Chapter 229

A moment later, Varen released a strangled breath, his chest heaving.

In the span of only a few seconds, all the color drained from his face. Cold sweat soaked him.

Damn it. Nothing ever goes smoothly even once.

Grabbing his forearm, I demanded urgently,

“What’s wrong? What kind of future did you see that shocked you this badly?”

With eyes still clouded by shock, Varen turned to stare at the burning palace once more.

His lips parted several times before any words emerged. Then, unlike himself, he spoke haltingly.

“N-Not the future... the past. I... saw the past.”

The ability he had awakened in Belzena was not limited to glimpses of the future.

Past, present, future.

It showed Varen whatever he needed to see, regardless of time.

Unfortunately, he still wasn’t accustomed to controlling it. He couldn’t simply choose a moment and view it at will.

Instead, the visions struck without warning, like revelations descending from nowhere.

And most of the time, he only saw brief flashes of the future.

This was the first time Varen had seen the past.

His unsettled appearance made me tense as well.

Swallowing hard, I asked,

“What past?”

“...Who destroyed the barrier underground.”

The culprit behind the underground explosion.

Varen and I had stood here discussing possibilities, yet neither of us had found a single clue.

I wanted to demand the answer immediately.

But Varen was trembling too badly.

Judging by his reaction, whoever he had seen was not an ordinary source of shock.

Varen raised a large hand and pressed it against his forehead.

His blue eyes shook helplessly, moisture gathering in them.

“How... how could he...”

He?

Was it someone Varen knew?

I was grinding my teeth and turning possibilities over in my head when my own body suddenly shuddered.

At this point, I was starting to wonder whether some sort of danger-detection system had been installed inside me.

Every hair on my body stood on end.

It felt as though every cell I possessed had begun reacting.

The same strange tickling sensation that had vibrated beneath my feet in the king’s bedroom returned.

The source was the same.

This time, however, it was so powerful that it reached all the way to the garden.

Crunch.

Crack.

The sounds of stone splitting and shattering echoed through the air.

Then came a scream overflowing with rage.

No... no! NOOO!!

“Urgh...!”

The shriek felt powerful enough to split my skull apart.

Clutching both hands over my ears, I dropped to my knees.

I hurriedly looked around.

The humans were still completely focused on extinguishing the fire.

If I alone could hear the voice, then it was true speech.

But Varen was standing right beside me.

And the voice was far too rough and mature to belong to Kaldrok’s child.

Which meant...

The only possibility was Morpha, who had scoffed at me for worrying and headed underground—

“...Huh?”

At that moment, everything stopped.

Far in the distance, an impossible sight unfolded before my eyes.

King Laskar’s palace was the sturdiest stone structure I had ever seen.

Its defenses were absurdly strict.

As befitted the residence of a king, safety appeared to be its highest priority.

The main building alone looked large enough to cover over five thousand square meters.

Including every structure and garden, the royal palace rivaled an entire sports complex.

That enormous, seemingly indestructible place began collapsing from the bottom up.

The tremors erupting from underground surged upward, and boulders the size of houses rained down.

“RAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

A beast’s roar tore through the heavens.

Bursting upward through the burning structure while smashing it apart from the foundations was a dragon.

Dark copper scales covered its entire body.

Eyes black as an abyss gleamed with madness.

The dragon bared enormous claws and whipped a tail lined with spikes as thick as tree trunks.

“W-What... what is that...?”

I had never imagined I would encounter a dragon’s true form here.

And not just any dragon.

The color of its scales.

Its eyes.

The shape of its tail and wings.

Everything about it was unfamiliar.

This was not a dragon I had ever seen in Belzena.

Shockingly, I slapped a hand over my mouth.

The humans closest to the palace couldn’t even scream.

The appearance of such an overwhelming existence had reduced them to pure instinctive terror.

Those who managed to retain some shred of reason staggered backward on trembling legs.

Then someone finally shrieked.

“AAAAAAAHHH!!”

“R-Run! Run away! A dragon has appeared!!!”

That single scream shattered the paralysis.

Instantly, chaos erupted.

The magnificent royal palace steadily crumbled apart.

Hundreds of people flooded from the collapsing building all at once.

People tripped while fleeing.

Others stepped on the fallen and stumbled as well.

Masses of bodies tangled together and tumbled down the stairways.

