The dragon's harem

When the next morning came, the entire capital was buzzing like a beehive. The news of the queens getting attacked at the mountain peak’s bridge almost broke the people. To think someone would be so foolish as to target the wives of their emperor, the women of that three-meter-tall giant who is a mountain-sized dragon with enough power to burn an entire kingdom to ash.

The people weren’t afraid for the safety of their queens, but were more concerned about the possibility of a large fight breaking out nearby and dragging them into it. So, all of the guards and knights were on high alert, despite knowing well that they couldn’t stand a chance against the monsters the queens faced.

One of the guards could clearly remember how Queen Matilda cracked the side of the mountain open with one of those monsters. Just the raw strength behind her punches should be enough to blast a hole through the heaviest of their armor.

Since the guards understood well that they couldn’t directly fight, they decided to focus on their job and mount the walls, siege weapons, and cannons. They also handled the preparations for shelter, escape routes to evacuate the citizens, and management of emergency supplies and resource networks.

The knights, on the other hand, were sent to scout the forest on horseback and survey the area, all while escorting people from and to Alina for free. They had to secure the roads, make sure no shady people were hiding in the shadows of the forest, and keep a tap on the adventurers going in and out of the forest. Since their enemy used corpses to make those horrifying monsters, it would make sense to be suspicious if a bunch of adventurers were lost in the forest.

But the people who had the most work today were the adventurers, as they were flooded with scouting requests, escort missions, and monster hunting for materials. The guild was so busy, in fact, that they asked the castle to send them some literate servants to help the receptionist with their job.

Nina had never had such work before in her life, and she was struggling to keep up with the increasing orders. Looking over her desk, she could see a line of over forty adventurers lined up and all waiting to either submit their quests, cash in their rewards, or complain about something.

Luckily, the adventurers in her line were all well-behaved and patient. No one tried to skip their turn or even complain about the line moving slowly; they are making her feel proud. Well, the last time one tried to make trouble in her line, they ended up with broken legs.

But her barbaric instincts were tingling now, and that was the reason she even bothered looking over the desk at the line. She has a feeling that someone might cause trouble today, and so she had to make sure to stay calm and not maim them by mistake.

Her eyes quickly stopped at an unfamiliar face who stood among the adventurers. A short halfling with fiery red hair, glowing blue eyes, and wearing a wizard robe that was a bit too big for her, coupled with a comically large hat as well. The moment Nina’s eyes landed on the wizard halfling, the woman looked back at her with a smile, making Nina aware that her gaze didn’t go unnoticed.

After a moment of silence, Nina went back to her work. The little wizard might be an adventurer from a faraway city, and if she is at least a bit too powerful, it would make sense for her presence to trigger Nina’s instincts.

After almost two hours, the halfling wizard finally reached Nina’s desk, and she wasn’t even tall enough to look over it at Nina’s face.

“I wonder if high heels would fix this?” The little halfling wizard mumbled with a faint smile, then started floating up until she could finally look at the desk and Nina behind it. “Are you here to submit a request, or cash an escort from another city?”

Nina asked a clear question, and the last part of it was meant to give the wizard halfling a hint that Nina knew she wasn’t from around here in a polite way. Wizards are smarter than barbarians, most of the time, so she should’ve gotten the hint.

The halfling wizard smiled, “Well, don’t worry. I’m not an evil stranger, by my own standards.” She pulled an old, battered adventurer’s card. “I want to renew my card. I stopped working as an adventurer a while ago, and now I want to get back.”

“Are you a wizard?” Nina looked at the old card. “I guess you secluded yourself for a while to study magic. No problem, I’ll look it over. Just give me a second.”

Nina pulled a massive, thick ledger that looked like an ancient relic and started looking through its pages. “Well, Lilia Bodhimicah, section L and B… you’re a wizard, right? When was the last time you used the card at a guild?”

To find the girl’s information, she had to look over the guild’s ledger and find a registered, valid quest or use of the card to use as a reference, and it was easier to find in this massive ledger if she knew the approximate date of the last use.

“Ah, I believe my last quest was a bulk order for dragon skulls, and since it wasn’t available, I ended up hunting some myself and sold the parts I didn’t need to the guild. That was about eight hundred and fifty-six years ago, on the second month of summer, and at the former, former capital.”

Nina froze for a long moment before she opened the ledge on that section and found the halfling’s quest registered there. Nina’s eyes looked at the ledge, then up at the halfling’s grinning face, then back at the ledge again.

“It says… you needed a hundred and fifty dragon skulls… and that you hunted them in a single afternoon.” For a moment, even Nina felt a bit afraid. It was then that the halfling blinked. “Ah! This quest might not be registered, but it was recent. I bought a dragon from your husband before, but I’m pretty sure Guildmaster Malta wrote it under the table to avoid causing a mess.”

“It also says….” Nina looked at the quest with wide-open eyes. It clearly stated that Lilia Bodhimicah was no ordinary wizard, and just now, Nina’s memories were getting refreshed. The halfling floating in front of her was the archmage of the wizard tower, and as Merlin warned her before, the goddess of magic, Yog.

It was the first time in a while that Nina felt afraid and threatened. This wasn’t someone she could defeat, even with her harrowing power.

“I want to have my card renewed, like… make me a new and active card. Time wasn’t gentle with this one. Look, it’s almost falling apart.” Lilia started spinning sideways. “In the meantime, I’ll look at the quest board.”

As Nina watched Lilia float toward the quest board, she sent a quick message to Merlin to inform her. Having this halfling here would spell nothing but disaster, and Nina wasn’t willing to tackle the entire mess on her own. Merlin is smarter, and she is a wizard as well, so she might find a diplomatic way to ask Lilia to leave without ending in the entire guild being burned to the ground, or stuck trying to sell a mountain of monster parts.

“Hey, Miss. Aren’t you wasting mana floating like that?” An old wizard approached the floating Lilia, and Nina immediately stood, getting ready to interfere if that wizard made any mistake.

Lilia looked at the old man with glowing blue eyes and smiled. “Oh! A wise and old one, indeed, I would be wasting a lot of mana if I were using a flight spell.” She clapped her hands, “But, I’m using a floating level 0 spell combined with a level 0 wind gust to move.”

She pulled a horrifyingly massive book that was almost twice as big as the guild’s ledge from nowhere and opened it up. “Look, here are the spells!” She showed the old wizard the spells, and pointed at them finger.

The wizard didn’t even look at the spells and was instead just terrified. “Where did you pull that book from? I didn’t sense storage magic.”

“Out of my ass.” She replied with a grin. “Armament and supplies sector, a demi-plane where I store all of my wizardry stuff. So, I used a teleportation spell instead of a storage one.”

“A demi-plane, that a ninth-level spell… no, you can’t even use it like this…” The wizard’s eyes opened wide, and then looked at the book Lilia pulled out.

“Is this your spellbook?” As he asked, she pointed at the number written on the front page.

[Issue 9854765211]

“No, it is one of my spellbooks… its number is… I can’t even read that.” She burst laughing.