“Either that thing is lying, or … or one of the nastiest beings in existence just returned from the dead,” Elias said slowly. There had been no need for Thomas to relay the dragon’s pronouncement, that was how loud it had been.

“No long time for long explanations, give me something I can use!” Thomas snapped.

The dragon interrupted as Elias was opening his mouth to answer.

“You may take as much time as you need to make your choice, but remember, her imperial majesty has countless legions at her beck and call. You will not be able to proclaim your loyalty if one of her thousand dragons has already destroyed you to clear a path for her. I am but the least of her servants, they may not even realize you were in their way.”

“That can’t be right, can it?” Thomas asked. Countless legions, thousands of dragons, most stronger than that thing, in this new London? They’d have seen them, right? Not to mention that if this empress had that much power at her disposal, why bother to send a message to him personally? If he was so insignificant, why not just annex him alongside the land?

“Someone would have noticed if there were that many dragons around, and their magic would have started warping the jungle,” Elias echoed his thoughts. “I’ll buy a few dragons, but legions? Not possible.”

So the dragon was bluffing. Probably. But by how much? That thing might still have had enough power backing it to utterly obliterate the Dungeon. And that was only if Thomas managed to beat this thing.

He began to pull back most of his creatures while sending out a single Capuchin monkey to negotiate. Somehow, miraculously, the dragon waited for the Dungeon Avatar to arrive.

So he had the monkey settle in front of the dragon, barely inside the Dungeon, sitting down and staring up into the lizard-like face of the far stronger creature.

“Hello.”

It was a blunt, basic, statement. A delivery far more emotionless than Thomas would have normally used. But as annoying as Elias’ initial attitude had been, it had taught him something. Dungeon Cores at his Rank were not meant to be all that smart. So why not pretend to be a real E-Rank Dungeon Core and act the fool?

“Hello, Core,” the dragon rumbled. “Have you come to offer your allegiance, or must I destroy you?”

“Hello, I’m Core.” Thomas answered and had the monkey give a little wave, hoping to get some more answers. “Where are your legions? Is that your name?”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed, glaring down at the little avatar.

“I am Verdant Herald, and I need no legions.”

“That’s a weird name,” Thomas commented only to Elias. “His empress had a ‘normal’ name.”

“Yeah, a job title as a name … he’s low in the hierarchy.”

Thomas made the monkey scratch its back absent-mindedly to cover the pause while he was talking to his fairy.

“Do you think the empress would mind if I killed him?” Thomas asked, not really expecting a positive answer. If dragon society was even remotely like any of the societies he knew, then attacking a messenger or ambassador was going to result in brutal retribution.

But that dragon was a problem. A powerhouse right on his front door, glaring at him, looking as though it might snap at any moment and go on a rampage. It certainly had gone very quickly from “take your time” to “answer or die”.

And if he killed it, he’d not only get rid of it, but he’d also get at least an idea of what dragons were capable of. Not to mention that while it knew he was here, its superiors might not.

“If you attacked first, she probably would. But if she’s who I think she is, if that thing outside our door starts something and gets killed, she’d probably blame it, not you,” Elias explained.

“Well, your answer?” the dragon growled.

“Who is she, what do you know about her?” Thomas asked his fairy, hoping for an answer that would clarify things.

“She’s supposed to be dead, for starters. Gone, vaporized by her own subjects for, uh … general tyrannical shittiness?”

That didn’t sound good. But he couldn’t leave the dragon outside without an answer.

“What does your empress need from me, if she has thousands of dragons?” he had the monkey ask while asking Elias yet another question.

“You don’t sound sure, do you know what actually happened?”

The fairy shrugged helplessly. “It happened like a week before I got turned into a fairy, in another universe. All I know is rumors. She’s a terrible ruler, and she was kicked from her throne, everything else is specu- …”

As it turned out, holding two separate conversations was difficult and partially ignoring an impatient dragon was not conducive to long-term survival.

A blast of flame wiped out the monkey avatar before the dragon raised its head to the sky, rising onto two feet, and roared in fury before dropping back down to all fours, marching into the dungeon, growling.

“You have not bent the knee willingly, so you will bend it under threat of death.”

Well, wasn’t that a statement?

If Thomas hadn’t already decided he didn’t want to join ranks with that dragon and its ruler, that would have cinched it.

His defenses were ready, his tactics laid out, his champions chomping at the bit.

The dragon’s wings snapped out the moment it was in the entrance hall, flinging itself skywards before coming to hover a couple of meters above the ground, glaring around, waiting.

“Well, dungeon?” it said in a mocking tone. “Why don’t you show me your fighting spirit? Or has my mere presence already broken you?”

While Thomas had countless creatures, he only sent out a few critters at first. His sacrificial lambs, or rather, lions. Well, they were tigers in this case, but the point was that he was sacrificing reasonably strong defenders.

