Chapter 419: Return
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
“Work hard! Work really hard! Work especially hard! Surpass Kasolan in three years, surpass Bardi in five years, and beco first in Eich in ten years!”
“Utilize the full extent of your motivation! Your courage equals productivity! One day is equal to twenty years!”
“We’ll see at the kiln just who’s the best! If you produce a ton of tals, we’ll produce two tons!”
“Ants can chew on bones, and cows can be cooked in teapots! Watch create a cha out of thin air!”
I felt like I was dreaming as I walked down the streets of Dawnlight Town and saw all these bright red banners. For so reason, my hands were trembling. I felt as if I had accidentally shot myself in the foot again—in a major way.
And so I asked what these banners were about...
“Didn’t you personally direct us to write these? Saying that we elite warriors of Dawnlight Town needed to work super hard, using only two or three years’ ti to reach the accumulated status of the other corrupt countries that have had centuries of ti. That we needed to prepare for war, to prepare to win, to prepare to fight against the entire world! You personally wrote the words for these banners.”
“I... was I so foolish? I couldn’t possibly be so foolish!”
“But didn’t you personally state one week ago that these were our strategic goals? You even requested us to make these words into banners so that we could constantly remind ourselves to work hard.”
One week ago? What was I doing one week ago?
Confused, I had a dazed expression as I did my best to rember.
“One week ago, I think Little Red and Molly arrived. They snuck into Dragon World by hiding on one of the supply ships. I then had a party to welco Little Red. She was complaining recently that nobody would accompany her to drink, and so we had a bit of a drinking party... What else did I do after that...?”
Alright, I could only recall my hangover headache the next day, and it sure made want to cut off my own head. It was definitely the fault of the wine that Little Red had brought with her. It tasted really sweet but had an incredibly strong kick to it. I soon beca hazy, which might have caused to act crazily due to alcohol...
“...Your dancing that day was beautiful: especially when you perford Swan Lake together with Eaglestorm and the Dragon of Ultimate Evil.”
Who was the “Dragon of Ultimate Evil?” That was a certain Dracon’s nickna on the Calamity Rankings. Of course, the na ant exactly what its definition was—that he was the “evilest dragon alive.” Being able to obtain such a mighty nickna as only a re Dracon far exceeded the nicknas of any Great or Supre Immorial Dragon. As expected of the super main character of his legendary story. Plus, since Eaglestorm habitually went around naked, the three of us actually danced Swan Lake together? That was such a “beautiful” scene that I didn’t even dare imagine it!
The silly cat yawned as she said those words, petrifying . I could only stare at her in astonishnt, hoping to my utmost that she was only joking.
“I’m not joking with you. That night, you decided to change the party into a torchlight party and even decided to personally go on stage to everyone’s cheers. Even I was startled by you. Right, you also had a nice dance together with Little Red. Despite the fact that you can’t sing on key to save your life, you’re surprisingly talented at dancing, especially that part about the ugly duckling transforming into a swan. Even with my standards as a Gold Elf I rate it as top-notch quality content. Right, I recall that the original Swan Lake didn’t have such a section. Did you modify the story yourself?”
*Smack! Smack! Smack!*
I was doing my best to smash my head against the wall in an effort to get that scary scene out of my mind. But unfortunately, the more I smashed my head, the clearer my mories beca.
Eaglestorm transford into a pudgy bird and acted as the swan’s mother. The Dragon of Ultimate Evil opened up his wings and perford as a black swan. I acted as the ugly duckling which would transform into a white swan. After we started dancing, even Little Red joined us as she tried to act the part of an eagle attempting to catch the ugly duckling, and then we really did start dance-fighting on stage... Now, I could only pray that there weren’t many spectators, and that please, please, nobody rembered to record this scene in a mory crystal. Otherwise, there would now be a new page in my dark history.
“Give a sword! I want to commit seppuku!”
“Will a fruit knife do?”
*Clang!*
Alright, I felt even more helpless as I looked at the broken fruit knife that had only its hilt remaining.
