The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

After Paris left, Liszt directly summoned the Smoke Mission.

“Complete the mission, reward: the research notes of Merlese Truth.”

The few notebooks that he had packed and brought back from Merlese’s cabin in the woods were the rewards for the Smoke Mission, and the real prize within them was for Liszt to find.

He returned to the study and, before opening the notebooks, reviewed the new Smoke Mission.

“Mission: Recently, many outsiders have chosen to settle in Fresh Flower Town, which shows that Fresh Flower Town’s charm has bloomed on Coral Island, but the increase in outsiders also brings risks. Please root out three hidden rats. Reward: The Assault of the Six-Headed King Serpent.”

“Hmm,” Liszt muttered, feeling surprised, “This chain mission has only gone through two links, and it’s already entering the final showdown? The reward seems a bit small, and it doesn’t give enough sense of security.”

The chain mission of the Thorn Minor Elf Jela was the longest, with a total of six Smoke Missions before Jela was born.

For the Formless Dragon chain mission, including the final gain of the Space Gem, there were also six Smoke Missions.

However, Liszt soon reconciled with the thought: “The two previous missions, plus this one, and possibly another during the final battle, make four missions in total. For an Intermediate Sea Monster like the Six-Headed King Serpent, that’s quite up to par. After all, it cannot be compared with Jela and the Space Gem.”

Hunting an intermediate sea monster is a prize of much lower rank than acquiring a minor elf.

One can imagine that the day the Smoke Mission decides to involve a Greater Elf, it might distribute many more Smoke Missions, perhaps more than ten. If it decides to involve a real Dragon, maybe there would be over fifty Smoke Missions, or even more.

After all, dragons are the most noble of beings.

“From the look of it now, the secret to dealing with the Six-Headed King Serpent must be hidden within Merlese’s notes,” Liszt opened a notebook and began to read.

He wasn’t in a hurry to tackle the task of rooting out the rats, waiting until everything was ready and choosing an appropriate moment to root them out.

He had just flipped to the first page of the first notebook.

And his eyebrows shot up.

Because on the first page of the notebook was drawn a goat’s head, its familiar shape immediately reminded him of the Goat Head Flag on the Ghost Ship, “This is the emblem of the Magic Goat Family, how come it appears in Merlese’s research notes? Could it be that she is a remnant of the Magic Goat Family?”

The Magic Goat Family had two legacies, one primarily trained in knighthood, and the other in magic.

After the failure of the coup at The Court, both were eradicated.

Now encountering this goat head emblem again on a magician from Fresh Flower Town, and considering the cruelty of this Merlese Truth, who tortured and killed over a hundred Magic Apprentices.

Liszt couldn’t help shaking his head, “They really seem like one family. Curtis Truth was cruel enough to use living people as sacrifices, while Merlese Truth tortured Magic Apprentices, with the same degree of brutality. No wonder the Magic Goat Family back then, in order to help Annute’s longevity, even dared to target the Sapphire Dragon.”

The content of this notebook mainly contained records of magic casting and refinement, essentially the insights and experience that Merlese had in meticulously practising her own magic.

From beginning to end, it had no relation to the Six-Headed King Serpent.

However, it included detailed experiences in casting the Water Magic Water Wheel Barrier, which could be passed on to the Sea Sprite Ake for reference to accelerate his learning process.

He put down this notebook.

He opened the second research notebook.

The cover and pages were severely damaged, indicating that Merlese consulted them frequently. The first page bore a hand-drawn goat symbol and a scrawled line of Serpent Script.

“Only in death during the release of passion can the purest soul be stripped away.”

He didn’t understand the meaning of this sentence.

He turned directly to the second page, and the more Liszt read, the more alarmed he became. The page shockingly detailed how Merlese had killed all the magic apprentices.

What was terrifying wasn’t the act of murder itself but her method and motive—she was studying souls.

She began her research when she was young, trying various methods to strip human souls. For example, she might suddenly kill a magic apprentice at the climax of mating and then begin to strip their soul; she also tormented apprentices to the brink of death before killing them to strip their souls.

She believed that when a person was in a state of abundant emotion, their soul was most easily stripped away and at its purest.

Liszt nearly forced himself through the discomfort in his scalp and heart as he finished the research notebook. Then he could confirm that the reward for the Smoke Mission was the content of this notebook—Merlese had invented a potion extracted from blood, named Soul Disturbing Agent.

She had never succeeded in stripping a soul away but did find a substance of grudge in the blood of dying people; after purifying it, she created the Soul Disturbing Agent.

It could plunge a person’s soul into chaos.

Not lethal, but it could easily dull a person’s intellect; however, the Soul Disturbing Agent was ineffective against those with strong mental strength.

People like Earth Knights and magicians, who have strong mental strength, would just feel dizzy for ten days to half a month after being injected with the Soul Disturbing Agent and could recover on their own.

“So this is the reward for the Smoke Mission, a Soul Disturbing Agent to confuse the mind of the Six-Headed King Serpent? Intermediate sea creatures probably don’t have weak mental strength, perhaps, it is targeting the two immature snakeheads?” Closing the research notes, he quickly went to the castle’s storeroom.

Merlese’s relics that he had brought back were not yet sorted out thoroughly.

After rummaging around, he saw eight crystal tubes filled with Magic Potion enter his view; under the detection of “The Eye of Magic”, they emitted a luminous green light, almost the same as the soul light he saw on the Ghost Ship.

Apparently, these were the Soul Disturbing Agents.

He packed up the crystal tubes.

Liszt thought for a moment and decided to finish reading the remaining three research notebooks. One chronicled her study of magic arrays, which he could give to Ake to study; another documented her bizarre experiments, which were somewhat referential.

The last one recorded the manuscript for the magic book she was preparing to publish, with even the name decided—”Different Kinds of Bone Handling Techniques—Merlese Truth”.

The manuscript was still unfinished.

But to Liszt’s surprise, it contained records on the treatment of dragon bones.

“Dragon bones are part of a dragon, containing the magic power of the dragon. The biggest difference between dragon bones and other bodily tissues is that dragon bones are related to the soul. It is said that the soul of a dragon resides in its teeth, so weapons made from dragon teeth are the divine arms Knights most covet, Dragon Tooth Soldiers.”

“I don’t have the means to purchase dragon bones, but based on my research on Dragon Beast bones, I infer that dragon bones are the source of Dragon Might. If you have a little understanding of the past of the Duchy of Sapphire, you’d know there once was a technique known as Dragonbone Stabilizer…which activates the Dragon Might within the Dragon Beast skeleton through a magic array.”

“Actually, there is an even quicker method: smash the dragon bones and calcine them with fire, and the Dragon Might will be released quickly. Of course, the Dragonbone Stabilizer Technique can continue to stimulate the Dragon Might, while calcining the dragon bones will release all the Dragon Might at once. If you all want to experience Dragon Might, you may wish to burn some dragon bones.”