To be honest, Gawain had neither guessed this start nor had he expected this ending. He never thought that he would actually build a connection with a ball, and even more surprising was that the ball would be so in need of a beating…
If it wasn’t because there were people watching and he had to maintain his dignified ancestor image, he would probably have immediately split this unlucky ball into two halves with a champion slash. Though the Sword of Pioneers wasn’t with him, it did not stop such a thought from emerging…
Making great efforts to calm his mind, Gawain resisted the urge to curse and adjusted the ball before him from a ‘frightened young child who needed help’ to a ‘naughty child in need of a beating who deserved to be locked in a laboratory and studied’. He controlled his impatience and said, “What good do I get from lying to you? The laboratory used to lock you up back then has been abandoned for a thousand years. It’s been a thousand years, do you know?”
The ball kept silent for a while, seeming to be in thought. Following that, it replied especially firmly. “Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
“I’m speaking the truth! If you don’t believe me you…”
“Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
All the veins in Gawain’s forehead were bulging. “It’s your business if you love to stay in this shell! First, release my men before anything else!”
In the connection of consciousness, the ball sounded a curious voice, “Your men? What men?”
Gawain was stupefied by this curious attitude of the other party that didn’t seem to be faked. “You attracted three of my soldiers to your body. Are you still trying to deny it?!”
The ball stayed quiet for an even longer period; then, it was ‘sounded’ utterly shocked, “So there were also people coupled with these steel-plate pieces?!”
“…”
“It must be because my perception has been affected!” This unlucky ball had simply admitted its mistake. As its words fell, he heard a clatter, the three soldiers had been instantly released and fell from the surface of the ball.
They wore looks of apprehension and terror. The first thing they did after landing was to frantically dash to a spot further away from the ball and dump their armors, weapons, and all sorts of metal belongings on the ground.
Gawain still believed that perhaps this strange ball could be communicated with. Hence, he asked, “Why did you attract all these armors and weapons?”
The ball’s response was in a bold and justified tone. “Can’t I get something to defend myself? Heavens know what other vile tricks you mad barbarians have!”
“I have said, the research facility from those days is long gone. How would I know how those people who captured you had—”
“Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
“…”
For the first time in his life, he had lost so terribly when debating with another. And what made this former know-it-all especially dispirited was — he’d actually lost to a ball!
If this ball was really a dragon’s egg, he would have lost to a zygote…
Subsequently, regardless of whatever he said, this rock ball suspected to be a dragon egg refused to respond directly. Even when it was driven into a corner, it would only respond with “don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell”. This even had Gawain suspecting whether the essence of this ball was a damn repeater.
And no matter what its essence was, the interaction could not be continued.
Gawain removed his hand from the surface of the ball with a somber yet odd expression. At the same time, he ended the magic sensing. Lifting his head, he saw Amber and Pittman staring at him with curious gazes.
Amber had just stood by and watched as the three soldiers gained their freedom a while after Gawain started interacting with the ball. Following that, Gawain entered a state of having his mind elsewhere as his face alternated between a fuming purple and a pale white. This had this half-elf girl thinking that this old dumpling1 was about to pass away again due to excessively utilizing magical power and losing control. She had been in dilemma in the past few minutes, deliberating for a long time whether to run out immediately and announce the division of belongings and disband or to strip everything valuable on Gawain and run away… In the end, before her inner struggle ended, Gawain had ‘revived’.
And he looked furious.
This made Amber, who had a guilty conscience (well deserved), immediately break out in a cold sweat; even her tone became an octave lower. “Are—Are you okay? Your expression changed really often. I thought you were going to spontaneously explode…”
“I established communication with this ball.” Gawain was rather focused on suppressing his anger, such that he didn’t even notice Amber’s abnormal attitude. “This thing… does have a mind!”
“A mind?!” The most surprised person wasn’t Amber, but the druid Pittman beside her. The little old man rushed to the ball right after but wound up hesitating, afraid to press his hand on it. It would be okay for the legendary knight to touch it, but he was merely a grade three druid. What if he succeeds in seeking his own doom? “A dragon egg would actually possess a mind?! Which means… gigantic dragons are already able to think when they’re just eggs? This is literally—literally the most inconceivable matter. It’s a profound mystery that no scholar or druid in the world has ever discovered!”
“No, we still cannot confirm that this is a dragon egg,” Gawain quickly corrected. Even now, he still couldn’t believe something so utterly plot-like would happen to him. However, his correction was of no use — Pittman had sunken into an inexplicable excitement, and he’d started planning to write this new discovery into a book to be sold to the Sacred Dragon Kingdom in the north.
