Chapter 399: Aftermath

The New Year holiday passed in a cheerful atmosphere.

While the common folk were still wrapped up in the festive mood, some people had already begun to notice that Shi Ying Town's guard duty and patrols had been raised by several levels compared to before.

The moment the holiday ended.

Curfews, reinforced city gates, nighttime inspections, and spell checks came one after another.

News of the dragon's attack, and its subsequent repelling, also spread on its own.

Some outsiders chose to relocate again because of this, but more chose to stay.

A dragon is certainly terrifying, but the fact that Shi Ying Town's Warden could drive it back proved the place's potential and strength.

Relocate again?

To the north is Coral Bay and the sea, to the south is the Kosh Plains crawling with beast-plague, to the west is the Desert of Death — only the east is left.

But the east is the very road they came by.

Along the way, with one's own eyes one could see: noble-toppling rebellions, sickeningly cruel monsters, road-blocking beastman bandits, natural disasters, mad-beyond-reason insane mages — who could guarantee anywhere is better than Shi Ying Town as it is now?

At the very least, that Warden is strong enough.

As for Shi Ying Town's Town Hall, they hadn't given a thought to whether these outsiders stayed or left.

The committee meetings these past few days had stayed firmly within the scope of dealing with the dragon.

Very fortunately.

All five committee members were local gentry of some years; those who stayed in such a remote little town in the first place already cared about old ties and were deeply attached to their hometown.

Now, every last one of them wanted to rush up and slay that acid-spewing black dragon.

An eighth-tier dragon's breath is no joke — it lingers and won't disperse.

And after being buffeted by that fickle winter wind, it gradually began to drift toward the farm district.

That's where the precious elven grain seeds Rod sold them are; whether they can pull through winter and early spring depends entirely on them.

Old gentleman Humbert, whose beloved adopted daughter nearly came to harm, reacted especially fiercely — according to himself, Laozi swears he'll level Coral Bay flat!

Lately he's been furiously writing letters and sending them out, apparently begging every friend he has for help.

Rod was dragged off to meetings first thing every morning.

Siege cannons, ballistae, catapults, and corresponding magical measures were brought up one by one.

Not caring about the cost, they actually planned to get a bit of everything — the local Shi Ying Town folk were fiercer than he'd imagined; if it dares come, they dare fight.

Still, these were mostly for deterrence; in a real fight they might not be useful.

A dragon can fly and attack at range, with thick hide and high damage.

Especially when Rod faced that black dragon Mikhail — the moment things looked even slightly off, he turned tail and bolted without a backward glance; one look was enough to see the sneaky bastard's true nature.

Rod did a conversion based on the spiritual values from the brass spirit-measuring orb.

He estimated that fellow's value was around 510 marks — quite extreme, even reaching the ninth-tier range in the setting.

But this dwarven brass spirit-measuring orb mostly references humanoid races' body size.

Dragons are born with an enormous natural capacity for spirituality and magic; this 510-mark spiritual mass is certainly not on par with a proper ninth-tier.

As for the watered-down seventh-tier dark elves who came to attack, most of them barely scraped 150 or 160 marks.

And the high seventh-tier one with the signature weapon black-gold warhammer should be around 270 marks.

Worthy of a man with a signature weapon — there's basically no padding in that number.

Rod measured himself again.

【314 marks】

Hmm.

From 312 to 314 made no real difference to Rod.

Before his advancement to seventh tier he should've been around 250 marks; after advancement he jumped straight to 312 — that was a real increase.

"314 marks versus 510 marks — the gap's a bit big, huh"

Rod felt a bit deflated.

The excitement of being praised by everyone for driving the dragon back a few days ago cooled off as well.

For a warrior like him, most of his spirituality goes into nurturing his body, so the brass orb's value also shows up in his physical stats.

In a straight fight against a dragon, the body he was so proud of would be crushed.

The reason he could break through dragon scales.

