The Elf Continent was stretching out before us like a thin line in the horizon. There were no tall mountains, lush forests, jagged cliffs, or endless plains we could spot as of yet. We were too far from it, but according to Captain Matthew’s calculations, we were closer to Ledmerra Kingdom than the Anui’Yahna.

For those who were waiting to see the next harbor or even the next island, there was an eager gleam in their eyes, however, for me, it made no difference if we were getting closer to the Human Continent, the Relliar Continent, the Dwarf Continent, or the Dragon Continent. Land was land, no matter what species lived on it, and it did not matter if it was covered in lush forests or barbed wire drenched in the deadliest of poisons.

There once was a saying that if you dared to look for them, you would find the dregs of society living their pathetic little lives at the end of the world, where the endless waters teaming with monsters kept them from sailing out, an impregnable prison wall.

If any such real-world location could be considered to hold true to these words, then I had to believe that this very Ten Sword Kingdom was it.

The soldiers of this nation were a joke, a mockery to our Akutan’s Human United Front soldiers, who were trained to combat the dangerous dragons across the ocean.

There was nothing more peaceful than waking up to the gentle rays of the sun as they washed over your face, with a small bird chirping at the window and a few butterflies flying off by chance at just the right moment. Well, all of that would have been absolutely lovely if not for the fact that I had a dragon’s stinky foot right up in my face!

We had to book two big rooms at the inn, one for the girls and one for the boys, because Ildea and Risha gave me a weird look when I suggested to get the huge one where nobles usually stayed. Meanwhile, Drumora didn’t seem to mind either way since she trusted us. What we didn’t expect were for the beds to be so flimsy and weak while the space was far smaller than advertised. I barely had any space to place my King size bed in there. As a result, we all shared it. Needless to say, the big lizard in our group took up most of the space, while poor Amadeus got squeezed off in a corner by Kalderan.

The following day, Ildea greeted us with a smile and acted as though yesterday’s events didn’t have any effects on her. I did not know if she was putting up a strong front right now or if she had really taken into consideration Coshun’s words and wasn’t letting the words of the knights get to her. For now, we just had to wait and see.

Not long after we had our breakfasts, we returned to our rooms and packed our bags. We said our thanks and goodbyes to the innkeeper and then headed towards the gates. Our next stop was going to be at Olfango Village. There, we had in plan to get some supplies and maybe see if there were any interesting some passing rumors. This whole matter with the Queen’s Sympathizers was definitely an interesting topic, but one which spelled troubled with a capital T.

Somehow or another, I ended up meeting the refugee Prince and Princess of the Akutan Empire as well as found the most important alchemic ingredient of them all: the orange!

To top it off, there was one other ingredient I managed to get my hands on, which was a Drop of Royal Human Blood, and you couldn’t get any more royal than the ancient Akutan Imperial Family. Not to mention the fact that Princess Ildea was also a possible blood bag donator.

The other ingredients I required for making the [Lumenos, Lumenya, and Nocturnia’s tears Potion], which was the cure for the [God’s Demise Poison], were: the Elf Queen’s Tears of Joy, Baby Tooth of a Relliar Royalty, Celestium-Zaradin alloy dust infused with ancient dwarf magic, and the Bone Powder from the Horn of a Skeletal Wyrm.

We followed the young Amadeus through the busy streets of Mathias Town, and for every step we took we felt as though we were moving closer and closer to some abandoned hellhole where no speck of civilization could be found, an abandoned twilight zone.

From the outside, it didn’t look like there were that many problems with this place. The nice buildings at the edge were made in such a way that the passing visitors could simply ignore or walk past these contorted and confusing hidden streets. The guards immediately tossed us a weird gaze the moment we followed young Amadeus into one of these narrow streets, while a greedy smile formed on the lips of those who looked like ruffians and scoundrels.

Humans and dragons were fundamentally different... when it came to their appetite. While I was not one to shy away from a decent meal, someone like Coshun tended to eat up to three times my fill.

