"Hey, Long Wang. Seems like you've taken care of the Yellow ranked demonic cultivators. Good job, and thanks for the help."
"Not at all, my lord. On the other hand, I'm impressed that you defeated two Mystic ranked demonic cultivators who were capable of combining. I underestimated you once more. I thought I would need to assist you after I eliminated the Yellow ranked underlings, but it seems that you've surpassed my expectations. Well done, my lord."
I exhaled and tried to stagger forward despite having run out of qi. Inwardly, I could hear the existences from beyond the fourth wall berating me for a stupid cliffhanger. Whatever that meant. Well, at least none of them were insulting me for being weak and useless now.
"Let's check on the others and see how they are doing. Oh, and destroy the spirit array those demons set up while at it."
While Long Wang dismantled the spirit arrays, taking direction from me as to where the eyes were located, I explored the place. It was huge, and the scalding pits of lava kept me away, but I found a few Spirit Diamonds. The demons had bene using them to fuel their spirit arrays, and by now, most of them were exhausted.
Damn. I was too late.
Still, there were a few usable ones. I picked up like ten of them, putting aside nine for upgrading my dungeon. The other two, I would wait until I reached peak Mystic rank before I attempted to absorb the qi from within to breakthrough into Earth rank.
"I am done, my lord." After I placed the spirit diamonds into my storage space, Long Wang showed up and dusted his hands. I observed that all of the demonic spirit arrays had been successfully dismantled, and thanked him.
"Thanks, good job."
"It's no big deal. As I said, dragons are the ultimate species who are second in terms of magic power and knowledge."
"Who's the first? Fairy spirits?"
"That's right." Long Wang was impressed. He smirked. "Maybe one day you'll make a contract with fairy spirit twins. When the time comes, you'll see why they are ranked at the top of ultimate species when it comes to magic."
"What's this, Beast Tamer?" At least I didn't have to worry about harem nonsense. Clearing my throat, I nodded at the fading spirit arrays. "What were they trying to do here?"
"Set off a chain of volcanic eruptions that would engulf the nearby human city in molten lava and destroy it. They were drawing more power to ensure the eruptions were as destructive as possible, so that they wouldn't just destroy Huo Yan Valley City, but also reach the other provinces and destroy other cities as well. It would an apocalyptic disaster. It's a good thing you stopped them before they could ignite the geothermal forces deep within the Earth's crust and blow up all the volcanoes here. I estimate it would generate enough power to be on par with several of your hydrogen bombs exploding all at once."
I shuddered at that. I didn't want to imagine what would occur if we hadn't stopped them in time.
"Thank you, Long Wang. If you weren't here to help me, they might very well have succeeded."
Long Wang chuckled. "I'm sure you would have figured something out, my lord. You're a resourceful person. And I can't let them succeed – the forces generated here will affect the ocean as well. I dare say it probably was a similar catastrophe that sank Atlantis ages ago. While I care not for the human cities and civilizations, I can't have such ants disturbing the peace of my home."
Ants…Mystic ranked demonic cultivators were ants to him. Then again, he was formerly a Heaven ranked spirit beast, an existence that was pretty much on par with a god, if not a god himself. I guess it was only natural that he would view mere Mystic ranked demons as "ants."
"Oh, and congratulations, my lord. It must be because of the previous battles pushing you to your limits, but it seems that you're intermediate Mystic ranked now. Not bad. Not bad at all."
"Huh? Oh…I didn't even realize it." I was exhausted and completely drained of qi, and moreover, all these ranks and cultivation realms and stages were confusing to me. I read all these weird cultivation web novels and manhuas where the protagonists and characters often went, "oh, I've attained so-and-so realm" or "that guy must be so-and-so stage" as if they all had an in-built qi measuring device in their bodies or something. But it wasn't clear to me how they knew or how they could tell. Was it the amount of qi that a person had? How did you even estimate the quantity just from a single look?
I guess it was similar to seeing the physical size or weight of martial artists and guessing from there. Usually, the bigger and heavier the martial artist, the stronger he was. However, that didn't really take into account the individual skill, and it was hard to tell apart the difference in strength between two martial artists who had similar physiques.
Whatever, I would just believe whatever Long Wang said. He was a millennia old Heaven ranked dragon. He knew what he was talking about, and would have plenty more experience in telling a person's cultivation realm at a glance.
"All right, let's go check on everyone else!"
As it turned out, everyone was fine. When I exited the cave and returned to the area where I had summoned Hei Ba, I found him lying around, his serpentine body coiled, as he licked his wounds. The carcasses of the Lava Drakes lay in pieces, with scorched patches of rock and flooded regions of steaming water indicating the fierce struggled that had transpired within. Hei Ba glared at me and sniffed before I recalled him to the dungeon.
"You're back!"
Myria was resting beside Xiao Huo, stroking her fur as she waited for my return. The Colossal Crabs were idling away, hammering at any Volcanic Viper that still twitched and showed signs of life. Xiao Ke and Da Hai were standing guard at the entrance and exit, watching out for any enemies. When he spotted me, Dai Hai relaxed and stood to the side, saluting with a clawed flipper when I entered. I smiled at him and nodded gratefully.
