Chapter 33: Older Dragon Lady

The workshop was silent

Everyone was staring heavily at the special composite metal shaft on the table.

It was flawless and beautiful, but also useless.

Garm broke first.

"Tch."

He shook his head, scratching his bushy white beard as his fat brows twitched inhumanly.

"Even if we find a platinum-class enchanter, what are the odds they’d even agree to help us? Those folk are rarer than dragon eggs these days."

He picked up the shaft, turning it over in his thick fingers.

"You know what the problem is with enchanters? No discipline. They get a little talent, a little mana, and suddenly they think they’re hot shit. Stop training. Stop studying. Then they wonder why they’re stuck at copper-class their whole lives."

He set the shaft down frustratedly.

"A century ago, you couldn’t walk through a market without bumping into a gold-class enchanter. Now? I’ve met maybe three in my entire life. Three! In forty years of smithing!"

Adonis gave him a flat look.

"Gee. Thanks." 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Garm held up his hands, chuckling nervously.

"Ah, no offense meant, lad. Yer doing yer best."

"Mm." Adonis didn’t sound convinced.

Geles had her face buried in her hands. Her pointed ears were drooping so low they almost touched her shoulders.

"This is all my fault. I’m supposed to be the rune expert here. I went to Naxos Academy. I graduated second in my class. And I can’t even inscribe a simple focusing array."

"Calling it simple is an overstatement..." said Prussia.

She lifted her head and they looked puffy and rimmed.

"There’s no time to design a new weapon. Even if we started over from scratch, we’d need weeks to test a new runic system. And this array..."

She gestured helplessly at the sketches spread across the workbench.

"This is the heart of the weapon. Without it, the spear is just a fancy metal stick."

Her eyes started to tear up again.

"I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry."

The workshop went quiet again.

Adonis looked at her, those trembling hands, the dark circles under her eyes. She’d been working herself to the bone for days, trying to make his stupid idea work.

He smiled.

"Hey."

Geles looked up.

"I should be the one apologizing. I lost my temper earlier and made a scene. That wasn’t fair to any of you."

He walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You know what? Let’s focus on finding a solution. Regrets can wait until later, how about that?"

Geles stared at him.

Her tired, overworked red eyes suddenly glistened with a soothing warmness that was easy to look at. It was as if she didn’t expect him to be this kind.

Still, her stare felt uncomfortably admiring.

He took a small step back.

And that’s when Mariella exploded.

"HELLO—?!"

Everyone flinched.

Mariella stood near the doorway in disbelief.

"Since when is this normal?!"

Adonis tilted his head.

"What do you mean?"

"What do I—" Mariella sputtered. She pointed a trembling finger at the corner of the room.

"There’s a naked dragon person here! And you’re all acting like it’s just—just another day!"

Alpis was sitting on a wooden crate near the wall. She wasn’t exactly naked... she was wearing Adonis’s blue tailcoat jacket. The garment was so large on her petite frame that the tails touched the floor, and the sleeves completely swallowed her arms. She looked like a child playing dress-up.

But to Mariella’s eyes, the difference between "naked" and "wearing one oversized jacket and nothing else" was apparently negligible.

"Oh, that’s Alpis." Adonis waved dismissively. "Can we focus on the rune problem? There has to be a way to reduce the load so it’s within Geles’s skill range."

Mariella’s eye twitched.

"Can you NOT act like this is normal?!"

She whirled on Garm.

"Aren’t you the least bit bothered by this?! There’s a dragon girl in the workshop! A dragon! Girl!"

Garm shrugged, puffing on his pipe.

"I don’t get paid to ask questions."

Mariella glared at him which scared the old dwarf a bit.

But it’s pointless, she sighs and held her face in her palm.

’Right. Of course. Why would anything in this insane project be normal? As the project supervisor, I need to focus. Even if a comet fell from the sky and killed half the city, my focus must remain on the project. That’s what Adonis wants. That’s how nonchalant he is about an actual dragon person appearing in our workspace.’

She opened her eyes.

"Fine. Fine! Let’s focus on the rune problem."

Adonis had already turned back to the workbench. He was studying the shaft closely, comparing it to the sketches of the runic array. The more he looked, the more hopeless it felt.

Forty-nine runes. Seven layers. Each layer requiring perfect precision and synchronization.

Tap... Tap... light footsteps approached.

Adonis looked down.

Alpis stood beside him, her dainty hands clutching the edges of his jacket. She had to tilt her head way back to meet his eyes.

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

Alpis shook her head and spoke in her soft, mature voice.

"Nothing. But from what I understand... you want to inscribe nearly fifty runes on this?"

"Yeah."

"I don’t know much about enchanting. But... all dragons are naturally born with the skill to do it."

"Oh! Dragon enchantment!" Geles snapped her fingers.

Everyone suddenly remembered.

