novelA Massive Commotion
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The task of moving a Fourth Grade dragon's treasure made Greem extremely busy!
Wings of Azure Skies Krille had already been captured alive. To avoid any unexpected incidents, the two Fourth Grade witches chose not to stay at Tempest Keep at all. They immediately returned to the World of Adepts through the metal fortress with the barely-alive dragon.
However, before they left, the witches took a trip to the lair. In the blink of an eye, half of the hoard was gone. They had only left half for Greem after seeing how much effort he had put into the mission. Otherwise, Greem wouldn't even have been able to get a single scrap of the leftovers.
Of course, Corpse Dragon Artest had also stuffed his stomach full of treasure before the two witches had taken their share. The size of his body made it difficult for him to use any storage equipment. As such, Artest could only use his massive stomach as a temporary storage box.
These items were his personal spoils from the battle. Even Khesuna couldn't easily take them away from him, despite being the master.
Once all these'big bosses' had left with a share of the spoils that satisfied them, the remaining half of the dragon's hoard fell into Greem's hands. One couldn't underestimate the value of the hoard after having so much taken away from it. The number of resources and the variety of treasures in it was still enough for Greem to turn a massive profit.
The metal fortress was very far away from Tempest Keep. Even a straight-line distance was a horrifying twenty thousand kilometers. Greem and the others didn't have the strength required to bring all of these spoils back with them without leaving any behind. All the storage rings and belts they had with them had been stuffed full of treasure, but it wasn't even one-tenth of the whole hoard.
Greem and the others had no choice but to abandon the less valuable gold coins and magical gemstones and place their focus on the strange and odd artifacts.
Insisting that things he couldn't understand had to be valuable artifacts, Greem spent the next two days in the sea of treasure and relied on the Chip's scanning functions to look for precious items. He was specifically looking for things with powerful energy reactions or those with absolutely none at all.
How could a Fourth Grade dragon and his refined taste allow for a'common' item to be mixed into his hoard? Even a fool thinking with his toe would know that was impossible. As such, the more ordinary an item in the hoard appeared to be, the more likely it was a rare artifact that exceeded the system of energy ratings.
In the end, Tempest Keep was not a place that they could stay at for long. The Fourth Grade dragon also had descendants, along with plenty of dragon subordinates. They usually stayed in their own territories and reigned supreme. However, if they heard of an incident occurring to their leader, they would most definitely rush over to investigate the situation.
According to Greem's understanding, this Wings of Azure Skies Krille was one of the seven Fourth Grades in the entirety of Lance. He had over two hundred dragon lords beneath him. If all these dragons managed to hurry over in time to surround the adepts in the lair, it would not be a good ending for them!
After hastily raiding the Fourth Grade dragon's hoard, Greem and the others silently left Tempest Keep with a dozen dragonborn slaves in tow. No one knew if it had been intentional, but Greem did not take the effort to exterminate all living witnesses near Tempest Keep when he left.
On the other hand, Arms didn't even notice this oddity with how careless he tended to be. Instead, he was simply excited at having taken back Iritina and obtaining plenty of treasure.
It wasn't until they had returned to the metal fortress that they heard from Gazlowe.
A massive commotion was rippling throughout Lance!
Greem had always been reckless in his hunts in Lance. They had raided and hunted down three Second Grade dragons and four First Grade dragons. Yet, the commotion had only been minimal then.
There was a minimum of two thousand dragons throughout the entirety of Lance. Hardly anyone would care about a small decrease in this number. No high-grade dragon lord would take the effort to travel tens of thousands of kilometers to a rural place just to find evidence and search for a murderer.
However, when it was a famous Fourth Grade dragon lord who had been attacked in his own lair, it was a completely different matter. This terrifying and shocking incident immediately incited a tremendous riot in Lance. For a period of time, the dragons were riled up. Every one of them emerged from their chambers and their lairs, searching everywhere for the location of the dragonslaying murders.
Gazlowe's information revealed that as many as three Fourth Grade dragon lords had already issued warrants and requested their subordinate dragon lords to conduct a thorough investigation of all outsiders in their territories. A report would instantly be made if they found any traces of the dragonslayers.
The scale of this disturbance was clearly beyond Greem's expectations. It was very likely to bring tremendous danger to the metal fortress. Even Thunder Dragon Arms became restless after hearing of this news. He carried Iritina on her back, along with all the various treasures he had taken from Krille's hoard and hurried back to his territory.
Greem chuckled coldly in his heart when he saw Arms leave in a hurry.
