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 become 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 metals, we’ll produce two tons!”
“Ants can chew on bones, and cows can be cooked in teapots! Watch me create a mecha 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 some 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’ time to reach the accumulated status of the other corrupt countries that have had centuries of time. 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 remember.
“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 welcome 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 me 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 became hazy, which might have caused me to act crazily due to alcohol…
“…Your dancing that day was beautiful: especially when you performed Swan Lake together with Eaglestorm and the Dragon of Ultimate Evil.”
Who was the “Dragon of Ultimate Evil?” That was a certain Dracon’s nickname on the Calamity Rankings. Of course, the name meant exactly what its definition was—that he was the “evilest dragon alive.” Being able to obtain such a mighty nickname as only a mere Dracon far exceeded the nicknames of any Great or Supreme Immemorial 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 me. I could only stare at her in astonishment, 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 memories became.
Eaglestorm transformed into a pudgy bird and acted as the swan’s mother. The Dragon of Ultimate Evil opened up his wings and performed 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 remembered to record this scene in a memory crystal. Otherwise, there would now be a new page in my dark history.
“Give me 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 me like that. Do you think that I carry around fruit knives enchanted to the +15 level? How bored would someone have to be to enchant a fruit knife to +15?”
“…Alright, what else did I do?”
The silly cat pointed at the banners before me.
“Nothing much. You decided in your fun to summon all your military and civilian leaders for a major meeting 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 shamed 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 me who ‘Quiet’ is. Oh, that’s a nice joke. Maybe I should create an artificial person named Quiet and go look for her every time that I do something 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, Amelia’s magical seeds had grown up into crops at an astonishing speed. With the druids’ careful cultivation, apples grew as large as watermelons, while watermelons 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 home to a great abundance of all sorts of magic metals, I instantly had seventeen large-scale kilns constructed here to help the metallurgy process of creating all sorts of magical metal alloys. The engineers and smiths would then create engineering products, weapons and equipment. It was indeed possible to produce more than one ton of refined metals 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 metals 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 former Mist Kingdom, so I had many elite or ace type troops’ equipment design plans and training methods available to me. If I could truly produce their equipment, 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 equipment?” Unfortunately, their answer made me 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 extremely 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 equipment being used in the Underground were crafted by the Gray Dwarves. However, no Gray Dwarf smithing grandmasters came with us this time.”
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 me 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 times before. Let’s not insult them anymore. Ever since an elf smith “grandmaster” forged my top-level tear sapphire into a sword accessory for me, 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. Meanwhile, 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 something 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 someone 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 element giants, and the fire element is naturally suited for smithing. And Red Dragons are also of the fire element, 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 moment as I carefully thought it over. Obviously, I was indeed a fool for thinking so.
“Then what did you mean…?”
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 mean? 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 merchants that do everything by the law; we’re cultured people… Hey, you there, help me 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 me 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 come to Dragon World? Things were different now. Previously, she didn’t come because the Dragon World leaders made their attitude clear that she wouldn’t be welcome in Dragon City. But now she came over because another Dragon World leader privately invited her. That dragon was the Supreme Immemorial 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 Metal Dragons that had a dominating advantage.
Ignoring the neutral dragon species, in all the Dragon Cities the Metal Dragons that were formerly 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 become the big boss. But if one looked into things deeper, why were the more aggressive Color Dragons unable to defeat the relatively more conservative Metal Dragons?
“The Black and Red Dragons have all been exiled. It would be ridiculous to dream of winning against the Metal Dragons after that.”
Although there were many branch offshoots and SemiDragon species, the five main Color Dragon species were still the most numerous. 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 extreme 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 Metal 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 came 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 same 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 something 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 Supreme Immemorial White Dragon Sam had brought his wife over and they were both living in my Frigidwinter Earth. Publicly, they claimed 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 Metal 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 means that all intelligent creatures are the same. Aren’t human nobles and royalty the same 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 time 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 Elemental 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 element Foundational Elemental Item I would receive—I could pick an element I was lacking. So naturally I was more than happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the Color Dragons scheme.
But what made me 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 blame—that would go to the Color Dragons of Dragon City.
Of course, her arrival also helped me 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 me 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 shameless ability… I love it!”
Notes:
[1] TL/N: The Chinese government likes to post motivational phrases everywhere, and I mean 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 name 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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