“So,” Eqan held the stack of bones in his hands. His face adorned more bruises than the other two men, but he had the brightest grin. “Where should we meet to deliver the money?”

Riol and Shotky weren’t any better, and they were conversing with snickers and insults, blaming each other for their injuries.

“I’m always at the Marquis mansion,” I said. “So, you can visit the gates anytime. Tell the guards you are Lady Letitia’s guests….” I paused briefly, thinking about the manor and its crazy rumors. “Nevermind. Tell the guards to inform me about your arrival. I’ll greet you at the entrance.”

“Thanks for the meal,” the lanky said with a grin. “I knew we could count on you. Shotky is a braindead idiot, so forgive his ignorance.”

“Huh?! Should I trash you, bastard?!” That wasn’t an empty threat because he had already headbutted Riol.

“What about the tusk?” Eqan asked with a sigh and concealed rage, pointing at the tip of the tusk poking out of the backpack.

“Mission clearance rewards and perhaps a rank up,” I said flatly.

“Don’t tell me you killed the boar?!” Eqan's lips quivered as she stared at me, aghast.

“Him?” Shotky and Riol were in strange agreement, this time in their laughter.

“This lean-kept man can hardly carry that tusk by himself,” the shorty snickered. “I bet his lady had hired some party members to do the hard job and let him take the credit.”

The hairy-chested mortal wasn’t as stupid as his mortals. “If you killed the boar, then we know better than to make enemies with you,” he said sharply. “As long as Lady Beth favors you, we will condone you.”

These fanatics were easy to handle, so I let them be for now. More importantly, the three men were amusing and somehow served the role of the comedic trio really well. As long as they kept me entertained and didn’t stab me in the back, I would reach out to them for a few seconds of laughter. Going out of my way to help them is beyond my reach.

We parted ways amicably, without any gut-wrenching action or gore. Yule and I watched them as they disappeared into the thick trees and littered leaves. No one was bathed in sunlight in the late afternoon as the clouds of the winter were too thick.

“Shall we check out the cave, Yule?” I asked with a grin.

“Grr,” it shook its body for a good while. “Gwar Grr Gwar.”

I didn’t understand the hound, but it tagged along as I moved in the direction of the pith.

By the time we reached the entrance of the cave, I was sweating profusely, and most of the wildlife had disappeared despite the absence of terrific coldness of the winter. Something inside scared everyone, and that included mortals, because rarely did explorers step inside the Devonov cave. My lady had recently told me about it in one of her study decisions, and I certainly looked like there were no trails leading through the cracked crevice of the large monolith. There might have been some brave ones that hadn’t been documented in the stale history of the realm. I wasn’t interested because I didn't like reading books, let alone some descriptions of a cave.

Vines crept along the vertical crevice, the rest of the jagged rock covered with moss and grime. It stood out starkly from the locale, despite being covered with smaller rocks of various shapes and sizes around the monolith. Large was an overstatement and relative measure. Hardly could ever one see the glazed tip of the rock from outside the confines of the forest, after all.

The thicket surrounding us was silent, except for hooting howls and some bird cries echoing in the distance. The scrub was thin enough for one of me to fit in, and I doubted Garlan would ever creep through it without butchering the meat off his body. The thought brought a smile to my gaze, and I trudged inside, moving flat against the jarred rock. The crevice was almost a bottomless pit. That much, I would hand it to the monolith.

Once I stumbled out of the fissure, I removed my cloak and overcoat with it. The heat was unimaginable this close to the source, and I missed the winters already. I regretted ever hating the chill because this much heat was enough to bake some good bread. Living, natural oven, if you prefer a modernist approach.

The inside of the monolith was nothing but a large empty space covered with overgrown moss and ferns that didn’t give much insight into the source of heat. The ceiling was high enough for four stacked undead, and the girth was enough to build a comfortable mansion around the place. The walls, or stones, were covered with splotches of violet overgrowth, and flowers that were resistant to the desiccating heat bloomed around the place. There was circulating wind within, too strong for the enclosure, and the overgrowths fluttered helplessly owing to their weak stalks.

“Grr, Grr,” Yule stood in the periphery and didn’t follow me inside, glaring at something my eyes couldn’t see.

I summoned my [Devil eye] which didn’t help much either. All I saw was an empty void before me in the space not covered by the overgrown greens.

“What are you staring at, Yule?” I asked, trying to think of better ways to unearth the mystery. Something my hound could see, but I couldn’t. But we both were summoned beings, one by transmigration magic and the other by summoning ritual. He had demon eyes, which I didn’t. Plucking them out of my hound and sticking them to my empty sockets would do little good. There was rejection to consider, and our gene composition differed too large for the transplant.

