Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 956 - 955: The Hidden World of Dragonkin Society

The dwellings of the Dragonkin—in the tales of bards and playwrights on the Loren Continent, they are described like this:

Dragons build their lairs at the centers of ancient volcanic craters or deep within eternal glaciers. Depending on their clans, they draw power from either searing magma or merciless ice. Sometimes dragons also live in castles or towers, but they rarely build such refined residences themselves. Instead, they simply occupy the houses of human beings or other weaker races, and most of the time—almost all of the time—they turn these exquisite, comfortable castles, rich with history, into an absolute mess, until some brave Knight or a lucky adventurer happens to defeat the dragon that has occupied the castle, bringing an end to this dreadful waste and destruction.

—Thus wrote the famous Anzu Era playwright Duoergong Jabandell in his work ”Dragons and Dens”.

Gawain came to the edge of the ”inner balcony,” leaned his upper body slightly over the railing, and looked down from on high at the scene within the Dragon Nest—

He saw a vast circular hall, supported by exquisite and magnificent pillars. Some kind of alloy structure that human beings could not yet comprehend had been assembled with seamless precision to form the innermost ring of walls in the hall. At the outer edge of the hall he could see mechanical devices in a dormant state, small drones busy maintaining equipment and scrubbing the walls, and strings of decorative lights. Another set of lights shone down from the dome, illuminating the center of the hall: there, a silver-white circular platform lay, its surface decorated with intricate relief patterns—its vast scale and delicate structure would leave even the most exacting artists awestruck.

He turned back and looked at where he was standing—this was an internal residence, built halfway up the mountain. Part of its structure extended into the mountain, connected with that enormous circular hall below, and the different levels were linked by elevators and corridors carved through the rock. The other part of the residence lay beyond his current line of sight, leading toward the outside of the mountain; Gawain had already visited it once. There was an astonishing skylight room where one could bathe in starlight or sunlight, and a lovely viewing gallery. All the windows were controlled by mechanical devices and could be opened, closed, or filtered at will with a single spoken command.

Melita Ponia called her ”lair” a ”simple industrial-style renovation”—according to her, this style was one of the more low-cost options among the popular decorating trends in Talronde in recent years.

”I wonder what those bards and playwrights on the Loren Continent would think if they saw this scene,” Gawain withdrew his gaze from the Dragon Nest, shaking his head in amused exasperation. ”Especially the ones who are so keen on telling stories about dragons...”

”Most of them wouldn’t think much of it—because the best bards and playwrights specializing in ’valiant heroes slaying evil dragons’ are actually from Talronde,” Melita Ponia, standing beside him, puffed out her chest and said proudly. ”We’ve supplied about eighty percent of the finest ’evil dragon’ scripts in the human world for nearly a thousand years...”

Gawain gave this Lady Dragon a look, utterly helpless. ”So all those rumors like ’evil dragons live in volcano craters’ were originally made up by you lot. Maybe stop complaining about human beings making wild guesses about your lifestyle.”

Melita Ponia thought it over and was easily convinced. ”All right, that does make some sense...”

As she spoke, she turned and walked toward the other end of the internal residence. ”Don’t just stand here. All you can see from here is the cavern. The view from the balcony on the other side is much better.”

”Do all your Dragonkin houses... take this form?” Gawain followed in Melita Ponia’s footsteps, asking curiously as they walked. ”I mean this structure where you have a large lair paired with a smaller residence.”

”Most of them are like this,” Melita Ponia said. ”We have a Dragon Nest big enough to accommodate our dragon form, and then we build a refined ’little house’ inside or beside the Dragon Nest. The Dragon Nest is where we can sleep for long periods in Dragon Form or adjust and recuperate our bodies, while the smaller residence is the ideal place to enjoy life in our human form. Of course... not every Dragonkin does it this way.”

”Oh?” Gawain raised an eyebrow. ”There are exceptions?”

”Some less particular Dragonkin only prepare a Dragon Nest for themselves and do all their daily living there. Our human form is much smaller than our true body, after all, and takes up very little space, so a casual bit of furnishing in the Nest is enough to meet our needs,” Melita Ponia explained quite earnestly. ”Nuoletta is like that—she doesn’t have a ’humanoid living room’; instead she dug a super-giant~~cavern in the mountain, much bigger than mine.”

While they were talking, they had already passed through the residence’s living room and corridor. The indoor lighting, controlled by Omega, adjusted continuously as the visitors moved, keeping every area within sight at the most comfortable brightness.

