Chapter 308: Moving the Portal

"Grandpa!" Irina immediately protested.

The elven princess frowned, and her face turned completely red from the immense embarrassment at her grandfather’s request. She looked around in panic, noticing how all the inhabitants remained silent waiting for Ryan’s answer.

"Hey, you reckless old man!" Lise complained much louder than Irina.

The dragon took a large step forward, positioning herself between Ryan and the old elf. Lise knew virtually no one among the people gathered in the village, as she had only recently joined Ryan’s party.

In her eyes, it was a massive lack of respect for a simple old man to speak with such familiarity to her powerful leader.

"Don’t speak to my master in such a presumptuous way!" Lise demanded, showing her sharp fangs a bit as a sign of threat.

"Calm down a little, young dragon lady," Irina’s grandfather told her, without losing his typical kind and calm smile in the face of Lise’s fury.

"Don’t worry so much about marriage. Rest assured that you will also marry young Ryan in the future," the old man added with total tranquility.

The old man rested both hands on his wooden staff and looked her directly in the eyes. "Or is it that you do not want to marry him and give him strong heirs?" he asked the annoyed dragon directly.

Faced with that surprising question, Lise changed her attitude in less than a second.

"Oh..." Lise lowered her guard immediately.

Completely convinced by the old man’s words, Lise immediately returned to her usual perverted demeanor. Lise brought both hands to her cheeks, which had turned very red, and began to fantasize in silence.

She swayed her body from side to side, imagining all sorts of indecent scenarios with Ryan as her husband.

’Wow,’ Ryan thought, observing the entire rapid interaction unfold before his eyes. ’It’s incredible how easily that old fox manipulated an SS-rank dragon with just a couple of words. Is it even possible to have children with a dragon? Don’t be incoherent, you damn old man.’

"Stop playing around, old man. Right now I don’t have time to discuss those matters with anyone," Ryan said with a firm voice, nipping any further conversation about weddings in the bud.

"I came here for something much more important," he clarified to his whole party.

Irina, who remained by his side, puffed out her cheeks at Ryan’s response, letting out a small, almost inaudible complaint.

"But, don’t take it as if it were a game... Ryan," the elven princess murmured to herself.

And then, before the old man or Irina could say anything else about it, the sound of heavy footsteps approached.

Runa, Kenia, and Mika arrived at the scene, making their way through the still-celebrating crowd.

"Hey, harem king!" Runa, the dwarf blacksmith, greeted Ryan with total informality and a big smile, acting just as she always did around him.

"Don’t call him that," Irina complained to Runa, while on the other hand, Lise kept fantasizing and imagining indecent things.

"But it’s just that, every time he crosses through that portal, he brings a new woman with him," Runa pointed out and then crossed her arms.

Irina opened her mouth to complain, but couldn’t find the words, and simply remained quiet.

"Alright, enough joking. Runa, how have you been?" Ryan asked with a slight smile at his dwarf blacksmith.

"I prepared some new relics for you," Runa told him, showing a small metal box in her hands. "I hate the cold of the mountains and the snow, so I made this so we don’t freeze in Kowarre."

’Relics for the weather? That sounds quite useful,’ Ryan thought. He found it very interesting to see what the blacksmith had created in such a short time, without him even having to ask.

"I also helped a lot with that, of course," Mika immediately intervened, approaching Runa.

The young alchemist explained her major involvement in the project. "Since our last request was to create tiny-sized relics, we now use that knowledge for new things," Mika reported proudly. "Now we are making these new relics in very small, easy-to-carry sizes."

Kenia, the elder elf, took a step forward and looked Ryan in the eyes.

"Ryan," Kenia said in a serious tone. "When I saw the whole village expand so suddenly, I knew right away that you had killed the demon king. But it is still very hard for me to believe. Did that really happen?"

"That’s right, I killed him." Ryan immediately confirmed the elder’s theory, nodding his head. "That is why I am here. I will take all of you to the Kowarre territory this very day."

But just as Ryan gave that order, Irina’s grandfather grabbed Ryan’s right arm with his old, wrinkled hand.

"Young Ryan," the old man told him with great seriousness in his voice. "This immense place must be consuming a lot of your precious mana without you noticing it right now."

"I thought about that too, but I don’t feel anything strange, old man," Ryan answered, assuring him that he was in perfect condition.

But the old man strongly insisted on his warning and did not let go of Ryan’s arm.

"Listen to me well. You took charge of maintaining this village a long time ago," Irina’s grandfather told him. "You barely notice the immense weight you carry because you have completely gotten used to that daily effort. But since then, you have become much stronger and leveled up," the old man explained. "And therefore, the village automatically takes more of your immense new mana and expands in response to your new power."

At that profound revelation, Lise widened her eyes in surprise.

"It surprises me a lot to learn this now," Lise commented, looking at Ryan with even more devotion. "If my master fought against Rigal in that state of energy drain... it’s something truly difficult to imagine for any human."

"Ryan is always incredible in everything he does," Irina said proudly, and everyone present nodded in agreement.

But Ryan remained silent while everyone praised him. He thought that he truly hadn’t noticed anything strange or any fatigue in either his body or his mana.

’Of course I know this place absorbs my mana, and in a way I must have gotten used to it to the point of not noticing, but if that’s the case, how much mana am I really losing?’ Ryan concluded.

But he decided to leave that mystery for another day. He spoke to everyone with a clear voice.

"I’m going to transfer the entire village, with all of you inside it, to my new territory." Ryan told them directly, and looked at the old man. "Let me ask, is it possible to do that without risks?"

"Yes, it is entirely possible," the old man answered, nodding his head. "Now that you have so much accumulated power, you should be able to do something like that without problems, just have confidence."

Everyone agreed to follow that plan. Ryan wouldn’t waste time bringing hundreds of people out one by one through the narrow dungeon portal.

Ryan quickly said goodbye to the old man and everyone else gathered in the clearing.

He turned around and exited through the glowing magic portal along with Irina and Lise, returning to the dark room on the dungeon’s hundredth floor.

Once outside, he prepared himself mentally to seal and move the portal to the north.