Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1205: Chapter 1204: Direction

The tomb of Duke Modir Vealt of the northern parts of the Dark Mountain Range is only a cenotaph, without any ancestral remains inside—it is indeed as Victoria said, not exactly a strictly guarded secret, but it’s also not something that’s casually made public.

No one would be bored (and stupid) enough to randomly discuss the ancestral tomb of one of the four dukes, and people wouldn’t pay attention to something that’s destined to have little to do with ordinary lives. Whether in the Old Anzu Era or the new Empire, the royal family and the upper echelons of the great clans have always had countless secrets and legends hidden behind thick curtains—one truth buried beneath a hundred lies, that’s all.

But Amber was clearly not one of those ”ordinary people” who are indifferent to such matters. After hearing Victoria’s answer, she did not immediately respond to the other party’s follow‑up question; instead, she thoughtfully rubbed her chin. ”So it really is a cenotaph...”

Victoria quietly glanced at Amber. ”Looks like you’ve investigated this.”

”Uh... I only know a little,” Amber instantly waved her hands, slightly nervous, ”you know, fall of duty and all that... There are rumors that Duke Modir Vealt from six hundred years ago ultimately wasn’t laid to rest in the family cemetery. On the last adventure of his life he went far from Anzu and then disappeared into the vast world... But I’ve only heard that rumor, that’s all. You know how it is in intelligence work—uncertain information can only be reference material. The King asked me to confirm this with you, so I still have to get your confirmation...”

Victoria did not pay attention to Amber’s muttering at the end. Wearing her usual cool expression, she only spoke slowly after Amber’s voice faded: ”The rumor is true—our ancestral founder Modir indeed did not find eternal rest in the underground catacombs of Bitter Winter Castle. According to family records, at the age of seventy he embarked on the final adventure of his life and disappeared during that journey. As a great adventurer, he ultimately walked far down the path of adventure. As a noble, he was quite controversial, but as a member of the Wilder Clan, the many feats he achieved on his journeys are a source of pride for us.”

”So he vanished... In that case, the ’Great Adventurer Modir’ who popped up in Talronde looks even more ’highly suspicious,’” Amber murmured softly as if talking to herself. Her occupational habit of coordinating intelligence work gradually kicked in, finally allowing her to ignore Victoria’s cool and rather oppressive aura. She then subconsciously followed up with another question. ”Then where did that last adventure take him? Any clues?”

”There is no clear record—every one of Modir Vealt’s adventures was planned by himself, and he was never someone who followed conventional procedures,” Victoria shook her head lightly. ”Only when he returned from an adventure could people sort out from the notes he brought back where he had gone and what he had done—and on his last adventure... he did not return.

”Of course, after he disappeared, the Wilder Clan and Anzu’s royal family made great efforts to search for clues, and they did gain something. According to family records, the last known sighting related to Modir Vealt’s final adventure was near the border between the Moss Woods and Old Anzu. A traveler saw him continuing to head north.”

”The north, huh... From the Moss Woods further north, there are only all the countries in the north and the icy coastline... Back then it’s also unlikely he went to Talronde again—the Dragonkin have no corresponding record.” Amber muttered under her breath as she thought aloud, and her gaze involuntarily drifted to the large map hanging on the opposite wall of the office. Her eyes initially only swept across the Loren Continent out of habit, but before she pulled her gaze back, she suddenly noticed a nation that previously hardly ever entered the Loren People’s field of view, yet had recently appeared frequently in her sight because of her new work focus.

North of the Moss Woods there was not only all the countries in the north and Talronde across the sea; there was also a secluded hermit kingdom encircled by the northern oceans, a mysterious great island ruled by Mages—the Violet Kingdom.

”Violet...” Amber subconsciously muttered to herself, ”don’t tell me this ties back to that place too...”

”It seems you’ve thought of something,” Victoria’s voice came from the other side of the Magic Web Terminal, cutting off Amber’s self‑talk. ”I heard you mention the Violet Kingdom.”

”Do you think it’s possible... that Modir Vealt from six hundred years ago once went to the Violet Kingdom?” Amber raised her head, staring seriously at the grand duke of the north—once even this disgrace‑of‑all‑creation put on a serious expression, even Victoria felt a slight sense of intimidation. ”And that something happened to him there, which led to the ’unusual traits’ he shows today?”