The first creature launched itself at the dragon’s face only to be reduced to ash in a single blast of emerald flame while a wingbeat carried it beyond the reach of a big feline that had launched itself at its tail.

Spinning in midair, the invader raked a gout of flame across the wall, leaving a glowing, cherry-red trail on the marble and obliterating several of Thomas’ creatures. Then, it let itself fall to the floor, landing heavily.

There was a tiger down there, the one the dragon had dodged in mid-air, but it didn’t live long, eviscerated by a single swipe of draconic claws.

Fire breath, that was one power. Something that allowed it to function and, more importantly, fly, with very little concern for the laws of physics. That was a second. But being D-Rank, it should have a third.

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What was it? It certainly wasn’t obvious.

The dragon lowered its head to the tiger’s body, about to take a bite, when it saw a hippo run down the stars behind it. It turned back to the tiger and began to eat.

And that was when the dragon found out just why one didn’t discount creatures just due to appearances. Hippos looked like butterballs, granted, but they were butterballs that could bite.

When the first hippo chomped down on the dragon’s tail. The reaction was … it was the reaction of a cat whose tail someone had stepped on. An indignant screech accompanied by a startled leap of seemingly supernatural power, launching the dragon onto the mezzanine while yanking on the hippo’s jaws with enough force to break its neck.

Whoa.

But the dragon wasn’t done yet. Yanking on the tail when it was stuck in the hippo’s mouth didn’t just cut into its lips, but also resulted in the dungeon creature’s teeth cutting into the tail. So when hippo blood, transformed into the lethal toxin of the Tatzelwyrm by Thomas, poured into the dragon’s tail through those small scratches … it wasn’t pretty.

The invader roared so furiously Thomas was half-convinced the roof was about to come down, and started to run in circles, obliterating the few Dungeon creatures that entered its field of view almost casually.

Until eventually, it came to a stop in the middle of the trashed entrance hall, growling furiously.

“Tricks are worthless in the face of absolute power.”

It turned, practically twisting itself into a pretzel to bring its flame breath to bear on its tail, but it managed it, burning off the damaged part.

“And now, you will submit!”

“At least it still wants to dominate instead of kill?” Elias suggested.

Thomas didn’t answer, he was too focused on guiding his creatures. This would have to be timed perfectly.

The dragon rounded a corner to the corridor, but before it could react, the camarasauruses he’d crammed in there cracked their whip-tails forward, wrapping the infinitely flexible limbs around it and reeling it in.

Sure, the dragon was physically powerful, but the dinosaurs were heavy.

Even before the dragon had been fully reeled in, it had charbroiled one of the dinosaurs, but at that point, the survivors literally dogpiled on it. A multi-ton sauropod simply tipping itself onto its side, toppling over, made for one hell of an impact.

Of course, the dragon was durable as hell, to the point where the weight of the dinosaurs did more damage to them than their target, but it was enough to shatter wings and, more importantly, pin the creature.

A t-rex was the first of the creatures who attacked next, its jaws closing around the dragon’s neck while it pushed its head down, trapping the dragon’s deadliest weapon against the ground.

Snakes shot across the ground, going for what had to be the weak spots in the dragon’s scales. Joints, mostly, as the dragon didn’t seem to have any external genitalia, though it didn’t really seem to enjoy having a boomslang bite down on the inside of one of its nostrils. And a second snake managed to crunch down on its tongue, though that particular avenue of attack also put it in the path of another flame blast.

Scratching and clawing like a feral cat while using swearwords that Thomas could barely even make sense of, the dragon struggled to free itself. Any normal creature in the same position would already have been long-dead. An F- or even E-Rank creature would also have died unless it had specialized powers. And shouldn’t its stats be barely better than peak E-Rank?

But no, that dragon was continuing to keep moving, keep fighting, until it finally managed to ever so briefly line up its jaws with one of the t-rex’s legs. Flame raked the dinosaur’s limb, feathers igniting, a pained growl escaping the dungeon creature’s throat. And in that brief moment, its jaws loosened.

The second blast of flame lasted for almost ten seconds, and by the time it let up, everything forward of the dino’s forearms was gone, reduced to ash.

Struggling even harder, crushing countless snakes almost by accident, the dragon began to free itself in truth … but in the end, it wasn’t its own efforts that truly got it out from under the dinosaurs.

But rather, a massive fist that caught it under the chin like a wrecking ball, lifting it up and hurling it almost ten meters backwards, right into the net the boomslangs had woven across the corridor entrance.

The design was ingenious, really, with most of the vines being woven around the center while only the bare minimum of plant matter anchored the foliage to the archway. So when Dexter’s punch had thrown the dragon into the trap, those anchor points had broken, causing everything to wrap around that damn foul-mouthed critter.

