Chapter 163: New Day

“It already appeared underground. Obviously it dug its way out, isn’t that blatantly obvious?”

Perletti spread her hands, looking completely unconcerned.

“Besides, it’s basically just a dead thing driven by obsession and curses now. A pile of bones with a rotten heart attached. No matter how you think about it, there’s no way it could communicate like a normal living creature.”

“But what if…? There’s always that tiny possibility…”

Olivia still wanted to argue.

Clack… crack… creak…

A faint yet deeply unpleasant sound of grinding and colliding bones suddenly came from behind them, from the heap of charred remains.

The three girls turned around simultaneously.

The Fallen Dragon—

which should have been completely destroyed—

was somehow propping itself up using two relatively intact ribs, struggling to lift its shattered skull from the pile of bones.

That massive heart covered in grotesque blood vessels had been dragged out through the broken gaps in its chest cavity, hanging half-suspended in the air while continuing its slow yet stubborn beating.

Its lower body was almost entirely gone.

Only half a ruined spine and several ribs remained.

Yet with that utterly miserable remnant of a body, it still dragged itself inch by inch, slowly crawling away from the three of them.

“Speaking of which…”

Perletti watched the absurd yet strangely tragic sight with leisurely interest. Not only did she show no intention of finishing it off immediately, she instead turned thoughtfully toward Olivia.

“In the previous timeline… did anything like a Fallen Dragon escaping its seal ever happen before?”

At the creature’s current speed, even giving it an entire day probably wouldn’t let it crawl beyond their field of vision.

Olivia almost instantly shook her head.

“No.”

“In the previous timeline, the seal on Fallen Dragon Valley never loosened—not even until the final apocalypse descended. There were no records whatsoever of Fallen Dragons escaping.”

“No, huh…”

Perletti rubbed her chin, her gaze sharpening slightly.

“Then that’s strange.”

“After returning to this point in time, did you do anything drastically different from the previous timeline? Anything at all that might’ve caused some kind of chain reaction?”

“This…”

Olivia thought carefully for a moment before answering.

“After returning and stabilizing the situation in the Elf Forest, the very first thing I did was go to the Empire to find you.”

“For that trip, I delayed several days’ worth of accumulated and upcoming official duties. Only after returning did I fully devote myself to handling them.”

“If nothing unexpected happened, then the problem’s probably there.”

Perletti snapped her fingers.

“Huh?” Olivia looked confused. “I only delayed my work for a few days. What direct connection could that possibly have with this Fallen Dragon escaping?”

“The butterfly effect.”

Perletti used a term Olivia probably didn’t fully understand, though she could roughly infer the meaning.

Her tone was vague and half-hearted.

“Who knows exactly how this stuff works? Anyway, whenever something impossible suddenly happens for no logical reason, blaming it on the butterfly effect is usually good enough.”

As she spoke, she raised her hand once more.

Light elements rapidly condensed in the air, forming three gigantic, heavy walls of light edged like blades.

They descended from the sky and smashed directly onto the still-struggling remains of the Fallen Dragon.

CRACK! BOOM—!

The already ruined skeleton was instantly pulverized beneath the crushing force of the light walls.

Even the ribs supporting it were ground into dust.

In the end, only the massive heart remained.

It lay alone among the gray-white rubble and bone fragments, still weakly beating, having lost all means of movement or support.

“So weak.”

Perletti looked slightly disappointed as she evaluated the completely incapacitated “prey.”

She had originally assumed that even a fallen dragon should possess at least some trace of the overwhelming majesty and oppression dragons were famous for.

Instead, it had proven absurdly fragile.

“The dragon race’s true strength lies in their unparalleled physical bodies and vitality,” Olivia explained.

“But a Fallen Dragon’s body has long since decayed and collapsed under the curse. Their current durability is less than one-thousandth of their peak condition.”

“So weakness at this level isn’t surprising.”

“No wonder Judy dared to head alone into Fallen Dragon Valley…”

Perletti suddenly understood.

“So the dragons in there are basically all bark and no bite now.”

Pinching her nose to endure the increasingly unbearable stench, she walked toward the gigantic heart.

At close range, dark-purple twisted veins and black blotches covered its surface.

Each beat squeezed out thick black fluid that emitted a horrifying odor.

“Even so, the Greed Curse carried by these dragons still isn’t something to underestimate,” Olivia warned while simultaneously beginning to set up isolation and purification spells around the area to prevent the contamination from spreading.

“This curse really is vicious to a ridiculous extent…”

Perletti examined the heart and muttered softly,

“It’s already become this disgusting, and it still hasn’t fully died.”

She found a relatively clean rock untouched by the polluted fluids, casually purified it with light magic, then sat down carelessly atop it—

even crossing her legs.

Afterward, she pulled out a somewhat old booklet from the inner pocket of her cloak and slowly began flipping through it.

“What are you looking for, Sister?”

Scarlet Night leaned closer curiously.

“I remember there being some purification spell in here capable of removing powerful curses… where was it again?”

Perletti muttered while turning pages, excitement shining in her eyes like an eager experimenter.

A sudden idea had popped into her mind.

What if she tried removing the curse from this Fallen Dragon?

Failure didn’t matter.

The dragon was already half-dead anyway.

But if it succeeded…

Wouldn’t that mean she might actually tame a dragon?

The title Dragon Rider sounded pretty cool, honestly.

“Oh! Found it!”

Her finger stopped upon a page covered in complex magic patterns.

“This spell can completely purge all abnormal states from a target…”

“…and restore its lifeform to its theoretically optimal peak state.”

“Huh? Such an incredible spell… why don’t I remember learning this before?”

She scratched her head, trying hard to remember why she had skipped over this magic in the past.

“Maybe I just thought it’d never be useful, or something more urgent interrupted my studies back then.”

“Wait, Perletti!”

Olivia immediately turned around, voice suddenly urgent.

“You want to remove the curse from it?! That’s way too reckless!”

“If this actually works, it won’t be some trivial matter!”

“A dragon freed from Masha’s curse and potentially restored to its peak strength suddenly appearing near the Elf Forest—have you thought about the level of chaos and terror that could cause?!”

“How big a deal could it really be?”

Perletti shrugged dismissively and pointed at the still-oozing heart on the ground.

“Besides, look at its current state.”

“Even if the curse really gets removed, it’s literally just a heart now. Don’t tell me you think an entire dragon could suddenly regrow itself out of nowhere and revive?”

Olivia opened her mouth—

then fell silent.

Indeed, by all reasonable logic, a single rotten heart should never be capable of regaining life.

Perhaps…

Perletti was simply curious and wanted to test the effects of this high-level spell?

Thinking that, Olivia no longer argued fiercely against it.

Still, she maintained absolute vigilance as she watched Perletti begin her magical experiment.