The 【Dragon-Type Special Attack +5】 obtained at the Bliss Faction party and Naolin's 【Grudge Pain Fire】 both helped tremendously.

So the only variable lies in his various spiritual arts.

That can't be reflected in numbers.

The new shared skill 【Yulia's Blood Detonation】 is a dragon-slaying skill; if used properly, it might really let him take on a dragon alone.

"Against an opponent with overwhelming force and a vastly different body size, stubbornly trading strength is pointless — gotta get speed and agility up"

Rod had always tended to overlook this point.

He was fast enough, sure — his style was all brute force and straight-line charging — but in the end he wasn't agile enough.

Among his spiritual arts there was only 【Swift Shadow Quick Step】, which he'd looted off a half-wolfman during the Ruins Brotherhood's attack.

If his Strength, Constitution, Agility, and Charisma could be quantified, the Agility column would definitely be the lowest.

Thinking of this.

He didn't even bother with the meeting — slipped straight out.

He spent an afternoon, browsed the Magi-Con Federation's market district, and ate at two of the snack stalls beside it.

One stall used an ultra-long parasite pulled from a Calvin brown bear's hindquarters to make fried skewers; the other was a mad-frog couple's body-surface mucus thick soup + fresh-squeezed signature raw frog eggs, dipped in Emerald Court-style sacred-tree wild-fruit juice sauce.

Rod's verdict was "sick" — he decisively gave them to the front-desk lad at the service hall.

At the same time, it was also quite a pity.

Didn't find any.

The Demon Control Union's spiritual arts have always been scarce.

The organization's essence is controlling magical disasters, so naturally the contents within are more related to that.

Spiritual arts, after all.

Compared to spells, the harmfulness is really not great; the worst case is just crippling oneself in practice, and very rarely does it clearly spread outward.

If you want to find spiritual arts, either join the army — there are tons of military spiritual arts inside.

Or else the Spiritual Guild, also known as the Adventurer's Guild.

There's a fairly large Adventurer's Guild in Stormwind City; Rod figured he might go browse it tomorrow.

It's already evening now.

Going home to throw a silver party, let's go.

The Demon Control Union's teleportation point this time was on the east side of Shi Ying Town, near the relay station.

The moment Rod came out, he saw from afar the ghoul Pan Ni casting some spell among a pile of dark elf corpses.

At this moment, the ghoul Young Lady was wearing a white-gray full-length wrapped robe, her figure wrapped in it with curves in all the right places.

A hood with a thick fur collar was on her head, her face unseen; a strand of black slightly-curled long hair was brushed out from it, lying quietly on her right collarbone and chest.

Some constables showed fear on their faces, watching from afar.

The ghoul's surrounding aura was cold and piercing, brimming with negative energy, naturally instilling fear in people's hearts; even knowing she was a helper from Windwall Forest, they didn't dare approach lightly.

Pan Ni suddenly turned her head and spotted her master at a glance.

Immediately her hands and feet started shaking with excitement, looking very unsteadily behaved — a far cry from the cold composure just now.

"Master! Pan Ni has already successfully conscripted all the usable dark elf corpses! This is the last batch!"

Rod nodded.

The dark elf corpses were a problem — several hundred remains, even more than when the Ruins Brotherhood attacked last time; one careless handling and trouble would arise.

Last time it was precisely because of this that a ratfolk raid was provoked.

Pan Ni's undead legion could claim a batch.

The remaining unusable ones were piled together; after they rotted sufficiently, Rod would use 【Plague Domain】 to absorb the plague elements within, then handle them properly.

Indirectly dealing with the potential germ problem.

One could call it making full use of everything.

"Come, let's see your level."

Rod handed over a brass spirit-measuring orb.

Pan Ni naturally knew this thing too; she took it with an eager expression and channeled magic power into it.

The black crystal guide-piece on the brass orb blurred for a moment, then displayed the number 【178】.

"Noob."

"Huh? Wuuuuh—"

(End of this chapter)