Seriously now, he was eating like there was no tomorrow! The food from his plate vanished faster than the waitress could bring it. What was even more ridiculous was the fact that he finished eating before all of us did, including Ildea, who ordered a meal fit for a lady rather than an adventurer.

At least he did not grab the mug and smashed it on the ground calling for another round.

Once we ate our fill, we left the tavern and returned to our rooms, where I looked around my stuff to find some decent gear for them.

When the humans invaded the Albeyater Kingdom 42 years ago and destroyed all of the Draketerus Territories, they captured and enslaved countless dragons and dragonesses, most of which were sent back to the Human Continent before Brekkar was able to rescue them. By the time the invasion was pushed back, those draconians were already on a boat crossing the ocean. However, who was taken and who was killed still remained unknown even today.

I remembered reading the reports regarding this tragic event. Many of them wrote off the individuals that were declared missing as dead until proven otherwise. A few dragons and dragonesses tried to take advantage of this situation to change their names. Some succeeded, while others failed miserably when they came into contact with those who knew the deceased.

“Fear me... You will die if you face me... You cannot defeat me... You can’t win against me...”

These words were like the whispers of an eerie breeze caressing the calm surface of a deep dark lake during a night with no stars or moons up in the sky, and only dead plants surrounding it. Their touch made the hair on my skin stand on its end, and the noise of life around me to vanish in an instant.

I could hear only my heart as it was beating fast, struggling to push the blood through my whole body so that I may not fall back or grow slower. Every cell in my body knew that whatever that thing was, whoever it was, he or she was not someone I could face right now.

At the break of dawn, I stepped outside for some morning stretches. Normally, you would have thought that by now I had adapted to this planet’s sense of time, but while my body was half-dragon and half-human, my mind and soul still held attachments to Earth. I still thought about an hour as having 60 minutes not 80 or 96 as others did. It was only pure coincidence or maybe an assumed choice that dragons thought about a day as having 32 hours, each with 60 minutes.

For me, having a mere 5 hours of sleep was enough, while 8 or 10 was just lazing around or relaxing. Dragons and dragonesses tended to sleep up to 12 or 14 hours, depending on the weather and how much Magic Energy they used during the day. Back in Albeyater, I would often wake up before Seryanna or when the sun’s morning rays had yet to touch the tip of the tallest tree in the land.

Being compared to some random dragon that kidnapped princesses to stash them away in his tower was a bit insulting and hurting at the same time. After all, imagine if I did that back in Albeyater.

“Honey, I’m home!” I would merely say.

“Oh? What did you bring?” Seryanna would ask.

“A princess I kidnapped from one of the human kingdoms. So, what’s for lunch?”

My father, the King of the Ten Swords Kingdom, the Patriarch of the House of Kor, has started acting strangely ever since the ambassadors from the Majin Kingdom and the Akutan Empire arrived at the palace more than a year ago. To say that he never behaved in a strange manner would be lie.

Father, like many other kings and emperors out there, often partook in parties of opiates with his noble friends and more than once was accused of siring a child with a random noble woman or in some cases one of the prostitutes living in the slums. While all of these accusations could easily find someone of peasant rank without a neck above his or her shoulders, I personally discovered that most of them were in fact true.

Leveder City, as impressive and beautiful some might claim it to be, in the end, it was a just another mining city. The Leveder Lone Peak was a tall mountain with a dense forest covering it and rich mineral nodes hidden beneath its thick layers of stone. The human settlements were spread around it, drawing resources from within the forest and staying clear of the more dangerous monster nest spread across it.

From a distance, the defensive walls of the city were like tall giants that stood proudly in front of their enemies. They were built to last against siege and raging behemoth monsters. The aerial defense, however, was terribly lacking. The humans did not seem to care about an attack from the sky, which was the area of expertise of the draconian species.

It was like they were waiting to be conquered by us dragons.

