Chapter 1269: 27. Not Love

"Mm......no......gentler......"

"I lost......I surrender......have mercy......"

"Mm......Muen......"

The girl's sweet moans, half song and half sob, drifted out of the room on the clear night breeze and scattered in every direction. When they struck an invisible barrier, however, they dispersed at once, failing to disturb the other ordinary guests staying at the inn.

But only the ordinary guests remained undisturbed.

The magical restriction used to isolate sound was far too simple. It had clearly been set up by the inn as a temporary measure for the recent festival, and against anyone with even slightly greater magical attainment or strength, it was completely useless.

And so, in the inn's small courtyard, a fiery-red figure stood silently.

Her hair swayed gently in the breeze, while her thorn-covered dress blended into the darkness of night, making her resemble a statue.

Yet the expression on that face at this moment was absolutely not something any statue could ever reproduce. Even the finest sculptor or artist in the world, faced with the complex look hidden within that slight furrow of her brows, would only be able to let out a helpless sigh.

Anger, joy, sorrow, serenity?

None of them.

Her expression was impossible to describe, as complicated as an overturned palette of colors, yet buried deep within shadow. Only those golden eyes remained blazing bright as they stared at the lonely moon in the sky.

"The moonlight is beautiful tonight......"

It should have been a scene as lonely as the moon itself, yet Hamreign was not the only person in the courtyard admiring it.

At the stone table and chairs on the other side, a gentle-looking woman with her long hair loosely tied and draped over one side of her chest was leisurely brewing a pot of flower tea.

Hot water flowed down in a soft stream, and fragrance immediately filled the air. Combined with the intermittent moans drifting from the room not far away......it somehow created a strangely unique atmosphere.

"So even the legendary calamity can have moments of melancholy like this."

She lightly sipped her fragrant tea and raised her head. The beauty mark near the corner of her eye made every smile and frown irresistibly charming, yet at this moment there was also a trace of meaningful mockery in her expression.

"......And what are you to him?"

Only after quite some time, perhaps deciding that there was ultimately nothing worth looking at in a moon she had already watched for more than a thousand years, did Hamreign finally shift her gaze.

Of course, she had sensed this human woman's presence from the beginning.

It was simply that this human woman was different from the flat-chested human woman from earlier. She did not appear hostile, so Hamreign had not bothered paying attention to her.

"Nothing special. We're simply an ordinary senior and junior." Anna smiled seductively and extended a hand in invitation. "Compared with the profound love between you and him, it's hardly worth mentioning."

"Love? Hah. Don't misunderstand. What exists between him and me is nothing as inferior as that."

Hamreign accepted the invitation and sat down on the stone chair that seemed to have been prepared specifically for her. A cup of tea had already been brewed in front of her, and she drank without the slightest hesitation.

After all, there was no poison in this world capable of bringing down a mighty calamity like her. That fact had long since been proven.

Only......

After taking a small sip, she still could not help slightly furrowing her delicate brows.

Was human tea supposed to taste this bitter?

"Love? Inferior? As expected of a thousand-year-old dragon. So many people spend their entire lives longing for that emotion, yet you dismiss it so completely."

Anna rested her cheek against one hand and carefully studied the legendary calamity.

She truly was beautiful.

As a dragon whose level of life exceeded that of humanity, Hamreign had been born as a being infinitely close to perfection. Even after taking human form, neither her face nor her body possessed the slightest flaw.

The only possible issue was that compared with an ordinary woman, she was somewhat too large.

At around two meters tall, she stood more than half a head taller than even Muen, which did not exactly fit the mainstream preference most men had for women smaller than themselves.

But......for certain perverts with unusual tastes, that physique might actually be a bonus.

"Now he's really got everything—curves, tall ones, slender ones, flat-chested ones......maybe all he's missing is someone especially tiny?" Anna rubbed her temples and could not help sighing.

Was he trying to complete an entire collection?

Still......surely that last one would never happen.

Unlike the others, that would actually be a crime.

If he truly did something like that, then as a law enforcement officer, even someone as broad-minded as her would find it very difficult to forgive him.

"So the reason Miss Calamity didn't disturb them is because you believe what you feel toward Muen isn't love?" Anna casually swirled her teacup and asked the seemingly unimportant question in an equally casual tone.

But she really was curious.

What had happened in this city could not be hidden.

So when she received intelligence from the Silent Bureau that Muen had appeared in a human city together with this dragon, she immediately concluded that her scumbag junior had most likely managed to win the dragon over.

After all, a mighty calamity had not ventured deep into the human world for centuries. If no one had talked her into coming, there was no reason for her to suddenly °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° show up here.

Anna had therefore already prepared herself for the worst.

She had originally assumed that when she came here to listen through the wall tonight, what she would hear would be Muen and this calamity.

Unexpectedly, someone else had moved even faster than her.

And had actually done it right in front of the calamity herself.

As expected of Ariel.

Her courage was as outrageous as ever.

