RMGCFW — Chapter 122
The Frost Demon Dragon was one of the few powerful ice-type demon dragons still surviving on the Central Continent.
Legend had it the creature shared deep, tangled ties with the Ice Demon Dragon of the Eight Primordial Creator Dragons from ancient times, wielding dominion over frost, commanding ice magic no human could ever hope to touch.
And yet, for all that power, two hundred years ago a single small elf had sealed it away inside a mountain range. A humiliation without equal.
Through the long, endless years of its imprisonment, the dragon had gradually given up struggling.
Then came this day, without warning, something went wrong with the seal. The magical energy faltered. Cracks split open in the barrier's formation.
It understood, in that instant, that this might be the only chance it would ever get.
The Frost Demon Dragon hurled its massive cerulean wings wide open. Every ounce of power it had stored across centuries erupted from its colossal body. It drove straight into the fractures in the formation and shattered the seal in a single heaving surge.
"ROARRR—!"
A roar like colliding mountains tore from its throat, the sound rolling outward in waves, shaking loose rocks that skittered and tumbled down the ridgeline.
It was free.
That damned elf. It was going to find her and tear her apart,
"Cut."
Overwhelming slashes converged from every direction at once.
The Frost Demon Dragon never got its triumphant announcement out. It simply became a dragon-club and dropped onto its back across the ridge.
"Honestly," the young man who had delivered the strike muttered, rubbing one ear with a pained look. "So loud."
Not far away, the assembled members of the Iorph clan, Elder Racine among them, had witnessed the entire absurd sequence of events. They turned to the white-haired elf with uncertain expressions.
"Lady Frieren..."
"I told you," Frieren said calmly. "With him along, it would be over quickly."
"..."
Racine had absolutely no idea what face to make.
You called that only slightly stronger than Lady Frieren?
"Why not just kill it outright?" Frieren walked forward and looked at the young man.
"No rush." Banxia waved her off, vaulted onto the fallen dragon's head in a single hop, and pressed his palm flat against its skull.
The creature stared up at him in pure terror.
"Rejuvenation." ×3
"Cut."
[Ding, Demon Monster Frost Demon Dragon slain. Total lifespan: 6,500 years. Remaining lifespan: 3,300 years. Absorbed.]
[Current Monster Time held: 3,400 years (fusable)]
"Much better."
Beneath his feet, the dragon's body began to dissolve, crumbling to grit and fading out of the world entirely.
"Shame, though." Banxia turned it over in his mind. "Higher-tier monsters — whatever they're made of — Retrospect doesn't seem to work on them. I'll have to find some low-rank monsters later, goblins or something, and run a proper test."
By the time he finished thinking, he was already standing in front of the crowd.
"Great Hero, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your intervention—"
"Small thing."
---
That evening, the bonfire crackled and the clan danced and sang around it.
A nightmare that had pressed down on the Iorph clan for over two hundred years had been brushed aside like it was nothing.
Two hundred years was not so long, plenty of the villagers still remembered the terror of that original sealing. Which made it all the more clear to them exactly how strong the young man traveling with Lady Frieren truly was.
On that basis, the villagers and the elder had spent the entire afternoon in discussion, and reached a unanimous conclusion:
Doing a little business with the hero? Not such a bad idea after all.
Negotiations went smoothly on both sides.
The Iorph clan had been cut off from the outside world for centuries, but Banxia had a conscience. He was willing to buy their cloth at close to market rate, one bolt per gold coin.
The problem was that he'd spent lavishly back in the commercial city recently, and barely had any gold left on him. The Xiaye Chamber of Commerce would have to send someone over later for the full transaction.
For today he paid five gold coins as a deposit and collected five bolts of cloth into his spatial technique.
Call it a small addition to the collection.
"Lord Banxia, Lord Banxia..." A cluster of children came trotting up to the table where the young man and the elf sat.
After watching the afternoon's battle, most of them had been a little afraid of the hero at first, but getting to know him had quickly revealed that he was actually quite gentle, and they'd grown bold enough to crowd around him.
"What now?" Banxia gave the small girl in front of him an amiable ruffle on the head.
The Iorph clan all looked young, but a glance at the eyes was enough to tell old from young, the rawness there never really hid. The few golden-haired, red-eyed children in front of him were plainly kids, no question.
"Maquia! The elder said not to keep bothering Lord Hero."
"It's fine," Banxia said, waving the protest off.
"Didn't expect this," Frieren said from across the table. She took a large bite of meat, looked satisfied, then glanced at him. "You're rather popular with children."