Hearing Melita Ponia’s words, Gawain’s eyes widened—every bit of local custom in Talronde was so novel and interesting to him that even how these dragons usually slept seemed like an entire field of study. He couldn’t help asking, ”So does Nuoletta not rest in human form normally?”

Melita Ponia shrugged. ”She built a bed of over a thousand square meters in the center of her Dragon Nest—the trip from the middle of the bed to the edge takes quite a while, but the upside is that it’s comfortable to sleep on in both dragon form and human form.”

Gawain: ”...”

Melita Ponia glanced at him curiously. ”Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Gawain spread his hands in helpless amusement. ”...I just suddenly feel... your Dragonkin lifestyle is really ’free-spirited’.”

At the same time, there was another comment he didn’t voice: this whole ”putting a thousand-square-meter bed in the middle of the bedroom” setup sounded awfully familiar...

Melita Ponia had no idea what Gawain was thinking. The topic had simply set her mind wandering, and after a brief silence she continued, ”Of course, there’s also a third situation.”

Gawain was taken aback for a moment, not quite keeping up. ”A third situation?”

They passed through the internal residence and stepped onto the balcony facing the outside of the mountain. The broad floor-to-ceiling viewing windows had been set to transparent mode. From this height and angle, they could clearly see the expanses of urban buildings at the foot of the mountain and the bright lights emitted by the gigantic factory complexes in the distance.

Standing at the edge of the balcony, Melita Ponia gazed toward the city. ”Some dragons only have a residence suitable for resting in human form, and they spend most of their time living in it as human beings.”

Gawain immediately furrowed his brow, but before he could voice his question, Veronica Moen—who had somehow walked up nearby—spoke up for him: ”Then what about their ’true bodies’? As far as I know, even though you can live in human form, you still need to release your true body to be eaten or to carry out maintenance...”

”There are specialized ’restaurants’ for being eaten, and if the implants in one’s body malfunction, one can go to a maintenance center or a privately run repair shop. Aside from that, Dragonkin don’t need to remain in Dragon Form for particularly long stretches. Putting away their true body also saves space and preserves their own strength.”

The more Gawain listened, the stranger it sounded, and at last he couldn’t help asking, ”What kind of Dragonkin would choose this lifestyle?”

”Poor dragons,” Melita Ponia said, ”or those whom Omega judges to lack sufficient capability to provide value in Upper Talronde, and who therefore can only live down on the plains and in the Lower City District as ordinary citizens.”

Gawain was finally struck dumb. ”You have poor people in Talronde as well... poor dragons?”

”How could there not be?” Melita Ponia sighed. ”We never managed to build a perfectly equal and infinitely affluent society, so an upper and lower tier are inevitably there. It’s just that poverty is relative, and you have to look at it from the perspective of the whole society—see the area where the city lights are densest? They live there, leading a kind of life that, from a human being’s point of view, is ’an incomprehensible poverty.’ The Senate allocates housing to those citizens for free, even provides for all their daily needs. Omega grants them access to almost all entertainment products, their monthly Enhancer quota is also distributed free of charge, and they even have access to some Hallucinogens that are not allowed to be sold in the upper districts.”

”They have everything. Talronde’s society will provide them with all they need, and as the condition—or price—for all this, lower-tier citizens can only accept this provision. They have no other choice. They engage in limited work that is in essence meaningless, cannot interfere in the affairs of Upper Talronde, and are subject to many other restrictions that... are not easy to understand from the perspective of the human world.”

Gawain frowned, while Amber’s voice suddenly came from the side: ”This sounds like... no need to work, you have a place to live, no worries about food or clothing, and plenty of entertainment. Why do I feel like that’s not bad at all?”

Melita Ponia turned her head and looked at the half-elf Amber, who was wearing a tangled and thoughtful expression. A faint smile suddenly appeared on her face. ”So, this is the kind of ’poverty’ that human beings from the Loren Continent cannot comprehend.”

”I can understand it,” Gawain suddenly said. ”Once you’ve developed to your level, maintaining sheer survival is no longer a difficult matter. Talronde’s society can easily support a huge ’non-productive population,’ and the cost that consumes is only a small fraction of your total social expenditure. On the other hand, if you want to put these members of society into jobs and give them the same work and promotion opportunities as other clansmen, it would generate a massive cost, because these ’low-capability’ groups would undermine your current highly efficient production structure.

