The Necromancer and the Priestess (28)

Not only the grandpa dragon, but the rest of the group was also staring at her, probably thinking that she had gone crazy. No, from her actions before, she had already been crazy. It was just that she had leveled up now, and was even crazier than before!!

"What is it?" The grandpa dragon growled, a hot breath blowing over Yin Mei and the group when he opened his jaw, a sharp row of long teeth glistening white.

"..." Yin Mei's lips twitched. Pfft, what was she even afraid of? Okay, so this guy was stronger than her. But she had faced dragons before! Long Aotian, for example. Though they were different since one was a Western dragon and the other an Eastern dragon, and at that time, Feng Hua was of similar ability and skill... Bah! It didn't matter! The point is, she shouldn't let a difference in strength get her feeling shaky all over!

"Esteemed elder, may I be so presumptuous to ask why in the world the dragons have shut themselves off from the world? For a young child, it is too restrictive to expect them to restrain their curiosity and not want to go explore the outside..." Yin Mei thought for a moment before saying. She had called out in the spur of the moment, and so could only just manage to cobble together her words.

"You dare question us? You think us dragons can be put on the same level as human children?" He growled, but these words actually caused Yin Mei to bristle up. Excuse me, was he looking down on her beloved kids right now?

"I think that children have some of the same characteristics, no matter the race," Yin Mei said with a forced smile, a fiery aura surrounding her.

"Hoho, you have courage to dare say such things!" Sparks flew as the two glared at each other.

"Grandpa! You can't bully my servant!" Yin Mei wanted to ask when she had been given this servant status, but she didn't say anything, partially touched that Azurite was speaking up for her.

"Wha-What? You would speak against me for an outsider?" Old grandpa felt betrayed, raising his head up as he staggered backward like he had suffered from a fatal attack.

Yin Mei grasped Azurite from her head, bringing her down to hold her in front of her.

"Wha-What?" Azurite said cautiously, but seemed to not struggle from being held by Yin Mei anymore. Gasp, habit was terrifying! Although it had only been a little while since they met, she had already been tamed to this point... how scary...

"Little child, you agree with me right? Don't you want to see the outside world? Aren't you curious? You want to experience the things that you can't from inside this little valley, right?" Yin Mei asked, her eyes and expression extremely serious.

The little dragon's own eyes began sparkling. Of course, she could use magic to do all sorts of things from in here, from seeing these sights with something similar to clairvoyance to making a playground that imitated those outside sights. But, that was different from experiencing it herself. She didn't know why, but she just felt that it would be. As a child, she held boundless curiosity for the things beyond this little fenced greenhouse. Although she possessed knowledge beyond that of any ordinary child, perhaps it was even more so due to that that her curiosity was even stronger. "I wanna go see!" She said excitedly.

Yin Mei turned her around and held her in her arms, looking smugly at a now collapsed grandpa dragon who had suffered a two time combo of betrayal. "See? Even Azurite says she wants to go out to see the outside world! It's practically sinful to keep a child locked up in here. Perhaps for you old fogey- I mean, you esteemed elders may have already seen know everything, but it's different for a little child!"

Rosella was so impressed that she couldn't help but applaud, though she had not understood a word that had been exchanged between them. The rest of the group members were practically petrified in fear though. They felt that Yin Mei was definitely insane to actually stand up against a dragon like this. As for El, he just thought that this was something normal.

"Even so, I cannot allow Azurite to go outside." The grandpa dragon was quiet for a moment before standing up to speak.

Azurite immediately had on a teary eyed expression and Yin Mei felt angered on her behalf. "And just why is that?"

"That's a story that goes back to why we have isolated ourselves in the first place." He replied, shaking his head to show his unwillingness to reply.

But Yin Mei sat herself down. "Well we have all the time in the world! Speak already!"

Grandpa dragon: ...

The rest of the group: ...

He let out a sigh, his breath blowing over the group as he played down with a large thump, head placed before Yin Mei. The other members also all sat down, although some were groaning inwardly inside.

"Ten thousand years ago, the first of our kind fell victim to a strange illness. It was the first that we had seen of it. It turned dragon to stone, regardless of age or gender. We isolated ourselves in this valley in order to study it and find a cure. But even ten thousand years later, we have only been able to come up with measures to slow the spread. Azurite's parents fell victim to it before she even had the time to hatch..."

Unlike how the group had been thinking, the story was quickly over.

Yin Mei thought for a moment. "What if I helped you find a cure? If a cure is found, then you don't need to stay here anymore, right?"

The elderly dragon scoffed. "Little human girly, you dare to claim to be able to find a cure, when us dragons haven't been able to find one in the last ten thousand years?"

Everyone around her all nodded, aside from Rosella and Kai, who didn't understand the words of the dragon.

Of course Yin Mei wasn't confident about this. But... "More brains are better than nothing, right? Anyways, a fresh pair of eyes never hurt!" She did indeed believe this. Plus, Yin Mei did have knowledge of several different worlds crammed into her head, which wouldn't hurt. And to top it all off, these two kids sitting next to her were the male and female protagonists! Although they may not be able to figure out the cure, they would certainly be able to greatly help, right? After all, one couldn't underestimate the power of the great luck that these two people possessed!

The grandpa dragon snorted, but he did understand Yin Mei's reasoning. Plus, one actually couldn't underestimate the potential of other races. Although on average, a single human or demon would be weaker than a dragon by far, there were still those individuals that had been able to climb up to the level of dragons.