Of course, practically mundane plant matter wasn’t enough to hold a D-Rank, but there were now a ton of vines entangling the creature, and a whole bunch of snakes were along for the ride, having patiently waited in the plant net.

So now, using the existing net as a base, they could keep entangling the dragon more and more, while using the vines as a cushion against the dragon throwing itself against walls and Dexter’s punches.

Between a giant sloth with unnaturally heavy fists pummeling it and all the snakes crawling over it, biting and envenomating anything and everything that looked even remotely vulnerable, the dragon was getting pummeled around like a football. And a few little critters that had been in the area were attacking too, wolverines nipping at exposed flesh, and a couple of sabertooth tigers managed to land solid bites.

The long teeth punched through solid scales and snapped off, just as he’d designed them to, dissolving into countless razor-sharp fragments that would travel through the dragon’s bloodstream, carving up anything and everything they came into contact with.

But even so, Dexter wasn’t managing to do much damage, prioritizing landing constant punches to keep the dragon from lining up a solid fire breath over causing injury. And that dragon was one tough fucker.

Eventually, the dragon decided to stop waiting for a good shot at its attacker and just started blasting. Was there a limit as to how much fire it could breathe? There had to be, right, otherwise, it would have just been spitting flames the entire time … right?

At first, it was just a matter of a few sparks landing, igniting Dexter’s fur, but sparks were often the prelude to flames, as was the case here.

The unnatural toughness of a Dungeon champion shone through as the giant sloth continued to land punches even while fully engulfed in fire, flames licking at the vine net and setting that ablaze as well.

It was at that point that Thomas decided to stop sending in more creatures and just let things play out. There was just too much fire all around the place, any reinforcements would catch fire in moments. Not worth it.

Eventually, the last of his defenders dropped dead and the emerald fire burned it out, revealing a still alive and very pissed dragon. Very little remained of its wings, only twisted nubs of bones poking out behind its shoulders, and only a handful of scales were still visible, but it was still alive.

“You think this will stop me?” the dragon growled and continued its march deeper into the dungeon.

The dragon was utterly crippled, had been scorched to hell, envenomated, and beaten within an inch of its life. And yet, it was advancing. Did it have a death wish? Also … how come the dragon had been damaged that badly by its own fire?

What the hell was wrong with this thing?

Growling furiously, the dragon advanced, cursing at any creature it came across, eviscerating or incinerating anything it came across, all the way to the mammal hall mezzanine.

“Once you have bent the knee, you will have to make more space in your halls,” it growled as it shimmied its way inside, a blast of fire every few meters ensuring that nothing remained.

It would have been a good strategy … but Thomas had hidden several creatures behind fake walls, including an arsinoitherium.

So when the dragon passed by the hiding spot, a multi-ton monster of a prehistoric beast hammered into its side, and this time, Thomas could clearly hear the crunch of breaking bone.

Of course, the dragon was able to tear off the dungeon monster’s head, but the damage was done.

Now limping on top of everything else, the dragon eventually reached the massive boss room Thomas had turned mammal hall into.

“Wet floors? Pathetic!” it spat, a gout of flame evaporating the water turning the ground into a slipping hazard. “How much more nonsense will you have me wade through?”

Oh, just a few more things.

Thomas grinned internally. The dragon might have been able to tear its way through everything else he had, but the next time, he’d be better prepared, and this thing was about to come up against Cheshire. Even without the advantage of the slippery floor, a crippled dragon against the apex of what a sabertooth tiger could be? No contest.

Cheshire blurred in, magically empowered claws slashing into the dragon’s hindquarters, right where major blood vessels, muscles, and sinews were.

With a furious roar, the dragon spun, but Cheshire once again activated the ability she’d gained at E-Rank, all but teleporting to the other side of the room.

It began to turn back around, already breathing fire, but Cheshire flashed into a different corner. She had maybe ten more bursts of supernatural speed in her, so she couldn’t keep that up indefinitely, but that dragon was beat to hell, and she was about to push it ever closer to death.

Judging that her target wouldn’t be able to turn around in time to catch her, Cheshire charged in at her standard, but nevertheless fast, speed, once again clawed at its hindquarters, and leaped away again.

This process repeated two more times until the dragon’s back legs finally buckled, spilling it onto the ground. And before it could raise its head again, Cheshire was on top of it, sinking her teeth into its neck.

That was the true purpose of the massive fangs of the sabertooth tiger. Thomas had repurposed them as single-use weapons that shredded an opponent’s insides, then immediately regrew, in his regular critters, but Cheshire had the size and durability to employ her massive chompers against even a dragon.

Ivory blades punched clean through every major blood vessel in the dragon’s neck, as well as the windpipe, neatly severing every vital connection save the spinal cord. One second passed, then two, until the dragon’s body finally let itself be dissolved by Thomas’ influence. Finally, victory.