“Your skin is too thick. It would seem that only a magically enchanted knife will be able to harm you. Don’t look at like that. Do you think that I carry around fruit knives enchanted to the 15 level? How bored would soone have to be to enchant a fruit knife to 15?”
“...Alright, what else did I do?”
The silly cat pointed at the banners before .
“Nothing much. You decided in your fun to summon all your military and civilian leaders for a major eting and gave a speech about ‘Comrades, our main problem right now is our lack of industrial productivity and how our needs are increasing by the day, so our goal is to...”
I looked at my “Roland’s plan on the current important tasks for Dawnlight Town, 115th revised edition” which plagiarized so many reports I’d read before and saw all the philosophies and wild dreams on how to increase our military strength and productivity. I felt too shad to face my seniors who wrote such things, and only wanted to go quietly hide myself in a corner.
“Don’t speak anymore! I want quiet... Don’t ask who ‘Quiet’ is. Oh, that’s a nice joke. Maybe I should create an artificial person nad Quiet and go look for her every ti that I do sothing foolish.”
“...Then you’ll probably be looking for Quiet every single day. Actually, these phrases on the banners are pretty nice. At least, it’s a far more serious topic than the Swan Lake performance that you put on. Haven’t you seen that your young subordinates are all incredibly motivated? Your banner phrases seem to be effective.”
“This actually worked!?”
“Of course. Your phrases are all really encouraging and motivating, so why wouldn’t they work?”
“...Fine, I was the foolish one. This is a cultural difference—no—a world difference.” [1]
From a certain standpoint, at least in the world of Eich, it wasn’t wrong to use such motivational phrases. I apparently wasn’t out of my mind enough to use completely nonsensical phrases. And with the high magical properties of the earth here, Alia’s magical seeds had grown up into crops at an astonishing speed. With the druids’ careful cultivation, apples grew as large as waterlons, while waterlons grew to the size of ponies. It was indeed possible for one acre to produce more than five thousand kilograms of food.
And when I learned that this land was ho to a great abundance of all sorts of magic tals, I instantly had seventeen large-scale kilns constructed here to help the tallurgy process of creating all sorts of magical tal alloys. The engineers and smiths would then create engineering products, weapons and equipnt. It was indeed possible to produce more than one ton of refined tals in a day.
However, while I had countless engineers on hand, I had very few smiths, and their average abilities were exceedingly average. The weapons they crafted out of these top-level magical tals lacked in quality. In the end, I could only tell my smiths to give up on crafting top-quality weapons in order to avoid wasting these top-quality resources.
Actually, I had extorted both Auland and Bardi, and there was the inheritance from the forr Mist Kingdom, so I had many elite or ace type troops’ equipnt design plans and training thods available to . If I could truly produce their equipnt, I could directly start establishing combat squadrons of these troop types. Without a doubt, this would be the fastest way to improve my warriors’ overall combat strength.
For this purpose, I went to ask my smiths about “Where are the most skilled smiths? Especially those the most skilled at creating magical weapons and equipnt?” Unfortunately, their answer made feel rather helpless.
“All Titan Bloodline descendants have excellent talent for smithing. Smithing grandmasters are incredibly common in giants, particularly the Fire Giants or Magma Giants. Both these species are extrely gifted at smithing. They’re the best in the entire world. Right, dwarves are also expert smiths. Previously, more than seventy percent of the weapons and equipnt being used in the Underground were crafted by the Gray Dwarves. However, no Gray Dwarf smithing grandmasters ca with us this ti.”
I felt helpless because this was all common knowledge. Of course I would know it already. And actually if you looked deep at the dwarves’ ancestry, they were also related to the Titan Bloodline. Since I wanted to avoid problems as their Titan Bloodline would summon them to the Titans’ side, I didn’t bring a single Gray Dwarf smith with to Dragon World. My smithing industry, which was weak to begin with, was reduced to the point of not even having a single grandmaster on hand.
As for the elven smiths? Forget it. I’d already insulted the elven smiths plenty of tis before. Let’s not insult them anymore. Ever since an elf smith “grandmaster” forged my top-level tear sapphire into a sword accessory for , I stopped having any hopes for the elven smiths. That tear sapphire could have been crafted into a thunder staff, a high-quality, powerful mage staff that could sell for several tens of thousands of gold coins.