”Your reasoning,” Victoria gazed at her expressionlessly, ”as intelligence chief, you shouldn’t be making such a conjecture at random.”

”Of course I have reasons,” Amber straightened her back. ”First, the Violet Kingdom is a Mage Nation. It’s one of the most coveted holy lands in the minds of all Mages, and Modir Vealt is a Mage—no matter what other halos surround him, his ’Mage’ identity is unquestionable;

”Second, Modir Vealt is an adventurer. Regions steeped in mystery and the unknown exert a fatal allure on him, and in this world, aside from Talronde, nowhere is more secretive than the Violet Kingdom. For Modir, who had already trodden across the known world, that place was practically ’the last missing piece of the world’ in his perception. As a great adventurer, he had no reason not to go there.

”Third, in order to guard its secrets, the Violet Kingdom excels at employing unimaginably advanced techniques of memory erasure. This might point directly at the amnesiac symptoms displayed by that great adventurer in Talronde—he may have tried to resist the ’memory cleansing’ cast upon him, which instead left his memories and mind in total disarray...”

At this point Amber deliberately paused, letting her expression grow even more solemn. ”And finally, the most important reason—intuition. My intuition keeps my gaze fixed on the Violet Kingdom. You know, I’m the Goddess of Shadows’ chosen, and you still don’t trust a god‑chosen’s intuition...?”

Victoria had said nothing since Amber began listing her reasons. Her expression remained indifferent and detached, yet deep in her eyes was a look of earnest listening. Only after Amber finished speaking did she respond in a low voice: ”Your three reasons all hold water... I’m convinced. And perhaps I can give you a fourth reason to add.”

”I already gave four reasons...” Amber couldn’t help muttering at once, but the Duke’s solemn, serious demeanor instantly made her swallow those words back down into her windpipe. ”What’s the fourth reason?”

”The Violet Kingdom’s external traveling scholars and its apprentice selection system—its attention to and influence on the Loren Continent’s Magic system—all began roughly six hundred years ago,” Victoria said gravely, her words seeming to crystallize into the millennium‑old northern frost. ”Almost the exact period when Modir Vealt disappeared.”

Amber froze for a second, then opened her mouth. ”...Ah oh...”

”Now it should be your turn to answer my previous question, Amber,” Victoria quietly watched her for a few seconds, her voice cool as she spoke. ”I want to know more about the ’adventurer’ who appeared in Talronde. It will help me further compare him with the material in our family records.”

”Oh, oh, of course,” Amber jolted fully awake in an instant and nodded quickly. ”First of all, this whole business starts with that adventurer gentleman, who suspiciously looks like your old ancestor, buying a boat ticket in Northport...”

...

In the hatching room, the two ravenous young dragons finally welcomed the first meal of their lives—under Betty’s direction, the sturdy attendants carried in two large basins full of freshly cut meat and two jugs of clean water (and, in passing, a heap of soft bedding enough to serve as a temporary nest for the hatchlings). The serious conversation between Gawain, Melita Ponia, and Enya was thus temporarily interrupted, and the exuberant young dragons drew everyone’s eyes in the room.

The two little ones, whose scales had yet to finish growing and hardening, caught the scent of food and promptly abandoned the eggshells they had been playing with for half the day, practically tumbling and scrambling their way to the wooden basins of fresh meat. Gawain watched in astonishment as these offspring of the race that sat atop the Mortal Races pounced straight at two basins of raw meat, and then grew even more astonished as he saw them deftly snap up the chunks and toss them directly into the air—the little dragons raised their necks, and bright red flame surged from their throats; the meat was quickly seared to half-done in the high heat, then fell into the mouths of the voracious hatchlings.

Sometimes, when they encountered a particularly large chunk of meat that couldn’t be evenly cooked in a single breath, they would toss it up several more times, roasting it as it flipped in the air until it was cooked through...

The process by which the young dragons were eaten was clearly far more particular—and far more complex—than Gawain had imagined.

”This is... really eye-opening,” Gawain muttered at last after gawking for quite a while, ”they actually know from birth that meat should be cooked before they eat it...”

”For human beings who cannot ignite by instinct, processing food by cooking it before eating is a complicated and advanced way of being eaten, an important step in the history of civilization. But for dragonkin who are born able to generate intense, high-temperature flames, roasting food is merely an instinctive action, almost part of the same process as your human ’chewing’,” Enya’s gentle, faintly amused voice came from within the eggshell as she patiently explained, ”this is the difference brought about by ’bodily talents’ in biological evolution.”