"Can't help it. My charm is simply too overwhelming." Banxia accepted this with a beleaguered expression, lifted Maquia into his lap, and looked down. "So. What is it this time?"
"I told everyone that Lord Hero said he defeated the legendary Xiaoyan, but Leilia and the others don't believe me."
"W-we never said anything like that..."
"Relax, that kind of thing doesn't bother me." Banxia smiled easily and stretched out his free hand to ruffle the other small girl's hair.
He'd always been popular with children. Come to think of it, that had been true even before he acquired Sacred Spirit Affinity. If the system had a spare skill slot, he'd almost wonder whether he had some kind of natural talent for it.
"Um... that..." Another child peeked shyly around the edge of the bench. "Lord Hero... did you really defeat Xiaoyan?"
"Yeah." Banxia nodded. "More or less. Just some dragon that was on fire all over. Pretty big, sure, but I hit it with a fire arrow and it was done."
The children's eyes all went wide with longing.
"Lying isn't something good children do." The white-haired elf set her napkin down, wiped her mouth, and spoke in a perfectly even tone.
She wouldn't deny the young man's strength, but when it came to Xiaoyan, Frieren had gone to face it herself, alongside her teacher, back in the day.
After all, her teacher's Wrath of Finality magic had been modeled after Xiaoyan's techniques.
Using fire magic to destroy Xiaoyan? That was pure fantasy.
"Is there a reward for being a good child?" Banxia asked, smiling, without exactly denying her point.
"No."
"So that's the advantage of age. Not even a little pressure."
"..."
Frieren said nothing, expression unreadable. Banxia let it go and reached into his spatial technique, pulling out a small bottle.
Inside it, a flame pulsed like a heartbeat, as though the fire were still alive.
"Is that... a fragment of Xiaoyan?" The white-haired elf looked at it for only a moment before identifying it.
"Correct."
"That's the legendary Xiaoyan?!" The children pressed in from all sides, eyes enormous.
The legend of the creator dragons was the kind of lore that even a secluded clan knew by heart.
"Keeping something that dangerous as a souvenir..." Frieren quietly ate another piece of meat, didn't ask his reason for having it, and instead warned him flatly:
"Xiaoyan grows stronger with every revival. You should be careful."
"Does that mean you've tried before?"
Frieren nodded, memories surfacing: "...My teacher once tried to control it, but failed in the end. Two revivals later, Xiaoyan had grown enormously stronger, even my teacher took severe injuries. In the end it took marshaling every elite soldier the Empire had to strip away a large portion of Xiaoyan's power before they could finally seal it again."
"I had no idea that happened." Real interest showed in Banxia's eyes.
An elder in the house is a treasure beyond price, the saying wasn't wrong at all. Every elf still walking the world was a living history book. No one ever knew just how many hidden things they carried.
"Lord Banxia, Lord Banxia..." Maquia, still tucked in his arms, looked up at him under the quietly concentrated hope of every child nearby. "On your travels... have you encountered other things?"
"Hmm..." Banxia paused. "The one I genuinely can't forget, that would be the monster that left the deepest impression on me. One that even I couldn't shake off."
"Eh?! Even Lord Hero—"
Banxia cleared his throat, reading the children's expressions perfectly. "You're impossible to say no to."
He shifted over to make room, lifted another child onto the seat beside him so no one had to stand.
Maquia settled into the crook of his arm, face tipped up, eyes shining.
The others crowded around the edges of the table, some leaning their chins on the surface, some pressed against Frieren's side, even the smallest one stretching up on tiptoe and gripping the table's edge with both hands, terrified of missing a single word.
"This was right when I was starting out..."
"..."
Frieren had been content to enjoy her meal, but she quietly tilted her ear toward him all the same. If this man, who claimed to have defeated Xiaoyan, was naming something he genuinely couldn't forget, it was worth cataloguing. Intelligence about a threat like that could prove useful someday.
She kept her face perfectly neutral. Her fork hovered in midair. The freshly roasted piece of meat she'd just skewered never made it to her mouth.
"...If I hadn't gotten lucky, I would have been buried right there in the forest outside town." Banxia's voice carried the weight of someone who had not entirely gotten over it.
Then a child tilted their head, puzzled:
"But... isn't that just goblins? The ones even farmers can beat?"
"That is a complete and utter lie!" Banxia said with genuine indignation.
"Huh?" Maquia looked up at him, confused. "Does that mean goblins really are strong, Lord Hero?"
"No, I mean the part about farmers being able to beat them without any trouble. That's the lie." Banxia shook his head. "I have no idea who started that rumor."
Goblins that set traps and coordinated ambush kills, how was any farmer supposed to handle that?
