Chapter 106 Chapter 105 The Angry Green Dragon
In a bright sky without a sun, the green dragon spread its wings and soared like an eagle over countless collapsed tree walls.
Under an inconspicuous thicket, Jima was pinning her head down into the grass by the Shadow King Arcanis, her mouth full of grass clippings. The green dragon grasped George as it flew over them, and only then did Shadow King Arcanis release his grip. Jima got up, spat out the grass clippings, and whispered:
“You almost suffocated me.”
“It would have been a problem if you had screamed in fear.”
“I’m not timid; I’ve faced a green dragon before and didn’t scream then.”
“Just in case.”
Jima clenched her small fists, but thinking about how she would later trick Shadow King Arcanis made her feel a bit better.
The green dragon Ciris slowly descended along the black smoke.
“They have been misled.”
With a half-smile, Shadow King Arcanis said, “Your man just found your burnt boots.”
Jima’s mood darkened instantly, and she stood up, saying, “Let’s go.”
“You seem anxious,” said Shadow King Arcanis. “Afraid he’ll find out?”
Jima shivered and denied, “He won’t find out.”
“It seems the paladins have their methods when it comes to succubi.”
Jima didn’t want to talk to this annoying cold-blooded killer, fearing she’d get herself worked up. She walked over to a small mound of earth, where a nondescript stone tablet was hidden among the weeds. Jima crouched down, cleared the weeds, and saw a jumble of characters carved into it.
Upon closer inspection, she was surprised to find it was Chinese.
Well, I suppose my handwriting is a bit poor. I must have forgotten to eat breakfast while carving, so my blood sugar was low and my hands shook a bit.
Jima squatted down and wiped the dust off the stone tablet with her gloved hands.
Arcanis’s mocking voice came, “Oh, another pile of dog-shit characters, and you can actually read them.”
“What dog-shit characters? These letters are the crystallization of five thousand years of ancient civilization.”
“Then they’ve been badly abused,” Arcanis said. “Wouldn’t be you who abused them, would it?”
“These were carved by the Demon King himself, thank you very much.”
“Then you must be his daughter?” Arcanis said. “You two have a similar flair for writing dog-shit characters.”
“Feel free to guess.”
Jima hated bureaucratic-style questioning. After wiping the dust clean, she finally saw the writing clearly.
My handwriting is still pretty legible.
The inscription on the tablet read: “This is the entrance to the treasure vault; the incantation is: Pineapple Pineapple Honey. // Since others won’t understand Chinese, there’s no need for any fancy opening ceremony. Who the hell remembers that?”
Too simple, huh.
Jima, for a moment, doubted whether she had forgotten to write something.
With her fingers gently brushing the stone tablet, Jima recited, “Pineapple Pineapple Honey.”
As soon as she spoke, a fist-sized blue light burst out of the stone tablet and, before the two of them, began to expand gradually into an oval-shaped portal.
Shadow King Arcanis asked, “Is it only melon-sized? Do we need to crawl in?”
“We need to wait a moment.”
As soon as Jima finished speaking, the sound of flapping wings echoed from above. Her face turned pale; it was too fast.
“Damn it, it must be that bitch Cuihua who put something tracking on me,” Jima cursed while searching her body, pulling out a flower the size of a finger from her hood.
Shadow King Arcanis said, “You really know how to surprise people.”
While Jima frantically looked for cover, hoping George wouldn’t see her, she said:
“If it weren’t for your impulsive attack, we would have been comfortably counting money in the Demon King’s treasure vault by now! By the way, do you have any invisibility potions?”
“Let me guess, next, are you going to ask me to hold off a dragon and a maniac?”
“Congratulations, you guessed right!”
Nearby the small mound, Jima found a row of collapsed tree walls. She bent down and without a second thought, crawled in, though her slim body still got stuck between the overlapping gaps of trees.
The dragon’s roar drew closer.
Just thinking about George, hanging from the dragon’s claws, possibly seeing a bunch of little white feet protruding from the tree heap made Jima anxious.
With a kick of her legs and her arms reaching forward, she grabbed something that felt like a hand, yanked hard, and finally got her body lodged deeper into the pile.
The “branch” in her hand moved. Jima looked and realized it was not a branch at all, but a hand with sharp claws. The head of a lizard-like creature leaned closer to her, and in the darkness, Jima could see the scales on its face and noticed it was holding a sharp little knife in its other hand.
It was a goblin! In the chaos of the maze, these timid creatures had long hidden away.
Jima grinned at it. Unfortunately, this friendly smile only excited the goblin, which yelped and thrust the little knife toward Jima.
Jima instinctively enhanced her “Supernatural Charm,” and the little knife veered in the air, plunging deeply into the tree trunk beside her hand.
Jima drew the dagger from her waist.
The goblin tugged at the little knife but couldn’t pull it out, then showed a friendly smile to Jima.
“Hehe.”
A demon and a goblin exchanged smiles. Jima suddenly mustered her strength, grabbed it by the back of the head with one hand, and drove the dagger viciously into its chin.
The goblin wailed a few times and died.
“A goblin thought it could kill me?”
Jima pushed the corpse aside and pulled out the goblin’s little knife, examining it closely; it seemed to be scavenged from some adventurer.
A loud noise came from outside, the sound of the green dragon landing. Jima panicked and crawled deeper; the space inside the tree pile actually opened up more. She crawled over the goblin’s corpse and discovered a larger space with even more goblins.
They grabbed their weapons, all staring at this unwelcome guest.
Jima gave an awkward smile, took off her hood, revealing her small horns, and said, “If I say I’m a goblin, or a dragon-blood goblin, would you believe me?”