”So, rather than bearing that kind of waste, you might as well just support them directly—after all, for you, it isn’t expensive.”

Amber stared wide-eyed as she listened to Gawain’s analysis, as if unable for the moment to fully grasp the picture he was painting. Veronica Moen cast Gawain a thoughtful glance, as though she too had pondered this issue before. Melita Ponia, meanwhile, looked astonished and surprised; she sized Gawain up and down several times, then furrowed her brow with an incredulous expression. ”You... actually thought of all that so quickly?”

”Just a burst of inspiration,” Gawain smiled. ”You know, I’m good at social simulations.”

”...This has already gone beyond the scope of social simulations,” Melita Ponia said in a peculiar tone. ”If a civilization hasn’t developed to a certain level, this should look like a violation of common sense to human beings.”

”Since I came back to life, I haven’t done many things that conform to common sense,” Gawain said offhandedly, and he did not let the topic drag on. ”Anyway... it seems I’ve just learned another obscure detail about Talronde.”

Melita Ponia fell silent for a moment. A few seconds later, she let out a breath. ”How was your rest? Interested in going out for a walk with me now?”

”Are we starting the ’tour’ now?” Gawain raised his eyebrows. ”Or are we just accompanying you on a stroll?”

”There’s no real difference between a stroll and a tour. There’s too much here I can show you,” Melita Ponia said. ”At this time, it should just be around dusk in Cecil Castle. It’s actually a great time to go out and wander around.”

”I don’t see a problem.” Gawain spoke at once, then looked toward Amber and Veronica Moen.

”No problem for me either!” Amber immediately sprang to her feet. ”My drowsiness is gone!”

Veronica Moen also nodded gently, indicating she had no objections.

Melita Ponia smiled. ”Very good. I’ll send a message to Nuoletta right now. Let’s go see Talronde after dusk together.”

Gawain nodded, then asked curiously, ”Where are you planning to take us?”

”You’ve spent half the day in the upper district of Talronde. You’ve probably seen enough of facilities like the Council Headquarters and the Upper Sanctum,” Melita Ponia said unhurriedly. ”So I’ll take you to see the middle and lower tiers of Talronde. We’ll go to the factory zones and the large corporate conglomerates, then head to the Lower City District on the plains—if Nuoletta agrees, we might even visit the Dark City. The Speaker asked me to show you every part of Talronde, but obviously we can’t tour the entire continent in just a few days, so we’ll pick a few representative spots... to let you see a complete and genuine Dragon Kingdom.”

After that, Gawain and the other two went with Melita Ponia to a platform outside the Dragon Nest. This broad platform, built halfway up the mountain, could accommodate dragons taking off and landing. In a sense, it counted as the ”front doorstep” of Melita Ponia’s home.

They had not waited long at the edge of the platform when sharp-eyed Amber suddenly spotted a slender, elegant white dragon flying in from the southwestern sky, then landing steadily in the center of the platform.

”Hey! Nuoletta!!” Melita Ponia happily rushed up as soon as her friend had come to a stop. ”You got here pretty fast...”

She had barely said half a sentence when the white dragon that had just come to a halt seemed to suddenly stumble. Her massive claws shifted a couple of steps on the platform, and in the next second, under the dumbfounded—and even somewhat alarmed—gazes of Gawain and the others, she stepped right on Melita Ponia’s head...

Strictly speaking, she stomped the entire agent young lady into the ground.

If that had been a human being, anyone below a legendary rank would definitely be dead or crippled.

But the very next second, Gawain heard Melita Ponia’s shrill scream coming from beneath the dragon’s claw, sounding still full of energy. ”Nuoletta! You did that on purpose this time!!”

”I lost my footing,” the white dragon lowered her head and rumbled. ”You know I’m not very used to your landing pad.”

”All excuses!” Melita Ponia kept shrieking as she scrambled out in a thoroughly bedraggled state from under the dragon’s foot. The elegant composure she had maintained in front of Gawain for so long was now gone without a trace. ”I’m keeping count—this makes one more time you’ve stepped on me!”

The two friends seemed to be interacting with great enthusiasm, while Gawain, Amber, and Veronica Moen watched from not far away, utterly dumbstruck.

After a long while, Gawain couldn’t help scratching his hair.

This trip to Talronde was truly worth it—he had once again seen a side of the Dragonkin no one knew about.

Just how many of these ”unknown sides” had he seen by now?