CH 86

Ning Chu first froze, then immediately asked, “Who died?”

His expression was hard to read, completely different from his earlier countenance, so the doorman subconsciously answered his question, saying two names. The names were unfamiliar, Ning Chu didn’t recognize them. He was slightly relieved and was about to ask more when the doorman kept looking into the distance, when he suddenly waved his hand anxiously to drive Ning Chu away, “Go, someone’s coming…”

Ning Chu hesitated briefly for a few seconds, before leaving the gate. He didn’t go far, but hid in a nearby corner and concealed his breath.

A few people approached the guard’s room, and Ning Chu heard a voice say, “What are you doing here?”

The doorman gave a few words of explanation, and the man snorted, “You better behave, if you dare to sneak students out again…”

Then the Academy doors opened, and a group of three walked out. From Ning Chu’s position, he could only see a silver hem sweeping by, heading in another direction.

Ning Chu was furious, he could never have imagined that the Church would be so blatantly direct with the Academy instructors. He circled around, found Wuuth and the two dragons who were still waiting for him to return, and quietly went in the direction the 3 people had left. Ning Chu saw that he couldn’t catch up with them, so he directly asked Third Cub to return to his adult form and fly over.

The Academy was in the middle of nowhere and few people passed by the road, so Ning Chu couldn’t care less. As the dragon approached, the three contracted beasts stopped in unison, while the disc in their arms began to react.

“Magic dragon!” One of them had a surprised look on his face, “Has the magic dragon really returned?”

They were just ordinary Church members and subordinates, completely lacking the strength to fight with a magic dragon,taking out the communicator in a panic to inform their companions. The sound of dragon wings flapping rapidly came from behind them, and the three contracted beasts whimpered and automatically returned to their master’s spiritual sea.

A few vines suddenly broke through the earth and wrapped tightly around the limbs of the three. They fought to resist, but just after clearing the vines, the communicator in their hands burst into flames and was burned in a few moments. The air sizzled as a red dragon stopped in front of the three, spewing heavy dragon breath from his snout.

The communicator was destroyed, so they were unable to relay any information and coordinates. Facing the dragon, the few people had no desire to resist, retreating while shivering in fear.

But just then footsteps came from behind. Why was there someone else approaching? The three people thought it was their companions who happened to be looking for them, and turned their heads to look.

In the middle of the road stood two student-aged teenagers, one wearing a gray Lance Academy uniform and the other was dressed in black. Wuuth’s appearance has long been spread within the Church, this was the man suspected of killing several Church members and an elder in the Academy, and most likely had a connection with the dragons.

The three of them recognized Wuuth at once and looked horrified. The black magic element appeared in front of them at some point, and the fog instantly materialized, like a pair of hands tightly choking all of them at the same time. They were defenseless in front of Wuuth, their faces turned red and they could only make monotonous syllables from their throats.

Ning Chu approached, his face as expressionless as Wuuth’s, “Better be honest, if you don’t want to die.”

He had no intention of leaving anyone alive and called out to behind him first, “San San.”

As soon as Ning Chu’s words fell, the three felt the pressure of the dragon behind them suddenly shrink, and a tiny red figure flew in and crouched on Ning Chu’s shoulder. It turned out to be… a young dragon. His body was covered in red scales, and his horns were black, almost an exact mold of the Scarlet Flame Dragon just now.

One of them shuddered and turned his head to look back, and the dragon was really gone. It seemed that the magic dragon and these two people had an extraordinary relationship. The roadside was still a little too open and anyone could see them as soon as they approached, so Ning Chu dragged the three back to the side into the woods. He looked at the shocked and fearful expressions on the three men’s faces and said in a deep voice, “Hand over your magic staff.”

The three didn’t dare to resist and carefully placed their staff at their feet before being tied together by Ning Chu with vines.

“What are you doing at the Academy?” Ning Chu interrogated them, “Tell me while you can, and if I’m in a good mood, I might even let you live.”

One of them, a short man, said, “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything…”

He was the highest ranking of the three, and he had seen Wuuth’s portrait, but Ning Chu’s face was unfamiliar. The short man remembered that after Wuuth disappeared from the Academy, there was also a first-year student who had disappeared from the Academy at the same time.

This student with the nickname “Ning” and Wuuth were very close. His identity was really mysterious, some people even speculated that “Ning” was the student who disappeared with Wuuth, but the magic element wasn’t right. And just now the vines from the wood talent and the flame that appeared out of thin air weren’t the works of the Scarlet Flame Dragon, they were most likely both from Ning Chu.

The short man basically confirmed it and his voice trembled, “You… You guys are really…”

He didn’t even know how to describe the tragic situation in the conference room. The Gale Dragon that suddenly appeared and left; the Scarlet Flame Dragon that appeared several times in the vicinity but couldn’t be traced; the two students that disappeared together; the mysterious organization that kept attacking the Church later… 

It wasn’t that the Church didn’t see the connection between these things, but the information they had was still too little to confirm their suspicions. They initially checked Wuuth and collected a lot of relevant information, but the aspects involved were pitifully few, and the traces left by Wuuth seemed to exist only in the Academy, plus, they didn’t even know where Wuuth’s home was.

