Her words tangled like vines; she was clearly smitten. Alicia’s worry melted like morning frost. Time to set the next piece on the board.

“Alright then, little sister! Tomorrow we hunt a dragon.”

She dropped it like a pebble into a pond, and the little one jolted like a sparrow.

“Why so soon?!”

The pushback, frayed with reluctance, drew a curious look from Alicia.

“Isn’t this the kind of thing that makes you happiest? You stayed just one day in the Mystic Realm, then bolted to find the Beastfolk. Now it’s dragons, and suddenly you don’t want to?”

Ling scratched the back of her head, sheepish as a cat caught napping. A week of play had fermented into a slacker’s rhythm. Her heart slouched like a lazy cloud, wanting to stall the hunt as long as possible.

Emotion spiked cold as needles. She dared not say it out loud, or Alicia’s ruler would come down like winter hail.

“Ma, sis, think about it, yeah? Lately there’s too much on our plate. If we don’t finish, I might not sleep at night.”

It was a paper-thin excuse; anyone who knew Ling could see the seams. She just stamped noisy seals all day—what could possibly need her “handling”?

Alicia still nodded, like a reed weighing the wind.

“Mhm. Fair point. The Elvenfolk do have a lot that needs tending…”

Ling bobbed her head, a chick pecking grain.

“Right, right? So we should—”

Alicia lifted one finger to her chin and tilted her head to the sky, thoughts drifting like kites.

“And the Beastfolk need some discipline, too.”

Ling kept nodding, her eyes leaving little afterimages in the air.

“Yeah! Beastfolk is DD, ok?”

“And we should sit down with Rafi for a talk…”

“Exactly, I feel the same!”

“But we can let Flan handle those.”

“Yep, we can let—eh?”

Smiling, Alicia slipped behind Ling, gripped her collar, and tugged her along like a kitten.

“Let’s go find a dragon. Edmund gets a day off.”

“Eh—eh—eh?!”

She couldn’t dodge fate; it flowed like a river. Goofing off suits dog-headed brutes, not small fry like Ling. Better she waits quietly for Koukou Sword to update, like watching moonlight creep across a paper screen.

Dragged out she was, and the dragon’s whereabouts were only “somewhere” by the Great Rift. That “Great” wasn’t rhetoric—it was a canyon vast as a sea.

Wider than the three Empires combined, the Rift breathed depth and silence. Pure-blood dragons were rare as stars at noon; mongrel ones, with odd bloodlines, swarmed like crows.

How do two girls comb a sky-sized plain and find those eerie dragons?

There’s an old tale: a human hero with a greatsword trailed a mongrel dragon and found a pure-blood. Put truth aside; it’s doable. But odds like that are sand in the wind.

Mongrels only meet pure-bloods when a pure-blood summons them. Most days, those hoard-sleepers curl on treasure like coals in a brazier; big announcements are jokes told to an empty hall.

Unless heaven drenches you in outrageous fortune, washing bad luck into blessed luck, you’re better off under a blanket. Every dream has a door.

Krrr—snap!

Ling’s double-edged Scythe struck a lunging, scaled brute. Its guard arm—hide thick as bark—split like wet paper. The blade pierced cleanly, then slid downward; barbs chewed through meat, ripping slabs free. Half the arm vanished in a grim red petal-fall.

“Sis, what are you thinking about?”

She chatted mid-fight, calm as a pond at dawn. To Ling, this wasn’t even a proper mongrel dragon; it couldn’t stir fear, only dust.

“Mm. How we’re going to find the dragons. In about a kilometer we’ll hit the Great Rift the books mention. No plan, no path.”

“Oh? Got it. You think; I’ll just—”

Whoosh.

The half-crippled creature should have fled into the reeds of shadow. Something in its skull snapped instead. It raised its intact claw and charged like a storm-broke bull.

The outcome didn’t need words. The head went, the body stayed. It lay there “happy,” “thrilled,” “content,” and napped on the stones like a headless doll.

Ling planted the Scythe in the ground. She wiped imaginary sweat from her forehead, small hand moving like a sparrow’s wing. Alicia gave her a long, dry look.

“Tsk. So young, and already pretending? You were clearly having fun.”

Ling flushed; the hand on the Scythe trembled like a reed.

“N-no! This game isn’t fun at all!”

Alicia didn’t argue; she just walked on, stride like a line drawn straight. Whether Ling followed wasn’t a worry—some threads tug themselves.