His party had nearly been wiped out entirely because they'd believed that nonsense.
Looking back now, that goblin pack was probably the single most oppressive monster encounter he'd had since arriving in this world.
"Wh-what do goblins look like?" Leilia asked quietly. Goblins were a weak monster native to the southern regions and areas bordering the Central Continent, most adventurers from the northern territories had never seen one, let alone a secluded clan like the Iorph.
"Green skin. Short. Carries some broken weapon." Banxia gestured. "They look completely harmless. But you never know where they'll set a trap, and you never know when one will drive a blade into your back."
Several of the children visibly shrank.
"The scariest thing isn't how strong they are," Banxia said, exhaling. A worn, knowing quality had crept into his voice, the voice of someone who'd earned the lesson. "It's what happens when you underestimate them."
By the time the feast ended, Frieren, who had spent the entire evening eavesdropping as the young man held forth about just how fearsome goblins were, sat in silence.
She quietly moved the piece of meat from her fork to her mouth, expression complicated.
She had lived over a thousand years. This was the first time she had ever heard anyone make goblins sound more harrowing than Xiaoyan.
She was almost tempted to revise her threat-assessment of goblins entirely.
Then she thought about it again, and felt that something, somewhere, wasn't quite right.
---
Later that night, in his room.
Banxia had just closed the door and hadn't even made it to the bed when a soft knock came from outside.
"Lord Hero... are you asleep?"
He opened the door. Standing outside was a young-looking woman, golden hair, red eyes, slight figure wrapped in a white robe, a touch of shyness on her face. She was holding a pot of tea, explaining she'd worried he might get thirsty in the night and had brought it specially.
But those eyes of hers were not the eyes of someone who had only come to deliver tea.
"I have no interest in married women. Please conduct yourself accordingly." Banxia's face was blank. He remembered, at the feast earlier, this one had a husband.
"But I—"
"Please head back." He eased the door shut. Polite. Final.
A short while later, another knock.
This time it was a young boy, carrying a fruit platter, asking the hero to teach him swordsmanship.
"Lord Hero, there were too many people during the day, it wasn't convenient to ask. Could we do it at night?"
"Not interested in that, either." Banxia closed the door again.
Third visitor. Fourth. Fifth.
He sent them off one after another, another married woman among them.
Standing at the window, Banxia could only sigh.
Being a decent person is exhausting.
All of them had been Iorph clan members angling, in one way or another, to get something from him for free. What made it worse was that the boy had been in there too.
Banxia was genuinely curious, he wouldn't deny that. But he wasn't far gone enough to wreck someone else's family to find out.
A widow, he could have worked with. Unfortunately, every single one of these people had families.
Whatever anyone might think looking at him, Banxia's own sense of himself was that he had standards. He was trying to be a decent man with a clear line he wouldn't cross.
Knock knock,
Another round of knocking. He heaved a quiet sigh, stood up, and went to the door.
"Married women and young boys, neither one, "
"Lord Banxia..."
"Oh." He blinked. "Racine. And Frieren." He scratched his head. "Both of you, this late, what's going on?"
"It concerns the First Hero," Frieren said quietly, and stepped through the door without waiting.
"I see..." Banxia glanced at the elder, whose expression had gone a little stiff at that previous line, and stepped aside without comment. "Come in, then."
He fished three cups out of his spatial technique and poured everyone a round of the pleasantly sweet carbonated drink.
Frieren took a small sip. Her eyes narrowed with quiet satisfaction. "Racine, you tell him."
"Yes." The elder looked at Banxia. "Lord Banxia, are you familiar with the First Hero?"
"I know a little." Banxia sat up straight.
Anything connected to the venerable First Hero deserved his full attention.
"In fact, the First Hero once visited the Iorph clan's hidden village and helped us with a great many things." Racine continued, "In exchange, he asked to use the lake bed beneath our settlement to conduct a magical experiment."
"A magical experiment from the First Hero." Banxia nodded thoughtfully.
"Could it be that some kind of hidden... monster girl..." He caught himself. "That is, could some kind of magical construct have come to life down there?"
"Nothing like that." Racine shook her head, glanced at the white-haired elf absorbed in her drink, and continued:
"When the First Hero left, he said he had placed a treasure of his in the lake bed, meant for the next hero who found their way here."
"Is that so..."
Frieren studied the young man with a puzzled look.
"You don't seem particularly interested in treasure, Banxia."
"...It's nothing. I just had a different kind of treasure in mind. A bit of a letdown, is all."
➤ Next: Super Beast Diary (Bonus)