What? You want to know the effects of the tear sapphire as a sword accessory? It would improve the sword by a miniscule—to the point of ignorable—amount of thunder damage. anwhile, the sword would have the extravagantly beautiful effect of sparkling with thunder while you waved it. That was the important part for the elf smith! In the end, I sold it off as a piece of artwork for a good price. There were plenty of idiots out there among the human nobles and royalty that would pay a good price for sothing so useless. However, people like us who were self-sufficient and barely had enough of such top-quality resources to begin with would find it best to stay as far away from elven smiths as possible.
Cough—cough—I seem to have accidentally insulted elven smiths again... Getting back on topic, as I was quite worried about lacking smiths, a certain soone laughed out loud.
“Are you an idiot? You can’t find an excellent smith? Can’t you find one that’s right in front of you?”
I was instantly delighted to hear Little Red say this.
“You actually know how to smith? Wonderful! I see, Fire Giants and Magma Giants are both fire elent giants, and the fire elent is naturally suited for smithing. And Red Dragons are also of the fire elent, so it’s only natural that you know how to smith!”
“Haha! Ridiculous! Red Dragons know how to smith? Who would we smith for? There’s not a single dragon that fights with weapons, so of course none of us know how to smith.”
Alright then, I paused in surprise for a mont as I carefully thought it over. Obviously, I was indeed a fool for thinking so.
“Then what did you an...?”
Seeing that I still didn’t understand, Little Red pointed outside and then made a grabbing gesture with her claw.
“Oh, I understand now. As expected of Red Dragon logic. This is indeed a good idea.”
What did Red Dragon logic an? Red Dragon logic—I should call it Little Red logic—was: “What’s yours is mine, what’s mine is also mine and anything I want is mine.”
Although it was unreasonable, when had a dragon, especially a Color Dragon, ever been reasonable with mortals?
Since Titan Bloodline descendants were highly skilled at smithing, and most of the natives here were the Titans’ descendants, I only needed to find a dwarf or giant tribe and kidnap their most famous smiths.
However, I was still slightly better than Little Red. At least I could be reasoned with.
“There’s no need to resort to kidnapping. We’re rchants that do everything by the law; we’re cultured people... Hey, you there, help ask the natives how many smithing grandmasters we can exchange for with a sack of magical wheat seeds. Yep, I’m talking about the wheat that’s capable of growing into stalks that are like giant bludgeons. Why are you looking at like that? You think I’m taking advantage of the natives? This is called the law of supply and demand and the needs of the market! We can obtain things legally far quicker than through robbery!”
******
Didn’t Little Red say before that she wasn’t going to co to Dragon World? Things were different now. Previously, she didn’t co because the Dragon World leaders made their attitude clear that she wouldn’t be welco in Dragon City. But now she ca over because another Dragon World leader privately invited her. That dragon was the Supre Immorial White Dragon, Sam.
Although the Blue Dragon leader Haros [2] was sent out to negotiate with Little Red, which represented a certain degree of tacit acceptance, there was another level to things. Those that made the final decision in Dragon City would forever be the tal Dragons that had a dominating advantage.
Ignoring the neutral dragon species, in all the Dragon Cities the tal Dragons that were forrly on the Order Side had the greatest advantage and thus ruled. The reason was simple: they were good at fighting.
Yes, that was the only reason. The rule on who could rule in dragon society was just that simple. Those good at fighting would beco the big boss. But if one looked into things deeper, why were the more aggressive Color Dragons unable to defeat the relatively more conservative tal Dragons?
“The Black and Red Dragons have all been exiled. It would be ridiculous to dream of winning against the tal Dragons after that.”
Although there were many branch offshoots and SemiDragon species, the five main Color Dragon species were still the most nurous. Although each species had their own specialties, if one looked only at pure combat strength, Red Dragons would be the strongest. Second would be the Blue Dragons, with minus points for lack of intelligence. Black Dragons would be third, with plus points for good intelligence. Despite this, Black Dragons couldn’t compare to Blue Dragons in direct combat due to the latter species’ simple and direct way of violent fighting. Green Dragons were fourth, only stronger than White Dragons. White Dragons had super minus points for their extre lack of intelligence and could be ranked absolute last, behind even the branch species.