"Thanks, Da Hai. Thanks, Xiao Ke and Xiao Huo, and thanks, everyone. You've worked hard. You can rest now."
They responded affectionately before vanishing back into my dungeon. Myria glanced around before turning back to me.
"You sure that's wise?"
"Yeah. They need some rest, and I'll just summon them again if necessary."
"My lord has me here, so there's nothing to worry about." Long Wang bowed his head politely. Myria jumped before gaping at him.
"W…who?! Where did that dude come from!? How come I've never seen him before?!"
"I'm a steward in service to my lord, and it's my job to manage his, uh, summoning space." Long Wang was the one who advocated that I keep the existence of my dungeon a secret, so he didn't reveal it. "And I was summoned here. Oh, I may look like this, but I'm actually a spirit beast who is contracted to my lord."
"What?! You're a spirit beast?!" Myria's mouth was hanging wide open. I nodded.
"Yeah. A reliable one too. More so than Hei Ba, anyway."
"Abyssal Serpents are ruthless and vicious in nature, so don't take it too hard, my lord. You will naturally command his respect and total obedience once you surpass him in strength, which shouldn't be too long from now."
"You have an Abyssal Serpent contracted to you too!?" Myria's jaw was almost reaching the ground. I shrugged and lightly pushed her toward the entrance.
"Yeah, but he doesn't…listen to my commands very often. He's too much of a wild card, only doing whatever he wants and rampaging on his own. That's why I didn't summon him here when he can potentially hurt my allies."
"Damn. You're crazy. I didn't think you would have such powerful spirit beasts under your command."
"I was just lucky. Anyway, let's check out what happened to my Lantern Fishes."
They had washed away the Magma Golems like a tide, and were lying in the exterior of the cavern, exhausted. I quickly dismissed them before they could be dehydrated by the heat, but not before I thanked them.
"Excellent work, guys. I knew I could rely on you. Thanks!" I smiled warmly at them. "You guys should take a good rest now."
Then they were gone, soaking in the cool depths of the internal seas of my dungeon. I could sense their contentment as they slept and healed their wounds, and returned to the present reality.
"All right, with our task gone, we'll have to report to Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. And the Huo Yan Valley City council too. I'm sure Ying Xing Ran wants to know what happened here, and they'll probably send their own force to investigate and clean up now that it's safe and we have eliminated all the spirit beasts and demonic threats here."
"What? So they are coming only after we did all the work?" Myria complained. I shrugged nonchalantly.
"To be fair, sending a large investigative force would have attracted too much attention from the enemy. They didn't want to hit the grass and startle the snake. Furthermore, most of the cleanup crew don't have much combat ability. They are mostly forensic experts."
There were many different kinds of cultivators in this world, and despite what popular web novels and manhuas would have you believe, the whole "strong eat the weak" nonsense was bullshit. Society couldn't operate on such a concept. Sure, you would have nasty people who abused their authority, and corrupt officials anywhere in the world, but society was a complex hierarchy of many different people operating in a myriad of roles to keep civilization running. Without logistics, stores wouldn't get supplies, and without drivers and a transport system, those supplies wouldn't get delivered to the stores. And as strong as cultivators were, they needed to eat. They needed living necessities and clothes. They needed houses to live in. Houses, clothes, necessities and food didn't just spring out of nowhere. Disrupt any one of the countless laborers working hard to coordinate the living ecosystem of society, and even high and mighty cultivators would experience extreme inconvenience.
This wasn't to deny that exploitation didn't happen. Lower rung workers were often exploited and underpaid, forced to work long hours while barely paid minimum wages. Arrogant rich people bullied others. The world was unfair. But it wasn't so extreme to the extent where rich and powerful people could murder a warehouse worker and escape without any consequences.
Point was, sure, the cleanup crew and forensics people might not have much combat ability, but that didn't make them any less valuable to the war effort against demons and spirit beasts. They had their role, and I had mine.
And now my role was over. trying to fight off exhaustion because I almost didn't have any qi left, I gestured wearily in the direction of Huo Yan Valley City.
"Let's return to the city."
"Yeah. Give me your hand." Noticing how dead on my feet I was, Myria swiftly came over to support me. She was more sensitive to my needs than Long Wang, despite the latter being my steward. That was understandable, given that Long Wang wasn't human but a former Heaven ranked dragon. He wouldn't know the intricacies of human interactions, and probably thought it was natural that trivial things like exhaustion and qi depletion were something a real man should endure stoically. At least he didn't scorn me when I accepted Myria's help.
Instead, he took point, scanning the area for any stray spirit beasts that might think to take advantage of our current vulnerable condition and launch an attack. Despite claiming to have expended a lot of qi in setting up the water dragon spirit array earlier, Long Wang didn't look tired at all. Not unlike Myria and me, both of whom were battered, weary and hurt.
Good thing he would never be able to betray me because of the spirit contract I forged with him. Sighing in relief, I leaned against Myria and the both of us followed Long Wang as he navigated a route out of Huo Yan Valley.