Chapter thirty-four - I don't need servants or slaves

"This is... a lot of treasure..." Locke commented, astonished, he was standing in front of a room whose end he could not see, the entire floor of the room was covered with gold, silver and other valuable metals, besides jewelry and others precious stones.

"My father lived for a long time, in this room my father accumulated his possessions of only monetary value, he still has a room filled with weapons and armor that he took from his enemies and another one with elixirs and alchemical reagents" Byakuri replied.

'Dude... We are f*cking rich!' Tia joked.

'Why did he accumulate so much treasure?' Locke thought. 'It's not like he's going to spend this!'

'It is in the nature of a dragon to accumulate treasures, even a dragon from the sky is compelled to do so' Tia replied.

'But I don't feel that way' Locke replied.

'Our treasures are not material things' Tia replied.

"My father also had four divine treasures, one of which you have already obtained, the other three are the golden gate, the orb of the thousand spells and the jade mirror!" Byakuri started to explain. "The Golden Gate allows you to cross between worlds, even a sealed one, but it requires a great amount of magic to activate."

"This... is not useful to me, I can cross dimensions on my own" Locke replied. "But the part about entering sealed worlds interests me, so I'm going to take a look at this gate"

"I am happy with your will, my lord... The orb of the thousand spells serves to marge and multiply the magic of a group of magicians, allowing them to realize a power greater tham possible for one alone, that's how we sealed that world in which you fought with my father."

"Another treasure that is not useful to me, since I always fight alone... And the last treasure?"

"The jade mirror..." Byakuri's tone was little sad "The jade mirror allows you to contact anyone across the worlds, as long as they have one of it's scales..."

"Why the sad face?"

"Pardon, my lord! It's just...The jade mirror belonged to my mother... it was the only way for her to be able to contact her family, but my father took even it away from her..."

"..." Locke was speechless, he thought for a moment and sighed. "Keep the mirror for yourself!"

"What?" Byakuri questioned.

"If it was something important for your mother, I better stay with you" Locke started to stretch, "I don't need all this treasure either, there's no way I can spend all that gold so I'll just take a little, I'll give it a little look at the alchemical materials and elixirs but I don't care about weapons or armor... Your father called humans cattle, is there any human here?"

"Not here, my lord, but in some of the smalls worlds that my father controlled there are human kingdoms, every five years he entered those worlds and demanded human sacrifices and treasures, he devoured the humans and brought their treasures here"

"And you, have any of you ever devoured a human?" Locke's tone seemed dangerous.

"No my lord, the only ones my dad would let out of our world were my older brothers, so they were the only ones who ever tasted human flesh, but... you killed them all"

Locke could see that Byakuri's eyes were full of tears.

"...Do you hate me for that?" Locke questioned.

Byakuri looked Locke in the eye. "No, I do not hate you, even though I am saddened by the death of my brothers I know that they came to you with orders to kill you, it was their life or yours."

Locke scratched his head. 'Should I tell her that I ate her brothers?'

'I don't think it will change how she feels, but is this truly important?' Tia replied.

Locke decided to tell. "I didn't just kill your brothers, I ate they meat, that's how I gained the power to defeat your father" he was ready to see her expression turn to pure hatred, but she hasn't changed.

"I know, I can feel, and it is normal for a dragon to eat its enemies" Byakuri replied.

'How is this normal?' Locke asked Tia. 'Do I have to go around eating everything I kill? I'm not going to do that! '

'Just chill dude! F*ck the way others do! Do things your way!' Tia comforted him.

"Thankfully!" Locke commented aloud. "So Byakuri, seeing that all your living brothers seem to follow your lead, must I understand that they will hear you?"

"Yes, my lord. My father reigned with fear, he devoured and killed all his children with great potential, I was the only one who took care of my brothers and sisters, there are none of them who do not have affection and respect for me."

"Great, I name you leader of the whole kingdom, stop invading and demand sacrifices in other worlds, try to be better than your father!" Locke took the gold shackles out of the inventory again and held them. "I don't need servants or slaves, so I don't need this thing!"

Locke's arms became claws, he pulled the sides of the shackles hard, breaking them.

The golden handcuffs shone for the last time and crumbled to ashes, at the same time the golden rings on Byakuri's arms broke and disappeared, as did the rings on all his brothers and sisters.

Byakuri was incredulous, from the moment she was born her father made her a slave, the cold handcuffs on her wrists were a constant part of her life, she touched her wrists in disbelief. "You... you freed us... why?"

"Because I think the whole idea of ​​slavery is wrong, although it would certainly be easier to use this means to force you to do my will, it still wouldn't be right, even if releasing you culminates in a battle in the future I still won't regret it! Slavery disgusts me!" Locke replied. "I will not be your king and you will not be my slaves, if you do not attack me I will not be your enemy either!"

Byakuri still didn't understand, she fell to the floor, tears were streaming down her face, she bent down and shouted "My lord!"

"I'm not your lord, fish-girl, and you don't have to bow to me!" Locke replied. "I will take some of your father's treasures as compensation for the fight, but as there may be something important for you or your brothers in the middle of the items that I choose, so I will leave the choice of my... reward? Yes, I will leave my reward to you, separate what you think I deserve for freeing your people from your father's tyranny, I will come and pick it up in three days!"

