A broken dream

Alice’s POV

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Saramir and his people charged at us, but he was intercepted by Pat. At first, I thought Pat would be able to take Saramir on, but she was pushed back. Pat was able to output five hundred and ninety-two golems of strength when she used her abilities, which made me realise something. The only explanation was that Saramir has had his tribulation and stayed back for one month.

Pat’s paw-shaped attack was crushed and she had to fly to the side to evade Saramir’s green ball. Even from afar, we felt how much energy it had. I took a quick look at Chic too, who was covered in a yellowish light, which seemed to be solar energy unless my senses played a prank on me.

He has only four hundred and eighty golems of strength, but his technique gives him another forty. Hmm, he must have got it from a dungeon.

My observation was interrupted by a loud roar. Our enemies underestimated us and charged at us frontally, thinking that we’d be easy prey. Hiro’s heads struck the elves’ bodies like lightning and caught three of them off guard. His jaws snapped on the elves and tore them into two halves. Seeing that two of them flanked him and wanted to attack his back, I moved towards them and used Dragon’s Swipe.

They turned around to defend against it and although they succeeded, they had no time left to evade my sharp teeth and ended up in my infinite belly. Hiro used his tail to attack the charging elves and two of them weren’t quick enough to evade. Trusting my own body and my mate, I flew into their ranks and used my claws, teeth, and tail to slaughter them. Their limbs and heads fell to the ground each time I attacked, but there were enough of them to encircle me.

Both me and Hiro used Hydro Mind on the elves behind me to stun them and then killed them in a hurry to make a path out for me. I felt many attacks flying towards my back, but Hiro shot Hydra’s Wings towards the incoming attacks. Although it was crushed and they reached his body, they weren’t strong enough to cause serious wounds. My mate started to heal at a disgusting speed and even the elves stopped for a moment in their surprise.

Don’t stop in a battle, morons. I couldn’t help but make fun of them.

These elves had four hundred and fifty to four hundred and sixty golems of strength, which was above our allies’ strength. But thanks to our opening show, they still decided to stop watching and finally moved in to help us. We had to swing our tails and swipe with our paws with all of our strength, which started to tire us out.

Just as I finished another elf, I noticed about fifty elves who flew back and pointed their weapons and palms towards us. I didn’t even have the time to move when I saw numerous attacks flying towards us.

We moved all of our energies towards our scales and created a protective layer of energy around our bodies. As the downpour of attacks reached us, we felt them eat through our energy shields and bombard our scales. Even if we were resistant, we weren’t immune.

I felt a few of the attacks break off my scales and hit my inner-scales. Noticing the weaker spots, more and more attacks flew towards it and soon I felt them penetrate my inner-scales.

[We must attack or something or we’re going to be killed.]

[Alice, move behind me and I’ll charge forward. I can regenerate quicker anyway.]

Without any questions, I did as Hiro requested and followed behind him. We reached the elves in the blink of an eye and I used all of my attacks and my body to tear them apart. They had no way to defend against a raging dragon from up close and as soon as fewer people attacked Hiro, he was able to help me out. At first, they wanted to change their focus and attack me, but when Hiro too started to slaughter them, they seemed to be unsure of what to do.

But their confusion was perfect for us and the humans and beastmen to join in and help us kill the remaining elves. When we finished, I saw his tattered and broken off scales and deep wounds on his body. Are you alright? Will you be fine?

[It’s fine, don’t worry. You know that I can regenerate quickly,] he replied as he put his huge paw on the top of my head. [In fact, if I could sit back for a short amount of time and use my energy to heal my body, I’m sure I’d be in top shape in just a minute! How is the battle with Pat, Chic and Saramir?] He asked nobody in particular as he turned towards the trio and started to heal himself in the meantime.

Pat was using similar attacks compared to ours, though hers were weaker. She was able to release about forty more strength with each of her swipes than her original strength, meaning five hundred and ninety-two golems of strength, almost reaching six hundred, which was the strength of a cultivator at the first stage of the World Founding Realm.

