“Can someone please tell me what I am looking at?” Evelyne’s resigned voice echoed across the mansion’s courtyard.

“A dragon,” Fynn answered in a casual tone.

“And why is that? No, how?” The woman turned to Scarlett with a helpless expression.

Scarlett stood before the monstrous dragon carcass, closely inspecting it. Almost every member of the household was present here with her. Allyssa and Shin gazed wide-eyed at the beast close to her, while Rosa seemed endlessly amused by the sight. Garside was conversing with the guards near the courtyard entrance, discussing what had happened, while the rest of the staff gathered at the edges, their faces filled with a mix of perplexity, awe, and slight fear.

Encountering a dragon was an exceedingly rare event. The fact that one was lying dead in her courtyard was still something Scarlett was processing.

“I’m with her,” Allyssa said, her voice filled with disbelief. “How is this even possible? How is there an actual dragon in front of us?”

The group’s eyes turned to Scarlett.

She looked at them. “…I do not know what answer to give you. Do you perhaps expect me to have been the one who slew it?”

Dragons were formidable creatures, even in the game. This one appeared relatively young—despite its size already surpassing that of most whales—so it was likely an adolescent dragon. That placed it on the weaker side as far as dragons came. Even so, it would have lived for at least nearly a century. Scarlett doubted her chances against it alone. Even a group of level 60s could struggle to deal with an adolescent dragon. With the support of her entire party, and if she could go all out by using the extra mana from [Ittar’s Genesis], they might have a chance. Maybe. She wasn’t sure.

At the very least it would be comparable to the last boss in Abelard’s Doll Mansion, where she’d had Leon to help last time.

But that didn’t matter now. This dragon had been killed by something else. Judging from its injuries, it hadn’t stood a chance against its opponent. She glanced up at the window that led to the hallway outside her office, where traces of black fur could be seen through the glass.

“You sure you didn’t do it?” Rosa asked, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. “Maybe you mistook it for a bird and accidentally knocked it down with one of your little flame-water thingies.”

Scarlett gave her a long look. “Yes, I am sure that is the only reasonable explanation.”

The bard shrugged. “It’s only ever-so-slightly more likely than a dead dragon randomly falling from the sky and landing here.”

“They’re both absurd scenarios.” Evelyne wore a complex expression as she looked between Scarlett and the dragon. The woman really seemed to have a hard time figuring out how she should react to the situation.

Soon, Garside concluded his conversation with the two guards and approached Scarlett and the others. The guards themselves resumed staring at the dead dragon like everyone else, their eyes filled with incredulity.

“My Lady,” the butler said, offering a short bow. “None of the staff members I spoke to seems to know what happened. One of the guards reported passing by the courtyard twenty minutes ago, and there were no signs of the body then. The people who first spotted it claim that it simply appeared when they weren’t looking. No one heard any sound indicating its arrival.”

Scarlett shifted her attention back to the dragon, studying it. The surrounding stone didn’t look damaged, so it hadn’t come crashing down. That would have made a lot of noise anyhow. It couldn’t have been dragged here either. Some type of teleportation magic had to have been involved. The Loci hadn’t detected anything, but that aligned with Scarlett’s previous experiences with Empress. The cat clearly abided by rules of her own.

The puzzling aspect was why Empress had suddenly brought a dead dragon to Scarlett’s home like this.

“Did no one see anything suspicious at all?” Evelyne asked, turning to Garside.

The man shook his head. “I am afraid not, Lady Evelyne. This servant apologizes for the staff’s lack of vigilance.”

“It is all right, Garside,” Scarlett said. “I do not expect any of you to know what happened.”

“Your word humble me, my Lady, but our negligence is still unforgivable.”

“It is not. Expecting anyone to have perceived more in this situation would be unreasonable.”

Evelyne looked at her. “So, you do have an idea about why there is a dead dragon in our home.”

Scarlett pressed her lips together. “…I believe it might have been a gift.”

The younger woman blinked, and the others gave Scarlett bewildered looks.

“…A gift?”

Scarlett nodded. “Most likely.”

Evelyne brought a hand up to her head, running it through her neck-length hair as she turned away in disbelief.

Fynn approached the dragon’s body, kneeling next to it as he examined one of its damaged and torn wings. “This is an ashenwraith dragon,” he said, poking at it. “They live in the mountains surrounding the Ashen Plains.”

“The Ashen Plains?” Allyssa gave him a puzzled look.

Next to her, Shin knitted his brows. “It’s a region on Baajirr, famous for the dangerous monsters that inhabit it.”

