Chapter 7: Countless Paths, Safety Comes First

The dark sky hung low, with stars scattered across the night like tiny beads. Inside the hollow of a sturdy old tree, Linde and Victoria huddled close together.

Though it was midsummer, the hollow was surprisingly cool—perhaps a special trait of the wood’s heat-absorbing nature. For an adult dragon, curling up inside the hollow was a tight fit at best, but for a young dragon and a small human like them, it served as quite a spacious secret base.

To Linde, it felt much roomier than the cramped rental room he had lived in before crossing over. He glanced over the assortment of miscellaneous items Victoria had piled in the corner: a black stone plate etched with strange patterns, a headpiece woven from colorful feathers, and a bluish clock… all sorts of peculiar things.

“Victoria, aren’t you a gem dragon? Shouldn’t your family collect precious gems like sapphires or emeralds?” he asked, hoping to save some effort searching for crafting materials.

But there wasn’t even a trace of gems in her collection.

“Eh, are those things really precious? They’re quite ordinary, I’m almost bored of eating them. I’m not interested in collecting gems,” Victoria yawned lazily, clasping her paws together and resting her head, looking ready to fall asleep.

Her casual remark left Linde momentarily speechless. It was like saying, “I’m not interested in money.”

Damn rich dragons.

“If you want, Linde, I can get you a whole bunch later. But you can’t take the treasures I have here—they’re for trading,” she added.

“Trading?”

“Yeah, you exchange something others want for something you want. Hoarding treasures isn’t true wealth; only treasures that keep moving are. That’s the wisdom passed down among gem dragons.”

“Before I was forced to come to this continent, when I was still on the Valran continent, I traveled alone, collecting gems to trade with other metal dragons, then brought back their meaningful treasures as bargaining chips for my next deals,” she explained simply.

Linde gleaned quite a bit from her words.

“You’re not native here?” he asked.

“Definitely not. Most here are exiled five-colored dragons. I, leaning towards the metal dragon faction, am considered an outlier. Besides a bit of communication with the green and blue dragons, I don’t even want to talk about the others. Honestly, it’s good enough that they haven’t forcibly taken over my territory,” she sighed.

“Wait, wait, why were the five-colored dragons driven out?”

Though Linde wasn’t deeply familiar with dragons from fantasy tales, he had heard basic things—like the metal dragons and five-colored dragons being sworn enemies.

If the five-colored dragons were expelled, they must have been utterly crushed... a one-sided slaughter?

“I don’t know the exact details. Even the news about the five-colored dragons’ exile was something I traded a high-purity blue crystal for from a blue dragon,” Victoria said.

“Uh, then why were you exiled too? Are you a traitor?” Linde asked.

“No way!!!” Victoria jumped up anxiously at the accusation.

“I just wanted to trade treasures for business. Some things only exist in specific regions. For example, the volcanic molten gold I wanted could only be collected on red dragon territory.”

“Uh-huh? And then...” Linde raised an eyebrow with a faint smile.

“Well... well... I was tired from flying on the road, you know? You’d understand—when you’re tired, you want to sleep,” she said.

“So I found a cave and took a nice nap. When I woke up groggy, I saw red, green, white, and black dragons frantically flying to one side like they were fleeing something. So I followed them.”

Linde fell silent for a moment, then gently stroked Victoria’s head.

“Growing up like that can’t have been easy, huh...”

“My mind’s perfectly fine!” Victoria snapped, spreading her small wings defiantly, as if asserting herself.

“Hmph, you weren’t there. You wouldn’t have felt that pressure.”

“Imagine looking up and seeing two suns in the sky! The other half of the sky is filled with dragons fleeing in panic. What would you do?”

“Two suns, huh? Probably just throw up my hands and shout loyalty,” Linde said.

“Whatever,” Victoria tilted her head in confusion. “First thing you should do is run away, dummy.”

“You have to survive first before thinking about anything else.”

“Besides, one side of the sky was lit bright, and the other was pitch black. You’d know how shocking that is if you saw it.”

Linde had one more question.

“If you knew one side had the sun and the other was dark, why didn’t you fly toward the light? That’s obviously safer.”

“Gulp!” Victoria blinked nervously, tucking her paws under her belly and turning her head to look at the hollow’s wall. Such a wooden wall.

She couldn’t exactly say it was because she was half-asleep, saw other dragons flying that way, and just followed along without thinking.

She didn’t realize that as a lawful dragon, flying toward the light would have given her a better chance of survival.

If she admitted to such an embarrassing thing, the little human before her would surely tease her. What future dignity would she have then?

She needed to come up with a decent excuse.

“I—I definitely knew! Something so simple, of course a genius young dragon like me would think of it. It’s just, um...” Linde watched her so nervously sweating and struggling that he almost wanted to help her save face.

“I got it!”

Victoria’s eyes suddenly lit up with excitement.

“It’s because I couldn’t go against the flow!”

“Think about it. So many dragons were flying densely to the right. If I flew left, I’d get crushed into a little dragon bun, right?”

“So going with the crowd was the smart move.”

Linde thought to himself that her ideological stance was quite proper. He wouldn’t expose the excuse she struggled to come up with.

“Alright, alright. Didn’t expect you to have such strong safety awareness.”

“Hehe, of course. When it comes to emergency escape, this young dragon is number one—no one else dares claim second.”

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Linde mused.

But seeing her smug smile, his expression softened. He just squinted silently and smiled.

“Genius young dragon, keep it up. Become a mighty dragon who shakes the world soon.”

“Definitely. But right now...” Victoria stretched out her right paw toward him, wiggling it up and down as if asking for something.