Because of this, in the end, grandpa dragon relented and let this strange group stay in the valley to research the cure.

El was afraid that they would be here for a very, very long time... he had one of the people with them send a message to the army that was waiting in the mountains on standby.

He really hoped that Yin Mei would give up soon, or figure it out even sooner... but he felt that he would be here for the long run...

As for Yin Mei, she was already focused on coming up with a cure. She would be having Rosella and Kai aid her, though not in coming up with ideas... but going out with an expedition group of El's soldiers to find treasures! That's right, she sent them treasure hunting, while she would be holing up here like some shut in NEET trying to figure out the cure.

First, she read through the information that the dragons had on the illness. Which was a lot. An unbelievable amount. So she had the librarian dragon (a cutie with a long green braid and glasses) bring her the most relevant information.

That alone took her several days to read through, even with her enhancing her reading speed with magic.

She then organized the information in her head.

There were no precedents of this illness before the first dragon had been infected. Considering the long life span and perfect memory of the dragons, Yin Mei didn't doubt this. They had records dating back to tens and hundreds of millions of years ago.

Aside from dragons, there was no other race that had appeared to be infected. Was it genetic? Race specific? Yin Mei couldn't say for now.

She looked at the case study of the first patient as well. The incubation period of this illness was unknown. They weren't even able to tell whether or not it was a curse or a virus or what. Firstly, they didn't believe it was a curse, since it did not have the characteristics of a normal curse - to interfere with a person's mana. Secondly, this world had no conception of viruses or bacteria, so there was no information there. But since dragons were so much more knowledgeable about magic than Yin Mei, she would rather go down the more scientific based route...

Anyways, going back to the first patient. He first showed signs of the illness when he was two thousand years old. First his left leg turned to stone, spreading from there to various parts of his body, and in no less than ten years, he had completely turned to stone. He could still survive with his heart turned to stone, but once his brain had been taken, then he had died.

After that, the cases were sporadic. Sometimes there were five or ten dragons showing signs of infection in one period, and sometimes, several years would go back without any dragons showing symptoms. The period of time that the stone took to spread also varied, anywhere from one year to a hundred years. The source location would also change, which could also affect how long the dragon would be able to spread - if both the heart and head were turned into stone, then the dragon would die, but if neither or only one was left unturned, then they could continue surviving until the end.

There wasn't any way of knowing how dragons were infected. It seemed completely random, and the dragons had been unable to pinpoint a pattern. If not even the extremely intelligent dragons could spot a pattern, then Yin Mei didn't think she would be able to either.

Genetic? Environmental? Magical? Virus? Bacteria?

The tenth day that Yin Mei was here, she visited the dragon graveyard - rather than a graveyard, it appeared more like a garden, with large stone dragon statues dotting the landscape.

Yin Mei felt that she could remember an illness in the modern world that was somewhat similar. What was it? Where the person would slowly turn into bone...? There was something about calcification... She couldn't remember a lot, so it was unhelpful. She also remembered reading fantasy novels that used this same "turning to stone illness", but again, because she couldn't remember anything, that was useless as well.

She had knowledge of another world, but she didn't have the memory or knowledge to recall anything useful. All those knowledgeable protagonists from the novels were fraud! When she went back to the modern world, she would make sure to memorize all sorts of useful information...

Because they were all stone, she couldn't even perform an autopsy. Using magic, she could see that everything was stone - inside and out.

She returned back to the library to look back over the information gathered by the dragons.

It couldn't be cured by healing magic - but that wasn't unexpected. Healing magic would only work if the healer had a basic grasp of what they were healing. Of course there was no need for detailed information like killing off this virus to cure this illness, but the healer would need to at least know the illness and what it affected in order to cure it. Because of this, many illnesses were still left incurable, with healers unable to deal with it - just knowing the basic symptoms wasn't enough. They would be able to relieve said symptoms, but it would only be temporarily.

They needed to be able to treat the cause.

And with this illness, they weren't able to find the cause, and thus were unable to use healing magic to cure it.

On the third week, the treasure hunting party came back. Yin Mei studied their loot. Yin Mei had implored to them to desperately search for something to cure the dragons, so although it didn't look useful, she was sure that it had its uses.

"What does this look like to you?" Yin Mei asked, holding up what appeared to be a small marble. She held it against the light, and the insides reflected a myriad of colors. It was like it was holding inside of it its own little space, a starry sky of blues, pinks, purples, and blacks.

El leaned over her shoulder, squinting at the thing. "Some sort of stone? It's a peculiar material that I haven't seen before." He said.

It was the one thing that the treasure hunting group had brought back that caught Yin Mei's eye, just for how pretty it was.

But, she knew that true treasures shouldn't catch someone's eye, but in fact be so ordinary or broken down that no one would look twice at it! After all, that's how it always was in the stories.

Even so, she couldn't help but feel that this little marble thing would be useful. With how it looked, Yin Mei's first guess was that it might contain its own world. It looked like it had a little galaxy packed inside of it, so wouldn't it make sense if it really was like that?

But, how would that be useful to curing the illness? Maybe she was overlooking something?

"Hmm... If only you had your memories." Yin Mei said, looking up to El's face. He looked at her with a questioning expression. "You would definitely remember more than I do..." But what was the point of regret?

That's right, in the end, what was the point...