Ti flew by, and after a short week, High Cliff Castle once again welcod its Lord.
"Did everything go smoothly?" Baisitina was the first to ask, raising her hand.
’She secretly counted the mbers of the returning party and was stunned to find that not a single person was missing.’
Levi smiled proudly, then turned and pulled back the cloth curtain of the crude canopy on the back of his wagon.
Hiss!
A wave of gasps instantly rippled through the crowd.
Just as the Lord was preparing to enjoy the coming tide of flattery, Baisitina’s quiet voice unexpectedly cut in, "Levi, where did you kidnap this clueless young girl from?"
It was no wonder everyone reacted so strongly. A silver-haired girl was fast asleep in the wagon, drool trickling from the corner of her mouth as she mumbled incomprehensibly in her sleep.
Her foolish appearance made it all too easy for people’s minds to wander in *that* direction.
They were supposed to have gone to slay a dragon, but in the end, there wasn’t even a single Dragon Scale to be seen—only a girl who didn’t seem particularly bright.
"Brother-in-law, I never thought you were into this type of girl," Mier added, his expression looking as if he were constipated.
Everyone nodded in agreent, their faces clearly showing that they were seeing their Lord’s true colors for the first ti.
"Worri! You’re slandering ! This is slander! Don’t be fooled by how harmless she looks right now. This is a genuine, honest-to-goodness Giant Dragon!"
The Lord hadn’t expected his grand mont of showing off to turn into a public shaming for kidnapping a young girl, and he loudly tried to explain.
"Mhm, mhm."
The crowd hurriedly nodded again, all putting on ’I believe you’ expressions.
But their insincere expressions clearly showed they had long grown accustod to bowing to a certain soone’s tyrannical iron fist.
"Believe it or not." Finally, the Lord dropped the curtain, grumbling under his breath, and started driving the wagon toward his great hall.
"He’s flustered! The boss is flustered!"
A hushed voice suddenly piped up from the crowd.
"Damn it! How did my High Cliff Castle end up with a ’genius’ like you, a regular Wolong and Feng Chu!"
With Zat’s hulking fra, it was useless for him to hide in the crowd. He was trying to learn how to stir the pot, but he was like a kid who learns to run before he can even pull up his own pants.
Both angry and amused, the Lord flew up and kicked it square in the ass, sending it sprawling face-first into the mud.
"Now get out of my sight and go write a three-hundred-word report on the ’dragon-slaying’!"
Even after getting thrashed, Zat just grinned and spat out a mouthful of grass. He patted his rear nonchalantly as if he hadn’t felt a thing. But when he heard the Lord’s last sentence, his face instantly fell, replaced by a look of agony.
Its hide was thick, so it didn’t care how hard the boss hit it. But making it write? It would rather go till the fields.
"Tina, hurry and have the cooks make sothing good to eat! I’ve been gnawing on dry rations for days, I’m about to puke!"
Having let off a bit of steam, Levi felt his chest muscles. They seed to have shrunk, as if he’d lost weight.
In preparation for the Giant Dragon Corps’ potential arrival, he had only been eating until he was seventy percent full each day. Then, hoping to launch a surprise attack while the Giant Dragon slept, he had rushed day and night without even a mont for a hot al.
It wasn’t just him; the Beastman Barbarians had probably all lost weight too.
...
The Great Hall.
The Lord of High Cliff Castle and the Chief of Internal Affairs, the two most powerful people in the castle, were huddled together whispering.
"Is that really a Silver Dragon?"
"The genuine article. I expended a Herculean effort to trick... no, to *subdue* her and bring her back to High Cliff Castle."
"I didn’t believe you before, but I believe you now!"
Baisitina shot a strange look at the Silver Dragon Maiden across from them.
The long, wide table was laden with all sorts of food: roasted deer legs, beef and potato stew, braised rabbit, and more.
Yet the Silver Dragon Maiden was feasting all by herself, clearing away the food before her in the blink of an eye. The delicate Goat-man maids serving the dishes were sweating buckets, nearly collapsing from exhaustion.
Five maids couldn’t bring out food as fast as she alone could eat it.
This entire feast was supposed to be a reward for the Dragon Slayer Squad, but now it was all going into a single person’s stomach.
Baisitina simply couldn’t fathom the size of the girl’s stomach. She had eaten enough food for nearly thirty people, yet her belly remained as flat as before.
Only her being a Giant Dragon could possibly explain it.
The Dragon Slayer Squad, anwhile, had been sent elsewhere for a separate, smaller al.
After watching her devour another half-table’s worth of food—equivalent to his own private rations for three days—the Lord finally lost his composure and couldn’t help but complain:
"Are you a pig? How can you eat so much?"
He had openly embezzled all this food for his own private als, leveraging his authority as Lord where rank can crush all opposition. And now, wonderful, it was all going into soone else’s stomach.
The timid Silver Dragon Maiden thought she was about to be scolded, so she instinctively flinched and stopped eating.
But after studying his expression and realizing Levi wasn’t truly angry, she puffed out her chest and retorted, "How could a pig possibly eat more than a Giant Dragon? I’m only thirty-five years old, still an adolescent dragon. This is a critical ti for growth! The more I eat, the more energy I use, and the faster I grow."
’Damn it, she makes a good point. I can’t even argue with that.’
The Lord clutched his chest and collapsed onto his chair, a pained expression on his face.
"Levi, what’s wrong?" Baisitina asked, startled. She quickly placed a hand on the Lord’s forehead. His temperature was normal; he didn’t seem to be sick.
"It’s nothing. My heart just hurts. Just give a mont to recover," Levi said, feebly batting away Baisitina’s hand as she reached for his chest.
’I didn’t capture a Giant Dragon, I fucking adopted a living ancestor!’
Originally, High Cliff Castle had more than enough food to last until next year’s harvest. Now, thanks to the Silver Dragon Maiden’s appetite, this one dragon was about to consu half of High Cliff Castle’s entire food supply.
Levi finally understood why the famous Flying Dragon Knight Orders of the Seven Kingdoms could never grow their ranks. It was for one simple reason: with appetites like that, who could possibly afford to feed them?
The Holy Sith in the west made a fortune from mariti trade, and their military budget increased annually. Yet, they never expanded their ace corps, simply because the entire budget wouldn’t be enough to cover the unit’s supply consumption for even a few days.
Expanding it would be like voluntarily switching their national finances to Hard Mode.
There was a very good reason why ace corps were called ace corps. They were, quite literally, fed with money.
You could say that every single Warrior was a walking pile of Gold Coins.
The weight of the word "ace" alone spoke volus.
After her hearty and satisfying "battle," the Silver Dragon Maiden patted her slightly bulging belly with a look of pure contentnt and slumped bonelessly in her chair. She hadn’t eaten such delicious food since arriving in the Wilderness.
"I’m so full."
’Staying here isn’t so bad,’ Sophia thought. ’As long as I get this much delicious food every day... No, no, even just once every three days would be enough to make happy.’
In the end, the Lord walked out of the great hall with tears in his eyes.
When the Chief of Internal Affairs stopped him to ask where he was going, the Lord simply stared up at the sky, his eyes lifeless, as he uttered, "Selling my ass to make money... to feed a bunch of useless mouths and one giant, useless mouth..."
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