?"
"No, one couldn't call it coexistence, but every Faramus tries to abide by human law, at least on the surface that is. Oh, right, that would mean that she isn't necessarily inclined to eradicate all life. Also, Raos is far too interested in his games and crafty schemes. He wouldn't support a mindless killing machine."
"Yeah, even though she's probably, you know, she didn't murder you even when you obviously angered her. Maybe we should consider the possibility of a special mutation. That would be Raos' style would it not?"
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