Anna glanced from the corner of her eye toward the room from which the moaning still continued.

"I thought you'd charge straight in there and teach that little cat stealing a taste a proper lesson."

"As I already said, what exists between him and me is not love. So why should I disturb them?"

Hamreign's tone remained calm.

"He and I are companions. We are bound to walk forward together forever. Why should I interfere with one of his little hobbies?"

"Ho......bby?"

Anna slowly tasted the word.

"To you, what they're doing in there is nothing more than that?"

"Isn't it?"

......"Ah, Muen, it feels so good......I love it......keep going......mm......no......you're going to break me......"

Well.

From the perspective that both of them were doing something they loved doing, it really could be called......a "hobby."

But......

"Miss Calamity, are you and he really not in love?" Anna asked again.

"I've already told you. Only you humans place such importance on an emotion so inferior and fragile."

"Inferior and fragile? From a certain perspective, perhaps you're right. But I'm still curious......do you truly disdain what people call love, or do you simply not know what love actually is?"

Anna gently brushed the hair away from her forehead and stared seriously into those majestic golden eyes.

"Hm?"

The golden eyes suddenly blazed brighter, their pressure stabbing painfully into the mind.

"What exactly are you implying?"

"Nothing in particular. It's simply that many people suffer from a certain misunderstanding. They believe that if someone lives long enough, they'll eventually know everything and understand everything......but that's fundamentally false. No matter how long you've lived, you cannot truly understand something you've never personally experienced."

Anna lowered her eyes and spoke lightly.

"Take love, for example......Miss Calamity, have you ever actually experienced that kind of feeling?"

"......"

Hamreign remained silent for a moment before saying,

"I already told you......love is nothing more than an inferior and fragile emotion. I don't care about it, so of course I would never......"

"In other words, you've still never experienced it, have you?"

Anna smiled.

"If you've never experienced it, then how do you know love is inferior and fragile? And how can you be certain that what you feel isn't what people call love?"

"Do you think I spent the last thousand years doing nothing but sleeping?"

Hamreign's tone suddenly became severe.

In her eyes, the human before her was so foolish that it was almost incomprehensible. Or perhaps humanity's narrow perspective had simply confined her thinking so badly that she could say something this ridiculous.

"I may never have truly loved anyone, but do you think I've witnessed too few examples of it over the past thousand years? Love......hehe. Humans always treat it as something enormously important, but in the end, it's nothing more than the attraction between male and female. Dry wood catching fire, living and dying for one another—it looks beautiful and sweet, but stretch the span of time a little longer, and it's nothing more than a boring emotion born from a moment of heated passion!"

"Oh? You're that certain, Miss Calamity?"

"I am certain because I've seen enough. Before the passage of endless time, no matter how profound a love may be, it will eventually become nothing. Only a contract signed in blood is eternal."

Hamreign abruptly stood.

She looked down at Anna from above.

In her eyes, the human woman before her and the flat-chested human woman inside that room were the truly pitiful ones.

They believed love was everything.

For the sake of a little more time together, they grew jealous and fought over one another.

But even if they possessed him in the end, what then?

A hundred years from now, they would become dry bones buried beneath the earth.

How long could their love possibly last?

Pitifully short.

To a calamity like her, their entire lives were too brief to even qualify them as passing travelers in her existence.

Why should she lower her eyes and care?

"Who he loves, or who he chooses to satisfy his instincts with—truthfully, none of that has the slightest meaning to me. I can allow him to love anyone he wishes, because this thing you call 'love' is already laughable by its very nature. I will never possess such an emotion. And you humans, when all is said and done, are merely beautiful skeletons who can accompany him for a brief moment. The only one who will truly walk beside him forever is me."

It sounded like a declaration.

Like contempt.

But those were the words of a calamity, carved into certainty as though engraved in solid stone.

And they were also her genuine thoughts.

Love?

How insignificant.

The relationship between her and him could never be described by something so trivial.

She and he were eternal companions, bound together by the purest blood.

A hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years—

it would never change.

There would never be love between her and him.

"So stop trying to probe me, human. From beginning to end, we have never existed on the same level."

With those words, Hamreign disappeared.

She had no desire to continue discussing such things. Merely talking to these human women whose minds were filled with such nonsense already made her feel unbearably sullied.

The wind swept through the courtyard, leaving Anna alone where she sat.

She glanced up at the moon, then toward the room whose candlelight was still trembling without pause, and murmured softly,

"Could it be......that I really was overthinking things?"

Did this dragon truly harbor an entirely different kind of feeling from theirs?

Was she fundamentally different from them, and therefore would never become one of their "fellow travelers"?

Was that really it?

Was it really?

For now, at least, it seemed so.

Her probing had been completely meaningless.

But......

Anna suddenly lowered her gaze toward the teacup on the stone table and sighed softly.

"Was the tea I brewed really that awful? Or......"

Ripples spread across the surface of the tea.

Even the beautiful moon reflected within it had been shattered into chaotic fragments.