The fortunate ones managed to escape.

Those standing closest to the palace, desperately trying to extinguish the fire, vanished beneath falling rubble without leaving a trace.

Everything unfolding before my eyes felt like a dream.

No.

It was too cruel even to be called a dream.

One dragon.

One dragon driven beyond reason.

That alone was enough to destroy the palace and kill countless people.

Yet the cruelest thing was the dragon itself.

“Why... why does it look like that...? Who could have...?”

At first, I thought its body was naturally covered in spikes.

Then I looked closer.

The spikes had not grown from within.

They had been driven into it from the outside.

Thousands of steel spikes pierced the dragon’s hide.

Hide harder than stone.

The copper coloration wasn’t natural at all.

It came from thick blood coating the scales.

Blood the dragon itself had shed.

“RAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

The copper dragon threw its jaws wide open and roared.

The movement resembled a dragon preparing to breathe fire.

Yet only thin wisps of smoke drifted from its mouth.

Without realizing it, I seized Varen’s forearm.

The skin beneath my fingers was burning hot.

Startled, I turned toward him.

Varen’s face was twisted in pain.

The blood shed by one of his own kind flickered red within his blue eyes.

Grinding his teeth together, he glared ahead.

His tightly clenched jaw trembled with fury.

“Kaldrok...”

The name struck me like a blow to the back of the head.

Kaldrok.

A longtime loyal retainer of Ordin.

The dragon who had betrayed his king after King Laskar took his child hostage.

We had searched for him for so long.

Yet we had never found even a trace of him.

At last, the culprit behind the underground explosion clicked into place like the final piece of a puzzle.

Someone possessing power beyond most mages.

Someone desperate to rescue Kaldrok’s child.

Naturally, I had searched for suspects among humans.

That had been a deeply human-centric assumption.

Of course.

Who could possibly want to save Kaldrok’s child more than Kaldrok himself?

Podric!!!

Kaldrok screamed his child’s name.

The anguish in that voice was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

But to ordinary humans incapable of hearing true speech, it was nothing more than the roar of a maddened beast.

I pressed a hand against my pounding chest.

My gaze drifted toward the sleeping Berius lying nearby.

An eighteen-year-old boy sleeping peacefully, breathing in soft, even breaths.

Outwardly, he looked completely innocent.

Whether it was truth or self-delusion, I kept seeing Berry in him.

But neither perception changed reality.

The human sleeping behind me was one of the central figures in this brutal world.

LASKAR! I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!!!

Kaldrok’s agony and rage were directed at a single human being.

The target of that hatred lay unconscious only a short distance away.

I looked down at Berius again.

My frantic heartbeat gradually settled.

The blood in my veins turned cold.

“Kaldrok... came for his child.”

“Yes. Kaldrok was the one who destroyed the barrier.”

“...And it was a trap.”

Kaldrok had betrayed the king he had served his entire life.

That was how desperately he wanted to save his child.

That desperation had ultimately led him into a trap.

The explosions underground were only the beginning.

The dragon that had erupted from beneath the palace was already slowing.

I watched with heavy eyes.

His body was riddled with spikes made from some unknown material.

And whatever magic had been used against him prevented him from breathing fire.

The gigantic dragon struggled desperately.

Yet compared to the palace’s enormous main building, only a small portion had actually been damaged.

In the end, they had successfully captured a full-grown dragon.

Compared to the destruction suffered, the reward was far greater.

As I stared at the stones crumbling beneath Kaldrok’s feet, a horrifying realization struck me.

“Morpha and the others are still down there!”

If Morpha had reached the place where Podric was being held...

Then they were directly beneath Kaldrok right now.

I clenched my fists while staring at the ruins.

Morpha would somehow survive.

They always did.

But the rebel operatives were ordinary humans.

They wouldn’t be nearly as fortunate.

“Ceryl! Over here! Help!”

At that moment, several people broke away from the fleeing crowd and ran toward us across the garden.

The person in front looked familiar.

Morpha had definitely altered his appearance earlier, but perhaps the spell had broken.

Theo was waving both arms wildly over his head.

Five or six others followed behind him.

Relief flooded through me when I saw they were alive.

For only a moment.

Because slung across the back of the largest man was someone covered in blood.

A man with wavy brown hair.

A thick beard.

The uniform of a royal guard.

“...Morpha!”