It was one of those things that was so obvious in hindsight that it was embarrassing they’d forgotten. Dragons were legendary enchanters. Their runic language was one of the seven great systems. They could inscribe arrays that human enchanters could only dream of.

Adonis tilted his head.

"Isn’t that—"

He didn’t get to finish.

Alpis rolled her eyes. Her dragon wings sprouted from her back and flapped once, lifting her off the ground and grabbing his face with both willowy hands.

Harumphh! She kissed him.

This is not a gentle kiss you’d expect from an innocent-looking young lady, it’s the deep, tongue-in-mouth, saliva-swapping type of kiss Minerva overfed him during their "alone" time.

Ufffuuu— Adonis’s eyes flew wide open.

Everyone else’s eyes flew wide open too.

"Eh?"

Mariella’s reaction was more, different? One would say.

She squeezed her thighs together hard as her angelic face went bright red. She clamped a hand over her nose, but blood still trickled between her fingers.

’Adonis is being kissed. In front of me. Another woman is kissing Adonis right in front of me! How... how can I deal with this level of embarrassment?!’

Her knees wobbled.

Alpis pulled back, a thin strand of saliva connected their lips for moments before snapping. She looked at him like he’s a tasty meal and licked her lips as her alabaster cheeks were colored a shameless pink.

"Fuaaahhh~ that kiss is too affectionate."

"You... what...?" said Adonis.

A blinding light consumed his vision.

When Adonis opened his eyes, he was standing in a world of white devoid of any other color or shapes.

"What the..."

He looked around the nothingness.

"Where in the world is this?"

"You’re in my mindspace."

Adonis spun around. The voice had come from... somewhere. He couldn’t tell where.

Pssst... pssst... The sound came from below.

Adonis looked down and froze.

There was a woman standing beneath him. Her feet were planted on what should have been empty space, and she was looking down at him with a mild smile.

Except "beneath" wasn’t quite right.

It’s more like her down was his up and his up was her down.

It wasn’t an inverted world. If it were, his hair would be falling toward the ground. And more interestingly to him, he’d be able to see up her dress.

Instead, they were just oriented differently.

Like two paintings hung on opposite walls.

"This place has no sense of up or down."

"Fufu~ mindspaces can be like that."

Adonis blinked and suddenly, she was before him.

He got a good look at her now.

She was beautiful, or say bewitchingly beautiful.

Long black hair that flowed down to her ankles. Ruby eyes that glowed wisely. Smooth, pale skin like milk reflected against glacier water. Luscious lips curved in a smile that was somehow both gentle and teasing.

Her figure was... substantial. Majestically curvy. Her revealing black dress barely contained her appetizingly large breasts and her slender legs seemed to go on forever.

Her large curved horns were larger than Alpis’s.

So were her wings that were folded behind her hot body.

She looked like Alpis, but older, much, much older. Mhm.

Adonis gasped.

"You look like..."

"Alpis?" The woman tilted her head. "Yes. It’s me."

"How did you know what I was going to ask?"

"In here, our minds are linked."

She gestured around them at the endless white.

"Gods, like myself, have such complex minds we created mindspaces to expand our mental horizons. Dragons aren’t particularly talented at it, so sometimes we end up locking most of our memories here."

"Ohhhh, so that’s why dragons have bad memories."

"Bingo." She winked at him teasingly.

"So you and Alpis are two different people?"

The woman shook her head.

"Depends on how you see it. We’re one and the same. We just exist at different points in time. Our mindspaces are out of sync. But now that you’ve assimilated her, you can talk with her memories. I’m what Alpis used to be when she tried to conquer the Magic Continent centuries ago."

Adonis nodded slowly and gave her another once-over.

She really was stunning. A mature dragon woman who looked about Minerva’s age. Everything about her was perfect. Long eyelashes. Flawless skin. Ruby eyes that seemed to see right through him.

’The fact that Alpis can get more beautiful is...’

Before he could finish the thought, the dragon woman hid her mouth behind her hand. Her cheeks flushed.

"My dear... this, this affection is simply too much."

Adonis smiled.

’She’s definitely a side story character. Most authors use side stories to cover events set before the novel. That’s another reason I don’t like them. Spoilers.’

The dragon woman tilted her head.

"What are spoilers?"

Adonis chuckled nervously.

’Right. She can read my mind.’

"Uhm... spoilers are a type of food."

The dragon woman nodded thoughtfully.

"Hmm. How intriguing..."

Adonis raised a brow.

’She believes that? Is she stupid?’

He panicked upon realization.

’Shit! I forgot—’

The dragon woman smiled.

"You’re quite the character."

Adonis waved his hands frantically.

"Wait, wait, I didn’t mean it like that—"

"Fufu~ it’s rare people can tell that about me."

"Eh? Tell what?"

"Well... that I’m quite stupid."

Adonis stared at her. "Eh?"

She pointed at the empty world going in every direction.

"These are all my thoughts and ideas."

"Shit." ಠ_ಠ