Defeating the World with the Power of One Dragon!

Chapter 486: Fairy Dragon, Twilight

Year 352 of the New Calendar, winter.

Snowflakes drifted down from the gray overcast sky, layering the towers, streets, and plazas of the Citadel of Crimson Flame with a steadily thickening silver mantle.

The wind blew from the northern wilderness, whipping up fine snow dust that pattered against rock and metal with a soft, rustling whisper.

The red iron dragon was coiled atop the peak of a steep cliff.

He allowed the increasingly dense snowflakes to cling to his back and broad wing membranes, slowly extending a foreclaw, spreading open the thick pad, and catching some of the falling snow. He watched quietly as they melted into water in his palm, then quickly evaporated.

"Without realizing it, I am already one hundred and thirty-two years old."

Garoth retracted his claw, his gaze turning towards the distant, snow-obscured horizon.

The years gone by flowed through his mind like an unceasing, rushing river.

Measured against the long lifespan scale of dragonkind, he was undoubtedly still very young, the overture of his draconic life just beginning to play.

However, the density and intensity of the battles, schemes, construction, and challenges he had experienced in these hundred-plus years were enough to make many Ancient Dragons who had lived far longer pale in comparison.For example, the White Dragon Beskarl.

Although an Ancient Dragon, the vast majority of his lengthy existence had been spent in dormancy and forbearance. Beyond meeting his basic survival needs, he hid away in some unknown corner, quietly watching time pass.

The situation with the Amethyst Dragon Iseramas was slightly different, but in essence, he too remained aloof from the mundane world.

The depth and breadth of such draconic lives were far less substantial and rich than Garoth's.

The red iron dragon stood upon the mountain peak, like a sculpture cast from steel, silently gazing down at the kingdom that belonged to him at his feet.

The outline of the Citadel of Crimson Flame was slightly blurred within the snow curtain, but the flickering lights still pierced through the wind and snow, sketching out the city's vigorous, upward-striving vitality.

A few seconds later, he broke through the howling of the wind and snow, accurately calling out a name.

"Vira."

"Here!"

A ripple spread through the air, and the petite figure of the Faerie Dragon appeared in response.

She hovered beside the massive head of Garoth, her wings maintaining a high-frequency vibration, head held high and chest out, responding crisply and efficiently, just as always.

Garoth lowered his huge and imposing head, his gaze settling steadily upon the Faerie Dragon.

He examined the Faerie Dragon carefully.

At first glance, Vira's appearance didn't seem to have changed much from over a hundred years ago when they first met.

It was still that delicate, petite body; scales bright and lustrous, refracting rainbow-hued, shifting colors, as if draped in a piece of elusive twilight.

However, if one observed long enough and carefully enough, some subtle changes could be caught.

The edges of her thin, cicada-wing-like wing membranes now bore some previously non-existent, now barely perceptible fine wrinkles; the originally vivid, dazzling colors of her scales, in a few places like her neck and the joints where her wings met her body, faintly revealed traces of a pale, grayish-white.

Her eyes were still lively, but occasionally, a flicker of weariness would pass through them.

Furthermore, Garoth had noticed behavioral changes beneath the surface long ago.

The Faerie Dragon's sneaky visits to observe him training had significantly decreased. Those endless pranks from before were now rarely seen. She had started becoming particularly fond of sleep, often spending the majority of her day curled up in her attic nest piled with odds and ends, or in some warm corner of the palace, emitting tiny snores.

The red iron dragon lowered his body further.

His massive head nearly touched the snowy ground, bringing him eye-level with the petite Faerie Dragon. His eyes reflected those subtle gray-white traces on Vira's scales, like ash mixed into a winter hearth fire.

"Vira."

The red iron dragon asked, "How old are you this year?"

The Faerie Dragon blinked her eyes, her wings fluttering twice.

She tilted her head, putting on an expression of recollection, extending a tiny claw and counting off one by one.

"One, two, three... hmm, seems like one hundred sixty-three? No, should be one hundred sixty-four?"

"Ah, the exact year is a bit hard to remember clearly, but it's definitely over one hundred sixty years old!"

After saying this, she even giggled twice, just like usual.

But Garoth did not laugh.

He fell somewhat silent. On the mountain peak, only the sound of the wind and snow howling past remained.

"I remember."

A few seconds later, the red iron dragon slowly spoke, his voice heavy. "For your Faerie Dragon race, the lifespan limit is roughly two hundred years."

A one hundred sixty-year-old Faerie Dragon... this meant she had already stepped into the twilight of her life.