“Great, thanks. That tells me a whole lot.”

Shin gave her a look as if he wasn’t surprised by her lack of knowledge. “Baajirr is the continent west of Zovivios. It’s said to be mostly desert, so not many people live there.”

Allyssa’s eyes widened. “It’s from that far away? Then how did it end up here? Are we sure they don’t exist here in the empire as well?”

Fynn shook his head and looked back at them. “They don’t leave their home in the Ashen Plains.”

“Then how do you know about them?” the girl asked. “You talk as if you’ve seen them yourself.”

“I was taught about them by the ancestors.”

“…Right.”

Fynn directed his gaze towards Scarlett. “Whatever did this toyed with the dragon. It likely targeted the wing first to force it to the ground before attacking the neck.” He pointed at the deep gash across the dragon’s neck, from which thick black-and-red blood was flowing out. The stone beneath showed signs of dissolving where it was touched by the liquid. “Dragons aren’t easily killed, even with injuries like this. It would have taken several hours for it to die.”

Evelyne shivered. “And you’re saying this was a gift, Scarlett?”

“That is what I suspect, yes.”

“From who? How? Why?”

Once more, Scarlett glanced up at the window where Empress was. She was unsure about how much she should reveal.

Evelyne fixed her with an intense gaze. “Scarlett, there is a freaking dragon in our courtyard. A Dragon.”

“Note the capital D,” Rosa chimed in.

“Yes, I mean, no—” Evelyne shook her head and turned to the bard. “Could you maybe take this a little more seriously? What if a herd of dragons suddenly descends on us for revenge, or something equally ludicrous?”

“I would if I could, but per your own words, there’s a ‘freaking dragon’ lying dead before me.” Rosa smiled. “It’s hard not to see it all as one big joke. I would recommend trying to find the humor in it. Makes it a whole lot easier to look at things from the bright side.”

“And dragons don’t live in herds,” Fynn added.

Evelyne stared at the two of them for a few seconds, then looked back at the dragon. Finally, her expression relaxed a little as she turned back to Scarlett. “Could you please explain why I shouldn’t be panicking about this? Please?”

Scarlett met her eyes. “…As I said, it is most likely a gift, so there is no reason to be concerned that anything more will happen. As for the how and why, unfortunately, I do not know. I…suspect the reason might be because of the milk.”

Evelyne gave her a dumbfounded look. A second passed, and Rosa burst into laughter that echoed over the courtyard. The staff members eyeing them from the side gave the bard befuddled looks.

“…The milk?” Evelyne asked.

“I knew there was something special about that cat,” Rosa cried, wiping away a fake tear.

Allyssa looked back and forth between them. “Cat? What cat?”

Evelyne’s expression froze, and she stared at Scarlett. “Is she talking about that cat I saw outside your office? The one that…” She blinked. “…You told me to show the proper respect.”

“Her name is Empress,” Scarlett said. “Or at least that is what she goes by. Her actual name and title are longer, but I am afraid that I cannot remember it fully.”

She’d only heard it once, and about half the places and terms in it had been unfamiliar to her.

“Wait, wait, wait just one minute.” Allyssa waved her hands as she gestured to the injuries on the dragon. “You’re telling me a cat did this?”

Fynn frowned. “Cats are small. It would have to be larger to do this.”

“Nonono, that’s not the issue here.” Allyssa shook her head. “We’re talking about a cat. It doesn’t matter how large it is, cats don’t kill dragons. Cats barely kill mice.”

“A really large cat could kill a dragon,” Fynn pointed out.

“Then it’s not a cat anymore! Then it’s a lion or… I don’t know! Something else!”

“The definition of the animal aside, I do find it difficult to accept that a normal cat would be responsible for this,” Shin said. He looked to Scarlett. “I assume there is more to it than that.”

Evelyne, staying quiet next to Scarlett as she seemed to process this information, suddenly jumped in the air with a loud yelp that grabbed everybody’s attention. At her feet, a black-furred cat had appeared and brushed against her legs, striding up to watch the dead dragon.

The others in the group froze, their eyes locked on the cat.

Scarlett cleared her throat. “I presume there is a reason why you brought this to my courtyard, Empress,” she said, and the cat turned to look at her with a pair of clear amethyst eyes. “The gesture is…appreciated. However, I must admit that I do not know what to do with it.”

Empress tilted her head, observing Scarlett curiously. Then the cat simply lifted a paw and started licking it while casting a lazy gaze over the others in the group, pausing momentarily on Rosa and Fynn.

