(Nov 30)

The meeting place was located inside of an abandoned village between the borders of our two kingdoms.

The fairies from the Kenava arrived before us, and I could feel them watching us as we entered the village.

Our king got off his horse and approached the Kenava group.

From the Kenava, a fairy woman with flowing white hair and noble clothing stepped forth and stood in front of King Allen.

Lily Lightsworth, queen of the Kenava kingdom.

She looked quite old, with slight wrinkles and subtle gray hair strands, probably around the same age as our king.

However, despite her age, she was brimming was energy. She too was an A ranker.

I didn’t leave my carriage, but I listened to them from afar.

“Hello King Allen. It has been a while… and Lord Briggs is here as well too I see.”

The fairy queen shook hands with our king as a formality and then looked over at Briggs.

“…”

Briggs didn’t say anything. He just glared back.

I had heard from Elder Vindal that Briggs once went crazy and attacked the Kenava so there must have been some sort of animosity going on.

Cornelia, who worked under Brigg’s order, commanded all the soldiers including me to come out and stand in formation facing towards the Kenava soldiers.

I concealed my dragon essence deep within me so on the surface I looked like an ordinary soldier. This was a good idea considering happens later.

There was a clear tension in the air between our human soldiers and the Kenava’s fairy soldiers as we stood staring at each other.

That’s when a I noticed a female fairy that looked strangely familiar.

I felt like I had seen her somewhere before…

At the time I ignored it since I didn’t want to get distracted, but now that I’m thinking about it, I have definitely seen her before.

Looking through my journal, my suspicion is right. I did see her before.

Near the very beginning of my journal, when I was visited by Brian and travelled to the city for the first time, there was a fairy who was travelling with us.

She was the same fairy that I saw among the Kenava soldiers.

She must’ve been a spy.

I didn’t even realize it until now.

The Kenava must’ve have been preparing for this for a long time now.

King Allen and Queen Lily, along with some of the more important figures like Briggs and Mona and a few others powerful fairies from their side, entered one of the buildings in the village and casted a magic barrier around it.

We soldiers were commanded to stand outside and guard the place while they would conduct the negotiation from within.

Due to the barrier, I couldn’t hear inside, but if I sharpened my senses, I could feel their presences and figure out what that was going on.

However, the rest of the soldiers couldn’t tell what was going on inside at all so everyone was nervous and afraid.

The Kenava soldiers stared at us, and we stared at them in silence.

Things were getting kind of tense.

We all knew that if things went south, then the soldiers in front of us would immediately become our enemies.

About half an hour passed and no one dared to speak a single word during this time in fear it might break the balance of silence.

Everyone was anxious to know how the negotiations were going.

That’s when I felt it… out of nowhere, an ominous feeling rushed over me like a crashing tsunami.

My entire body went cold.

The world around me literally came to a screeching halt as dragon’s mind was automatically activated.

My dragon instincts were screaming out.

I quickly looked around, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Every millisecond that passed, the eerie feeling that my dragon instincts were warning me of continuously grew.

What the fuck was going on?!

My dragon instincts have warned me of danger before, but this was the first time I felt sick from the sheer severity of the warning.

Was it because my dragon instincts became sharper? I didn’t know.

All I knew was that something was going to happen.

I quickly checked inside of the meeting, but they were still discussing things normally… no… it took me a moment, but I noticed there was something wrong.

Upon a quick scan of the room, I realized that the feeling of danger that my dragon instincts was warning me of was especially strong towards Brigg’s location. Something was going to happen to him!

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew I had to act, and so I did.

Since dragon’s mind was activated and time was basically frozen, none of the soldiers noticed me moving.

The only one who caught a glimpse of me was Cornelia who was the closest A ranker to me, but even she didn’t have time to react.

I quickly bolted out my position, while simultaneously transforming into dragonoid form and charged straight for the negotiation room.

The barrier tried to stop me, but I tore it apart and rushed in.

Due to my forceful entrance, everyone in the room immediately detected me. It was also because everyone in the room was an A ranker and had sharp senses.

Before they could react though, I dashed towards Briggs.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was doing since I was merely following my instincts, but then I looked into Brigg’s eyes.

His eyes were filled with hatred, anger and rage… but when he saw me, his eyes soften and was filled with trust.

This made me feel very weird.

Regardless, I jumped into the air and tackled Briggs onto the ground.

He didn’t even resist.

It felt like I was tackling a pillow.

But the moment I did so, a bolt of light blasted into the room through a window and pierced into my shoulder.

Despite all my defenses, including my hardened skin, thick dragon scales and even a layer of web essence, something managed to break through all that and lodge itself deep inside my flesh.

Everyone just stared in disbelief as I slowly got up and dug my finger deep into the wound.

I pulled out a bullet. Obviously not an ordinary bullet.

Upon gazing at it, I detected a subtle hint of dragon essence inside of the bullet…

There was dragon blood inside of this bullet. Pure, condensed, undiluted dragon blood. Just barely a single drop of dragon blood... however, even that single drop would’ve been enough to have crippled even A rankers.

I was fine since I’m half dragon and have already grown resistant against dragon blood, but if Briggs has been hit instead…

The Kenava… had tried to assassinate Briggs.

Briggs took a deep breath and smiled at me before slowly standing up and dusting off his clothing.

“Thanks Anthony. I would’ve been in trouble if you didn’t save me.”

Despite his smile being filled with warmth and friendliness towards me… I felt a sudden chill run through my body.

The feeling of danger hasn’t gone away yet. In fact, it was stronger than it was before.

And the source of it was coming from Briggs.

My dragon instincts weren’t warning me that Briggs was in danger, instead, my dragon instincts was warning me that Briggs was the danger.

“Anthony. Please run.”

I didn’t even have time to even blink before the world suddenly went completely black.

‘Eh?’

I looked around and couldn’t see anything.

It was pitch black all around me.

Total darkness.

It was so sudden. One moment I had broken into the negotiation room to save Briggs, and then suddenly everything went black.

I tried to move my body, but it felt extremely slow almost as if I was submerged in mud.

I tried to shout, ‘hey, what’s going on!’ but no sound came out.

I touched my throat, and I could feel the slight vibrations from my voice, but I couldn’t hear anything.

I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t hear.

I couldn’t feel anything besides my own body.

It was complete isolation.

A void of nothingness.

It felt… calming. Almost serene.

My body and mind felt like it was drifting off into space.

I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed since it was all dark, but I tried to close it anyways.

Dragon’s mind activated as I spent a moment think for myself and clear my thoughts.

A part of me wanted to stay inside of this dark void. It was calming. Almost felt like an escape from all the trouble of what was happening in the real world… but unfortunately, I knew I couldn’t.

I injected dragon essence into my veins as if it were steroids and forcefully tore my way out of the darkness.

As I did, my eyes slowly started to see through the curse that was casted on me.

A thick fog of black miasma enveloped the room I was in and was spreading throughout the entire town.

In the center of this black mist, was Briggs.

But he was unrecognizable.

His body pitch black, twitching, distorting in and out of reality.

His eyes were softly glowing, not a bright white as it was when I saw him in berserk before, instead this time, his eyes were murky and dull as if the light in his eyes were being tainted by his curse miasma…

My dragon instincts were ringing out so loudly that I had to actively put effort in to suppress it so it wouldn’t cause a splitting headache.

I had only heard about it a few times before, but I was certain when I saw Briggs like this…

…that he was in full berserk.