On the other hand, Saramir didn’t have as good techniques as Pat, so his attacks had about six hundred and twenty golems of strength. Although it’d have been hard for Pat to fight him alone, Chic was by her side and was helping him, even if their teamwork was shitty…

The higher star a divine beast was, the more powerful their attacks were when they transformed into their monster forms. This meant that one-star divine beasts would increase their strength by ten percent in their monster forms, while Pat did it by fifteen percent. Their strength would increase corresponding to their stars until reaching True Divine Beasts, whose strength increased by twenty-five percent. Our skills also provided us with an addition of sixty golems of strength, while Pat gained only forty from her skills.

This meant that Chic’s skill was on the level of a two-star divine beast, which showed how rare his technique was. Not many attacks were as strong as two-star divine beasts’.

We were done with the elves Saramir brought with himself so all that was left for us to help out the others! Hiro, after our performance, I just realised that we could have killed Wilhelm even if he attacked us, don’t you think?

[Eh? It could be… But I didn’t think either that we’d take care of the elves so quickly,] he turned his heads my way.

[Your teeth are all bloody and you should hold your tongue in your mouth… what are you, a dog?]

[Are you picking a fight?] he laughed.

[Well~ correct me if I’m wrong, but dragons were more popular in the stories in your past life, right?]

[I see you’re looking for some punishment,] he put his paw on my back.

[Yaay! I’ll gladly take it.]

[Pervert.]

[Hahaha, you’re one to talk! If not for your memories of your past life and meeting you, I believe I’d be still a pure flower, a white lily!] I shook my head.

[Uhm- I can’t say I’m sorry. My mind has been corrupted in the past.]

[I certainly don’t mind it, though~] I replied and seeing that his scales were mostly back, I flew towards Saramir. The true problem was that he was able to ascend any time if he passed the tribulation, which also explained his seemingly calm face.

But before I could reach him, something unexpected has happened. Ten elves arrived from the way of the city and their strength seemed to be similar to Wilhelm’s.

In the middle stood a blonde elven woman, wearing a golden robe. She looked elegant, but that golden colour attracted me. I wanted to sit on her and lie down on her as if she was a pile of gold! “Hello, humans and beastmen. It seems like you don’t know your places since you are daring enough to fight against our leader on our planet! We haven’t bothered with your little games before, but if you want to die so bad, we are going to help you,” the woman said talked as if she was some sort of god.

Shut up, I thought inwardly.

[I thought so,] and Hiro agreed.

After hearing this, everyone stopped to fight for a moment and Pat also changed back into her humanoid form to talk.

“Greetings, elders. Before you misunderstand something, I’d like to say that we never intended to fight, but Saramir wishes to kill my friends. If you could let us leave, I’d definitely owe you one,” she said.

[Nice! We need to advance only a single stage and these bastards are dead. I guess she noticed that we’re on the brink of breaking through to the next stage. Let’s cultivate while they’re chatting!] I told Hiro, only to notice he was already doing that.

You’re more selfish than I am… I pouted.

“Hahaha! Do you think that we would let you leave after killing so many of our powerful soldiers? I believe we should kill all of you so you’d atone for your sins,” the blonde woman said.

“And what if you killed only those two and let us leave with our people? They caused this, after all.”

“Oh? You wish to betray your friends? How unsightly, but they died because of your help, so I can’t say yes.”

The woman stopped chatting and charged towards us. Why are we always the first priority? I cursed in my mind. I’ll break through using you, bitch.

I rotated my energy and shot two Dragon’s Palms towards the woman. She raised her hand and shot the same sort of green balls towards me as Saramir. Our attacks negated each other, but I shot another two. Although the end result was the same, this time my attack seemed to be more powerful.

A smirk formed on her face as the other nine elves moved towards Hiro and the remaining humans and elves.

“Why are you so happy?” I asked.

