I looked at the piece of cheese that was handed to me. I sniffed it and bit into it. I tried to savor the taste as the piece of cheese burnt inside my mouth, unable to chew or swallow the delicious food given to me. The noble looked at me confused then clicked his tongue angrily before leaving.

That was weird. It was the beginning of Founding Day, everyone was celebrating the day the kingdom was founded. I was wandering around the castle when a random noble gave me ‘cheese from the most exotic land’. The cheese itself looked alright but I wasn’t sure about the green and purple powder on it. Those were probably exquisite spices from the same ‘exotic land’.

With nothing to do inside the castle, I decided to just leave and go enjoy the festival at the main street. I went to the courtyard to check on the kids when I saw that only Lard was sitting alone at a bench eating.

“Mm....mm…hmm? Teacher of the Great Vakasa of the Darkness, would you please enlighten this mighty hero?” He got up while still chewing on a slice of cake.

“Why don’t you be enlightened on the ways of proper manners before I answer your question?” I asked him back. He started chewing faster and nearly choked.

“Alright, tubby. What’s your question?” I crossed my arms. I waited for him to stop dying on the floor before continuing.

“Well, then. Tell me, why are half of the castle occupants busy running around?”  He asked me while placing a palm on his face and stretching his other arm towards me.

“Stop posing. It’s Founding Day, apparently. Some kind of big festival to celebrate the founding of the kingdom.” I shrugged.

“A festival event?! That meant that something huge and terrible will happen that could change the kingdom dramatically!” He gasped as he tried to unsheathe his sword on his back.

“Like I keep telling you, stop placing your sword on your back. It’s stupid and will get you killed.” I pointed out. After struggling to take out his weapon for a while, he managed to take it out and started slashing the air with his sword randomly.

“What do you mean something huge and terrible?” I asked.

“Mmhmm. Even this great masterful dragon-like intelligence is unable to predict what specifically would happen, but I know something will happen! Wait, do dragons exist?” He stopped and looked at me worryingly.

“Yes? They do. Those oversized lizards with wings?” I asked. His world seemed very different from mine from what little information I could piece together, so I had to make sure it was the same type of dragon. Who knows, maybe in his world dragons are oversized cats.

“Oh, thank the Dark Sun of the Twelfth Dark Empire! I want to go see a dragon!” He declared.

“The last time, you said it was the ‘Darkest Dark Sun of the Ninth Darkest Empire’. Which one is it?” I glared at him.

“It’s a….Never mind that! I want to see a dragon!” He stretched his sword forward, pointing at the sun.

“What are you going to do if you see a dragon?”

“I will ride it! I will make it my own personal dragon! A hero needs a dragon!” He shouted. I stifled a laugh.

“Are you a moron? No, wait. The answer is quite obvious. I’m not sure about dragons in your world, but in this world, dragons are sentient beings that wouldn’t let anyone climb their back unless given a good reason. Would you carry a rat with you all the time on your back?” I asked.

“Er…if that rat is my pet, yes,” He answered.

“Same to dragons. Unless you’re a very good friend or you’re a dragon’s pet, you can kiss your dreams good bye,” I continued.

“Then…then…I’ll make the dragons bend to my will! I shall be the dragon slayer!” He announced.

“Dragons are sentient, you know? They also have groups and cultures. If you, by some miracle, managed to kill one, the rest of its kin will hunt you down until you last fragment of existence is gone,” I explained.

“Er…killing a dragon would get me stronger power, right? Like killing other monsters would give me power?” He asked.

“No? What are you on about?” I asked. He remained silent for a while until I got called.

“Boss!” A voice shouted at a corner of the courtyard. This voice…

“Sarjay!” He waved at me and I beckoned him to come closer. I also noticed he brought Asha along in a nice dress but looked she hadn’t slept for a while.

“Sarjay, what in whatever divine powers are you doing here?” I asked.

“Since it’s Founding Day, all the nobles were summoned to the capital. I technically rule over Follis, so I was invited. Follis is quite near so it didn’t take me too long to arrive. I think I arrived too early, though.” He looked around and saw that people were still busy.

“Follis, huh? How’s the place?” I asked.

“It’s….ok. Fine. Really. What are you doing in the capital? Where’s the others?” He inquired.

“Funny story, actually. Come with me.” I brought him to a corner and explained how I got shoved into the heroes’ party, met a fairy and some walking trees, and then explained to him that I fought the Abyss.

“You fought the Abyss and survived?” He asked.

“She was pretty weak when I fought her. I’m sure the next time wouldn’t be the same.” I sighed.

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“You used divine spells for quite some time, will you be fine?” Sarjay asked.

“What are you? My mother?” I answered. He looked behind me and at the blob of fat flailing his sword around.

“Is…he a hero?” He pointed at Lard.

“I summoned him from another world to replace me. Not sure how it’s going. By the way, I got Lucia a vampire thrall,” I whispered to Sarjay.

“You what?” Sarjay was baffled. I mean, he was already baffled at the ‘fairy are demons’ part so I guess he wasn’t that surprised.

“We haven’t learnt much about the vampires so I thought this would be a good opportunity. It’s crazy how much I’m learning from having two vampires. The vampires also have their own preferred magic, it’s amazing,” I explained.

“You have another vampire? Eh…I’ve seen better.” Asha shrugged then raised her brows.

“What’s up with her?” I pointed at Asha.

“I showed her my forge back at my manor and she had been working almost every day, making all sorts of tools, weapons and armor.” He nodded proudly like she was his kid or something. Wait, she actually was, down the line.

“TEACHER OF I, VAKASA OF THE DARKNESS!” Lard shouted while approaching me.

“Hey, kid. You must be the summoned one,” Sarjay greeted. Lard stopped and looked at me. I explained to him Sarjay’s a good friend.

