Chapter 25. Shirone Kingdom

Mordred let out a breath and slowly made his way back to Hector.

Hector said, "Hm. Dragons are a fairly intelligent species of monsters after all. They felt it wasn't worth it to fight us, so they retreated."

"But there were no Dragon Kings, just ordinary Dragons..." Mordred murmured.

"Of course. Dragon Kings are rare. They would likely only live deep in the King Dragons' territory."

Mordred faintly smiled. 

Dragons were indeed powerful for a monster, but their disadvantage was arguably ordinary speed. They were also not at the level that human geniuses could achieve.

Although, in the past the Emperor Dragon-King of King Dragons Kajakut killed the 1st North God, and the 2nd North God needed a group of comrades to eventually defeat it. It was powerful.

But currently, no dragons of that level seemed to be alive.

There should exist Dragon Kings among the dragons, being a rank stronger than a typical adult dragon. Just one would be quite a challenge, but they didn't appear here.

To Mordred, ordinary dragons were livestock.

Hector formed a small smile on his wizened face and commented, "Flying through the sky and witnessing Your Highness slay more than ten King Dragons alone… I will have good stories to tell my grandchildren after we come back to Wyvern."

"Haha..." Mordred chuckled.

[Boss… You're strong!] Albion transmitted as he flew out of the bag, staring at him.

'Of course!' Mordred smirked at him. 'By the way, don't you feel bad that I was killing your kind?'

[Uh? What my kind?] Albion tilted his head. [Boss, are you blind? They are yellow. I am white. We are not the same.]

'That's… racist.'

Mordred laughed. At the very least, Albion was intelligent while most normal dragons are just wild beasts; it's natural he'd feel he's different.

After the battle, Hector and he began to dissect their prey and collect their loot.

In total, he killed nine King Dragons.

From that came nine Magic Stones.

The stones varied in rank from A to B. Most of them were A-rank Magic Stones, coming from adult King Dragons.

The entire corpses of the dragons were also full of valuable materials, but the only thing that was easy to transport were those Stones.

The Magic Stones gathered into a small pile.

"The Magic Stones of King Dragons are not too valuable because they don't have an affinity with any of the elements, but that's still a few hundred gold coins," said Hector.

Mordred thought, 'To think I've been worrying about gold just recently…'

All he needed to do was drop himself into a horde of dragons and kill some…

He guessed that there would be no one else crazy enough to do something like that, wheras those few capable enough, God-ranked beings, would have no money problems anyway.

As these thoughts entered Mordred's mind, Albion began to pester him by asking for the Magic Crystal that he refused to give him in the past.

'You know you peed on it?' Mordred thought, teasing him.

[But… you washed it!]

Mordred chuckled and gave him the Magic Crystal.

Albion swallowed it whole.

[Ah, I'm full!]

After eating the crystal, he quickly fell asleep back in the magic bag.

Mordred returned to where he left the speeder.

The area where they landed was not even, so when he canceled his Gravity Magic and left the speeder there, it could not land on its legs and crashed to the side. Fortunately, it was sturdy enough.

Mordred brought back the speeder, effortlessly carrying it in a Low Gravity Zone.

He then used Earth Magic to part the earth, hardened the walls and created a deep tunnel with rooms at the end where he planned to stay.

The entrance was big enough for a human or two to enter but a dragon could never.

One of the rooms he filled it with ice, turning it into a refrigerator.

The speeder, the supplies and the Magic Cores were all brought into the cave, along with a few hind legs of the slain King Dragons for food.

…

Mordred's reclusive training in the mountains began.

After settling down, he left his dwelling and began to practice his Saint and King ranked Magic.

Although he could record Magic Power flow inside his Magic Circuits, if he 'loaded' a spell like this, he could not modify it or put more Mana into it than the default value. So while he could cast it silently, it was not true Silent Casting.

For this reason, Mordred cast the Saint and King rank spells multiple times over the next few weeks for practice, laying destruction in an area of tens of kilometers around him.

No more King Dragons came to that area after the first day, probably having acknowledged Mordred as the new overlord of that territory.

The dragon corpses were worth even more than the Magic Stones, but Mordred had no way to take them with him, so he burned them all with massive Inferno before they began to rot. He only took a few of the largest dragon fangs with him as a souvenir.

While not casting Magic and while waiting for his Magic Power to recover, Mordred practiced his swordsmanship with Hector from dawn until dusk. Day after day.

Longsword of Light was an incredible offensive technique, but Mordred was also amazed by how great the defensive skill [Flow] was.

If compared to Servant skills, it would be a top martial skill that would give any Servant an overwhelming advantage in close-quarters combat. Regardless of the difference in strength, even if the opponent was a berserker with three times greater Strength parameter, one could use Flow to parry his blows with low effort and then use that force to counter-attack, doing it so smoothly that it was difficult to guard against unless one was also skilled in using Flow and had superior speed and instincts.

It was also a great way to preserve stamina in a prolonged fight.

What left a lasting impression on Mordred was the young Water Emperor Isolte being able to receive and parry the blows of the Fighting God in the novel, stalling him – a giant whose physical strength surely surpassed God rank.

A Water Emperor being able to trade blows with a huge berserker possessing Beyond God level strength? That was the strength of the Water God Style!