Since the number one and number three combat strength Color Dragon species were no longer aboveground, it would be inconceivable for the three remaining Color Dragon species to still win against the full five tal Dragon species.
But if the first and third-ranked Color Dragon species returned...
Obviously, the current leading species, the Gold Dragons and Silver Dragons, wouldn’t want to see this. And their will would naturally be the will of Dragon City. When it ca to major decisions that represented the entire species, the Blue Dragon leader Haros could only carry out Dragon City’s official will.
Of course, dragon study experts also ranked the dragon species’ combat strength all together with each other, purely judging the average combat strength of the individuals in a dragon species over their age group. The first tier, the most powerful dragons, were ranked as Gold Dragons, Red Dragons, Blue Dragons, and Silver Dragons. The second tier dragons were ranked as Red Copper Dragons, Bronze Dragons, and Black Dragons. The third tier, the weakest dragon species, were once again the Green Dragons and White Dragons who always ranking last. Although Copper Dragons were also categorized in the weakest third tier, that was mostly because they had unique personalities among the dragons and greatly disliked fighting. It would still be very easy for a Copper Dragon to defeat a Green or White Dragon of the sa age.
With this, the situation would be quite easy to understand. It would be impossible for the Color Dragons to gain a strong enough position to obtain leadership unless the Red and Black Dragons returned. This was sothing that the Gold and Silver Dragons definitely wouldn’t wish to see. That was why Sam had privately invited Little Red. And how could Little Red, of the species famously known for pride and arrogance, possibly pass up on such an excellent opportunity?
Currently, the Supre Immorial White Dragon Sam had brought his wife over and they were both living in my Frigidwinter Earth. Publicly, they claid that they were there to observe the White Dragon inheritance research and hoped that their soon-to-be-born child could avoid the fate of being born with a wild beast’s level of intelligence. But actually, Little Red, Molly, and the White Dragons would discuss all sorts of ridiculous things every day. Occasionally, the Green and Blue Dragons would visit them as well. It would seem that the Color Dragons would soon be making things very difficult for the tal Dragons.
“The fires of Armageddon are almost upon us, yet they’re still squabbling over authority. Honestly...”
Harloys felt rather helpless about the situation. However, I didn’t mind it so much.
“Hah! This actually ans that all intelligent creatures are the sa. Aren’t human nobles and royalty the sa too? Bardi just finished with their princes’ internal conflicts, while Auland’s new emperor killed his father to obtain the position. Perhaps it’s exactly because there’s not much ti left that it’s all the more important to obtain authority.”
I didn’t want to have anything to do with Dragon City’s internal affairs. However, if our side had the advantage, I might be able to obtain two of Dragon World’s Foundational Elental Items. Even if I couldn’t obtain two items, it would also increase my influence over the dragons, and I would perhaps be able to pick and choose which elent Foundational Elental Item I would receive—I could pick an elent I was lacking. So naturally I was more than happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the Color Dragons sche.
But what made the most delighted was that Little Red, who was originally one of my helpers, successfully entered Dragon World. My combat strength here had improved even further. And if she was discovered here, I wouldn’t even take the bla—that would go to the Color Dragons of Dragon City.
Of course, her arrival also helped have a practice opponent I could use my newly-regained ice abilities against. These ice abilities were an inherited gift from my previous life as Roland Blackhand.
“Roland... do you dare face directly from the front!”
“Of course... not! Face a Red Dragon in battle directly from the front? You think I’m an idiot? Ice Hallucination; this is such a shaless ability... I love it!”
Notes:
[1] TL/N: The Chinese governnt likes to post motivational phrases everywhere, and I an literally EVERYWHERE. For instance, one can often read motivational phrases even on bathroom walls. As one can imagine, this tends to have the opposite effect from intended.
[2] TL/N: Yes, I know his na really is similar to the Gold Dragon leader Halos. It’s off by just one letter if you go by pronunciation...
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