What was I supposed to do here? Should I join in on either side? I'd like to claim the conflict had nothing to do with me and reverse course before anyone noticed I was here, but it would be a lie. The black dragon only existed and travelled here because of my actions.

Which side won would likely have lasting implications worldwide, too.

Perhaps I should just follow my usual strategy and wait for someone to attack me, then join the opposing side?

The white dragon, the final sister of the trio, lanced the black with ice breath, but the ice evaporated from his scales as quickly as it formed. The green tried a breath of acid, but the black dragon evaded, lancing at the white with his Void-tainted fire. The white partially evaded and partially deflected the attack with her own breath, her ice losing the contest badly but at least succeeding in shielding her.

Void immunity advanced to level 33

The black dragon roared, the sound laced with a touch of the Void, and while I weathered it well, the other dragons were both closer and lacked my immunity skill. The red, who had been trying to dig himself out of the crater he'd landed in, collapsed. The green and white fell from the air, the white clawing at her own ears.

The black dived after them, claws brandished and ready to carve into the stunned green.

Unsure which side I should take, I watched on, frozen, as the black dragon sliced deeply into the demon lord. A lake of blood sprayed from his side, but the black dragon didn't let up, slamming the injured green into the ground, pinning his head with a claw, and unleashing his obsidian flame. He kept it up for ten full seconds before stepping back, by which point the demon lord was very obviously dead, his head being reduced to a blackened, scorched skull.

The red, barely having climbed to his feet, roared. Not a roar of dominance or challenge, but despair. He flamed the black, while the black flamed back. Red and obsidian lances clashed, but the darkness consumed the light. The red fought valiantly, lasting a full fifteen seconds until he, too, was consumed by the flame of the Void.

The white dragon didn't even respond; not dead, but unconscious. The black dragon lazily plodded along the ground towards her.

That was finally enough for me to move. I swooped in and dropped down between the two of them.

"Isn't that enough?" I asked. "You've already won."

"This is no concern of yours, failed hero. Be gone from this place."

"Of course it's my concern! I came here to stop a war, and you just killed the one who was going to start it!"

"Then I would say your problem is rather neatly solved, would you not?"

"That depends on why you just killed your original."

The black dragon snorted. "As I said, this is no concern of yours. Go away. The demons and humans will all live. You have nothing else to do here."

"What are you even doing here? If you could leave that dungeon at any time, why didn't you?"

The black dragon growled, a reverberating, angry sound that vibrated every bone in my body. "You should learn to think before you speak, foolish human."

Why? What had I done now?

Of course. The other red dragon. Thanks to the oath, I'd put him completely out of my mind. He wasn't here. To escape the dungeon, the black dragon must have abandoned him. Either that, or he'd died when I killed his original.

"It seems you finally worked it out. Now, be gone."

I looked down at the unmoving white dragon behind me. It just didn't seem right to let the black one kill her, nor did I know what he intended to do next. There was no way I could just leave.

"Why kill her? She's already beaten."

"Why do you care? This is your first time meeting her. You know nothing of her. Her life, her personality, her pets. The carnes multiformis belong to her, and you are yet to meet any of them in this world, either."

"Why should it matter if I've never met her? The default should be to save lives, not to end them. If I did know her, and knew she was evil, perhaps I'd stand aside, but it's because I don't know that I'm here."

"Would it sway your opinion to tell you that the coward regained consciousness some time ago and is playing dead in the hopes that you will save her?"

I glanced behind myself again, only to see her eye open a slit. Wow. A dragon taking refuge by hiding behind me wasn't something I ever dreamed of adding to my bucket list.

"It is not cowardice to admit I have no hope of victory. I know not who you are, or why you have slain my brothers unprovoked, but I will not give up on my life for as long as I still draw breath."

The black dragon growled again, but refrained from attacking. "If it will convince this irritant to leave, I will make an oath of mutual non-aggression. My original was my only target to begin with. If these two hadn't interfered, they could have both lived."

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The white dragon growled back in response. "Your original? As far as I'm concerned, you came from nowhere and attacked my brother. Why would I not interfere?"

"You," she continued, turning her attention to me. "I know not who you are either, but this one obviously fears you. Aid me against him, and I will offer you a share of the hoards of my brothers."

The black dragon snorted, but said nothing, leaving it up to me to explain. "Sorry, but he doesn't fear me. He just knows he can't kill me, and that it's more expedient to convince me to go away than to pick a fight. If you want to live, I suggest you take his offer."

Although, even saying that, he was still being... odd. He distinctly told me to go away, rather than home. Despite being so obviously pissed at being forced to abandon the dungeon's version of the red dragon, the worst he'd done was raise his voice at me. Wasn't he tempted to disembowel me once or twice? He knew I'd survive it, and he could easily kill the white dragon in my respawn time, but he seemed to constantly be going out of his way to be nice.

"Stupid cheating summoned heroes," said the black dragon in the draconic equivalent of a mutter, which in normal terms was the volume of an opera singer screaming into a megaphone.

