Descending Into A Novel

Raymond stared at the bloody mist surrounding him. His silhouette seemingly floating, each step quiet like a ghost.

It reminded Raymond a lot of the vampires back on Erde. They just had this bloody aura surrounding them at all times that made them extremely hard to even perceive.

If not for what he was saying, he would have been extremely menacing.

"Ellen! There’s my favourite rich girl! How are you doing?"

She cut to the chase immediately, "Why are you here?"

"We just need some money is all! I promise you we weren’t going to kill Leo."

"That’s not the problem! Weren’t you offered a contract to go rescue some people on the demonic continent?"

A flicker of surprise briefly crossed his face.

"How did you know about that?"

"Because you should have taken that contract!"

"I did take it though?"

Now it was her turn to be surprised.

"Then why aren’t you there rescuing them?"

"Because the contract only starts in a few months. I still need to pay my guys in the meantime."

She let out a breath of relief. So the timeline was still normal after all, it was just delayed a little bit.

"Whew. Never mind then."

"Great! You’re not going to try and stop us are you?"

She shook her head.

In the corner of the room, a certain bound and gagged man trashed wildly upon seeing this interaction.

Leo:I’m still here!!

His trashing did nothing unfortunately. As a regular human that could barely use mana, even regular ropes were enough to restrain him.

Raymond even felt a bit bad for him, lying down like that couldn’t have been good for his back!

Subtly using his telekinesis, he lifted Leo slightly until he was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.

All the better now.

"Mmf—mmh!!"

Seeing that he immediately started trashing against, falling on his sides. Raymond immediately felt his blood turn cold.

His kindness was wasted on individuals like these. Tch.

Here he was looking out for his posture and spine health. Only for it all to be thrown out the window.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, meeting Ellen’s eyes. She stuck a hand out.

"You still have all the merch we bought right? Our VIP tickets are supposed to include a fan signing event after all."

Even in this situation, she was still looking out for herself. Truly inspiring.

"Can you unbind him for a while? And does anyone have a pen or marker?"

When someone removed his gag, the first thing he did was plead with Ellen. Eyes trembling as he got on his knees and begged her. Something she probably enjoyed deep down but would never show it to anyone outside of Raymond for the sole purpose of making it seem like he was in the wrong and slandering her.

"You need to help me! These people said they wo-

Shh

She put a hand to her lip, shushing him before handing him the several shirts and blind boxes. Alongside a red marker.

"Please sign this and I promise you won’t be hurt."

Red Ghost and his crew wasn’t even planning on hurting him in the first place, this was just a ransom after all. They needed him to be in good shape, so Ellen saying this was like knocking on an open door. The peak of redundancy mountain.

"I’ll do it! Ill sign it!"

Except Ellen must have had some sort of divine halo because he believed it immediately. Rushing to grab the pen and sign every single piece of his own merchandise.

For such a famous person, his signature was really simple. Just his name in big blocky letters.

Shakily handing them back to Ellen, he found himself swiftly tied up again. A new gag entering his mouth.

"Mmf!"

"Thank you so much! My friends and I really appreciate this!"

Just like that, she waved him off.

Even Raymond was a bit speechless at Ellen’s shamelessness, the sheer audacity even.

Actually, with how eccentric Ellen had been acting ever since they left the academy. Raymond didn’t want to mention it since it was quite a sensitive topic but...

Perhaps it was just that time of the month?

***

"Mmhh...grandpa! It hurts..."

Erin pushed away Rayez’s hands, who was petting Erin like his life depended on it. Before running over to Clara and jumping onto her lap instead.

She briefly flashed her husband a smirk. Just a small sign of her superiority. Subtle, but still clearly received.

Receiving a glare in return, she adjusted Erin’s position before smoothly stroking her soft red hair. Making sure not to repeat the same mistake that her husband did.

"I don’t get it...what’s so different about us that she prefers you?"