If he really dared to sell such fictitious ‘research findings’ to those fanatics who worshiped gigantic dragons, Gawain would have no choice but to hire a new druid. Fortunately, Pittman did not have the money to print books; neither did he have money to travel through the entire Anzu kingdom and the northern mountain range in order to do promote himself in the Sacred Dragon Kingdom.
Taking into consideration that the rock ball had refused all contact, Gawain could only opt to continue leaving it here. However, to prevent this ‘dragon egg’ — which was able to control metals and, to a certain extent, affect the flow of magical power — from stirring up more trouble, he changed the original housing measures: all metal items within a 10-meter radius of the tent were moved away; a circle of obsidian slabs was planted around the sphere so as to impair magical power; the sphere was tied up with layer upon layer of strong ropes and thick wooden posts were used to fix it to the ground; the rock ball was told that he planned on buying oranges…
No one understood the last step.
And while he was arranging all of this, Gawain recounted the entirety of his interaction with the ball to Heidi who’d waited outside the whole time.
Surprisingly, the always mature and steadfast Heidi who strived to be realistic also suspected the ball to be a dragon egg.
Turns out this manner of thinking was trendy in this foreign world?
“This dragon egg was probably stolen by the Master Mages of the ancient Gondor Empire.” After listening to Gawain’s description, Heidi shared her own inference, “I’ve heard that the gigantic dragons did indeed appear on the continent a thousand years ago. The Sacred Dragon Kingdom has records of that. Although those mad dragon worshipers have always been a little strange when it came to topics involving dragons, they are the most reliable recorders about when and where gigantic dragons have appeared. This point in time tallied with the construction era of the remnants.
“And judging by the dragon egg’s attitude toward humans, the Master Mages of the Gondor Empire had clearly used underhanded means in the process of obtaining this egg and weren’t exactly amicable to it in the subsequent steps.”
“That goes without saying. They’d left it on the laboratory bench! How amicable could that be?” Gawain pursed his lips. “I suspect it’s been in a slumbering state since. Those Master Mages had probably used some method to suppress its spirit because that ‘egg’ has absolutely no memory of a thousand years going by. When we brought it out from the remnants… I’m afraid we’d destroyed the seal left by the Master Mages a thousand years ago.”
“How do you plan on handling it?” Heidi asked cautiously. “If it really were to be a dragon egg, then we can’t do anything to it. Legend says that gigantic dragons are a species that holds grudges, and they especially value their eggs. The Gondor Master Mages from back then might not fear the vengeance of the dragons, but it’s different for us today. Besides, to the dragons, I fear they can’t even differentiate between us and the humans from a thousand years ago.”
Almost no one living had ever seen a true gigantic dragon, but there wasn’t a lack of descriptions about them. Regarding their temperament, classification, preferences, and even diet, this continent had countless professional books making a fuss of introducing them. A number of them were the accounts of gigantic-dragon specialists from every place, while another came from the northern Sacred Dragon Kingdom. The latter boasted themselves as Aristocrats of the Ice, descendants of dragons. They used lots of resplendent yet terrifying terms to describe the ‘dragon ancestors’ in their hearts, and Heidi chose to believe the most dangerous part of that description.
Gawain rubbed his chin. “That makes sense too… We’ll first leave it alone there for a few days. Don’t have anyone disturb it. Let it believe that there is indeed no one doing experiments on it. Then I’ll think of a way to build up trust.”
With that, he let out an uncontrollable long yawn. The drowsiness from being woken up in the middle of the night and the fatigue of intensive concentration came crashing at once as he yawned. “Uahhh… Let’s just do this for today. Everyone is tired from busying around in the middle of the night. Except for the people on night duty, everyone, go back and have a rest.”
The gathered crowd dispersed. A yawning Amber also disappeared from sight through her Shadow Walk. Gawain turned back and took one last look at the ‘dragon-egg tent’ being watched from afar by the soldiers. Shaking his head, he turned and walked toward his tent.
After entering his tent, he sat on his bed but did not go to sleep immediately. Instead, as a habit, he focused his attention and called upon the ‘magical-power imaging view from the sky’ in his mind.
After ensuring that there weren’t many energy distribution fluctuations in the magical-power imaging view, that there were no high-energy reactions nearby, especially near the dragon egg, and that there were no new alerts from the satellite, he then let out a small sigh of relief and prepared to go to bed.
However, the moment before he laid down, his peripheral vision caught some indistinct, faint light in the unlit part of the tent.
Gawain rubbed his eyes and verified that this was not an illusion; moreover, the faint light was coming from the big basket beside his desk.
Those were the waste products from Rebecca’s process of ‘baking cement’; the hardened materials whose use could not be figured out.
Gawain leaned over curiously and saw a faint glow coming from the hardened materials.
The glow, though weak, was like stars in the sky.
