Since Ninety Nine Maiden was willing to speak for the little Black Dragon, the crowd settled like a wind-tamed sea.

She didn’t want to talk here; she beckoned Ling and Alicia to follow, like a crane leading two fledglings toward a quieter reedbed.

Confusion pricked Ling like cold dew. Then she saw the dragons around them, heads lowered like willows in rain, and she understood the topic was heavy.

Alicia and Ling climbed onto Ninety Nine Maiden’s dragon back, her scales dark as spilled night. They glanced back at the bowed dragonkin, stones under tide, and a thin thorn of doubt caught in their throats.

ROAR—!!

She hovered and roared; her Dragon King pressure rolled out like thunder over hills, scattering birds like chaff and beasts like leaves, until only one dragon and two girls held the sky. She dropped to a clearing like a falling star and flowed back into human shape like water remembering its bowl.

“Why bring us here?” Ling asked, her voice taut as a drawn bowstring.

Ninety Nine Maiden stretched like a lazy cat, skirted a few golden tussocks of grass, then stepped to the center and tested the ground like a hunter tapping ice.

“I told you. A proper explanation… about the Undead,” she said, her words steady as stone.

Thud—!! Her right foot slammed down, and the crust of earth caved like a rotten roof, laying bare a dark hollow below.

She pointed at the bottomless black, a well with no stars, and glanced at Alicia and Ling. “Here it is,” she said, light as falling dust.

“What do you mean, here?” Ling asked, her eyes knotting like tangled thread.

Ling’s confusion was simple, a knot that wouldn’t pull free. Alicia guessed the Undead lay beneath, like rot under snow, but she didn’t know what the Undead were or why they nested inside.

Sensing their doubt like a change in wind, Ninety Nine Maiden picked up a stone half a head in size and tossed it down as casually as flicking away trash.

…

Thunk!

Kreee—!!

After a breath, a razor scream knifed up from the depths, witch-like yet icier, like frost singing on iron.

“That… is that the Undead?” Alicia asked, her words shivering like a thin flame.

Ninety Nine Maiden nodded, a quiet pebble sinking in a pond.

“But it doesn’t seem like much,” Alicia said, confidence puffing like warm breath. “They’re trapped in that hole. If they can’t get out, what could they do?”

The answer clawed its way up at once. A Skeleton burst from the dark, not huge yet looming over three meters, its eye sockets burning blue like ghost-fire. Below a ribcage and grasping hands, its body trailed off into black smoke, a chill fog clinging to bone.

Ninety Nine Maiden didn’t freeze; she snatched a solid rib like grabbing a spear mid-flight and yanked the Skull close. Mana flared from her palm like wildfire, and corrosion raced from the grip point, devouring the Skeleton like rust eating chain.

Alicia watched the thing that had spooked her crumble, and curiosity rose like a tide under a new moon. “Are these guys… all that easy?”

If only, Ninety Nine Maiden thought, the idea cold as rain.

She grabbed the paralyzed Skeleton and pitched it back into the hole like tossing a dead torch into a well.

“You both saw that Skeleton clearly, right?” she asked, voice smooth as a whetstone.

Ling nodded, calm as a lake. The Undead matched the shape in her mind, so it went down easy.

“These things… how to put it,” Ninety Nine Maiden said, words marching like footprints in dust. “Most can’t cast. They don’t hit hard. Strike the physical bits and they shatter like dry twigs. Only two edges cut sharp: their numbers are a swarm, and they don’t stay dead.”

Ling lifted her right hand like a schoolkid, bright as a lifted leaf. “So that means a few are stronger?”

“Hey now? Not bad,” Ninety Nine Maiden said, a quick smile like sunlight through cloud.

“The weak ones aren’t worth a nightmare,” she went on, voice dropping like dusk. “The strong ones are different—filthy hexes like swamp-gas, uncanny strength like roots in bedrock, moves you can’t crack like fog with no seam. But the worst is still their not-dying.”

A chill traced Alicia’s spine like a fingertip of ice; then her mind lined up facts like stones on a path. “You freaky dragon! So the little Black Dragon wants us to drive out or wipe out the Undead, right?”

“Mm, that’s the shape of it, but you’d better just—”

“No!” Ling cut in, her resolve sparking like flint. “I have to make that Black Dragon admit defeat.”

“Why get serious with that kid?” Ninety Nine Maiden asked, a wry wind in her tone.

It wasn’t just pride. Ling’s curiosity about the Undead flared like a lantern in fog. There’s an old saying: cross into another world and never see the Undead, and did you even make the trip?

Ninety Nine Maiden didn’t smile. She fixed her gaze on Ling, eyes clear as still water, looking as if she could see the girl’s soul. “You… really plan to go down?”