Those recently observed changes—the wrinkles on her wing membranes, the fading of her scale colors, the sleepiness and diminished vitality—all had a reasonable explanation now.

The hands of her life's clock were moving towards their end.

If unable to break through the legendary barrier, a Faerie Dragon could theoretically live to two hundred years old.

But this was only the theoretical limit.

In reality, most Faerie Dragons would meet their end earlier, around one hundred seventy or one hundred eighty years old.

When the innate liveliness and mischief of a Faerie Dragon completely vanished, when they completely lost interest in pranks and play, becoming silent, sluggish, drowsy all day long, it often signified the approach of the final moment.

Perhaps after one seemingly ordinary nap, they would never wake again.

Vira's condition had already begun approaching this stage.

"Yeah, yeah."

The Faerie Dragon seemed utterly oblivious to Garoth's heaviness.

She fluttered forward lightly, landing on one of his massive foreclaws, finding a comfortable spot to sit on the relatively flat scales of his wrist area, her tail swaying idly behind her.

"I can't compare with you big guys who can live for millennia at the drop of a hat."

"Using human terms, I'm already an old lady among Faerie Dragons now."

She spoke with utter frankness, even casually scratching a slightly duller scale on her jaw with a hind claw.

Garoth fell into deeper silence.

Garoth grew slightly silent. The lights of the royal city below the cliff were hazy like stars within the increasingly dense snow curtain.

Memories surged up uncontrollably.

When he was still a wyrmling, struggling for survival in the perilous Ser Wilderness, he had already met this Faerie Dragon.

Their initial encounter was full of deception and small misunderstandings, the process not exactly beautiful.

But after that, the joyful spirit Vira carried had indeed provided him with rare relief and diversion amidst the ever-present dangers and pressures of the wilderness, preventing him from being constantly taut like a fully drawn bow.

His entire path of ascension, almost every step, had been witnessed by this Faerie Dragon.

Without realizing it, he himself had grown into a powerful Legendary Dragon, while that hyperactive little troublemaker from back then had quietly reached the twilight of her life.

The Faerie Dragon aging, dying... this thought gave Garoth a strange, clogging feeling.

He was not accustomed to contemplating the demise of things around him, especially an existence that had long been woven into the fabric of his life's trajectory.

"Is there a way? A method to extend lifespan."

The red iron dragon asked.

As for relying on herself to break through to Legendary to obtain a life leap... this hope was even slimmer.

Faerie Dragons themselves were not low-level, but when a dragon begins to decline into twilight, their growth rate plummets drastically. Wanting to break through the already immensely difficult Legendary barrier held minuscule possibility.

Vira stopped swaying her tail.

"There is."

She used a tone for telling secrets, lowering her already tiny voice further.

"Legend says, if we Faerie Dragons can return to the ancestral land of our original birth, gain the recognition of the Ancestral Spirits, and undergo baptism by the Primordial Breath, perhaps we can reshape our life's foundation. With enough luck, we might even break through the shackles in one go and become a Legendary life."

She paused, drawing her wings in a little.

"But then, that's only a 'perhaps'."

"That's how the old stories tell it. Who knows if it's true or false, and how many have actually succeeded?"

The Serene Spirit Wilderness.

Garoth knew of this place. It was one of the many Outer Planes, the realm where the deities of the fey races dwelled, and also the primary habitat for all sorts of fey creatures and natural spirits—a world filled with magic, wonders, and unpredictability.

"I will send you to the Serene Spirit Wilderness."

The red iron dragon made a decision and stated it.

"Since an opportunity exists, we shouldn't give up on trying. Moreover, I have never set foot in an Outer Plane. Taking this chance to see the sights of a different world holds no disadvantage."

The Outer Planes, those were places where true masters and dangers lurked, connecting to infinite possibilities and perils.

That ancient progenitor belonging to Garoth's lineage, the powerful dragon named Ignas, if he had not perished, would most likely be hiding deep within some Outer Plane even now.

The Faerie Dragon raised her head, a proud expression appearing on her face.

"Don't forget, Your Majesty, I am a Dimensional Dragon, you know."

Hearing this, the red iron dragon was slightly taken aback, then asked, "I've never heard you mention this. Don't you want to return to the homeland of your birth to see it?"

"Your Majesty, oh Your Majesty, have you forgotten something?"

The Faerie Dragon let out a puff of laughter, flapped her wings to rise, and hovered before Garoth's enormous eyes, her wings vibrating at high frequency.

She put on an exaggerated expression of fear, pointing a tiny claw at her own chest.

"I have your contract on me! That terrifying, powerful enslavement contract."