"Hmm. Maybe you don’t love her enough?"

Absolute nonsense of course.

It was hard not to love such a small little bundle of joy like Erin, even if she was a big naughty at times.

But it was always fun to see her husband turn red in the face.

"Hehe."

Even if she wasn’t related to her, or even a human at all. Her charm and cuteness more then made up for it. So what if she was a dragon? It just made her more cute!

Having a granddaughter was so delightful, now if only Ellen would give her a real granddaughter...

Her hands unknowingly pinched Erin’s soft cheeks, drawing out a muffled noise of complaint from her.

Swatting her hands away, she jumped out of her lap before running away. Causing Rayez to also snicker at his wife. Just to even out the wrongdoings just a little. But look who’s laughing now? Even Clara couldn’t fully get Erin to accept her.

Compared to when Raymond and Ellen did the same thing, Erin would run away from them each time they tried to do anything more then pet her. Clara personally blamed them for not introducing Erin sooner, to think they had her all to themselves for months now! Whereas she and Rayez only had these few days.

Seeing Erin run out the door, the two of them let out a small sigh.

Elsewhere, inside a mountain located near the city of New Rayan. A silver eyelid lazily opened, revealing a shimmering white and grey pupil.

Lifting her massive head up slightly, she cautiously sniffed the air. The scent of another one of her kind was an alarming thing, as far as she was aware. It was only her and another one that should have chosen to live in this realm. But this third scent was different, unrecognizable to her and...fiery. Reminiscent of ash and smoke.

’Another dragon?’

Surrounding her building sized body, piles of silver and gold as high as dozens of men provided a soft cushion for her. She didn’t collect just coin, because in separate piles were thousands and thousands of different currencies from practically every century of hand history. Alongside other more antique objects such as exquisite statues of old, masterpiece paintings and relics and artifacts powerful enough to draw blood from her scales.

Each of the treasures alone could be worth a fortune, but to her. It simply served as a more comfortable bedding, as well as something nice to look at.

Because to silver dragons, there was nothing better in the world then treasure! 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Just staring at her own wealth was enough to put her mind at ease.

It also reminded her of her own happy memories, obtaining all this treasure wasn’t easy after all. But it was definitely fun!

Well, it was pretty easy actually. There weren’t many that could resist a dragon’s magic.

Like when she had to craft a fake for all the paintings, and then use several excuses to ’destroy’ the fake and keep the real ones so no one would look for them. Or the time when she stole the statue and accidentally uncovered a plot containing an astronomical amount of money. Which she then promptly stole. Or even the time she once accidentally kidnapped a male servant who had fallen asleep.

The last one wasn’t even her fault. How could such a handsome man fall asleep so still like that? He was barely even breathing and his pale skin was more marble and stone then flesh.

No wait, there was something more important right now!

Why was there another dragon here?!

Smelling the ashy scent, she could immediately recognize it as a red dragon as well. Which was even more shocking then the realization of there being a dragon.

If dragons lived in a peaceful society, then the red dragons would be the rowdy hoodlums that ruined everything. All dragons could be pretty aggressive when they wanted to, but red dragons took it to the max. Breathing out fire on anything they didn’t like.

Cow was too skinny and didn’t have enough meat? Fire!

Other dragons were too loud and annoying? Fire!

The sun was was too hot? Fire!

Not that dragons lived in a peaceful society, but a red dragon being here totally messed up her life!

She moved into the human realm for a simple reason after all, there were no other dragons around minus the one, but he also had the same idea so the two of them had left each other alone.

Why was there a third one all off a sudden?!

No. She had to go see for herself. She couldn’t let her peaceful days of sleeping and counting money go.

But staring st her own piles of wealth, she faltered slightly.

She wasn’t good enough at magic to be able to cast protective barriers,so how could she possibly risk her money? It had taken her years to collect this much! She wasn’t about to risk her entire life like this!

’...next time.’