Chapter 876 — Lost Property

Noretta? Another senior agent of the Mithril Vault?

Metzen had gone off to carry out a "collection assignment"? So this temporary stand-in, Noretta—was she a dragon too?

Listening to the voice coming through the ring, several thoughts flashed through Gao Yang's mind in an instant. Then he suddenly frowned as something occurred to him—

This time he couldn't make a My Little Pony joke!

Suppressing that fleeting odd notion, Gao Yang cleared his throat twice, gathering his thoughts as he addressed the "Miss Noretta" on the other end of the ring. "It's like this—I need to consult you about a few matters. They may involve the dragon race, so I'd prefer to speak face to face."

"Dragons... I understand," Noretta's voice paused for a second. "Please wait a moment. I should be able to see you in about an hour."

Gao Yang blinked—an hour to arrive, again. Whatever else might be said about the senior agents of the Mithril Vault, their on-call service attitude truly commanded respect. He wondered where these dragons holed up while carrying out their agent duties; thinking it over carefully, there really were quite a few suspicious points about it...

...

Dark red lava wound its way across a dry, scorching land. Cyclones of astonishing heat carried ever-burning flames within them, and burning tornadoes swept across a crimson sky like serpents of fire, ceaselessly scattering hot ash and rain of fire—this was a world ruled by flame. Here everything, soil and stone alike, existed in a state of fire-element saturation, maintaining unbroken agitation and transformation, and vast numbers of "creatures" with fire elements as their principal substance lived in this place that to mortals was nothing short of hell, each possessed of its own bizarre and fantastical "life form."

Lava fleas leaping amid the molten rock, fire imps breeding in the cracks of stone, living heat waves riding the wind and moving with swiftness—all manner of fire elemental creatures burned blindly in this blazing world, fought, and consumed their own lives, whether long or brief. Yet suddenly a tremendous crash, as though it might shatter space itself, and a roar that struck terror into the heart rang out across the entire realm, sending the agitated elemental creatures of the earth and the lava lakes scattering in an instant—

"Damn you! You damned reptiles!!"

Amid the deafening roar, the crimson sky suddenly split open in a shocking rift, and a colossal entity composed entirely of burning boulders and viscous magma tumbled ignominiously from the fissure down toward the earth. It smashed a crater a hundred meters in radius beside a lava lake; then those boulders writhed and rumbled, crawling up from the bottom of the crater and little by little reassembling into an awe-inspiring giant of flame.

The giant raised its burning head and roared at the sky once more, and in the sky that ceaselessly shed rain of fire and ash, several equally colossal figures were circling—seven dragons.

The giant lifted its arm, and a blazing bright spear of flame took shape. Yet before it could hurl the spear, a dragon's roar came down from the heights, and the balance of elemental power was shattered in an instant by that roar. The fiery spear burst apart, and then lightning, frost, gale, and arcane force descended from the heavens like a furious storm, pinning the giant helplessly to the surface of the cracked earth.

Those low-tier elemental creatures that could act only on instinct had fled utterly clean at the very outbreak of this dreadful battle. Rising from the fissures of the cracked earth now there was only mindless, pure flame.

"You... you dare, in the domain of the elements..."

A blue dragon descended from the sky and planted its foot directly on the flame giant's head. A deep, majestic voice issued from the dragon's mouth: "No one may be in debt to the Mithril Vault—including Elemental Lords."

"You madmen... fools... reptiles!" The giant struggled with all its might, yet under the effect of the gravity spell it grew ever more powerless to resist. "The cycle is coming, coming! Everything will be reshuffled, the whole world will be remade—what debts, what contracts, none of it will mean anything! Doing this, you..."

"A very young Elemental Lord indeed—you can't have been born from the fire source more than a thousand years ago. Did your elders never teach you a lesson?" A red dragon with heavy scales, alloy armor plates set into the shell of its back, and both eyes already replaced by electronic prosthetics sneered as it cut off the flame giant's cursing. He stepped forward, lowered his head, and gazed into the giant's eyes. "The world may be destroyed, civilization may be remade, but even if a planet crashes headlong into the sun, you must settle your debt to the Mithril Vault before you die!"

The giant summoned the last of its strength and roared in broken bursts beneath the blue dragon's foot: "You... you madmen!!"

"It seems your elders truly never educated you properly," the red dragon said, shaking its head. "But it doesn't matter—we will complete this transaction. You privately concealed collateral that you had promised to the Mithril Vault, and you are now a hundred years overdue. Today we have brought the bill—as you have confirmed, the Mithril Vault will collect the late fees and the collateral today."

The blue dragon pinning the giant's head also lowered its head: "Also, don't forget to leave a positive review for this transaction—"

A black dragon standing to one side, who had not spoken all this while, stepped forward. Accompanied by a low, barely audible chant, complex draconic runes coalesced before her and swirled into countless rotating arrowheads. Those arrowheads drew little by little toward the flame giant's torso, and the latter immediately began to howl madly: "Stop! Stop! You can't do this! You..."

Sparks flew, and the rotating arrowheads tore open the stone shell as easily as a knife through butter. The flame giant's roar finally weakened, leaving only broken cursing: "You reptiles... you can't take it... I went to such trouble to steal it... it's mine, my treasure..."

After a low, dull thud, the elemental core within the giant's husk was cut through by the arrowheads, and its sturdy body at last began to fall apart. A weak, halting voice drifted through the air: "You... are nothing but... a pack of prisoners..."

The blue dragon glanced down at the stone head, rapidly dimming, and pressed down hard with her foot, crushing it to pieces. "Thank you for your feedback. Your evaluation has been received."

The lifeless elemental body turned into red-hot stones that clattered and scattered across the ground.

A tiny flame, small as a candle's glow, sprang out from the cracks in the stones and, shrieking with fury, fled at a dead run from that place. Its shrieks carried far: "I'll be back! I'll be back!"

"Next time you reincarnate, ask your elders about the market rates in this world!" the red dragon shouted after the fleeing little flame from afar. "We won't charge you a consultation fee this time!!"

The blue dragon, for her part, shook her head, and a pale golden projection panel appeared before her. Having activated the work system, she began earnestly recording this outing's report on it: "...In summary, after the service was completed, the client offered a sincere and enthusiastic evaluation. Owing to the shortness of time, the client did not have the opportunity to select a star rating; by unanimous agreement of the agents present, we consider this to be a default positive review..."

"Metzen, don't bother recording that—you can write it up slowly after we're back," the black dragon who had summoned the arrowheads stepped forward and said in a rather young and unpolished voice. "Let's tidy up this mess first."