360 Mindy's days at the Dragon Empire

After bidding Rou'khan goodbye, Mindy went back to her inn.

Wait. What?

Yes, that's right. Her inn. Let's rewind back a bit.

A few days ago, back at the Dragon Empire, as a token of appreciation for their new alliance, Zor'khan-dras bestowed upon Darian and Mindy new clothes fashioned by his family's tailor.

They were stylish. They were comfortable. They were luxurious. Most importantly… they were fireproof!

"Next time you bring back mana, you can do so without fearing for your modesty." Zor'khan assured Mindy.

Mindy's face only grew redder. She absolutely refused to say a single word since emerging from the Portal Room. Not One Word.

"Relax." Remian told Mindy. "I doubt that was the first time the Emperor faced a situation of having screaming naked girls appear unexpectedly in front of him."

Mindy raised her fist, then abruptly turned around, spread wings of fire and fled through the skies. Goodness knew where she ran off to.

But the Fortress Guards didn't stop her. In fact, based on the thoughts swirling around their heads, they were starting to believe Ling Yun was right, and that she really was a dragon in disguise.

As for Darian, they actually saluted him quite naturally. In their minds, he was a high level Draconian, and according to his strength, certainly a ranking Captain. Him wearing the same manner and style of clothes as the Dras Clan only served to heighten that impression. To be honest, considering his relationship with Kor'ag-dras, Remian felt that they weren't wrong.

"In any case, I think we can safely say that those two, at least, are completely immune to fire." Remian cleared his throat. "I believe it's best I leave the retrieval of mana from the other side of the Portal to them."

This basically left the pair of them completely free to do whatever they wanted in the Dragon Empire. All they really had to do was supply enough mana crystals to keep the Beacon running when it was built.

So, what did they do?

***

Mindy went shopping. Seriously, what else did you expect when you put a pre-teen girl in the middle of the biggest city in the world? Especially considering her current level of income…

"Ten million!" Mindy wisely set herself a budget. "I won't spend any more than that today!"

It was a good thing Darian was nowhere near. If he had heard her say that, he might have had quite a negative reaction…

But Mindy wasn't entirely wasteful with her spending. The first thing she bought was, in fact, a three-floor bed-and-breakfast inn by the riverside. The inn was actually in quite a bit of trouble at the time. Larger companies wanted to take it and raze it and build stylish hotels in complete defiance of the district's low density zoning, and it was only due to the united protests of their also small-building neighbors that they managed to hold out so far…

"Also, reserve the second-best room for my friend. He might need a place to stay too." Mindy added, thinking of Darian.

This would cut into their profits, but profits weren't Mindy's agenda in the first place. No, Mindy's true agenda was having exclusive ownership of the corner balcony of the best room overlooking the river…

The second-best room also had a balcony overlooking the river, but that one was much smaller, just enough to fit an armchair and some walking space. Mindy's balcony was six times bigger and overlooked both the street in front and the river. Darian's would overlook the river and some of the alley behind the inn.

The inn cost her three million lir. She might have overpaid, but she felt sorry for the couple.

The second thing she bought was a carriage. An actual, horse-drawn carriage. While she could simply fly around the Capital, doing so would attract too much attention for comfort. The innkeeper couple already had a pair of horses and horsecarts, and they had three staff members able to drive, so Mindy didn't worry over having a driver or horses to pull it. The carriage wasn't particularly ornate or special, and cost her only some ten thousand lir.

No, her dresses cost more than that… in fact, for the first day, while Remian and Zor'khan were taking a huge fleet to the Wildlands, Mindy spent most of her time in boutiques and malls. As a result, she found herself needing more wardrobe space, and temporarily had to use the one in Darian's room to store some of her purchases…

What could she say? She liked the oriental fashion styles favored by the Dragon Empire.

But yeah. There were a lot more stuff she saw, liked, and bought. This included airship parts and designs, souvenirs for her friends back home, specialized bird feed for Chirpy [1], and a wall-sized poster of hand-painted scenery.

Since then, Mindy had spent as much time in the Capital as she did in the Undead World. While Darian spent most of his days fighting zombies and collecting mana crystals, Mindy only had three trips with him and Ling Yun so far and had come away with fifteen purple mana crystals and dozens of lesser crystals in the process.

