Child of Destiny

……

Shin and the others waited patiently for Lycan to continue the story.

“We are suspicious of that mysterious person at first since he had a lot of deception. He couldn’t see through his intention at all.”

“He just appeared in front of us all of a sudden and claimed that he knew about the truth of our war. He said that we are just being used by the God of Winter to hide her crimes.”

“Of course, we didn’t have a way to tell if he was telling us the truth. And it also didn’t change the fact that the spawns of evils on this land were creating chaos in every place that they went through, so we didn’t have a reason to stop the war.”

“But that person said that the residents of this place are only being controlled by a Demon Lord and he had a way to help them break away from it.”

“The Grand Mashal was still not convinced and intended to reject that person’s intention. But all of a sudden, our minds were suddenly sucked into an illusion where we witnessed all of the past events that I had told you.”

Reaching this point, Zero suddenly pointed out. “But you can’t be sure that everything you’ve seen is true.”

This time, Shin suddenly opened his mouth. “But it is a different case if they have an adult dragon on their side since it can see through all kinds of illusions.”

Hearing that a real dragon was involved, Arthur couldn’t help but become more interested in the topic.

‘If there is a dragon in the army, then there is a high chance that it is buried here somewhere,’ the expression on his face couldn’t hide his thoughts, which made the others able to read what was running inside his mind.

Shin ignored Arthur and turned to Lycan, silently waiting for the enlightened wolf to respond. And just like what he had expected, the latter smiled at him and confirmed what he just said. “That is right, the companion of the Grand Marshal is an adult dragon.”

“That guy even had a reputation in the ranks of Dragon Sanctuary of that time and was known as the Glacial King. Unfortunately, he was de-thorned after his defeat to the Ice Dragon from the main nest of the sanctuary.”

At this point, Arthur failed to hide his excitement. He didn’t care if that dragon lost to someone or not, what was important to him was the news that there was indeed a dragon buried somewhere in this land.

He was familiar with dragons, so he knew the span of their abilities and how they were going to react to certain situations. ‘If it was really a Glacial Dragon, then it could only do two things.’

‘One of them was sealing itself inside the Thousand Sealing Ice since it could stay alive even thousands of years past without losing much of its powers.’

‘The other way was sealing its heart and core to preserve its powers even if it died. After all, Dragons were close to nature. And this kind of environment of extreme coldness was perfect for it to achieve it.’

‘Well, it is favorable for me either way. I can get another Dragon Partner if it is the former or I can further strengthen the powers of my Ocean Dragon if it is the latter.’

‘Tsk! Tsk! My luck is really on the roll today,’ Arthur started closing his eyes as he could already imagine how powerful he could be if he found where the Glacial Dragon was buried.

Shin couldn’t help but sigh helplessly when he saw Arthur fall into a dream world. He then quickly reminded the dragon fanatic about their main purpose for coming to this place. “Hey! If ever you have forgotten, we are currently doing YOUR Empire Quest.”

He even emphasized that was the initiator of this quest.

Arthur rolled his eyes at Shin when he heard those words and replied. “Tsk! Yeah, yeah. I still haven’t forgotten about that.”

That was what he said on the outside, but he was having a different thought inside as he took another look at the system notification that he got earlier.

‘I can’t wait for this quest to reach its final stage!’ he thought alongside an evil laugh inside his head.

Shin shook his head with a bitter smile before turning back to Lycan. He tried to get more information from the wolf, but he couldn’t get any helpful information anymore.

Aside from the things they already knew, all the things that he got were something that he could already guess.

The system already gave them all of the backgrounds that they needed, so they no longer needed to blindly proceed on this quest.

Moreover, they already got the notification that they needed which signaled them to continue exploring the area.

Their main target was still the Frozen City that they saw previously, and they already got a detailed map from Lycan, so there was also no need to wander in the area without knowing the main road.

But despite that being the case, they still needed to explore the map for two reasons.

The first one was to familiarize themselves with this place. This map was definitely going to be unlocked once they cleared the Empire Quest, so it was necessary for them to fully explore it to have an advantage over the other guilds and other organizations that would advance on this place when it happened.

As for the other reason, it was a request from Lycan. He asked the group to also take down the other armies and free their souls from being bound by the curse that was cast upon them by the God of Winter.

Naturally, it was going to initiate a sub-quest and would have a separate reward from the Empire Quest that they currently had, so there was no reason for the group to not accept it.

Lycan also indicated on the map where those armies could possibly be, so the group would not need to waste their time looking for them.

Shin and the others thought that Lycan would accompany them. But to their disappointment, the wolf told them that he would like to stay on the burial grounds of his master and the soldiers of their army. He wanted to stay with them for a little bit longer before moving on.

But he gave the group a special talisman that could allow him to sense their location at all times. He promised that he was going to save them if ever they encounter a dangerous situation that they couldn’t escape.

Shin thought that it was another setup from the system, and a hit at the same time. This could only mean that they were definitely going to encounter that kind of situation.

Aside from that, he also thought about the armies that they were going to face and the possible characteristics that they should have.

Based on the scenes that he saw earlier, there should be three more armies that they needed to face. Moreover, Lycan also told them the respective names of those armies, so he could treat those names as additional clues.

The first one should be Sky Griffin Army, then the King Ghost Army, and the Dragon Knight Army after that – Shin thought that the Great Blue Wolf Army was a little stronger than the first two armies, so he was not much troubled by them.

If ever, they might be a little trickier to deal with because of their unique characteristic, especially the King Ghost Army since. Shin could already imagine what kind of monsters were they going to face when he heard their name.

‘If they were also undead monsters, then there is a high chance they are going to be specters. And they are most likely assassins based on the appearance that they have.’

‘Tsk! That is going to be a pain in the *ss,’ he couldn’t help but shake his head after realizing how troublesome they could be. .𝒐𝙧𝒈

Then he was reminded of the heavy cavalry that the Sky Griffin Army and further shook his head. ‘Then those guys are most likely be Death Knights or a bunch of Dullahan, maybe even both.’

He started to grimace at the fact that the next battles were also not going to be easy. But that was not the end since the one that gave him the most headache was the Dragon Knight Army.

Facing an army of inferior ‘Arthur’ was definitely going to be an unpleasant experience.

Shin tried so hard to figure out what kind of undead could they possibly be, but he couldn’t think of anything. They could be skeleton warriors or might as well zombies.

But they were supposedly the strongest army among the four armies, so Shin thought that it was not going to be that simple. They could even face a zombie dragon in the worst-case scenario since that army was led by the Grand Marshal who was also the partner of the Glacial Dragon.

He was even reminded of his battle against Immortal since he faced a real Zombie Dragon at that time.

Fortunately, he could at least summon the Eclipse Dragon if that happened since it would definitely trigger the activation of that copied skill. But he was also not sure that the strength of the dragon was going to be the same as before.

He was not like Arthur would take that information positively. He was also the group’s leading figure, so he needed to consider all possible scenarios they could face.

He was just hoping that Arthur would find a way to solve that situation if it really happened. After all, this guy was a dragon fanatic for a reason.

After reorganizing his thoughts, Shin discussed their next course of action with the rest of the group. They then took a rest to recover their peak forms before proceeding to the quest.

But Shin was not done yet, there was still another issue that they needed to take care of. He walked over to Faker and Zero to discuss the hidden variable that could affect their quest later.

……