“That’s not a cat,” Fynn said.

Empress paused, her ears twitching as her eyes narrowed at him.

“Um, Fynn… I think you should be really careful with what you say right now,” Allyssa warned. “That is clearly a…cat.”

The young man furrowed his brows. “Cats smell. This one doesn’t.”

Empress lowered her paw, peering at him for a moment longer. Then she strode up to him, tail standing up in the air, and stopped before his legs.

Scarlett watched in silence as he and the cat looked at each other, uncertain of what would happen. She felt it unlikely that Empress would get violent, at least.

Fynn’s nose twitched as he sniffed, and his frown deepened even further.

“I see,” he finally said. “I’m sorry.”

With that, Empress seemed satisfied and pushed in between his legs, continuing forward towards a group of servants who were looking on with confused expressions. One of them, a young blonde woman named Nichol, leaned down and began petting the cat as she approached, and Empress appeared to preen under the touch. If Scarlett recalled correctly, Nichol had been the one to have fed the cat milk when she was away in Windgrove.

“Okay, I feel so lost,” Allyssa said after a while.

“So do I…” Evelyne muttered.

Allyssa turned to Fynn. “What did you mean by ‘I see’?”

“I was wrong. She does smell like a cat,” he replied.

“You’re telling us you just happened to make a mistake?”

“Yes.”

Allyssa pointed over at Empress. “So that’s just a normal cat?”

Fynn looked at Allyssa like she had just said something absurd. “No. Clearly not.”

The girl gave him an indignant look. “What? That’s what I—!” She paused, as if realizing the futility in arguing that, and sighed. “Ugh, never mind.”

“One would have thought you’d learned by now,” Shin said.

“Quiet, you.”

Evelyne turned to Scarlett. “We’ll need to talk more about this in the future.”

Scarlett nodded. “Understandable.”

The younger woman then focused her attention on the towering dragon carcass in front of them. “For now, though… What should we do about this?”

“That is what I have been considering for the last few minutes.”

What did people do with dragon corpses here in the empire? Even if you discounted the usual items that a dragon dropped in the game, the materials you could get from one this huge had to be valuable. But she doubted there was a specialized agency specifically for dragon harvesting. In the past, when she had gathered resources from monsters, she had mainly sold them to alchemy and reagent shops here in Freybrook. The rarer materials were either auctioned off or sold to the mage towers through Evelyne’s growing connections.

“Do you believe the Brook Tower would be equipped to handle this if we contacted them?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Evelyne eyed the massive creature, scrunching her nose. “It would probably take them days, though. What if it starts rotting before then? It’s already causing damage to the stone.”

“It takes decades for a dragon to fully decompose,” Fynn said.

“Okay, but how long does it take before it starts to smell?”

The young man tilted his head. “…I’m not sure? I think it already does.”

Scarlett smelled the air, but she couldn’t tell anything too much yet. There might have been traces of ash in the scent—which fit with the name—but it wasn’t even close to what she would have expected from a beast of this size. That said, her sense of smell wasn’t as acute as Fynn’s.

“Well, regardless, I would prefer not to have a dead dragon lying in our courtyard for a week. It’s giving me the creeps just looking at it. Feels like it might start moving any second,” Evelyne said.

Fynn raised his eyebrows. “It’s dead, though.”

“Yeah, no, I agree with her,” Allyssa chimed in. “It feels weird.”

Garside looked at Scarlett. “Should I contact Brook Tower to inquire about the matter, my Lady?”

Scarlett pondered for a moment, then shook her head. “Delay doing so for the time being. I have a guest visiting later today who might be able to assist us with this issue.”

Evelyne turned to her with slight surprise. “Really? Who is it?”

“Dean Warley Godwin of the Elystead Tower.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “He’s coming here?”

“He is, yes. I received a message from him yesterday confirming the visit. I expect him to arrive in the afternoon. There is no way to hide this from him in that amount of time, so I may as well bring it up.”

Evelyne’s expression turned more serious. “…You met him during the ball, right?”

Scarlett nodded. “I did.”

“You told me that he seemed interested in doing business with us, but I thought you were referring to the Elystead Tower in general. I didn’t expect him to come here in person.”

“He is apparently quite an eccentric individual. But considering this.” Scarlett gestured at the dragon. “I believe he has good reason to take an interest in our house.”

Their eyes turned back to where Empress was now getting the attention of a group of servants at the edge of the courtyard, reveling in the affection as hands stroked her fur.

“Well, I can’t blame him,” Rosa commented.

Evelyne grimaced. “No, neither can I…”