In the Academy, Wuuth’s talent was so high that every teacher and student had heard of him, and he was practically undefeated in the arena. It seemed like… he only lost once? But in the end, in the eyes of the Church, Wuuth was just a first-year student. He wasn’t very old, so how strong could he be? Could one person really have killed everyone in the room?

So, the Church came to the conclusion that the Academy was hiding something, and they might even be the ones who wanted to go against the Church.

Josh was the first one they took control of. He was Wuuth’s teacher and he always believed that Wuuth was a good student, but he couldn’t tell what really happened after the teacher in the conference room was put under the sleeping spell that day. After Wuuth disappeared, every teacher and student at the Academy was questioned, but nothing came of it.

Then there were rumors of an organization deliberately targeting the Academy, killing members to take their belongings and even stealing 30 adult dragons, who also seemed to have some sort of connection to the magic dragons. During this time the Academy has been under control to prevent anyone from going outside, making the people in the Academy be on edge, so two instructors attempted to escape with a wave of students.

The Academy had a magic array that could summon a magic shield, but because of the lack of energy and the Church not wanting to invest too much in it, it was never used before they got the idea to escape. They didn’t succeed and were promptly captured, just when the news arrived that a large number of dragons had been taken away, and the angry Grand Elder in the Church directly addressed the two instructors in front of everyone in the Academy.

Since then, without the Church’s permission, no one in the Academy dared to escape. Lance Academy was located in a remote location, and almost all students lived on campus, so the outside world wasn’t aware of this, plus no one had the ability to resist. Since for some time, the Church wasn’t able to gather any useful information, they were ready to leave the Academy.

The few instructors who survived the conference room had tight lips, or they really didn’t know anything. Moreover, there was no evidence to prove that the group attacking the Church outside was connected to Wuuth, and no one had seen him kill anyone in the first place.

But just a few days ago, a portrait was passed to the Church.

The person in the portrait emptied the account of a deceased elder at a money bank, wearing a mask that covered the upper half of his face, and the rest of his features were almost identical to Wuuth. The late elder, who died because of an attack by the mysterious organization, had his account credentials stolen. There weren’t so many coincidences in the world, so Wuuth was indeed connected to this mysterious organization.

So the Church turned their attention to the Academy again.

If it was really Wuuth who killed the people in the conference room… But he didn’t strike at any of the instructors, and only used the mildest of slumber spells.

There was blood in the room, but not even a single wound on the teachers. This proved that Wuuth had some regard for the Academy. If he heard that something had happened to the Academy, he might return. However, before the Church could do anything, Wuuth really came back.

The three short men were planning to go off-campus today to buy some supplies. The Church didn’t allow anyone to enter or leave the Academy, and the small bazaar next to it was forced to close its doors, so they needed to buy enough food to store every once in a while. The Church did intend to use the Academy and his teachers to draw Wuuth out, but they didn’t want to eradicate everyone in the Academy, they couldn’t do that yet.

The short man told Ning Chu what he knew, while the other two men on the sidelines added to it.

Ning Chu sneered, “Can’t do it?”

“Who are you to blockade the Academy and detain the instructors and the students?” The vines tightened little by little, as Ning Chu’s tone filled with anger, “What right do you have to treat human lives like grass?”

Ning Chu wasn’t just angry, he was also blaming himself. When he and Wuuth had fled the Academy in a hurry, he hadn’t thought that such a thing would happen to the Academy. Or rather, he couldn’t have imagined that the Church wouldn’t even spare a group of unsuspecting instructors and students.

They were responsible for the Academy’s current situation and the two dead teachers. Ning Chu’s gaze grew colder and colder as the short man trembled and begged for mercy, “I… I’ll go back and tell them to leave…”

“Too late.” Ning Chu interrupted, “Didn’t you want to find a dragon?”

He raised his hand to touch Third Cub on his shoulder and called out, “Er Er.”

A young yellow-brown and white dragon emerged from Wuuth’s jacket and flew into Ning Chu’s arms. Ning Chu stroked Second Cub’s neck fur and said with downcast eyes, “This is the Gale Dragon, you know that, right?”

The three of them didn’t know what Ning Chu wanted to do, but they didn’t have time to be shocked and think, they were too terrified.

“Now that you have found  two magic dragons,” Ning Chu raised his eyes, “do you think you can escape their grasp?”

The three men couldn’t make any more noise and were dealt with by Wuuth’s hand.

Ning Chu turned away not wanting to look, stroking Second Cub, when he suddenly said, “Er Er, go and find a few dragon herds nearby and bring them here. The more the better.”

“Aowu?” Second Cub didn’t understand, but was excited.

The author has something to say: 

Second Cub: Making trouble? I’m familiar with this.