To be honest, Gawain had neither guessed this start nor had he expected this ending. He never thought that he would actually build a connection with a ball, and even more surprising was that the ball would be so in need of a beating…
If it wasn’t because there were people watching and he had to maintain his dignified ancestor image, he would probably have immediately split this unlucky ball into two halves with a champion slash. Though the Sword of Pioneers wasn’t with him, it did not stop such a thought from emerging…
Making great efforts to calm his mind, Gawain resisted the urge to curse and adjusted the ball before him from a ‘frightened young child who needed help’ to a ‘naughty child in need of a beating who deserved to be locked in a laboratory and studied’. He controlled his impatience and said, “What good do I get from lying to you? The laboratory used to lock you up back then has been abandoned for a thousand years. It’s been a thousand years, do you know?”
The ball kept silent for a while, seeming to be in thought. Following that, it replied especially firmly. “Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
“I’m speaking the truth! If you don’t believe me you…”
“Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
All the veins in Gawain’s forehead were bulging. “It’s your business if you love to stay in this shell! First, release my men before anything else!”
In the connection of consciousness, the ball sounded a curious voice, “Your men? What men?”
Gawain was stupefied by this curious attitude of the other party that didn’t seem to be faked. “You attracted three of my soldiers to your body. Are you still trying to deny it?!”
The ball stayed quiet for an even longer period; then, it was ‘sounded’ utterly shocked, “So there were also people coupled with these steel-plate pieces?!”
“…”
“It must be because my perception has been affected!” This unlucky ball had simply admitted its mistake. As its words fell, he heard a clatter, the three soldiers had been instantly released and fell from the surface of the ball.
They wore looks of apprehension and terror. The first thing they did after landing was to frantically dash to a spot further away from the ball and dump their armors, weapons, and all sorts of metal belongings on the ground.
Gawain still believed that perhaps this strange ball could be communicated with. Hence, he asked, “Why did you attract all these armors and weapons?”
The ball’s response was in a bold and justified tone. “Can’t I get something to defend myself? Heavens know what other vile tricks you mad barbarians have!”
“I have said, the research facility from those days is long gone. How would I know how those people who captured you had—”
“Don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell!”
“…”
For the first time in his life, he had lost so terribly when debating with another. And what made this former know-it-all especially dispirited was — he’d actually lost to a ball!
If this ball was really a dragon’s egg, he would have lost to a zygote…
Subsequently, regardless of whatever he said, this rock ball suspected to be a dragon egg refused to respond directly. Even when it was driven into a corner, it would only respond with “don’t try to fool me into leaving my shell”. This even had Gawain suspecting whether the essence of this ball was a damn repeater.
And no matter what its essence was, the interaction could not be continued.
Gawain removed his hand from the surface of the ball with a somber yet odd expression. At the same time, he ended the magic sensing. Lifting his head, he saw Amber and Pittman staring at him with curious gazes.
Amber had just stood by and watched as the three soldiers gained their freedom a while after Gawain started interacting with the ball. Following that, Gawain entered a state of having his mind elsewhere as his face alternated between a fuming purple and a pale white. This had this half-elf girl thinking that this old dumpling1 was about to pass away again due to excessively utilizing magical power and losing control. She had been in dilemma in the past few minutes, deliberating for a long time whether to run out immediately and announce the division of belongings and disband or to strip everything valuable on Gawain and run away… In the end, before her inner struggle ended, Gawain had ‘revived’.
And he looked furious.
This made Amber, who had a guilty conscience (well deserved), immediately break out in a cold sweat; even her tone became an octave lower. “Are—Are you okay? Your expression changed really often. I thought you were going to spontaneously explode…”
“I established communication with this ball.” Gawain was rather focused on suppressing his anger, such that he didn’t even notice Amber’s abnormal attitude. “This thing… does have a mind!”
“A mind?!” The most surprised person wasn’t Amber, but the druid Pittman beside her. The little old man rushed to the ball right after but wound up hesitating, afraid to press his hand on it. It would be okay for the legendary knight to touch it, but he was merely a grade three druid. What if he succeeds in seeking his own doom? “A dragon egg would actually possess a mind?! Which means… gigantic dragons are already able to think when they’re just eggs? This is literally—literally the most inconceivable matter. It’s a profound mystery that no scholar or druid in the world has ever discovered!”
“No, we still cannot confirm that this is a dragon egg,” Gawain quickly corrected. Even now, he still couldn’t believe something so utterly plot-like would happen to him. However, his correction was of no use — Pittman had sunken into an inexplicable excitement, and he’d started planning to write this new discovery into a book to be sold to the Sacred Dragon Kingdom in the north.
