On the other side.
The matriarch had left earlier, leaving only Verdalite, Azar, and the patriarch in the stone chamber.
Half finished with the cleansing, Azar abruptly stood up, interrupting the process.
The patriarch, now in human form, but still somewhat resembling a stone statue nonetheless, also stopped circulating his aura.
Verdalite frowned: "Old man, why is your mountain shaking? It didn't even shake this much when I blew up the entire bottom floor before."
"How am I supposed to know?"
The patriarch looked down in irritation, this stone chamber was specially built to be on top of the polluted mines to aid his absorption of miasma. Although the mana ores had been polluted, they should have been very stable.
At this time, the cracks Ciel had made on the ceiling were still spreading upwards. Seeing the floor start to crumble, the patriarch quickly hobbled up, changing into his dragon form. However, because his wings were still petrified, he was too late.
Like a house without its foundations, the smooth rock floor immediately crumbled down—bringing the half-petrified patriarch with it.
While falling, the patriarch still didn't forget to return to his dragon form and yell: "I'll be going for a dive! Remember to fish me up when I've landed!"
Azar: Be serious won't you?
Verdalite: As expected of the old dragon who raised me. This level of carefreeness can't be achieved by just anyone.
The two men looked down speechlessly, not bothering to stop the patriarch from falling. As a powerful old dragon, the patriarch's body wouldn't break even if he were to fall from the top of the mountain, not to mention the lower half of his body was still petrified.
Verdalite looked at Azar.
"Then… should we go?"
Azar looked annoyed: "You go fetch the matriarch, I'll follow him."
Holding down his veil, the fox neatly jumped down the dark hole that had formed in the chamber.
As a result, just when Ciel and the others had reached the edge of the tunnel they had come from, they were greeted with a loud splash along with the surroundings lighting up from the sheer amount of lava splashed out of the pits.
Quetzal jumped up in surprise, barely avoiding a large drop of lava landing on him.
"What the—"
He directly slammed into Erin's back and almost smacked Ciel's head.
Holding his nose, Quetzal blinked back his tears.
"Hiss.." Wasn't he a dragon? Why did it hurt so much?
Having not seen her young lord in pain since a long time ago, Aspen clumsily formed a small ball of ice and pressed it on his face.
Ciel ignored this harem member that was very, very close to breaking his character settings and got off Erin's back.
"Damn, look at the size of that stone, it plugged up the entire lake."
Hearing this, Quetzal immediately forgot about the pain and looked at the middle of the cave. The fallen rock was indeed a capable plug. Not even a bit of lava seeped out of the lake. It also looked vaguely like the back of a dragon. In the dark cave only lit up by the light of the smaller lava pits, it even gave off a faint turquoise luster at the top—no wait.
Beside him, Aspen gave a hesitant whisper, "Young lord, doesn't the large plug resemble the patriarch?"
"F*ck, father!?"
Finally feeling the faint familiar aura radiating in small waves off the plug—no, the half petrified dragon, Quetzal broke into a sprint to the center of the cavern, Aspen hot behind his heels.
Looking down to see his family's precious son and the aide he had painstakingly chosen running towards him, the patriarch suspected that the fall had damaged his head.
Why were they here?
Seeing Ciel and Erin walking slowly behind them, their calmness a large contrast to their messy appearance, the patriarch's mind crashed.
No, this had to be a hallucination. Otherwise, why would he see children that looked like a mix of Verdalite and that fox? Don't tell him that that year, they really eloped?
"Father! You're finally here!"
Quetzal's hoarse shout broke his delusions.
Looking at Ciel and Erin's likeness to Verdalite and Azar, the patriarch stood shell-shocked, all his majestic air gone.
"You have children!?"
He quickly rustled around in his pockets. No wait, he had no pockets in his dragon form!
Damn! He had nothing to give to his grandnephews! Why did he have to leave his space bag behind when he had chosen to isolate himself in that chamber?
Azar face-palmed, not knowing whether to be pissed off or be amused.
Like father, like son. Even though they weren't blood related, the fool Verdalite was indeed raised by this patriarch.
Even in this situation, he still had the guts to fool around like this. For the dragons to have become the leading tribe in the reptilian clan, the matriarch has truly worked hard.
The patriarch, "Azar, you really are impressive. It's rare for different species to even have children, yet you and that boy have two!"
Very calmly, Azar decided to be the first option.