The word of Andu’Yang’Ores’ success in retrieving the Hammer of Umidaba had reached the ears of all the tribe leaders. Upon finding out that he was aided in this quest of his by the two dragonesses who recently passed the Nundaba Ritual, the dwarfs began to see them as one of their own.

Now, no matter what any other outsider declared, Sir Kataryna and Sir Seryanna as well as Princess Elleyzabelle, to the dwarfs, they were all citizens of Trindania, my citizens. As such, the completion of the Trade Agreement and Alliance Agreement was hastened with support coming from some of the biggest tribes in our nation.

When the Emperor told me that the dragonesses would drop by my forge the following day, I did not expect them to be knocking on my door at the sun’s breakfast, right before the crows woke up, at the first rays of sunrise!

They were all looking bright and full of energy, while I looked as though an anvil struck me on the noggin and then a rabid Hanba dragged me across all Trindania.

I was tired. I was sleepy. I was a grumpy ol’ dwarf with a hangover.

“Ya’ winged lizards never heard of this ol’ thin’ called sleep?! Not even the sun woke up and ya askin’ me to be awake? Go back to ya’ beds and SLEEP!” I shouted and then slammed the door in their noses.

During the Nundaba Ritual, time passed so slow it felt as though it was a skinny little human who was dragging behind him an entire mountain. The dwarfs who came to the Temple Courtyard looked at me as though I was an object on display. There were many who expressed their belief that I would not last longer than a day and even some who deliberately threw sexual remarks my way to disturb my concentration.

As a dragoness and daughter of the Queen Elliessara Seyendraugher, I stood my ground in front of such pathetic attempts. No one had the right to step on the Soul Platform, so at best they could do was stay near the edge and toss meaningless words at me. I ignored them just as a sheep ignores the ants on the ground and focuses solely on the tasty wolf ahead.

As I stood on the Soul Platform, reading the chants from this old and dusty book, letting the harsh cold wind whip my body, and ignoring the gazes of the curious dwarf onlookers, I thought of only one thing: What does it mean to be a Queen?

It was such a simple question, but which in every Kingdom and Empire in this world held a different answer to it.

For the humans, the Queen was the legal wife of the King, bound to him through a political marriage, and holding the duty of giving birth to an heir to the throne as well as princesses that may be later used as political bargaining chips. For the elves, the Queen was their all-knowing mother, she who held their entire country together. For the dragons, she was the Supreme Matriarch, the dragoness who ruled them all and used her King as the sword that cut through country’s foes.

The Audience Room of the Emperor was supposed to be imposing, and the noble dwarfs who had gathered here to watch over this ceremony were supposed to be intimidating. The Royal Guards gave off a strength that should have frightened a simple peasant, and the stare of the Emperor himself was piercing and filled with a heavy pressure that could silence even a rowdy noble.

In such a place, I was supposed to feel humble, maybe even frightened, but there was no such thing. I, for one, felt no different than simply walking into a crowded bar. There were a few gazes which hinted of danger, but nothing I could not handle.

There were no other ships in this port except for ours. The piers were flooded with curious onlookers and the Princess was currently talking with one of the dwarf representatives. Wary of the rule mentioned centuries ago, none of us stepped on the wooden platform so as to not upset them.

While the negotiations for our permission to come ashore were being discussed, I waited by the rail and watched the far-off lands of the Dwarf Continent. The snow made it hard for me to see too far inland, but from what I could tell, the nearby area was a plain mostly used for animal husbandry and probably the cultivation of special vegetables that could grow in these harsh conditions.

“Is it just me or does this journey feels a bit longer than it should? King of Hearts.” I said as I place a card on the table.

“It isn’t just you, Seryanna, we’re all feeling this. Besides, it’s raining buckets outside. Three of Hearts.” Kataryna said as she placed a card on the table.

“Do you remember how it was when we arrived at the Dwarf Continent? Queen of Spades.” Princess Elleyzabelle asked.

“Of course I do... Joker. I take half of your armies as my own.” I said as I placed the card on the table.