I walked through the overgrowth, my legs taking cautious steps, swiping out the swaying plants before me. That’s when my eyes fell on too-faint white lines beneath the dark soil underneath. If it wasn’t for Yule digging up the soil, I would walk past without noticing the markings.

“Good boy,” I nuzzled its head and smiled in amusement. This was an incantation circle. A half-summoned creature, whatever it was. In mortal words, the summoners couldn’t complete the summoning ritual due to third-party interference or their incompetence. The latter was highly likely because they were mortals, after all.

I couldn’t resist my urge to uproot everything in sight, and I did. Magic? There was none, so we worked ass off just to get a good glimpse of the full summoning circle underneath. Yule was particularly fluent in the task and worked twice my amount.

We piled up the uprooted plants at one corner after I chased them away with [Gale], which had me feeling wobbly and sick in the stomach. I resisted my urge to puke and studied the incantations within the circle with much interest.

The scriptures linked my first world, no doubt, and to the lava cave that was particularly famous for the notorious Glazukaize. The red arrogant dragon that had quibbled with me on the validity of my claim that bread was the best in the world. He disappeared to nothingness on one fine day, and so did our battles. But I wasn’t friends with this arrogant bastard who claimed mortals tasted better than bread. Anyone who didn’t understand the true intricacies of bread was worthless. So, I wasn’t inclined to find the reason for his abnormal disappearance.

Guess he was still floating aimlessly in the interdimensional portal. That made me smile because it was the right punishment for folks that claimed bread was worthless.

“You don’t really want to meet Glazukaize,” I said to my hound. “Arrogance runs in that bastard’s blood.”

“Grr,” the hound shook its head.

“You want to taste its meat?” I asked in surprise.

“Grr,” Yule bobbed its head. “Gwar Gwar Grr Grr.”

“I don’t understand such complicated words,” I rolled my eyes. “Just say yes or no.”

“Gwar Grr Gwwar Grr–“

I smacked its head, and Yule shut up for good.

“The point is it will sleep for a few years even if I summon it,” I sighed. “It’s unlikely to start gobbling up humans immediately.

“Grr?” the raised tone at the end of Yule’s voice meant it was a question.

“Dragons are inherently different kinds of mages from us. They don’t need to learn external casting because the amount of mana they can store in their reserve is enormous,” I paused, rubbing my temples in exasperation. “And enormous means it's enough for a few tens of generations of mortals until the dragons go back to pooling mana again. That’s why most of them sleep for a few years. This bastard also collected princesses, so I, for the infamous undead I was, was usually blamed for the antics. Heroes, mortals with pitiful strength that was laughable at best, came to save them. I always told them they got the wrong house, but they didn’t trust me one bit. Of course, I enjoy slaughter, so I killed them instead.”

“Grr,” Yule nuzzled its head against my legs.

“You think I am pitiful?” I asked, not without my brows raised.

“Grr,” Yuled nodded.

“The heroes wouldn’t share the sentiment,” I laughed and patted its head. “The bottom line is this bastard is arrogant and perverted. He’ll sleep for a few years and start stealing princesses again. If he can’t find any, then he’ll start wrecking city walls, forcing them to bring their most beautiful girls out.”

“Grr,” Yule shook its head in disapproval.

“But,” I grinned. “There’s no harm in completing the summoning, is there? Who knows? This arrogant prick might become my servant for saving him from a never-ending void.”

And with that thought, I got back to recreating the summoning circle. It wasn’t a hard task because everything was already in place, and all I had to do was tinker with the script that was mistaken in more than two places. Well, the entire was scripture was wrong, but they were trying to bind the dragon with Essence Gourge. Bad move that ended up failing with not much surprise. I used [Boulder] with cent percent materialization and erased everything in sight.

I slit my wrist after rewriting the scriptures on the summoning circle and moved to the central pith, where all the triangles converged to a single point. Geometry was not quite accurate because drawing on rocks would be hard, even for the undead. But my surplus blood helped, and the entire periphery started glowing in a blinding light that forced Yule to retreat a couple of steps. It still watched me with vigilance, ready to pounce on the meat of the dragon if anything materialized. Little did it know about the tough hide of dragons, their scales, and their exclusive overpowered fire attribute.

Not everything that smells great is good. Bread is the only exception.

But all my talk about bread and Glazukaize had made me forget one question that I should have never ignored.

Who in this freaking world knew about my world?

Alas, the consequences of ignorance were never dire to the undead, so I had become way too lethargic. Perhaps, it would bite me back in the future in the most unexpected situations.