“I’m looking forward to the face you’re going to make when your friends die. Ah, but please show your human face when it happens, your stupid dragon head doesn’t show much…”

Hiro started to battle alongside the others, but we were still watching out for each other. I shot another Dragon’s Paw towards the woman and flew to the side at the same time. Hiro’s attack flew past me and surprised the woman. She hurried to shoot another attack in defense, but it didn’t have enough energy in it and was crushed. Hiro’s weakened attack struck her body and she was pushed back a few meters.

As she coughed up some blood, anger filled her eyes, “You bitch! Fucking monsters!” she shouted, but at the same time, I felt my energy rise to a new level. A sense of warmth flooded my body as I broke through to the next level. The damned pressure of their domains finally decreased and with my new strength added, I knew she stood no chance. A moment later, I felt Hiro breaking through as well.

[Shall we dance?]

[Ah, but I think I suck at it,] Hiro replied.

[...]

Shaking my head, I flew towards the woman and poured my energy into my scales. She shot an attack towards me in a hurry, but I simply shrugged it off this time. She turned around and wanted to flee, but I caught her with my paw and bit off her head. Her blood sprayed on my paw and filled my mouth at the same time.

Tasty~

Turning around, I saw the remaining seven elves. It seems like you too had a taste of them.

[Of course,] Hiro replied as he made it six.

We quickly took care of the ‘mighty elders’, and then checked on Saramir. He made an annoyed face, probably because he couldn’t kill Pat and Chic and his people had been killed instead.

[Hey, Hiro. Maybe we should make weapons and armours out of our scales, don’t you think?] I asked.

[That’s a great idea. Our scales would grow back anyway in at most a day and it’s not like we need much considering their size. They’d be much tougher than any metal we could get at our level. Why the fuck have I never thought of this?]

[Because your mind is always filled with me~ You’re my slave and I’m yours,] I flew closer and rubbed my head on his necks.

[Haha, that might be true. Anyway, we should help out Pat and Chic,] Hiro remarked.

Now that we broke through, not even Wilhelm would stand a chance against us. Our monster forms gave us an addition of thirty percent of strength, but since our base was four hundred and fifty golems, we had five hundred and sixty-three in our monster forms!

On the other hand, the elves we killed wouldn’t be able to penetrate our scales anymore, no matter for how long they bombarded us. The beastmen and humans were startled when they saw the quick death of the elven leaders. They outnumbered the elves yet they weren’t able to cause any serious wounds, but as soon as we broke through to the early eighth stage, their enemies were killed in a short amount of time.

[Sorry guys, but we are unfair, however, you look at it,] I mused.

“AARGH! Just why can’t I kill them!!? And YOU DAMNED CAT TOO!!?” Saramir shouted all of a sudden as we got close to him. “Why are you so damned powerful!? And why are you even helping them!?”

As he finished shouting, Pat replied, “It’s because they are one of the leaders of the divine beast race. Although I’m helping beastmen because I’m closer to them, but I’m still not a beastmen. I’m a divine beast and I’m helping Alice and Hiro because they are fellow divine beasts. Considering that they are going to be the rulers of every Hydra and Dragon-type of divine beasts, why the hell would I want to be in a bad relationship with them?”

“I’ve helped them so they owe me. Now we might be similarly powerful, but once they reach the peak and leave me in the dust, I can ask them for a favour. Think about it, I’ll have level ten True Divine Beasts owe me!”

At least she isn’t hiding it. Well, it’s nothing surprising. But does this mean that every Hydra and Dragon is going to look at us like gods? That’s quite a weird thing. W-We should avoid people of our race! I don’t like when I’m being looked at like that! Norfindir was so weird too! It was as if she went through a mind-wash!

[Well, if we think about it, your race is called Dragon God. I imagine the one who named it did so for a reason…] Hiro replied.

Ugh- I’m not sure if I still want to meet dragons. They’re freaking me out, I shuddered.

[Yeah, but it’s only because of my memories. If you grew up alone, you’d be happy to see them fawn over you.]

That’s partly the reason I’m glad to have you, Hiro~

“What do you mean the rulers of every Hydra and Dragon-type of divine beasts? Are they True Divine Beasts?” Saramir furrowed his brows.

