Charter 261: A dragon?

Ruella lowered her bow after the demon fell and then looked up at Haru and panted. She hadn't had time to gather her full strength and was still exhausted. But she had managed to gain enough strength to be able to defeat the remaining demons alongside Major Niu who was standing with two scythes that were attached to chains that wrapped around her wrists.

Haru hadn't seen either of them fight before but surprisingly their weapons seemed to suit them perfectly. He looked at them both for a moment and then sighed.

He was originally planning to fight them if he needed to since he didn't expect to stall them long enough for the two of them to recover their strength. It was lucky that the demon that led them was so foolish and spoke about something that Haru knew about already.

If Haru didn't know what he was talking about then he would probably have been attacked by them all at once and would have to fight with his life on the line. Although he was prepared to fight for his life he still didn't want to endanger himself too much. There was only so much luck one person could have after all.

And he didn't want to run the risk of his luck running out in a life-threatening situation. He felt relieved that he didn't have to fight them but also a little frustrated that he didn't have a chance to test his strength out.

He was no longer scared of cultivators at the nascent soul stage so that should have meant that he would have a decent chance of fighting against them but he didn't have the chance to because they were taken down before he could join the fight.

'That's a little disappointing but at least we got some information about their leader.' Haru thought as he remembered what the demon had said when he thought that he had the upper hand.

"This is bad…" Ruella said to herself before starting to pace slightly as she thought of what to do.

Major Niu seemed confused and didn't have a clue what anything meant anymore. Of course, she had been filled in about the general situation but the conversation between Haru and the demon wasn't something she could follow since she knew next to nothing about the upper realms.

"What's bad? Is it something I should be worried about?" Major Niu asked, causing both Ruella and Haru to look over at her.

"Yes. We should all be worried. If what he said was true then this is really bad." Ruella added and then turned back to Haru who had some questions of his own.

"Are there really artefacts that can allow you to go against the realm laws? That seems a little bit too much." Haru asked. He hadn't heard anything about that before but Ruella seemed to know more than he did.

"Yeah, of course, they exist. They were made for people in the upper realms to visit the middle realm without having to worry about their cultivation dropping. The demon clan may have gotten their hands on one of them and now use it to kill people in the lower realm since they wouldn't have a way to fight back.

We should tell everyone else as soon as possible. Depending on his cultivation there is a good chance that he could just kill us all himself and get it over with if we decide to drag things out for too long.

I don't see him standing by and watching his people get killed for much longer if he can in fact do something about it." Ruella seemed to be feeling a little defeated already. She had lost a lot of her fighting spirit from that fact alone and seemed like she was ready to give up depending on how strong their leader turned out to be.

Haru on the other hand thought about the situation some more. If there were just cultivators helping fight off the demons then there wouldn't be much of a chance that they would make it out alive. But they had a dragon on their side. Dragons had been known to stop wars with just a glance of one flying through the sky above the fighting.

If Lao showed himself then the demons would be sure to retreat but that would also cause more trouble to earth if they escaped. Dragons were now rare and a sighting of one was bound to bring even stronger cultivators to try to reap the benefits that a dragon's body could give them. And that was also something they couldn't afford.

Haru thought to himself a little more before coming up with a way to motivate her again.

"Well, we have one thing that they don't," Haru stated. Both Major Niu and Ruella stared at him with questioning eyes.

"And what's that? Ruella asked. She couldn't think of anything that they had which the demons didn't. She was too focused on the fact that their leader could be many stages above them in cultivation. Major Niu on the other hand was staring blankly since she still didn't have a clue what was happening.

"Well, we have you guys. You all are from the middle realm too aren't you? You have much more experience than most of the demons that have come here today.

They are expecting to fight regular cultivators from the lower realms. There are bound to be some things that you guys know that even the demons don't know of right.

Just think about the techniques that you know of. I bet if you all worked together you could take down a guy even four cultivation stages stronger than you. Even if their leader has an artefact that allows his cultivation to transcend the possibilities of the lower realm, I doubt that he is a match for you guys if you fight together." Haru said.

"Fighting together? It's so simple… Yet it might work." Ruella said to herself. Since she had left the black star sect she had been on her own and fighting together was no longer something that she was familiar with. She didn't even put that possibility in her eyes because she was so used to fighting alone and so were the rest of the cultivators from the upper realms.

They had decided to split up at the start of the fight to maximise the number of demons they could kill within a short time frame out of instinct and being used to fighting alone. But if they combined their strength then they would be capable of much more than was possible otherwise.

To Haru that plan was normal. Back during the war, mages would constantly combine their attacks with attacks of other elements to amplify the damage that it would do. It was his everyday life back in the army. Although he had decided to put his past behind him, he wasn't afraid to use his knowledge from that time in his life to help him from time to time.

Ruella pondered on the thought for a couple of minutes in silence before turning around suddenly and looking Haru dead in the eye with an intimidating gaze in her eyes.

"Haru… Did anyone ever tell you… That you're a genius!?" She shouted and then ran over to hug him.

"You make me so proud. If I had a grandchild like you it would make me so happy. I wonder what your parents are like? If they could raise you to be this smart then I guess they must be pretty amazing too aren't they." Reulla said while patting Haru's head like a proud parent.

"But it was just a bit of common sense. It's not worth praising me for something like this." Haru shouted out while being suffocated within her chest.

"Actually, I think that she's right. For someone to think of teaming up to defeat an enemy during a battle it takes a cunning wit that most people chose to ignore. A cultivator's pride is something that will always be their downfall.

If someone thinks they are strong then they will try to prove themselves to the people around them by fighting alone to show that they aren't afraid of anything. Yet if you meet someone stronger than you then you will be defeated.

It's the same as what happened the night when I first met you. Ninety-five had overestimated himself and gotten killed for being too prideful to admit when he was in the wrong. And that demon who had come and said he would kill everyone. He was alone and underestimated the strength of the people in front of him.

He didn't know that there was a dragon before him and his cockiness is what led to his death. People who are willing to throw their pride away in a situation like this should be seen as geniuses." Major Niu said before being interrupted by Ruella.

"What did you say about a dragon?" Ruella asked quickly as she thought that she had misheard what Major Niu had said.

"The blue-haired man that was protecting Haru… Isn't he a dragon?" Major Niu asked. She thought that everyone from the upper realms would have already known that but that wasn't the case at all.

"A dragon?" Ruella asked again but this time directing her eyes to Haru who sighed.

"Well… He's a half-dragon. But guess he can transform into a dragon if he wants to." Haru replied calmly. He had known Lao was a dragon for years and that fact no longer bothered him. But Ruella on the other hand froze like a deer in headlights with her jaw hanging wide open.

"I… I… I fought against a member of the dragon race and survived?" She asked herself in shock by the revelation that Lao was a half-dragon.