- 65 - Dragon

Having stayed awake for far too long during the final moments of the dream, Yvette returned to the motorhome in the Automaton Town and slept all the way until the afternoon of the next day. She woke up with hazy eyes and let out a long yawn.

It was a wind-swept afternoon. The late autumn sky was overcast, and pale, greyish-white light fell upon the withered leaves blanketing the ground, carrying a dispiriting gloom.

When Yvette stepped down from the vehicle, she saw the Grand Elder brewing a steaming cup of tea, sitting on a stool at the entrance of the town, gazing into the distant skyline. Setting aside its weathered mechanical body, it looked quite like a solitary old man in a human village, every movement imbued with the vicarious vicissitudes of time.

"You've woken up a bit late today, Miss Yvette. Is this the secret to your cultivation?" The Grand Elder raised its teacup toward Yvette and then poured the hot tea over itself, signifying a hearty drink. Although the scene was abstract, Yvette had fully adapted to it and took it in stride.

"More or less," Yvette said. "Grand Elder, I'm preparing to leave."

"Leaving already?"

"Mm."

"I'll go inform everyone." The Grand Elder hurriedly stood up.

"There's no need. It's precisely because I wish to avoid such scenes that I am only informing you." Yvette shook her head calmly.

"Very well... I understand your intentions, Miss Yvette." A sigh emanated from the Grand Elder's speaker. With a deep sigh, it said, "Since you wish for your departure not to be too grandiose, I shall respect your wishes. May the wind be at your back. In our little kingdom, it might take a dozen years or more for another outside visitor to arrive. I hope that one day I may see you again and hear you tell tales of your journey."

"I certainly will... Also, please remember to keep an eye out for that blonde girl for me."

"Haha, rest assured, my memory is quite good. I won't forget."

"Thank you. I'm off, then."

"Safe travels!"

"Goodbye."

With a brief farewell, Yvette did not return to the town. Instead, she climbed directly into the driver's seat and drove the motorhome toward a certain direction in the distance. It was the next stop she had planned long ago—another metropolis ruin within the territory of the United States of New Eden.

Looking in the rearview mirror at the Grand Elder, who was still standing at the entrance of the village and waving goodbye to her with clumsy gestures, Yvette's dark red eyes held neither sorrow nor joy, revealing no emotion whatsoever.

In truth, she had never been certain whether the various emotional fluctuations and reactions of automatons dedicated to imitating humans came from their hearts, or if they were merely a powerful form of feigned acting. This suspicion had permeated every single second of her life in the Automaton Town, and as time passed, far from fading, it had only grown more severe.

Perhaps, however, in her future travels, she would find the answer to this question.

...

The direction Yvette was heading was the northern part of the Black Tide Continent. According to her travel itinerary, she would traverse the northern, central, and southern parts of the Black Tide Continent in order from top to bottom before planning her next ocean-crossing voyage.

The north was naturally relatively cold, especially since the Black Tide Continent was already in the northern hemisphere, and combined with the late autumn season nearing winter, it was not long before scattered snowflakes began to fall from the sky. Even the aberrants along the road became increasingly sparse, as if they too were hibernating.

As she drove into a stretch of rolling mountainous terrain, she parked the motorhome near a snow-covered forest, then picked up the material repair fluid she had brought out from the dream and began spraying the vehicle. This was to prevent crashing into something in an area with poor visibility and shaking her already scrap-metal motorhome apart.

She had to admit, the material repair fluid of the scale-shedding creature was truly magical. After being sprayed and dried, the coated parts formed only a semi-transparent hard film, yet its hardness was astonishingly high. If attacked by low-tier base-type creatures, it likely wouldn't even leave a scratch.

Once she finished her tasks, the sky had grown dim. She went back inside the motorhome to sleep and planned to set off again early the next morning.

Before leaving, however, she intended to check if there were any wild animals nearby. If she could hunt a rabbit or two and roast some game, it would effectively increase her travel happiness.

And so, she wandered around in the snowy mountain wilderness. She didn't see any wild rabbits, but she did spot a few grey wolves.

However, their posture was exceptionally vigilant, as if they mistook Yvette for an aberrant. Upon seeing a slim, silver-haired girl, they showed no desire to attack whatsoever and instead bolted far away in an instant, showing a cowardice that was somewhat startling.

She watched from afar for a moment. Seeing that the pack of wolves dared not approach, she gave up. Just then, however, the sound of a roaring motorcycle echoing from afar, accompanied by a woman's scream that pierced the heavens, caught her attention.

She turned her head and saw that on the opposite ridge, a blue-haired girl riding a motorcycle—with a rather familiar appearance—had suddenly rushed out, careening wildly down the snowy slope while screaming at the top of her lungs. Even more absurdly, shortly after she plunged down the hillside, following closely behind the ridge was actually...

A dragon?!

Yvette stood in place without moving, looking closer. She realized it truly was a dragon: a smallish black dragon with a wingspan of about ten meters and twin horns on its head. It spewed billows of flames from its mouth, continuously blasting fire at the fleeing Bing Yu. Relying on her motorcycle skills, Bing Yu was having narrow escapes time and again, and she currently looked to be in mortal peril.

Yvette's brows furrowed slightly, as she found it difficult to understand the situation.

Although archaeological research of the origin civilization had proven that in that ancient civilization era at least thirty thousand years ago, giant dragons did live on the land, and even clear skeletal fossils had been discovered—making the evidence ironclad—the problem was that this was a post-apocalyptic world, and humanity had been extinct for less than a millennium. Where had this black dragon come from?

Could this be a specially evolved aberrant that simply happened to look like a dragon?

Or... had it time-traveled here?

She immediately took flight, closing the distance toward Bing Yu. Seeing a ball of roaring flames about to land on the automaton girl, she instantly summoned a rudimentary defensive spell composed of water elements from afar, intercepting the inferno entirely in the form of a water shield.

This sudden turn of events instantly interrupted the black dragon's pursuit. Abandoning the automaton girl on her speeding motorcycle, the dragon shifted its cold gaze onto Yvette, then opened its jaws without hesitation and unleashed another breath attack.

Yvette stood motionless in place. Red runes quickly spread across her entire body, enveloping even her black dress.

After taking a bath in the raging flames, she stood unharmed in mid-air, hearing the black dragon let out an angry roar.

Yet just as she prepared to test what other tricks the black dragon had up its sleeve, she noticed it suddenly turn around, beating its wings as if it intended to make a run for it.

Naturally, that was not going to happen. A fierce cold current surged forth from a ring of blue runes that lit up around her.

The frost bullet of the present was no longer confined to the shape of a bullet; it possessed far more variations. Calling it "frost control" was perhaps much more fitting—the same applied to her other spells as well. After all, the architecture had been completely reset, roughly equivalent to programmers tearing down a mountain of spaghetti code and rewriting it from scratch. The only remaining connection was likely just the shared elemental attributes.

Amidst this pure white chill, the black dragon, which had not flown very far, immediately stiffened all over and plummeted straight down into the forest below, snapping several saplings and kicking up a flurry of snow dust. When Yvette landed before it, she could clearly hear the wails and lamentations coming from its mouth.

"Damn it, why is there such a powerful human mage in this ghost of a place... and a female mage at that... Could she be that evil god? Is she really that evil god witch? It's over, it's all over..."

It could actually speak human language, and in standard Glow speech at that. It really was a time-traveled black dragon... Hearing the familiar term "evil god," the corners of Yvette's mouth slowly curved upward, revealing a tiny, ambiguous smile.