"Summoned hero? There is no such thing. I have analysed the so-called hero summoning ritual of the humans, and it is naught but fancy decoration. Their summoning circle is utterly non-functional."

"Empirical evidence suggests otherwise," I stated, remembering my summoning well. But the green dragon had said exactly the same thing. Why were they so sure it shouldn't have worked?

The white dragon said nothing, wordlessly staring in our direction for a half a minute. Then she turned and fled, taking to the skies with a flap of her wings. The black dragon reacted instantly, lancing at her with his Void-tainted fire, then flying after her.

At first, I thought the white dragon was weaving in her flight as an evasive measure, but it quickly became obvious that wasn't the case. Whatever injuries she had taken in the fight were disrupting her ability to fly, and the black dragon was far faster than her.

She failed to dodge his second lance of flame, crashing into the mountainside with another earth-shaking boom.

"Are you going to complain?" asked the black dragon, flying back to me.

"No. I did what I could. Fleeing was her own choice. But my second question remains; what do you intend to do next?"

"Nothing. I will lair here and sleep, as us dragons are wont to do. The pets will live on with as much freedom as they had before. As much as I would like to bring the humans under my control too, I suspect you would interfere, so I will settle for severing my land from theirs. The defence of the border will be increased. Any humans that try to cross will forfeit their lives."

"Fine..." I agreed, not seeing any other option. He already saw demon territory as 'his' land.

Time travel ceased to be so much of a cheat when others could tag along for the ride, and I obviously wasn't going to be able to rid myself of that black dragon. A dragon that was angry at me for the death of his brother, even if he was being weirdly accepting of it. There was no past or future I could travel to where I could save the red dragon from the dungeon. My previous leap backward had erased him completely.

All three original dragons were dead. I couldn't care less about the red. The green... he had been pragmatic, but he'd also taken the continent hostage against me. The white I knew nothing about. Good or evil? Were her strangely shaped blobs slaves to her? Pets? Friends? Children?

The war was stopped, and lives were saved on both sides. Should I be happy with that? It wasn't as if I intended to travel back to the dawn of creation and save everyone I could. I could save more with timeless—the fox-kin from the dungeon, for example—but that would leave me unable to take formless. I needed my last class level if I wanted both.

That skill could bring back the dungeon version of the red dragon, too. I didn't particularly want to, but he wasn't the worst of the dungeon denizens, and it would make the black one more favourably disposed.

"Do you know the location of any damaged Goddess shrines? If I repair one more, I might be able to rescue your brother."

"How? That future has been erased. Your power grows more nonsensical with each passing day."

"That future has been erased, but it existed once. You and I remember it, and that's enough."

It really was. With each new class skill I took, I understood more about how this Void stuff worked. How little effort it actually took to hop between worlds. How every potential past and future caused ripples through the Void. I currently lacked the ability to parse those ripples and reproduce from them what had been lost, but it was an ability I could easily gain. All it would take was to select the skill.

The dragon concentrated briefly, whether using his own abilities to scan or tapping into the collective memory of his 'pets'. "There are none within my territory," he answered. "The Goddess is respected and her shrines well cared for here, and so it shall remain. Try asking among the humans."

However else this dragon may act, he was always careful not to bite off more than he could chew. With the size of his mouth, he could chew one hell of a lot, but he did seem to legitimately respect the Goddess.

So, human territory. Treading there without formless would be risky—albeit for them more than for me—but for now I wanted to keep the skill slot open. I had the choice between stealth or openness. I could fast travel in and try to hide, or approach the border openly and announce my presence. Maybe hand back the bandit I'd captured.

...Actually, I should probably feed and water him at some point. I'd forgotten he was there. Before I forgot his existence again, I reached into the storage area of my dimension home and pulled out a canteen and a few muncher corpses, before dropping them back in my makeshift prison section. The canteen landed on his head, eliciting an amusing squeal.

Taking the time to consider things, I decided on option three; fast travel without bothering to hide. I'd use a shrine to teleport back to the human capital and have a word with this king who I'd accidentally killed but never actually seen the face of. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, but given that I'd personally met the demon lord, both new and old, I should at least make sure I'd visited this king in person, too.

The black dragon was watching me carefully, apparently waiting for me to finish thinking. "Okay," I told him. "I'll go visit the human territory. I'll see what I can find, and rescue whatever kidnap victims I come across while I'm there."

"You are... inconsistent. You flip between apathy and unrestrained passion without any logic I can discern. Go and make the world into something you consider to be a better place. I shall not interfere."

"Thanks. I think."

"It was not intended as a compliment," snorted the dragon.

"Doesn't mean I can't take it as one."

Leaving the newly installed demon lord to take his dragon-nap, I flew back to the fox-kin town, the sun cresting the horizon before I reached it. The previously sent out army was nowhere to be seen, presumably disbanded and returned home already. This time, the gates stood open. Let's hope I could get in as easily as last time.