The dragon would never truly be on Greem's side if he refused to give up on his identity as a dragon lord. Greem already intended to make this arrogant Third Grade thunder dragon fully submit by making use of this upcoming crisis.
To avoid being caught by the dragons in a single go, Greem had already held a long discussion with Gazlowe before they'd set out on the expedition to Tempest Keep. The magical machine army stored underground in the metal fortress had already been secretly transferred to a different land.
If the metal fortress was discovered and sieged by the dragons, Greem, Gazlowe, and the adepts could still tuck their tails and escape. They could continue developing their underground kingdom in a different area. At any rate, the ore veins beneath the Stonetalon Mountains were already at their limits after all these years of mining. They needed to move away anyway.
Greem had already made his preparations in expectation of a dragon crisis that could befall them at any time.
Unfortunately, though Greem was fully prepared, Arms was not.
In all seriousness, he was the one who actively started this war. His purpose had been to exact vengeance for having his lover taken away from him. Yet, despite yelling for revenge all this time, Arms had never truly reflected on the tremendous impact that the death of a Fourth Grade dragon lord would wreak upon Lance and himself!
Perhaps, deep in his heart, he had never believed this to be a possible task!
Things had happened way too fast, leaving him with absolutely no time to think things over.
Initially, Arms' mind had been filled with thoughts of resentment and anger at having been humiliated. He had not been able to think of anything else. Later, he had become a mere participant in the event, swept along the currents for the ride with no ability to guide the progression and trajectory of events.
After the dust had settled, the return of his lover and the immense amounts of treasure he had obtained caused him to be blinded with joy.
This series of events had destroyed Arms' ability to think, causing him to walk into the massive pit that Greem had dug for him, step by step.
Now the oil pan was set, the fire was lit, and the hearth was burning warm. All Greem was waiting for was for Arms, the protagonist, to simply jump into the pain and end it all!
In the end, Greem was just an outsider. Even if he was defeated, he could abandon the metal fortress and return to where he came from. If Lance was no longer a safe place to be, there was still the World of Adepts to fall back on. On the other hand, it seemed there was nowhere else for Arms to go apart from Lance.
While Greem happily dealt with the dragon's hoard in the metal fortress, he also silently waited for the incident to blow up.
Just as he expected, everything happened in the blink of an eye!
Firstly, plenty of survivors had been left at Tempest Keep. These survivors described the appearances of the invading enemies. Naturally, outsiders like Greem were foreign and unfamiliar to the dragons. However, the existence of a Third Grade thunder dragon stood out like a sore thumb.
As dragons themselves, the dragon lords harbored an intense hatred for all traitors!
With a clue as obvious as a Third Grade thunder dragon, it became much more convenient to investigate the dragonslayers.
There were quite a lot of thunder dragons among the dragon lords of Lance, but those who could reach Third Grade were still a minority. Even if they were to search blind, the dragons would have quickly found their way to Third Grade Thunder Dragon Arms.
Furthermore, the metal fortress had been a calamity to its surrounding dragons over the past few years.
In particular, in the incident with Third Grade Philippa Eilhart, Arms had shown himself and publicly stood on the side of the invaders. It had been a significant conflict at Stonetalon Mountains back then!
Now, with the eruption of this crisis, all of these past events were dug up and used as evidence.
The dragon lords cast their increasingly doubtful eyes at the young and successful Third Grade dragon lord, Arms.
Just as the dragons were planning an assault on Arms' territory to capture and interrogate him, Arms managed to find out about the plan through his secret connections with the thunder dragons.
Arms might be a Third Grade dragon lord, but even he had become restless when he first caught news of this. If he was brought before the high-grade dragon lords, and his spoils were exposed as evidence of his wrongdoings, it was very likely that his title would be voided, and he would be imprisoned until his eventual death.
That... that was not an outcome he could accept!
After some long and laborious thought, Arms could only choose to take his wealth, Third Grade Emerald Dragon Iritina, and five low-grade green dragons to seek shelter at Greem's place.
Iritina had initially hated Greem to no ends. In fact, she had even considered leaving Arms and establishing a place for herself in Lance. Unfortunately, this coming crisis had become a storm that swallowed everything in its way. No person and no dragon could remain uninvolved.
Iritina had the most direct connection to the disappearance of Wings of the Azure Skies Krille. If she fell into the hands of the dragons who sought vengeance or searched for information, she wouldn't end up any better than Arms.
Just a single bite from each of the one hundred dragons serving beneath Krille would be enough to tear Iritina to pieces!
It was a dead-end situation like this one that forced Iritina to suppress her seething hatred and come to seek refuge from Greem.
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