Until now, however, she had yet to find a single red mana crystal. Where the purple ones amounted to roughly 10,000 mana, the red ones were worth 100,000. Just one of those would be worth ten of her purple crystals. According to Ling Yun, you couldn't get them from the Lich group leaders commonly found around the base camp site. If you wanted red crystals, you had to fight Death Knights.

Mindy had never seen a Death Knight, but Ling Yun shuddered when he spoke of them. Basically, they were armored skeletons on skeletal horses, yet despite their similarities, their strength could be multiple times greater than a typical skeletal warrior. Ling Yun dared fight skeletons one-on-one, and he had a decent chance of holding off a Lich at least for a bit. But a Death Knight? All he could do, all he dared do, was run and pray he might luckily survive.

This, of course, only roused Darian's interest to challenge one even more. Still, he retained enough wisdom to do it cautiously. That was why he only ventured farther out from the base camp when both Mindy and Ling Yun were there to back him up. On top of that, he'd started looking into feasible traps they might employ in the Undead World.

So far, they still hadn't met any. All they found were more bands of lich-led skeletons and zombies. Mindy was actually quite happy to keep it that way and accumulate lower level crystals efficiently.

***

Unfortunately, her peaceful days of easy harvest came to a sudden, abrupt end.

The morning after her tea with Rou'khan-dras, Mindy went to meet Darian and Ling Yun at the portal only to encounter an incoming band of Draconian warriors…

They had been badly mauled. Every one of them was wounded, many trying to stop bleeding, several sported what looked like acid burns. Half of them had to be helped along by their fellows, and in four cases, carried in on makeshift stretchers.

Those stretchers couldn't survive the decontamination fires. Emergency crews rushing in to help had to bring in new stretchers before they could haul them to medical care.

"What happened?" Mindy asked Darian and Ling Yun, who were watching grimly from the queue.

Su Jing was there. "There was a Lich… but this one…" she shook her her numbly.

"A Lich? A Lich did all this?!" Ling Yun could only gape.

"This one was different! We thought it was the same, but… but…" Su Jing shut her eyes. "The group it led was bigger. There were creatures in it we've never seen before. There was a ghost-woman who screamed… and it tears your very soul…"

"Two Death Knights." Captain Yang Feng was there too. "It had two Death Knights at its command. We thought it was just following one of them, but it turned out to be the other way around. That thing wasn't any ordinary Lich. That was something else entirely."

They had banded together thinking to fight for two red mana crystals. With their combined strength, they should be able to hold off two Death Knights first and clean out the lesser Undead before ganging up and finishing them off. As for any old Lich, well, any of their squad lieutenants could handle one of those on their own.

But it turned out, that 'old Lich' was something older, stronger, and much more powerful than anybody could have anticipated.

"General!" shouts were heard and people instantly snapped to attention all over the Portal Hall.

Like a storm, in strode a tall man in dark steel plate armor. He had an imposing and grim presence that bore down on everyone nearby like a weight. He took off his helmet, revealing a scarred face, ice-cold eyes and short gray hair.

This was Gar'na-dras, General of the First Draconian Legion, commander of the Crown Prince's Honor Guard, the Crown Century. Supposedly, he was the strongest Draconian in the Empire, a man whose strength was estimated to be at the peak of the middle Earth Qi stage.

Middle Earth Qi! Ling Yun could only stare in awe, stars in his eyes. Even Mindy had to admit she was somewhat impressed. Darian though, simply took it in stride.

In Wildlands terms, a Middle Earth Qi martial expert would be a match for any of the Kings of the Wilds. But Darian had a bond with the Wood Emperor, the Great Dragon Kor'ag-dras! At his peak, he had fought and even killed a Tier-8, Emperor-class Spectre! Now that Kor'ag had gone into deep sleep, his power had waned, but even so, he wasn't so easily impressed by the power of Gar'na-dras.

"Withdraw all our forces." Gar'na-dras ordered. "Seal the Portal. On my command, nobody is to go through to the other side until after this threat is eliminated. Assemble the Crown Century and have the Second Century take over their escort duties for the day.

"I am going to deal with this myself."