"If I sneak off to the Serene Spirit Wilderness, so far away from you, what if halfway there the contract activates and just erases me? I wouldn't dare take that risk."

Enslavement contract?

A flicker of confusion passed through Garoth's eyes, then a corner of his memory was illuminated.

He remembered what the Faerie Dragon was referring to.

It was a matter he had almost completely forgotten.

Back then, to keep this useful yet troublesome little creature, and lacking effective means of restraint himself, he had casually scared her into signing a completely fabricated enslavement contract.

"That contract," Garoth gazed at the Faerie Dragon and said, "is fake."

The mountain wind swept past, blowing up snow like mist.

Vira was quiet for about two or three seconds.

Then, the fearful expression on her face instantly melted away.

She extended a tiny claw, pointing straight at the red iron dragon's massive nose tip, then burst into a series of clear, ringing laughter.

"Giggle... ah-ha! Deceitful evil dragon, I actually knew it all along!"

"That lie of yours was not cleverly crafted at all!"

She laughed so hard she did somersaults in the air. "Such a clumsy falsehood, you didn't think the supremely intelligent Vira-sama couldn't actually see through it, did you? I've been acting along with your performance all this time!"

"You..."

For once, the red iron dragon was at a loss for words.

"I just wanted to see when you would expose it yourself."

Vira finally managed to stop laughing, but the curved arc at the corner of her eyes remained. "Turns out, waiting took a whole hundred years. You're really good at holding it in. But... that's fine too. With the contract in place, I could justifiably stick around in the Material Plane."

"This place is so much more interesting. I can tease those fierce-looking, silly Rampage Bears."

"The royal city has countless fascinating creatures—humans, goblins, ogres... each one can play with me, listen to my stories, or be pranked by me a little. And there are so many novel things constantly happening..."

"So, it's not that you can't go, but that you don't want to go to the Serene Spirit Wilderness?"

Garoth asked.

"Not entirely that I don't want to."

The Faerie Dragon stretched, revealing the paler scales on her belly.

"At first, I thought it was fun, like a long-lasting adventure game. Later, I got used to life here. And then later... I also wanted to see just how far that wyrmling who scared me would grow, whether he could stand atop the heavens and fulfill his dream."

She flew up, approached one of Garoth's massive faceplates, and pressed her tiny forehead against it.

"But then," she continued in a whisper-like tone, "I seem to be getting a bit tired now, for real."

"My wings don't flap as lightly and powerfully as before. Those clever ideas for pranks in my mind don't seem to bubble up as much anymore. I can't play tirelessly all day long like I used to."

After saying this, she landed back in the dragon's palm, then yawned, seeming somewhat sleepy.

Garoth stared intently at the Faerie Dragon.

"I will send you to the Serene Spirit Wilderness."

He repeated, his tone leaving no room for doubt.

Vira nuzzled against his warm palm.

"That won't do. Inside the Serene Spirit Wilderness, it's all little cuties like me. If a big evil dragon like you goes over, you'll scare the native inhabitants, and then it'll provoke a crusade."

"Don't underestimate us little ones. Among us, there are deities."

"And those deities live right in the Serene Spirit Wilderness. They wouldn't allow a big evil dragon like you to run rampant."

The Faerie Dragon said with a giggle.

Garoth said, "You're worried I'll cause trouble in the Serene Spirit Wilderness? No, I will maintain proper limits. And compared to planes like the Abyss and Hell, the Serene Spirit Wilderness is basically harmless. A Legendary Dragon is more than sufficient to soar within it."

In truth, Legendary was not weak anywhere.

Additionally, while deities did exist within the Serene Spirit Wilderness, the gods resided within their own divine realms. Unless some great commotion alerted them, they wouldn't turn their gaze upon a single Legendary life.

The Faerie Dragon blinked.

"Oh right, if it's you, then it's definitely fine."

"You come with me to the wilderness, but not now."

She said, "Wait for spring. I hate going out in winter. It's too cold, and there are no pretty flowers or plants, fewer little animals too. I want to see the spring of the Material Plane one more time, then return to my fey homeland."

Garoth gave a slight nod.

"Good. We'll wait for spring."

"Then it's settled, my dear Emperor Ignas."

Vira's voice, thick with drowsiness, gradually grew softer. "When spring arrives, you come with me to the Serene Spirit Wilderness... For now, I'll sleep a little... remember to wake me to watch... the sunrise..."

Her breathing became even and long. She fell asleep in the red iron dragon's palm.

Garoth closed his claw, shielding the Faerie Dragon from all the cold wind.

He did not train anymore today. He just coiled upon the high cliff, and together, they closed their eyes for a little rest.