Chapter 384: Tied Memories

Name：The Dragon of Dreams Author：
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Chapter 384: Tied Memories

Mid Afternoon - Late Fall : The Library of Eternity, Atlas | Bahamut

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Staring into Hera's eyes after she bluntly admitted to stealing my money, I felt her smug look eating away at my willpower before I finally gave in. "Ugh, whatever... If you wasted it, I'm gonna make sure it comes out of your pocket." Averting my gaze, I quickly turned back toward the librarians.

But Hera kept her gaze on me for just a moment longer. "Huhu~, I'm fine with that..." Speaking warmly, she turned back to the librarians with a pleased curl in her tail before continuing in a casual manner. "In any case, we will pay quite a bit if anyone knows anything. Any takers?"

The whole room instantly fell silent as everyone's focus turned to their own thoughts.

But while I started having some doubts, after a moment, one of them started moving, sifting through a huge pile of books by picking them up and moving them in sequence as if to create a wave. -Did she remember something?-

Her focus seemed to heighten the more books she moved before, out of nowhere, she pulled up one book, opened to a specific page, and read it. "I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but..." Closing the book, she moved it over to me with her aura.

-Hm?- The cover read 'The Deep Black', and looked like an encyclopedia of some sort. -Is this a bestiary?- *Flutter* Quickly opening it with a flutter, I skimmed through it before suddenly coming to a stop about halfway through.

The page I stopped on was labeled 'The Continental Serpent', filled with text, diagrams, and images of a scale that looked like it belonged to a fish.

But it couldn't have come from something so simple.

And that was because of the text below the image. -'Retrieved from the deepest part of the Death's Gape, the scale measured four kilometers, by six kilometers, with a thickness of half a kilometer and the material strength of a young Elder stage bronze dragon scale'...- I had to pause after I read it. -What the fuck...-

*Fwip* Flipping the page, Hera poked her head in to read it, but her previously warm expression had turned stern, and her wings had relaxed. "Oh.. this was something they retrieved from before the war... I forgot about it..." Pausing to read, she spoke curiously. "Does anyone here know of 'The Scale of the Colosus'?"

-Hm?- It was something I had never heard of.

But every single one of the librarians nodded. "Of course."

"It comes up frequently in older texts."

Properly looking up, Hera started sinking into her own thoughts. "Does it come up in newer texts as well? We didn't see it mentioned anywhere in the first two layers, but this book looks new."

"That's because they're all copies of the 'Avgi Bestiary', which is already stored in the third layer." The clerk next to us quickly interjected. "It's very well known, and one of the most well-researched bestiaries in the world from before the war. It's one of the few texts that had enough copies to survive from the Golden Age."

"Hm..." Sinking into thought, Hera slowly pulled herself away. "Do any of you know of other places the scale is mentioned?"

There was a long silence that immediately filled the room as our eyes darted around at the various librarians.

But after a moment, a young voice met our ears. "U-Uh.. I-I might!" Looking over, I immediately set my eyes on a young pink-scaled dragon who couldn't have been much older than 30, carrying a large container of absolutely ancient-looking books.

-Huh?- She looked just like Chloe, but there were some differences. "Would you introduce yourself, please?"

But I had to be cautious too. -Is he trying to become a god?- Although I couldn't remember the details, he was someone I was on irredeemably bad terms with, but something about the idea of him becoming a god simply felt off.

"Did you.. remember something?" Hera spoke somewhat anxiously.

"Yeah..." Pulling myself out of my thoughts for a moment, I Iooked out toward the distant blue sky hanging over the horizon. "If it's what I'm thinking.. this might be a really big problem... But..." As my gaze thinned, my aura started warping the lightly colored sky around me. "Somehow I'm nervous it's not that simple..."

Suddenly becoming serious, Hera's gaze stiffened. "What do you mean..."

"I.. can't be sure..." -But my gut is telling me the idea of him wanting to become a god is a joke...- And that wasn't because he already was one. -If I remember right.. he never showed a hint of interest in the surface...- Living around the core of the planet, he had no interest in the life that had evolved on the surface, but rather cared more about the 'life' of the planet. -But even the Acardi documented him coming up to the bottom of the Death's Gape...- "Why..." I mumbled as I let out a stressed breath.

But while it was eerie, and had me stressed, at the same time I had to simply focus on taking things one step at a time.

Keeping most of my theories to myself, I followed Hera to Nkremo, a city in the northwestern mountains of Bahamut, in order to investigate her own theories.

Her idea was that the dragons could be worshipping the leviathan because of a huge scale that surfaced in the ocean. "There would be no reason for a cultist to be making a sacrifice somewhere with no religious significance, so I'm thinking we should check around Nkremo for one of the scales... Although I only remember them existing near The Forgotten Islands, it's possible one got dislodged and floated to the surface near there."

Considering how fast it got deep right off the coast of the city, it wasn't a terrible idea. The idea that the dragons unhappy with their choice of gods would turn to worship such a scale wasn't unlikely either. -But I'm not so sure it could be boiled down to coincidence...-

Something about it felt off.. almost as if an artificial scenario.

But the issue was, only time would tell.

Simply thinking about it got me nowhere. -Maybe it's time I reactivate the other laboratories...-

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