After finally getting to taste the legendary dragon-meat skewers for herself, Barghest, who seemed to have quite a talent as a gourmet, could not stop praising the dish. Her stomach alone devoured seven whole Wyverns before she was barely satisfied.
Once everyone had eaten their fill and recovered their strength, they ventured deeper into the Swamp Dragon's Remains. Barghest, still craving more, occasionally licked her lips, her eyes gleaming whenever they encountered dragon beasts along the way. She was clearly beginning to regard every last one of them as premium ingredients waiting to be harvested.
Even so, while her appetite was stirring, it did nothing to diminish Barghest's judgment or ability to carry out orders as a proper battle fanatic.
As a muscular woman whose forearms were already nearly as thick as Baobhan Sith's thighs, this atavistic A-Ray became even more energetic after eating her fill. Wielding the Fairy Sword Black Dog Galatine, she took the initiative and cleared the path ahead.
Earth dragons, Wyverns, magical swamp serpents, and other Magical Beasts they encountered along the way were brutally dismembered and incinerated beneath the scorching blade.
Come to think of it, the immensely powerful Fairy Sword in Barghest's hands was something Samael had quietly taken from the Great Cathedral's treasury just before they left.
After all, Aurora was already his contracted pet. What was wrong with her master taking a few things?
Naturally, for the sake of fairness, Morgan, Merlin, Baobhan Sith, Habetrot, and the others all got a share as well. With Samael egging them on, everyone went inside and took one or two items from the collection that caught their fancy.
According to rumor, the Great Cathedral had not held an auction for half a month after they left. Apparently, Aurora had taken quite a financial beating.
Remembering Aurora's miserable, aggrieved expression, Samael's lips curled upward in delight, and his mood improved even further.
After all, happiness was often built upon someone else's suffering.
On that point, he wholeheartedly agreed.
"What a huge marsh!"
After traveling dozens of kilometers and finally burning off most of her excess energy, Barghest stopped and stared at the shimmering expanse of water beneath the dense white mist ahead, unable to suppress her amazement.
But when Baobhan Sith beside her waved a hand and used Mana to disperse the fog, she immediately covered her nose, disgust filling her face.
"Ugh, what are those things? They're disgusting!"
Hearing her, the others stepped forward to look.
They quickly discovered that the marsh, stretching for nearly a hundred kilometers in every direction, was covered in indistinct, writhing lumps of flesh.
The masses varied greatly in size. They pulsed like beating hearts as they absorbed the Ether drifting through the Swamp Dragon's Remains. Their flesh proliferated, their bodies steadily expanded, and at a speed visible to the naked eye, they gradually formed into tissues resembling embryos.
"Roar... roar..."
Just as the group moved closer to observe, several purple-red embryos that had swollen to several meters began to tear open from within.
With low growls heralding new life, claws covered in tiny scales ripped through the membranes, followed by slimy, lizard-like heads.
Flutter... flutter...
Their soft wing membranes flapped several times, quickly drying the moisture from their bodies. Their bones and scales hardened soon afterward.
Within moments, several juvenile dragon beasts, each a few meters long, burst out of the marsh.
Their eyelids opened.
Cold serpentine eyes, unmistakably those of predators, locked onto the easy prey that had conveniently delivered itself to them.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Before the monsters could even approach, Mana spears, thorned roses, and Fairy greatswords tore across the ground in turn, sending the newborn dragon beasts straight back to the grave before they had even had time to properly see the sun.
"Now I understand where all the Mixed-Blood Dragonkind in the North came from."
Samael frowned as he looked over the writhing chunks of flesh that nearly covered the entire surface of the marsh like maggots.
Merlin crouched at the marsh's edge and poked at one of the writhing, proliferating lumps of flesh. Once her curiosity was satisfied, she rubbed her chin and asked casually.
"So what do we do with all this?"
"We destroy every last embryo, of course!"
Morgan answered without hesitation, then paused before adding thoughtfully.
"We've come all the way from the outside, and we've barely seen any living creatures apart from degraded Dragonkind. The ecosystem here has already been devastated. If this continues, it will collapse sooner or later."
"And once more and more dragon beasts begin flying out of this marsh to hunt elsewhere, given how much they eat, the entire North will eventually become their hunting ground!"
Samael's eyes flickered as he prepared to speak.
But Morgan, always decisive, did not bother waiting.