“The way you’re geared to the teeth….that girl must be a princess of an important backwater country!” Lard pointed at Asha as if he answered a century old mystery.

“Maybe. But, I’m not the bodyguard. She’s my grandkid. I’m the noble here, Lard.” Sarjay patted at his own chest trying to clear things up.

“Kuh! A noble! All nobles are corrupted and evil in their mind! Look at her! You must have kidnapped this girl and done so much horrible things to her! I do not believe you one bit!” Lard stabbed the ground with his sword and stood on his ground.

“Can we just ignore him and go enjoy the festival? The feast will start later anyway.” Asha started pulling my robe out. She probably tried pulling Sarjay but it was hard to pull a hulking set of plate armor out.

“Well, might as well.” Sarjay started following us out with Lard behind him.

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.

.

“Knives, darts and other dangerous things for sale here!” A merchant shouted as he held a tray of dangerous weapons. He was, for some reason, using the tray used for food. When he saw me, he started moving towards me fast.

“Sir! Would you like to buy some dangerous weapons that could assassinate an annoying target…whoops!” He tripped, letting the blades fly towards me. The combination of my passive magic shields protecting me and my silk robe caused the assortment of pointy objects to harmlessly bounce off me.

“You’re fine…Tsk! I mean…Oh dear me! I’m so careless!” The merchant clicked his tongue but then quickly shook his head and looked worried.

“Er…be careful next time?” I shrugged and continued walking along with Sarjay and the others.

“There’s quite a lot of people here,” Sarjay noted. We were at one of the market district and it was crowded with people. We were walking around the busy streets until we stumbled upon a crowd surrounding two dwarves arguing. What was intriguing was that one of the dwarves had a beard while the other didn’t.

“You uncouth barbarian, you abandon the ways of your Queen if you remained unshaven!” The gentleman dwarf removed one of his gloves and threw it at the bearded dwarf.

“Blah blah blah. It’s a good thin’ I decided to not shave me beard off! I would sound like a cunt like you!” The bearded dwarf laughed hard and started drinking beer off his mug.

“You traitor! Is that alcohol?! No wonder your tiny brain could not process my refined words, for you have drowned your poor pea-sized brain in that vile beverage!” The gentleman dwarf took a sip from his tea.

“I ain’t tha traitor! You ah! Tha Queen wanted us dwarves to come bah to our fuckin’ roots! Ya tottlin’ teat-sucking milk drinker!” The bearded dwarf spat towards the gentleman dwarf. The crowd gasped at the rate the bearded dwarf was swearing.

Recently, bearded dwarves were slowly becoming common sight among the people, or at least the people in Angolia. The gentleman dwarves tended to stay underground whilst bearded dwarves were less resistant to going out. Most likely because they didn’t look down on other races, unlike those tea-drinking snobs.

But it appeared that there was a divide among the dwarves. Really, what the hell was Ellysa doing? Both sides of the dwarves seemed to think the Queen was on their side.

“I still can’t get used to bearded dwarves…” Asha muttered and started leaving. Seeing as the guards were approaching, we decided to leave as well.

“Any interesting news from the others?” Sarjay asked me as we walked along the street.

“Apparently the others made a criminal gang called ‘The Skeleton Crew’. There’s a branch of them here, led by Daggerless,” I answered.

“What? Why wasn’t I invited?”

“Eh, it’ll take too long to send an invitation to you in Follis. Don’t worry, I wasn’t invited as well.” I shrugged.

“Is there any interesting place here in the capital?” Sarjay inquired. There was a lot of good places to visit but I’d like to visit them with the rest of the tour group.

“I could take you into the dungeon. The king gave me special access to it.” I took out the receipt I snatched from the dungeon and gave it to him, “Here, souvenir from the dungeon.”

“The dungeon is still alive? I sold it off to a spirit thinking he would somehow break it. I didn’t expect it to be still operational,” He said as he looked at the scroll.

“Well, the dungeon doesn’t cause much trouble anyway,” I said.

“I suppose so. Well, it wasn’t like in the old days when it had maximum mana in store. Horrible days.”

“What happened back then? I wasn’t really informed of what happened in your kingdom back then.”

“Well, when the dungeon had a lot of mana in store, it shut off for a while. We thought it was broken until it created a massive monster portal. It took days to clear out. But it was fine because everyone in Phollicia was trained in the ways of war since birth.” Sarjay snickered.

“Oh wow, I didn’t know it was serious. I could’ve helped, you know?” I said.

“You did. You sent a massive army to help me. You didn’t remember?” Sarjay answered.

What? I had forgotten? How could I have forgotten such a big thing? Maybe because it was about a thousand years ago? Impossible, I still remembered a lot of things back then. Or perhaps because…Wait a minute…

“Sarjay, you said something about a monster portal?” I grabbed one of Sarjay’s shoulders.

“Hmm? Yeah. It was terrible. If it opened up now, I doubt any of these guys would survive.” He waved his hand towards the people around us.

“I think I may have…” Before I could finish my sentence, the ground shook and a shockwave went through, breaking a lot of windows. People started panicking and rushing around.

“An earthquake?!” Asha started looking around.

I boosted myself and jumped up towards the roof of a shop. Sarjay followed me while carrying Asha. I used magic to raise Lard up using wind. We saw on the horizon, where the dungeon once stood, was a portal changing its color between blue, red and green. That wasn’t something I could call ‘massive’. It was HUMUNGUS.

Out of the portal came monsters of different sizes and shapes. It was like someone had some clay and decided to make models blindfolded. Whether they were on the ground or on the air, they started attacking everything.

“Ugh, Boss?” Sarjay called out.

“Wasn’t me.” I shook my head.