"They were both picked up by Verdalite's adopted son. Also."
He took a deep breath, he couldn't yell at the patriarch in the heart of the patriarch's own tribe.
"I. Am. A. Man."
It has been years since they first met, but why did this old dragon and his wife still think he was a vixen who seduced their good adopted son away?!
Did this couple not have eyes?! F*ck! The gender was all wrong too!
Verdalite, who had contemplated for one second before sending a passing eve to fetch the matriarch before coming down himself, shuffled quietly behind Erin and Ciel.
"Be quiet for a while, Azar is pretty pissed right now."
Ciel: …
Erin: …
How can you tell, all we can see is a human shaped block of ice.
Aside from Verdalite, there was probably no one in this world that could read an emotion on Azar's face when it was expressionless.
The first brave warrior to challenge Azar's anger was naturally the musclehead.
"Ah!"
He pointed a finger at the veiled man.
"Aren't you the damn vixen that seduced my older brother? Now you've adopted children huh? Let me tell you, even if your adopted grandchildren are talented, they'll never be able to take my position as heir!"
Azar whipped his head around, the air beside him practically freezing.
"Hah?"
The trio in the back smacked their heads.
Of course it was this guy who provoked this ticking bomb.
Quetzal froze, but his pride wouldn't let him back down easily.
"Y-you heard what I said! Although we the dragon tribe rely on strength to decide the leader, we won't accept half-breeds and outsiders as blah blah blah…"
The more he spoke, the more confident he became, and the faster the atmosphere cooled down. The previous sweltering temperature of the lava filled cavern had even become chilly.
Seeing that his good buddy was about to turn this volcanic area into an icy wasteland, Verdalite hurriedly smacked the back of Quetzal's head.
"Stupid kid. Even if you don't talk, no one will think you're mute."
He shot a glare at the patriarch, who immediately followed up on Verdalite's slap with another slap to the back of his son's head.
"That's right, be respectful to our guest. Since he's your brother's friend, you should call him older brother as well!"
Quetzal was dumbfounded, "Br-brother?"
He's a male?
It was evident that he hadn't heard what Azar had said to his father.
Looking at his idiotic expression that resembled Verdalite's expression when Verdalite had first learned about his gender, Azar suddenly lost the strength to get angry.
Anyway, the whole family was like this. Even the even-headed matriarch had mistaken his gender and relationship to Verdalite till now. It wasn't anything new.
He sighed, waving Ciel and Erin over, skipping over the dragon eves who started to tussle around.
"Don't mind them. Let me see your injuries."
He frowned as he looked at Erin's broken wings.
"What happened?"
Ciel pointed at the young master being beaten by his elders.
"This time, it really wasn't me. You think I would put Erin in danger? It's that dragon's fault. He suddenly came up to Erin and picked a fight. Then he destroyed the cave and we all fell down here."
Being the young lord of the dragon tribe, Quetzal had never been blamed so blatantly before. He forgot about the two beating him and was about to lash out, when he suddenly had a flash of insight.
"Ah right!"
He pointed at Ciel and Erin.
"If they're the grandchildren of my brother, aren't I their granduncle?!"
Ciel automatically blocked out his nonsense. He pointed at the large lava pool, still talking to Azar.
"Also, we found the same terrorist that injured my knees and bombed the plaza pouring suspicious dark stuff into the largest lava pool over there."
"What?"
Hearing his words, Azar, who had been wrapping up Erin's wounds, whipped his head around.
"Are you sure?"
From the second the hole had opened up underneath that old dragon, he had sensed an overwhelming amount of miasma pouring out, and he had only found the reason why when he had come down—the lava pools of various sizes were all contaminated with miasma, but the one in the middle was the most serious.
Although miasma had slow acting poisoning properties, it was actually very aggressive. When it came to sentient beings, it would slowly work its way through their bodies and petrify them from inside out. But when it reached non-sentient beings and other things, it would directly turn their nature in an aggressive direction. Plants and animals would start attacking others, and non-living things such as land and water would carry harmful and eroding properties to the natives of Aeon. Demons, of course, were unaffected, and even benefited from the change.
Ignoring his piercing stare, Ciel nodded. "Something black and shiny. Then the lava became darker."
The temperature dropped further as Azar took Ciel's blindfold and tied it around Ciel's eyes. Transforming into a large, snow-white fox with bluish markings trailing around his body, Azar threw both boys on his back.
"We're getting out of here. Now."