Chapter 153

However, how to progress to the next step depended on the fate of the battle on the surface.

I turned my attention to the detection wards even as I continued to heal her, trying to understand the changes. The battle was still ongoing, but with a lower intensity.

The group of three tried to retreat, the group of five followed after them, and the berserk one split his attention between the two groups. With that, they moved away, leaving the fake body on the ground without even bothering to check closer, taking its fate as given.

Interesting development after putting all that effort to defeat her.

With them drifting away, but the immediate danger was gone. But I didn’t hurry up to share that nugget with my guest.

“Well, it had been a good talk, but they discovered the tunnel and coming down. And I’m exhausted healing you. I should be going. Best luck to you,” I said as I stood up, even taking a step toward the tunnel.

The tunnel was too small to contain her. I wanted to see what she would do under the risk of being left to her devices.

‘Wait!’ she wrote. ‘Are you going to abandon me?’

“I don’t want to,” I said, stretching my acting capabilities to the limit to actually look sad. “However, healing you exhausted me. And you can’t exactly follow me through the tunnel, can you,” I added, pointing at the tunnel that was barely enough large enough for her head.

‘Still, you can’t!’ she wrote.

“I don’t want to, but after all that healing, I’m hardly at a point of joining another battle,” I said, having no problem misleading her about my mana capacity. “Too bad you’re too big to follow me,” I said.

There was a point to the dilemma I was forcing her. The way she had explained her own situation, carefully skirting over the reason for her presence, both in terms of her capture by the undead, and her objectives in the Mount Dread, was enough to show that she had a good idea about the value of information.

I was trying to goad her into offering something valuable, enough to ‘convince’ me to rework the tunnels, enough to allow her to pass. I could have directly blackmailed her for it, of course, but that would set a tone I wanted to avoid.

She didn’t say anything for a moment, before gesturing me to stop, her pasture determined. I expected her to offer a bargain. ‘Turn your back, and don’t look,’ she said instead.

I followed her order, and turned my back, my eyes closed. Amusingly, she thought that it would actually prevent me from watching her in a room covered with my own runes.

With my back turned to the dragon, I stretched my magic to see what was going on behind me. Partially because, even after saving her life twice, I didn’t trust her enough to ignore the flare of magic that was going behind me.

Although, that wasn’t the full explanation. There were many ways of detecting the nature of magic that was going behind me. Direct visual confirmation was hardly required.

My instincts — the same instincts that were telling me that the dragon was female despite having no real reason to think so — poked me to watch it to catch a show.

I watched as her magic covered her skin, turning her into a glowing silhouette of a dragon, before she started shrinking. It was not a spell I recognized. I forced my examination ability, trying to get a feel for the mana pattern, trying to understand what was the spell she was using.

It was certainly not elemental, and despite the glow it created, it wasn’t light magic. Despite the way her body shrinking with great speed, it wasn’t a Biomancy spell either. Not even close. I stretched my mana, letting it touch the glowing aftermath, trying to get a better feel.

Only to realize it wasn’t a spell at all. It was hard to explain as I didn’t fully understand what was going on. The closest I could categorize was a healing spell, and that was only because of the effect, rather than the working principles. She was using the unaltered nature of her magic to pull her real form.

Weirdly, that didn’t make her dragon form any less real. The simplest analogy was like flipping a coin. The faces were different, but it was still the same object.

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6226 / 6324 Mana: 6831 / 7750 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

Expert Craft [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 22/26]

[Helga - Level 22/26]