At first, he made a startled face, which turned into a smile in the next moment, “Hahaha, so it’s like that! Now I get it! I understand why they are so powerful! But I’m not going to die as you think!”

A divine light shone down on his body, ready to take him to the next realm. He wanted to run away, but he screwed up because we had great treasures! Hiro used the binding clock on him, which stopped his ascension! Both of us shot out Space Breath towards him and as the space around him collapsed he was sucked into the grey coloured thing beyond space. His smile turned into fear and disappointment as the grey mass devoured him.

If we thought about it, we were quite bad… We killed his son, asked for his help, and then killed him as well, along with many other elves. But if he bothered to educate his son, maybe none of this would have happened. Of course, we were to blame at as well.

Pat and Wilhelm came in front of us and reverted to our human forms.

“We thank everyone for helping us out. Although I hate owing and being indebted,” - I sighed - “if you need help with anything then just ask. Of course, you can’t ask anything just to be clear. I will still bite you if you do!” I muttered.

“We wouldn’t dare to!” the remaining people shouted.

Although they didn’t do much, if not for their help, I wouldn’t have had enough time to break through. It was only natural we would help them out once they needed help.

“Ehm- so if you don’t have any immediate tasks to do then we’re leaving,” I raised my brows.

“I don’t need your help right now. Like I said, I’m going to ask for things when you grow up to be way stronger than me! Oh, but I want to get an armour and made of your scales! That’s a simple wish after helping so much don’t you think?” a grin formed on Pat’s face.

“Such vile woman,” my brows twitched. “But okay.”

“Also. I want that armour to be made of Hiro’s scales,” she chuckled.

[Ignore it-] Hiro wanted to calm me.

“What’s your point, bitch?” I wrinkled my forehead.

“What a dirty mouth you have, hahaha. I just want to wear an armour made of Hydra scales! It’d be one of the rarest armours in the universe! Maybe I’ll be able to sell it later when I grow out of it~”

“Haah- okay. Come, Hiro,” I grabbed his hand and pulled on it.

Why that smirk? Do you want me to hit you?

[Noo! My little Alice wants to hit me!] he shouted in my mind.

[Shut up. I’ll be on top tonight!]

[As you wish, Alice-sama~]

[You’ve gone crazy…]

---

We quickly left the place and went back to Nelh Ennore to spend some time together and we also contacted Ellery and Max. They weren’t happy when they heard of what we did without telling them. But they knew that they wouldn’t have been able to help us, so they calmed down in a short time. They were advancing quite quickly since they both reached the peak of the fifth stage. I don’t know why, but they seemed to advance more while being around us.

“And what do you intend to do now?” Ellery asked after hearing our tale.

“We will have to unite the elves else the uncontrollable elves and beastmen will become much more aggressive. I’m sure we can still find a few powerful elves, so we just have to make them agree,” I replied.

“I guess that isn’t going to be so hard. Being a leader has its perks, after all,” Ellery nodded her head.

The next day we flew back to Woodmerrow in our monster forms and roared. Of course, every elf in the area heard it and left their houses to come closer and see what was the commotion about. Seeing that the crowd was large enough, I reverted to my human form to speak.

“Hello, everyone. We’ve killed your leader, Saramir, and several of your elders. Now Pat Cooley and Chic Wilhelm, the leaders of the other two race could easily overwhelm you, so I suggest if you don’t want to suffer and die, you should select a new leader and unite every elven city, village, and tribe!”

Of course, some laughed at us after hearing me and some even wanted to pick a fight, but after killing a guy at the peak of the ninth stage with a single move, they quickly stopped.

“I also recommend you to hold a tournament or something like that to select a leader! Of course, this is up to you,” Hiro added.

We told them what to expect, but the rest was none of our concern. In fact, we both knew that neither Pat nor Wilhelm would attack them. Two days later came the news, saying that a championship would be held among the elves to select the next leader. Only elves at the peak of the ninth stage were able to participate.

