Chapter 3: The Threshold
Alas, the current Kai was nothing but a silkworm farmer.
He'd have made a decent living selling silk and continuing this ordinary lifestyle. Maybe he'd have even married the seamstress next door.
His ambitions were already long destroyed over the years, and he no longer yearned for his past glory. He just wanted to quietly live out the rest of his life growing his mulberry trees and raising his silkworms in a place where no one knew him.
Who knew that there'd have been a day when he would have somehow become involved with the famous War Goddess in a dungeon. Life's just full of surprises.
Closing his eyes, Kai also began to feel lost.
He fell asleep shortly after.
...
"Ziziziz"
'What's that smell? Are the neighbors frying egg rolls again?'
Kai woke up to the pleasant smell of food.
Splashing cold water on his face, Kai realized that the smell was coming from his own kitchen.
The War Goddess?
She's in the kitchen?
She can cook??
No way… not only can she survive a dungeon, but also cook?!
In the kitchen, a bamboo basket full of the fried rolls sat on the counter beside the frying pan, each one crispy and appetizing.
Immediately, Kai witnessed another shocking scene.
His guest skillfully covered Kai's most prized worms in squash powder, proceeding to dump them in the sizzling oil.
"My worms!" Kai howled.
"I was hungry, but you didn't have any other food left."
How could someone have the heart to eat these adorable worms!
For more than a month, Kai had been toiling over the silkworms. He was relying on them to bring home a bride since each of them could sell for a grain of silver.
"Why is it that, even though you look like a goddess descended from heaven, you fry worms in such a delici- cruel manner!" Kai cried out.
"I've seen these silkworms before. My subordinate used to fry them like this. They don't taste that good though... too oily," she criticized as she wrapped one in fresh greens, furrowing her brows as she took a bite.
'Not to mention the fact that you ate them, but you even had the nerve to call them oily and make that disgusted face.'
'They clearly look delicious!'
In the end, Kai gave in and grabbed a piece for himself. Folding it in the vegetables, Kai placed it in his mouth.
"Not you, little guy. These silkworms were meant to be eaten," Kai chewed as he reassured his pet who sat on his shoulder.
"There have been rumors going around that, since young dragons like to eat silkworms, any spirit creatures who ingests these will have a higher chance of morphing and should be captured," the War Goddess started.
"No wonder these silkworms have been selling so well recently! I thought some well-off ladies needed a lot of them to make silk for clothes or something. But it must be disappointing for the worms to become someone else's nourishment when they were meant to be spitting silk," Kai frowned.
"If eating these silkworms meant the evolution of a dragon, then it will be worth it. Even at the cost of hundreds of thousands of them."
"Dragons… are they important?"
"Very."
"Compared to you?"
"I can't amount to even one."
There was an extraordinary power in the land that allowed all animals the chance to evolve into dragons.
Despite that, it was still rare for one to go through that transition, making dragons so revered and powerful.
Legend said that every living creature had the potential to evolve into a dragon—a threshold to overcome on its journey of becoming a superior life form.
Dragons were majestic and breathtaking creatures, and their dominance was undeniable.
To them, the wild beasts and demonic creatures who dared to stand against them were nothing but mere krills and minnows.
"What's the point of human conflicts if dragons are so formidable?" Kai asked.
"There are infinite factors to the development of a dragon. It needs a certain amount of luck, and one will face countless obstacles. Humans are intelligent. Some find patterns in the morphing process to help younglings who have potential yet lack the resources to cross their threshold."
"Dragon tamers?"
"Mmm. One can become a dragon tamer."
"How about me?" Kai asked enthusiastically.
"You're pretty good at raising worms."
'Aw, she looks beautiful even when she's being blunt.'
...
City of Aeter.
Despite it being the crack of dawn, the sky was lit in a brilliant orange hue, akin to the color of flames, lighting up the streets to the point where even the most remote corner could be seen.
"Hurry, run! Run!"
"Fire, there's fire!!"
Slowly advancing closer and closer, a commotion could have been heard from the streets. A hoard of people ran for the outskirts of the city in panic, as if there were monstrous beasts chasing them from behind.
"CRSHHHHH!"
Suddenly, a rain of fire swept the streets, smashing into the roofs of numerous buildings and burning them to ashes as countless charred tiles fell to the ground.
A group of civilians were crushed by the blackened debris, miserable in their last moments as their bodies were engulfed in flames.
The startled, bucktoothed sentry frantically pulled out his saber, under the impression that a group of bandits had invaded the city to loot and destroy.
"GRRRRR~!"
Behind him stood an extravagant building, atop of which the head of a dragon peered, followed by a lengthy yet wide torso covered in fire scales.
"A DRAGON!!!!"
The sentry was stunned, staring up at the dragon as it steadily rose. He was frozen, entrapped in ice cold fear despite being surrounded by searing flames.
A Golden-scaled Fire Dragon…
It purged the streets of Aeter, raining down on hoards upon hoards of people with a hurricane of fire.
A tilt of its head, a breath, meant the annihilation of a once-bustling street.
A sweep of its tail, and an entire block became unrecognizable.
As for the commoner residences, the simplest contact of an ember ignited them, combusting the buildings to ashes within mere minutes.
In the short span of thirty seconds, the street was in ruins.
Some armed soldiers remained--prepared, fearless, skilled.
Yet all it took was one roar to burst their eardrums. Without as little as a fight, the soldiers held their heads and were reduced to a state of helplessness, fallen on their knees, crying out in pain.
The dragon slammed its claws mercilessly into the ground, refusing the soldiers a chance to retaliate as they were crushed to a pulp.
Even the military couldn't oppose the fire dragon, let alone the citizens.
A sea of flames flooded the city, and its once formidable army collapsed at the force of a single enemy. Soon enough, soldiers bearing arms escaped the city along with the civilians.