”...That actually makes a lot of sense.” Gawain’s expression froze for a second as he mumbled under his breath, while inwardly feeling a bit rueful: here was a former God giving him a science lesson, guiding him to explain the behavior of extraordinary creatures through scientific thinking—somehow, the whole situation felt decidedly strange...

”After they finish this meat, they’ll probably ask for more, but don’t keep feeding them—at least four hours must pass before the next meal,” Enya’s voice sounded again as Gawain was muttering, ”this amount of food is just right. In the first week of their lives, young dragons don’t have good control over their own intake; if you feed them too much they’ll quite literally stuff themselves to harm. But water you can give them more of—that’s fine.”

”They won’t end up starving, will they?” Melita Ponia asked worriedly. ”I’ve heard hatchlings are very easy to get hungry—will they really be full enough?”

”Relax, they won’t starve—unless they get so hungry that they start trying to eat their own eggshells, you don’t have to worry about their nutrition falling short,” Enya explained with a smile. ”Oh, and the eggshells must be kept, at least until the young dragons are one year old. During this period, the shells are their best toys and teething tools, and also props that help them sleep in peace—they’ll pick out the larger pieces of shell themselves and use them as pillows.

”But their skin and scales are still quite fragile—you have to be careful that the sharper, more jagged shell fragments don’t cut them. Smoothing out those less suitable pieces of eggshell for them is an important step in caring for hatchlings.”

Gawain nodded repeatedly as he listened. ”Oh, got it—I’ll have someone see to that right away...”

”I meant Melita,” Enya cut him off before he could finish, her attention focused on Melita Ponia. ”Smoothing the shells for the hatchlings and settling their sleeping area is the responsibility of a new mother. In more ancient times, this was a skill that dragonkin who practiced traditional egg-hatching simply had to master—and when the young dragons see an adult doing the work of smoothing their shells, they’ll trust and depend on you even more.

”Remember to leave a few shell fragments for Nuoletta to smooth as well, otherwise the hatchlings won’t recognize their ’other mother’.”

Melita Ponia kept nodding as she listened, and in the end couldn’t help sighing softly. ”So looking after young dragons is such a scholarly business... I never knew any of this...”

Gawain, listening on the side, was full of emotion as well; it felt as though in just this short time he had accumulated an immeasurable amount of utterly useless knowledge—but strictly speaking, this expertise in caring for young dragons would be priceless if placed among certain scholars obsessed with the study of dragons. Back in those days when the dragons lived in isolation and secrecy, those scholars had managed to spin wild tales and hype each other’s theories until they’d developed seventeen or eighteen different schools of ”dragon science”, and now the things he was hearing came straight and genuine from the Dragon God’s own mouth...

Setting everything else aside, at the very least this sounded far more reliable than some piece of trash like the Outline of Dragon Slaying.

A few scattered, fanciful thoughts flashed through Gawain’s mind, and meanwhile, seeing that the young dragons were able to be eaten smoothly, Enya also let out a small breath of relief. Her attention returned to the matter they’d been discussing earlier.

”From the way you described Modir Vealt’s condition... he does indeed exhibit certain traits akin to the undead.”

Melita Ponia spoke up reflexively, ”But Leader Heragor has already confirmed it—Modir really is very much alive...”

Enya interrupted her with a faint smile. ”His body is alive—but what about his soul?”

Melita fell silent at once, her eyes widening slightly along with Gawain’s.

”A soul has no dividing line between life and death, but it does enter phases of life and death. For Mortal Races, this is hard to distinguish with the naked eye—but not quite impossible. Heragor probably just didn’t look carefully enough,” Enya said slowly. ”Modir Vealt is most likely a living man, yes—but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t ’died once already’, or ’died halfway’...”

Melita stared blankly for a long moment before finally drawing a soft breath and speaking in a low voice, ”Speaker Andar did say—they suspect Modir Vealt may have fallen into a kind of ’state of neither life nor death’...”

”You’ll need to send someone to confirm this in person—at the very least, to confirm his identity,” Enya said, and her ”gaze” seemed to fall upon Gawain. ”I can’t return to Talronde now, nor is it appropriate for me to contact other dragonkin. This is something that must be done by you.”