We attended the championship just for the show and the winner was a hidden expert with five hundred and thirty-five golems of strength! We killed the most powerful ones but there were still many talented elves. Saramir was so powerful only because he was already half a step into the World Founding Realm.

After talking in private with the new leader, called Uredrialia, and after prompting him, he told the elves to unite. The villages joined smaller cities, making them grow stronger. It took about a month for everyone to unite. There were hundreds of cities on Lark, but all had powerful cultivators, who would be able to protect the others. In the meantime, we also reached the early ninth stage and left Lark behind.

------

Ellery and Max went back to Morburn to train, while we were on Sypno with Pat and Wilhelm because they were about to ascend.

The humans were going to be weaker once their main pillar left, but this is also true for the beastmen. The elves would become the strongest, but they didn’t even leave their planet, so it was unlikely that they’d start a war. The new leader didn’t seem to be the ambitious type…

“How nice of you to ascend together. I didn’t know you liked each other,” I’d never miss the opportunity to tease her with Wilhelm.

“Do you want me to ask for even more things?” Pat growled.

“Haha- I’d never want that to happen!”

“Then be quiet, you stupid dragon!” she humphed.

[Noo~ My little Alice was bad-mouthed by a big, evil cat! But how am I supposed to fight a woman?!] Hiro mused in my mind.

“Why are you badmouthing me all the time? Do you want a beating?” I raised my brows. “Wait, I know something better~” I added, remembering my dream to pat her and play with her as if she was a pet.

“What do you want?” she stepped back as I started to walk towards her.

“I should pat you, don’t you think?” I smiled at her.

She closed her eyes and I felt her energy rise in the next moment, as clouds started to gather above them. Grr, she broke through just to escape.

Leaving the area, we watched them from afar since Chic broke through as well. It didn’t take long before the first lightning struck and they easily defended against it. The second one was much more powerful. They soon reached the fourth lightning, which was as thick as an arm. Cultivators of this level didn’t have to fear the elements since we were immune to them.

Everyone had to fear the Space Energy which was mixed into it! It was as if a powerful ninth stage cultivator would attack you with a strength similar to Wilhelm’s. Naturally, defending against one of your own attacks wasn’t that hard. It’d have been much harder if they were weaker. In this universe, the weaker you were the more likely it was that you’d fail your ascension. After taking on the tribulation they stopped in front of us.

“So what are you going to do once you ascend?” Hiro asked.

“I’m going to attend a school. I can be counted as a genius so I should be able to get into one. At that time, I can get a lot of pills and resources. There are way more alchemists than here…” Wilhelm replied.

“And you, Pat?” I raised my brows. “Although you broke my dream of patting you, for now, I’m still going to pat you, so don’t worry!”

“Screw you…” she hissed as she shook her head, and then replied.

“I might attend a school as well. Who knows if I can meet other Divine Beasts! Maybe I’ll also find a tiger type. The guild’s presence is also stronger at the higher levels, so I thought about joining it. The competition among humans and beastmen isn’t as bloody as here either.”

“That’s a good choice, we are also members of it. It’s just that we haven’t done even a single quest because of Wilhelm…” Hiro hung his head.

“Okay! We are going to visit it once again and go on missions!” he said with newfound interest.

“You didn’t even ask me,” I pouted.

“Why? Do you not want to go on missions?”

“What could be better than going on missions? Of course, I want to!” I exaggerated.

“Haha, okay. Let’s meet once again in the next realm. Considering your disgusting speed, I think that it won’t be long before I see your faces again,” Pat interrupted us.

“Goodbye,” Wilhelm nodded and a divine light shone on their bodies. They disappeared without a trace in the next moment.

“What’s your problem with missions?” Hiro hugged me from behind.

“Hmm~ I have nothing against it, I was just teasing you,” I turned around to kiss him.

“My wife is the best,” he mused as he returned the favour.

“My world is too pink when I’m left alone with you,” I giggled as he pushed me on the ground and looked into my eyes.

“Is it bad?” he brushed my hair to the side.

“Noes~”

“Good then, my dragoness.”