"You will always be my lord! You saved my brothers and sisters from becoming food for my father! And me, you saved me from an even worse fate! You set us free! Stay and be our emperor! All of our treasures are yours! We will all follow you with all our heart!"

"I can't be your emperor, I'm too young for that, I am not mature enough for that much responsibility, and there is a lot that I have to do in my own world, you will be the new leader of your people! Keep your family in line! I'm leaving! In three days I will be back to get the deal!" The black dragon wings emerged from Locke's back and he took flight, moving away towards the exit.

Byakuri was still not believing, she returned to the throne room, the empty throne seemed strange to her, she sat on the throne stairs, the castle doors opened at that moment, her brothers and sisters entered through the door.

"Big sister! The handcuffs are gone! The handcuffs are gone! What's happening? What's happening?" One of them screamed, her appearance looked like a mixture of a human girl and a turtle, her proclamation was followed by shouts of happiness among all her brothers.

"How did it happen, my sister? We saw the new lord, flying across the sky far away, if he is still alive, how did the handcuffs disappear?" Another asked, he was a big, bald man, his skin was blue and he had a single horn on the left.

Byakuri took the lead, she faced the crowd, who immediately fell silent. "My brothers! Our savior is different from our father, he has a good heart and abhors slavery, he destroyed our chains and gave us freedom!"

"It can not be! Did he, did he just set us free? Thus? so easily?" The turtle girl was crying with happiness. "Is that really true? Are we really free? Is no one going to make us kill and loot? Will we be able to live without the fear of being eaten?"

"Yes, Kawa! We are free! Kōrudo, gather the elders among our brothers, our liberator will return in three days! He even gave us our father's treasure, he left the choice of his reward in our hands! We need to prepare our thanks!" Byakuri replied.

***

'Are you sure this was a good idea?' Tia asked. 'What if next time she tries to attack us?'

"I don't know if that was a good idea, I really don't know... but what else could I do? Keep them as slaves? The mere thought gives me a bad taste in the mouth... Let's hope it wasn't a mistake" Locke replied, he was flying through the sky, his wings were the only transformed part of him.

'I didn't expect anything else from you' Tia replied 'How are we going to get out of here? I don't feel any breach '

"Let's take a look at that golden gate treasure, maybe we can use it."

Locke arrived at the gate, there was no one else guarding it, he landed on the floor and retracted his wings, only then did he realize that they had destroyed the back of his shirt.

"I still haven't gotten used to it, I can't keep destroying my clothes every time I change..." Locke took another shirt from the inventory and put it on.

'How about adopting nudism? You will save on clothes and I will always have a nice view!' Tia scoffed.

Locke ignored her sassy jokes as usual, he touched the golden gate.

The golden gate had a strange circular shape, was made of black wood covered with gold filigrees and was standing in the air without any support.

Locke sent his mana to the gate, the mana surrounded the entire object and Locke could feel his magic circuits. His evolution had brought him many benefits, he now had much more finesse in controlling his mana and his dragon eyes could see the flow of magic clearly.

The magic circuits engraved on the gate were intricate and complex, like a huge three-dimensional puzzle, activating it itself was not difficult, Locke just needed a lot of mana and he had enough to activate. But Locke didn't activate the gate at once, he continued to analyze the circuit patterns and shapes, whoever made the gate was a genius and Locke was learning a lot during the process.

His evolution had not only removed the limits of his status, he had also provided enormous growth in all of them, with his increased intelligence Locke's brain was tantamount to a supercomputer, after 15 minutes Locke not only fully understood how the gate worked as managed to derive a completely new spell from it!

After taking off his shirt, Locke Released his wings and positioned himself in the air, his mana began to form a huge and complex magic circle around him, when the circle was complete he started to compress, enveloping Locke in a sphere , the sphere then expanded in a small explosion and disappeared.

In the insect rift, just above the old dilapidated village, now a vacant lot, a black sphere appeared in the air, expanded over a distance and broke, revealing Locke's appearance.

[Congratulations! The user has just created his first exclusive spell! Please name the magic!]

'You are crazy! You have crossed the dimensions without being through a crack! What if it didn't work? What if we got lost in the void between the worlds? 'Tia fought with Locke.

"It was a leap of faith!" Locke joked, "I knew it would work! Let's call it Dimensional Leap!"

'No more' leaps of faith 'in the future! I don't want you to take unnecessary risks!'

"A little late for that, don't you think? After all, since I found out about being a dragon, all I do is take risks! "

'...You're not wrong... Why didn't you go straight to Earth?'

"The entering emits a lot of magic and a small shock wave, if I did that on earth it would attract a lot of attention, maybe I will do some bases in the worlds that I have been through.

'It wouldn't be a bad idea...'

Locke started to look around, the village had been completely destroyed and the place was full of craters, the crack was intact so he didn't worry, he saw the forest in the distance with several felled trees, an idea crossed his mind.

Locke flew into the forest and started storing fallen trees in his inventory, he took them all.

'What are you going to do with all that wood?' Tia asked.

"I still don't know, maybe a cabin?"

'Do you know a place that would be great for setting up a cabin? The harpy rift! Imagine, a cabin in the mountains with a beautiful view, slightly close to that natural hot spring!'

Locke imagined himself sitting in front of a fire in the moonlight, cooking sausages with Hanna and Tia at his side in front of his cabin in the mountains. "Every man's dream... Maybe in the future! Now that I have collected the wood, let's go home!"