She immediately began chanting divine words, summoning spear after spear woven from Mana and bombarding the floating masses of flesh throughout the marsh, destroying them one by one.
Tch. Melusine, the legendary Fairy Knight Melusine, couldn't possibly be among those, could she?
Samael watched embryo after embryo rupture across the water's surface and muttered inwardly.
Still, logically speaking, the Age of Gods had already receded.
Producing Dragonkind on this scale, even degraded specimens, should not have been something Vortigern possessed the technology to accomplish.
So how exactly had it been done?
As Samael frowned in thought, Habetrot, who had flown into the air to scout ahead, suddenly stared straight toward the center of the marsh.
Her eyes went wide.
Then, as if she had lost all control over her body, she plummeted toward the water.
Morgan immediately gathered the water into a mirror and used it to bring her companion back to her side. While checking Habetrot's condition, she asked with concern.
"What happened?"
"Bones! Meow! Huge bones, meow!"
Habetrot still looked badly shaken as she answered hoarsely.
At those words, the Ancient Serpent's vertical pupils split into a cross-shaped pattern.
His gaze pierced through the lingering mist and stretched into the distance.
Then he saw it.
A colossal skeleton nearly two thousand meters long, with a lizard-like skull and enormous wings covered in vicious bone spines.
Even a brief glance was enough for an indescribable pressure to erupt from the gigantic remains and strike directly at the observer's soul, inspiring an almost instinctive urge to bow down in worship.
Ether surged around Samael as he forcibly erased the skeleton's mental interference.
Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, his lips moved as he slowly murmured.
"A dragon's remains..."
More precisely, it was a half-decayed dragon skeleton.
Roughly two-thirds of the bones were exposed, while on certain parts, nearly one-third of the flesh still clung stubbornly to the skeleton.
More importantly, those lumps of flesh, soaked by the marsh water, were slowly peeling away from the dragon's remains in scattered pieces.
Like fish roe being scattered into the water, they drifted toward every corner of the marsh.
So that's it!
Understanding suddenly dawned on Samael.
Those degraded Dragonkind were most likely mutated from pieces of flesh that had fallen from this pure-blooded Great Dragon.
But what kind of monster could possess such terrifying vitality and exert such a lasting influence even after death?
As yet another question surfaced in his mind, Samael thought for a while but failed to find an answer.
So he simply told Morgan and the others what he had discovered.
"The Dragon of Albion... So the legends were true. It really existed!"
Morgan gazed at the astonishing sight across the marsh, emotions surging within her. Only after a long while did she calm herself, frowning as she murmured.
Seeing the others looking completely confused, Morgan paused and explained.
Only then did the members of the group begin to understand the colossal creature before them.
Albion was actually the earliest known name for the island of Britannia.
Apparently, the name had been passed down by ancient Greek geographers during the Age of Gods. It meant "the white land" and later became another name for Britannia itself.
According to legend, long ago, an earth-shattering Divine Spirit war had erupted across this land.
Countless Divine Spirits and monsters fell from the sky, while divine blood rich in Mana rained over every corner of Britannia, nourishing the island.
When the conflict reached its most brutal stage, a Great Dragon over a thousand meters long was gravely wounded and crashed into Britannia, disappearing without a trace afterward.
Some claimed it followed the gods to the Inner Sea of the Planet.
Others believed its wounds were too severe and that it had died long ago in some unknown place.
Yet from beginning to end, no one ever saw the fallen Great Dragon again.
Because Britannia had been the place where it fell, the creature became known as the [Dragon of Albion].
After listening to Morgan's explanation, Samael's expression became strange.
The War of the Covenant... the Dragon of Albion...
He vaguely remembered that there had only been one Great Dragon of such an extraordinary rank that he had managed to get killed during that war.
And, by an even stranger coincidence, that thing really had been a world-class Cataclysm...
Damn it... it can't possibly be that much of a coincidence, can it?
Samael stared at the kilometer-long dragon corpse floating on the water, its eyes still open in death.
The longer he looked, the more familiar it seemed.
The corner of his mouth twitched violently.
Was he somehow responsible for every disaster wherever he went?
"There's something inside the dragon's bones!"
While Samael was still muttering to himself, Morgan once again sensed the strange resonance from before.
Her brows immediately furrowed.
She raised her wand and stepped onto the surface of the water, walking across the waves as she headed first toward the enormous dragon remains that loomed like a palace.