Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 228: The Evil Dragon

“Name.”“L-Lane…”

“Speak clearly, no stuttering. What were you trying to do, sneaking into a private home at midnight?”

“I…I was threatened by despicable cultists. I had to kill those two girls, otherwise, otherwise I’d be finished…”

“You’re not a believer of the Cult? How did they threaten you?”

“Of course I’m not. How could I worship that kind of false god? Officer, please, you have to believe me, I was forced…”

“Heh. Go on. How were you caught?”

“I…I couldn’t beat that short-haired girl. She was terrifying. She kicked me and I went down.”

“What level of power did you receive?”

“The power of a Benediction, equivalent to a mid-tier Magic Swordsman. I think that’s it. I’ve never studied magic, officer.”

“Mid-tier? This so-called Benediction of yours, is it really mid-tier? That’s awfully weak. You sure it wasn’t apprentice level?”

“Huh? I was cheated? Curse the Witch Cult. And I was so devout to the Goddess!”

Standing outside the police station’s joint interrogation room, listening to the slap of palms on a metal desk and the panicked answers of the cultist named Lane, Yvette and Lucia pricked up their ears for a bit. Then they saw Palea push the door open and give the two of them a small nod.

“The police interrogation is so-so, but that cultist is a pushover. Scare him a little and he spills everything,” Palea said.

There were few people at the station at midnight. With the interrogation nearly done, Palea led the two of them across the dim lobby and into the neighboring Disciplinary Committee branch.

The lighting here was much brighter, warm light provided by magitech lamps. In her office, with the long peal of the clock sounding outside, Palea hesitated, then could not help asking, “Yvette, before I share what we learned, can you answer me first. How did you subdue him?”

“What is it?” Yvette asked.

“That cultist claims the power he received was bestowed by an Apostle of the Evernight Conclave of the Witch Cult. He says this Apostle had him pray to the Evernight Matron and he obtained a power called a ‘Benediction.’ He also claims it could match a mid-tier Magic Swordsman and came with corresponding sword arts, unfortunately single-use.”

Palea watched Yvette as she spoke, curiosity tinged with a little unwillingness. “If he didn’t lie, I want to know, Yvette, how exactly did you drop him in one move? Could you show me?”

Mid-tier Magic Swordsman was the graduation level for the Academy of Truth. Palea herself had reached that threshold. All the more reason she struggled to imagine, and could not accept, that someone at that level could be felled by Yvette in a single move.

Right now she only wanted to confirm whether the cultist was bluffing, or if her gap with Yvette was truly that large.

“He lacked technique and could not bring out his real strength,” Yvette said to soothe her. “Palea, you are much better than he was. In your place, you could have put him down in one move too.”

Palea said nothing. She looked at her, doubtful, then turned to Lucia.

Lucia stayed silent.

She had seen the whole thing. The cultist broke in, clearly drunk on power for the first time, cocky and taunting. Yvette walked over and dropped him with a single kick.

It was too over the top. Even she felt it was absurd, much less explaining it to anyone else, and it touched on Yvette’s secrets. So she shifted her gaze guiltily, not daring to meet Palea’s eyes.

Seeing this, Palea grew more certain. “Yvette, you’re lying to me. You really are hiding deep. You aren’t already above mid-tier, are you?”

Yvette lowered her eyes to her shoe tips and thought, It might be a bit deeper than you think.

Since the chestnut-haired girl would not cooperate, Palea could not press her. The late-night interlude ended there.

The next afternoon, as the dean’s commendation speech played once more on the broadcast, everyone learned that Yvette, who had just turned the tide in the Blossom Street subway incident, had immediately afterward captured a cultist. Compared with the first event, the second lacked process, so taken alone it was less shocking. But the two had occurred almost back to back, which made it significant, practically a slap in the Witch Cult’s face.

Yvette would have preferred otherwise. Too much attention disturbed her quiet campus life.

The academy clearly had its own ideas.

From its perspective, these two events in succession were major morale-boosters and trendsetters, with big social impact, so of course they should be widely reported. As for retaliation by the Witch Cult, yes, it was a threat. But the Witch Cult existed to commit terror attacks. An attack is an attack no matter where it lands. If you shrink from reporting for fear of backlash, what will you report in the future? That only emboldens the cult.

There was no evidence that not reporting would stop the Witch Cult from attacking, unless one achieved absolute secrecy with zero leaks of identity information, which was very hard. The end result was the same either way.

Yvette felt this sounded reasonable. She only wondered whether the Witch Cult would send people to harass her later. If they did, she hoped they would come together, so she could bundle them all up and deliver them to the station at once.

====

In the days that followed, at least within District Nine, nothing related to the Witch Cult cropped up again.

As intern members, Lucia, Anya, and Flami gained more experience under Palea, encountering many unusual incidents: magical vines running amok at Verdant College, hauntings engineered by the College of Afterlife, and a tournament riot at the Elemental Sanctum.

Yvette kept up the same steady routine of classroom and library. This time, however, her research shifted from searching for the War of Divine Judgment’s battlefield to investigating the Dragon Nation.

The War of Divine Judgment would have to wait for Professor Hockel.

As for the Dragon Nation, by doing her own research, cross-checking books, and asking instructors in related fields, she finally confirmed that the contemporary Dragon Nation had seven Dragon Kings in total: the Storm Dragon King, the Sea Dragon King, the Frost Dragon King, the Flame Dragon King, the Green-scale Dragon King, the Holy Dragon King, and the Evil Dragon King.

Of the seven, only the Holy, Frost, and Evil Dragon Kings had ascended within the past five hundred years. If Dugrabi really had become a Dragon King, it could only be one of those three.

In addition, the once-famous Flame Dragon King had fallen in the War of Divine Judgment. In the materials she found, there was no note indicating whether the Holy, Frost, or Evil Dragon King was the Flame Dragon King’s child.

For some reason, when Yvette saw the title “Evil Dragon King,” she felt it fit Dugrabi’s aura.

The Holy Dragon King sounded lofty, the Frost Dragon King sounded aloof, neither matched that guy. And Dragon Kings chose their own titles. What proper Dragon King would pick “Evil Dragon King”?

With that in mind, she focused on investigating the Evil Dragon King and soon found the related records were pitifully few. Everything that seemed to touch on it was just children’s tales.

In those tales, the Evil Dragon King was the Eastern Continent’s villain, spawning all manner of terrifying legends: stealing princesses, stealing treasure, destroying cities, even stealing candy from children. It felt as if every bad thing was its doing, a thoroughgoing evil dragon.

A villainous dragon like that did not fare well in stories. It was either slain or sealed. In the few good endings, it either fled and vanished, or turned over a new leaf.

If you looked only at survival rates, Dugrabi probably would not die so easily.

Endings where knights, heroes, or True Gods took the villain head-on and wiped it out made up only about twenty percent. The remaining eighty percent lived.

Even so, the Evil Dragon King might not be Dugrabi. Another possibility occurred to her. Without her supervision, Dugrabi might have shown his true lazy-dog colors and stopped trying altogether. To this day, he might still be a layabout of a dragon, never having become a Dragon King.

That almost sounded worse than being an evil dragon.