“How much money did you bring?”
“500 gold coins.”
The underground trading room looked like a tavern, but it was dim. Only the small oil lamps hanging from the ceiling provided any light.
Two middle-aged men sat at the counter, breathing heavily. Dust covered their weathered faces, and they looked as if they’d just fled some disaster.
“Ma’am, do you know how much trouble we went through to get our hands on this thing?”
One of the men held a huge, round bundle and set it on the counter. “Stealing something from that monster nearly got us killed!”
A young woman in her twenties sat behind the counter across from them.
Her name was Jocelyn O'Casey, and she was the proprietress here. Her black hair fell like a waterfall, and she wore a sleeveless leather vest that left her fair arms bare. A tattoo of a pair of blood-red wings marked her shoulder.
Beneath her arched brows, her bright eyes were captivating. Yet her gaze was detached, as if she couldn’t care less about their complaints.
Jocelyn slowly raised a pipe to her lips. She gave a light flick of her slender fingers, and a small flame sprang to life at her fingertips, illuminating her pretty face.
“Sss… haah…”
A stream of smoke slipped from her thin lips.
“What I mean is…”
Before she could finish, one of the men across the counter barked, “800 gold coins! Take it!”
“No, I was trying to say…”
“How about 800 gold coins?”
“I just wanted to say…”
“800 gold coins, take it or leave it! If that works, pay up and we’re gone!”
“Fine.”
Jocelyn raised an eyebrow and reluctantly took a pouch of gold coins from beneath the counter, then handed it to the man. He eagerly weighed the coins in his hand before pocketing them.
Then, right in front of the two men, Jocelyn slowly opened the huge round bundle. Inside was an egg!
The egg was nearly half the size of an adult’s body. It was hard to imagine what kind of terrifying creature was growing inside.
Jocelyn took another puff from her pipe and looked the egg over. Satisfied that everything seemed fine, she carried it behind the counter.
The two men who’d received the gold were pleased. Even their heavy breathing seemed to ease now that they had the money.
“Oh, right, ma’am. What was it you wanted to say?” one of the men asked, finally relaxing.
“I was going to say that, since you worked so hard, I’d make an exception and give you 1,000 gold coins this time.” Jocelyn shrugged. “Money doesn’t matter to me.”
“???”
The two men stared at her, completely dumbfounded.
The man who’d been so relaxed a moment ago twitched, then immediately smacked the other man—the one who’d haggled—on the head. “You damn idiot! Do you even know how to haggle?”
The other man didn’t dare argue. He just looked utterly innocent.
They knew this woman was no ordinary person, so they didn’t dare ask for more. Still, they’d just lost a full 200 gold coins. They felt like they’d been robbed blind.
“Haaah…”
In the dim, quiet room, the man’s breathing grew heavy again. He tapped his fingertips against the counter, making a “tap, tap” sound.
“Ma’am, considering we risked our lives to do this for you, surely two more glasses of wine wouldn’t be too much to ask?”
“Sure.”
Jocelyn brought two glasses of fragrant wine over to the men, then sat back in her chair. She crossed one pale leg over the other and rested the elbow of her pipe-holding arm on the counter, looking perfectly at ease.
“Tell me, what did that monster you mentioned look like?”
“She was terrifying! I’ve never seen a creature like that in my life! How should I put it… She was also a really sexy woman.”
At the mention of the monster, the two men perked up. One of them lifted his wine and gulped down a mouthful before continuing. “She had a great figure and a real allure to her. She was beautiful enough to charm thousands of men—almost as beautiful as you, ma’am.”
“Get to the point.”
“We knew a woman living in a godforsaken place like that couldn’t be ordinary, no matter how beautiful she was.
“At the time, she was holding that egg, almost like she was incubating it with her own body. It looked weird, but it was kind of exciting, too…”
“So how did you steal the egg from her?” Jocelyn asked, taking another puff from her pipe.
“We’re professional thieves. This sort of thing is no problem for us.”
One of the men thumped his chest, looking rather proud. “I know a mesmerism spell. Once it hits someone, they’re guaranteed to stay unconscious for at least a day. I’ve used it on I don’t even know how many women. It’s never failed.”
“That woman looked pretty weak at the time, so taking care of her was easy.”
“But after we got the egg, she suddenly woke up. It took less than three minutes! That was so strange!”
Jocelyn smiled. “Maybe you haven’t practiced your spell enough.”
“It wasn’t that I hadn’t practiced enough. That woman wasn’t human at all!”
“You know what? As soon as she realized we’d stolen the egg, she revealed her true form.”
At the memory, a trace of fear crossed the man’s face. “Horns started growing out of her head, and wings sprouted from her back. She looked like some giant bat… No, she also grew a tail. Then she looked like a lizard.”
“That sounds like a dragon.”
The other man cut in, his expression dark. “I once read about them in an ancient book. Dragons capable of taking human form are called calamity dragons. Their appearance means disaster is on the way, and humanity could face a catastrophe.”
“But by all accounts… those creatures went extinct 200 years ago. How could one show up on Ivory Mountain? I just can’t make sense of it.”
After hearing their account, Jocelyn looked intrigued. “So how did you escape from her?”
“We can turn invisible. It’s an essential skill for any thief who wants to stay alive!”
The man rubbed his temples. “Luckily, we’ve been practicing that skill since we were kids. The monster was weak, of course, so it couldn’t find us right away.”
“Our old man was right. Nothing matters more than staying alive. The first thing a thief needs to learn is how to save his own skin.”
“Bang!”
Just as they were chatting, the trading room door was suddenly kicked open. A beautiful woman dressed in white appeared in the doorway, her expression chillingly cold.
Her skin seemed to glow with a pale light, but her blue eyes were as cold as the frozen ground atop Snow Mountain. Her high nose gave her face a sharp, striking profile.
Her ink-black hair, streaked with white, fell in soft waves. Paired with her cool, oval face, it made her look like an ice queen, radiating an intensely aloof air.
Everyone’s eyes turned toward the woman who had burst in.
But when she recognized the two men, the ice queen’s gaze changed at once. Her pupils contracted into pinpricks, like a beast’s. Two horns emerged from her head, huge wings appeared on her back, and a lizard-like tail swayed behind her.
As the woman transformed, the temperature plunged. A bone-chilling cold spread throughout the basement.
The two thieves stared with wide eyes and gaping mouths, their faces etched with genuine terror.
The air seemed to turn suffocating in that instant…
“Monster!”
“Monster!”
“Monster!”
Three terrified cries rang out almost at once.
The first two came from the thieves. But the last one…
It seemed to come from the egg behind the counter.
“???”
Following the sound, everyone saw that something had hatched from the egg. A little girl’s head poked out through the broken shell.
Everyone there blinked without thinking.
Soft gray-white hair fell over the little girl’s shoulders. A hint of pink touched her tiny nose, and two little fangs showed at the corners of her delicate mouth, just right for her.
Her eyes were rather large, and a clear gleam shone in her beastlike crimson pupils.
All in all, she was tiny and delicate, with the beauty of a flower.
But, like the icy beauty who’d burst in, she also had two little horns on her head and a pair of tiny wings on her back. A thin, long tail poked out of the eggshell, too.
The little girl had no idea what was going on. She didn’t understand why everyone was staring at her; she just pointed in terror at the icy beauty by the door.
“Over there! A monster!”
“???”
As soon as she said that, the little girl instinctively raised her still-sticky hand from inside the eggshell and covered her mouth.
Because in her memory, that soft, light voice didn’t belong to her at all.