The goblins shook their heads.
At this time, outside the tree pile.
George, having fallen to the ground, got up and brushed off the grass and leaves from his body. His entire armor looked quite ugly, its surface pitted and charred from the battles and dragon’s breath.
On the stone tablet, a winter melon-sized, continuously enlarging blue light caught the attention of both the dragon and the man. George noticed that faintly, a piece of brown rock was visible in the center of the light.
It was the forming portal.
“Sure enough, the stone tablets in the maze are the gates to the treasure vault,” the green dragon Ciris said. “That goblin is probably not an ordinary goblin.”
Before she had even finished speaking, the green dragon Ciris suddenly released a breath, a green breath with a strong chlorine smell sprayed towards the ground.
George suddenly turned his head towards the green dragon, pointing his sword at Ciris. But he found that the dragon’s breath passed by him without hitting him.
Ciris said, “You really are on guard against me.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m just trying to find the Shadow King you mentioned. I’m spewing shadows; trust your god, I have no need to breach the contract.”
No, it’s not that simple.
George suddenly realized that he was now facing away from the small mound, which was not lacking in shadows. He felt a chill at his back; without hesitation, George raised his sword and shouted, “Light!”
At the same time, he immediately turned around.
“Clang.”
A sword as black as shadow appeared in the air, thrusting towards the gap in his armor at the neck. The blade veered off, causing no harm to George.
George turned back, swinging his sword wildly and missed, seeing Shadow King Arcanis retreating quickly.
“Not bad, you understand right away that you’ve become bait,” Arcanis said with a laugh.
George distorted the light and saw another burst of dragon’s breath rushing towards him from behind, dodging sideways while the breath shot straight towards Shadow King Arcanis. Meanwhile, George’s glowing sword drove away the nearest shadows around him.
The green dragon’s breath surged toward Arcanis, seemingly forcing him to take it head-on.
But George inexplicably felt that this silver-haired half-elf wouldn’t be easily harmed.
No miracle occurred; the breath overwhelmed Arcanis, and within the green mist, only a blurry shadow could be seen, followed by a scream. The breath soaked Arcanis, splashing onto the surrounding grass and plants, turning green grass into a puddle of green mud, revealing the black soil beneath.
Arcanis’s dark body fell to the ground.
“Really not durable,” the green dragon Ciris said. “Weak mortals.”
George calmly responded, “You were deliberately trying to scare me, using me as bait?”
“I don’t have time to negotiate with you,” Ciris said. “See, isn’t this successful—”
A black as night short sword interrupted Ciris.
Arcanis revealed himself from mid-air, his sword aimed directly at Ciris’s dragon eye, only two arms’ length away. The dragon’s eye widened in shock, still lost in the thought that Arcanis was dead, and reacted too late. Instinctively, she closed her eyes and twisted her head.
Arcanis reversed his grip on the short sword, stabbing it into Ciris’s eye socket, dragging it downward, cutting through the eye socket and even piercing into the sturdy dragon scales. As he landed, a bloody dragon scale also fell next to his foot.
Ciris shook her head in pain, tightly closing her remaining eye, a stream of blood spewed from her wound as she let out an extreme roar of fury.
George reacted quickly, charging towards Shadow King Arcanis, only to see Arcanis smile at him, take a step back, and vanish into the shadows under Ciris.
“Under you!”
The green dragon Ciris was momentarily stunned before understanding George’s meaning; she dropped down but felt nothing beneath her.
Her one remaining eye scanned the surroundings, but there was no sign of Shadow King Arcanis.
At that moment, in the unnoticed tree pile, a small finger discreetly twitched.
A wave of anger surged within the green dragon. The pain from her injured eye was not only sharp but also ignited a burning nerve pain, laced with a potent poison. For a short time, the eye would not heal.
As a true dragon, she couldn’t believe a small mortal had injured her; how had he cut through her skin?
“What are you waiting for? Iron tin!” she barked, seeing George glancing around, filled with frustration. “Quickly heal my eye.”
George replied, “I’ve already used most of my healing abilities on myself just now.”
Ciris snorted, “Useless kindness.”
George said, “The moment you heard the Shadow King mention I was bait, you should have realized he already saw through your little trick.”
Ciris ground her dragon teeth together, producing a clicking sound. She thought of the contract but held her tongue.
George continued, “As long as we hold this place, we’ll be fine.”
“You don’t need to remind me, mortal—”
Before Ciris could finish her sentence, an arrow shot toward her eye. She closed her dragon eye and tilted her head back as the arrow struck the scales beneath her eye, embedding itself in the dragon scale. Although it didn’t cause much harm, it was quite painful.
What strange magical arrow was that?
Green mist spewed from Ciris’s nostrils as she prepared to launch another strong breath towards Shadow King Arcanis.
Shadow King Arcanis appeared atop the small mound, standing over the forming blue portal, and said, “If you have the ability, spray the portal away too.”
George was about to charge at Shadow King Arcanis when he felt a gust of wind from behind. He stopped in his tracks to see the furious green dragon whipping her tail towards Arcanis, roaring, “Die!”
Shadow King Arcanis deftly dodged, and the enraged green dragon’s attack inadvertently hindered George’s response.
Just as the three were caught up in the fray.
From the tree pile, two goblin heads and one Jima, wearing a goblin shaman mask, emerged.
Seeing the three had shifted the battlefield away from the portal, Jima said, “Brothers, behind the light orb is the temple to become a true dragon. To become a dragon, follow me.”
“Alright, alright.”
The goblins shouted in unison.
Jima spread her feet and, leading the charge, raced toward the portal. The goblins flocked after her in a frenzy, clamoring loudly.