Mordred favored the Sword God Style, but he didn't discriminate between the three styles. His talent of a top-ranked Saber and passion for the sword pushed him to master all three!

Or perhaps it was also the fact that he had great talent for sports for once that he wanted to realize his potential.

And of course, there was also the threat of Hitogami.

He was greatly motivated in the first place, but as he continued growing stronger, training became addictive.

A month soon passed.

Practicing magic, training his Water God Style counters and eating dragon meat every day…

During this time, Mordred became much more skilled in using [Flow], reaching Advanced rank and apparently surpassing in his technique the level of an average Advanced rank swordsman.

The next step for him to become a Water Saint was for his Flow technique to reach the realm of his counters 'flowing like water' and for him to develop his danger detection and prediction ability to a certain level.

Given that Mordred had incredible predictive instincts as a Pendragon and could use Mana Sense from long ago, he had already fulfilled the second requirement, so he only needed to improve his use of Flow to a sufficient level.

On average, it took a talented person 3 to 5 years to reach the Water Saint realm from the Advanced rank, so Mordred prepared himself for the grind. His goal was to train harder than anyone and become a legitimate Water Saint within a year!

After managing sufficient levels of Silent Casting with all his massive-area spells, Mordred decided to move on.

He took a break from all spell-casting to recover his Magic Power to their maximum amount before setting off.

A few days later.

In the cave, a Magic Item lamp was giving off light as Mordred pointed at the continental map, saying, "If we fly straight north from here, we will end up right in the Shirone Kingdom. So that's the direction I want to take. We can sell the Magic Cores there and resupply. After that, we can fly straight west."

Even though he could travel quickly, navigating would still be a bit problematic without a GPS, but if he took this kind of route, things would be very straightforward. Luckily, Shirone was exactly in a straight line north from that mountain peak.

…

The next day, Mordred set off from the Dragon King Mountain range in the early morning.

Flying non-stop straight north, he reached the kingdom of Shirone in the early afternoon.

As the speeder drifted closer toward the capital city Ratakia, Mordred said, "There is a Prince that I know in the kingdom of Shirone! It might cause a commotion, but… I think it will be best if we land in the palace and ask him for cooperation in selling the Magic Stones."

After informing Hector, Mordred accelerated once again, soon beginning to fly over the city.

He imagined that many people were looking up to observe that strange 'bird' flying above the city in broad daylight.

Having arrived somewhere above the towers of the Shine Kingdom's sand-colored royal palace, Mordred paused and began to descend.

After looking around closer to the ground, he soon found an open garden-like courtyard where he decided to land.

Mordred descended and landed slowly and carefully, so by the time the speeder reached the ground, there were already a few guards that rushed to that place.

The Shirone kingdom's knights pulled out their swords and shouted out at Mordred's group:

"Who are you?!"

"Intruders, identify yourself!"

Hector stood up and spread his clear voice through the garden, "My name is Hector Grant. I'm a Water Emperor and a knight of the Kingdragon Kingdom. And this is the 16th Prince of Kingdragon, Mordred Kingdragon!"

After hearing this, the soldiers were surprised and slightly startled.

"Ah… You're from the Kingdragon Kingdom?"

"Do you have proof?..."

"Can't you men see the golden dragon on my chest and cloak? But if it isn't enough…" Hector pulled out a golden dragon token. "Here. We apologize for not giving any advance warning of our arrival."

"This… seems to be genuine…"

In the meantime, Mordred placed down the speeder on the ground and then turned toward the soldiers himself. "Can you inform the 3rd Prince Zanoba Shirone that I'm here? Tell him my name – it's Mordred."

Following that point, even more soldiers and knights gathered in that courtyard.

Mordred patiently waited for the men who left in a hurry to find Zanoba.

Ten minutes later, a tall and thin man in a tunic had arrived at that place in a hurry, his posture a mess.

The man's cheekbones were strongly visible, with hair in a bowl cut and round glasses on his face.

Behind him was a young swordswoman with short dark-brown hair.

Mordred faintly smiled. He could see that the two were clearly Zanoba and Ginger!

Huff, huff, huff…

Zanoba breathed roughly out of exhaustion as he rested his arms against his knees, a clear sign that he had run there at top speed.

While doing so, he looked up in the direction of Mordred and Hector, his eyes open wide. Amidst heavy breasts, he asked, "Is it true… That you're the 16th Prince… of Kingdragon?"

Mordred faintly smiled. "It's me."

"... Maaaasteeeeeer!!!" The man let out a loud yell and suddenly dropped to the ground as if struck by lightning, prostrating himself before Mordred on all fours and bowing to him in worship.

Next to Mordred, Hector was dumbfounded.

The gathered knights and soldiers were also completely dumbfounded by their prince's reaction. This was just… way too shameful!

Mordred was silent as he looked at Zanoba; that much was within his expectations, so he wasn't too surprised.

[Who is that loud weirdo…] The shouting was so loud that even Albion woke up and pulled out his head from the pouch.

In the real world, Mordred smiled and told Zanoba, "Can you get up? You're making a scene."

"Yes, Master!!!" Zanoba replied with vigor and suddenly shot up from the ground in a comedic manner like a cartoon character. "Master… How come you came to Shirone?"