If he really dared to sell such fictitious ‘research findings’ to those fanatics who worshiped gigantic dragons, Gawain would have no choice but to hire a new druid. Fortunately, Pittman did not have the money to print books; neither did he have money to travel through the entire Anzu kingdom and the northern mountain range in order to do promote himself in the Sacred Dragon Kingdom.
Taking into consideration that the rock ball had refused all contact, Gawain could only opt to continue leaving it here. However, to prevent this ‘dragon egg’ — which was able to control metals and, to a certain extent, affect the flow of magical power — from stirring up more trouble, he changed the original housing measures: all metal items within a 10-meter radius of the tent were moved away; a circle of obsidian slabs was planted around the sphere so as to impair magical power; the sphere was tied up with layer upon layer of strong ropes and thick wooden posts were used to fix it to the ground; the rock ball was told that he planned on buying oranges…
No one understood the last step.
And while he was arranging all of this, Gawain recounted the entirety of his interaction with the ball to Heidi who’d waited outside the whole time.
Surprisingly, the always mature and steadfast Heidi who strived to be realistic also suspected the ball to be a dragon egg.
Turns out this manner of thinking was trendy in this foreign world?
“This dragon egg was probably stolen by the Master Mages of the ancient Gondor Empire.” After listening to Gawain’s description, Heidi shared her own inference, “I’ve heard that the gigantic dragons did indeed appear on the continent a thousand years ago. The Sacred Dragon Kingdom has records of that. Although those mad dragon worshipers have always been a little strange when it came to topics involving dragons, they are the most reliable recorders about when and where gigantic dragons have appeared. This point in time tallied with the construction era of the remnants.
“And judging by the dragon egg’s attitude toward humans, the Master Mages of the Gondor Empire had clearly used underhanded means in the process of obtaining this egg and weren’t exactly amicable to it in the subsequent steps.”
“That goes without saying. They’d left it on the laboratory bench! How amicable could that be?” Gawain pursed his lips. “I suspect it’s been in a slumbering state since. Those Master Mages had probably used some method to suppress its spirit because that ‘egg’ has absolutely no memory of a thousand years going by. When we brought it out from the remnants… I’m afraid we’d destroyed the seal left by the Master Mages a thousand years ago.”
“How do you plan on handling it?” Heidi asked cautiously. “If it really were to be a dragon egg, then we can’t do anything to it. Legend says that gigantic dragons are a species that holds grudges, and they especially value their eggs. The Gondor Master Mages from back then might not fear the vengeance of the dragons, but it’s different for us today. Besides, to the dragons, I fear they can’t even differentiate between us and the humans from a thousand years ago.”
Almost no one living had ever seen a true gigantic dragon, but there wasn’t a lack of descriptions about them. Regarding their temperament, classification, preferences, and even diet, this continent had countless professional books making a fuss of introducing them. A number of them were the accounts of gigantic-dragon specialists from every place, while another came from the northern Sacred Dragon Kingdom. The latter boasted themselves as Aristocrats of the Ice, descendants of dragons. They used lots of resplendent yet terrifying terms to describe the ‘dragon ancestors’ in their hearts, and Heidi chose to believe the most dangerous part of that description.
Gawain rubbed his chin. “That makes sense too… We’ll first leave it alone there for a few days. Don’t have anyone disturb it. Let it believe that there is indeed no one doing experiments on it. Then I’ll think of a way to build up trust.”
With that, he let out an uncontrollable long yawn. The drowsiness from being woken up in the middle of the night and the fatigue of intensive concentration came crashing at once as he yawned. “Uahhh… Let’s just do this for today. Everyone is tired from busying around in the middle of the night. Except for the people on night duty, everyone, go back and have a rest.”
The gathered crowd dispersed. A yawning Amber also disappeared from sight through her Shadow Walk. Gawain turned back and took one last look at the ‘dragon-egg tent’ being watched from afar by the soldiers. Shaking his head, he turned and walked toward his tent.
After entering his tent, he sat on his bed but did not go to sleep immediately. Instead, as a habit, he focused his attention and called upon the ‘magical-power imaging view from the sky’ in his mind.
After ensuring that there weren’t many energy distribution fluctuations in the magical-power imaging view, that there were no high-energy reactions nearby, especially near the dragon egg, and that there were no new alerts from the satellite, he then let out a small sigh of relief and prepared to go to bed.
However, the moment before he laid down, his peripheral vision caught some indistinct, faint light in the unlit part of the tent.
Gawain rubbed his eyes and verified that this was not an illusion; moreover, the faint light was coming from the big basket beside his desk.
Those were the waste products from Rebecca’s process of ‘baking cement’; the hardened materials whose use could not be figured out.
Gawain leaned over curiously and saw a faint glow coming from the hardened materials.
The glow, though weak, was like stars in the sky.
