Green didn’t look back, striding straight towards the royal palace.
Albeco opened her mouth as if to speak, then gritted her teeth and decided to follow to see what would happen. She took off her academy robe and wrapped herself in a short cyan cloak with stealth effects, her whole figure shrinking another notch in an instant.
Based on what she knew so far.
There were only four main plot characters currently in the royal capital.
Among them, Dolores was with Viseliane; with the latter accompanying her, there was no need to worry about Dolores’ safety.
Hilberu would soon become the Saint of the Miracle Descent and was protected by luck—she wouldn’t get into trouble.
Only Green was someone Albeco had to worry about; he’d long since deviated from the game’s flow, so anything could happen to him midway.
Albeco saw things more clearly than Dolores.
Her own transmigration and Green’s rebirth happened on the same axis; she’d carefully observed Green’s movements and come to a crucial conclusion.
This otherworld Green was unlike the game protagonist—not rigid, not foolish, on the contrary, actually very smart.
Because according to the setting, even if it was a revenge scenario, players wouldn’t be given a pile of random items right at the start, even though logically—
“Using memories from a previous life to get Hidden Items early” is a perfectly normal thing to do.
But the game itself emphasized gradual progression; getting Hidden Items ahead of time made subsequent text supplementation troublesome, and all the carefully balanced early stats could easily break down.
Most importantly, if the game duration wasn’t stretched properly, people could finish in two hours and refund it.
Still, Green shamelessly took advantage of his past-life memories, not as stiff as in the game.
Dolores was still giggling, thinking Green would probably follow the plot.
But Albeco had already realized the story was running off course, so she couldn’t afford to keep thinking by the old plot memories.
Fated things would still happen, but the details and people involved could change considerably.
Dolores wanted Green to die so she could escape the system.
And as for Albeco, who thought herself detached from all this, she wanted Green to live a bit longer, preferably not die at all, since he was, in this world, the only one she understood thoroughly and one-way.
He was capable, she understood his motives and logic; she and Green could be friends or companions with foreknowledge.
To scheme for all kinds of needs—of course, nothing physiological, since so many ancient ruins and treasures were for the exclusive use of the Hero.
Just being friends—no way she’d get caught up in anything else.
Could the system even register her, when she wasn’t in the game’s plot?
Still detached.
Originally, Albeco was only about 155 cm tall. With the short cloak on, she now looked just over 140, and her appearance had changed as well.
Albeco lifted her head slightly toward the palace.
In the palace’s direction, a hundred-meter-tall phantom towered over the earth, locked in a standoff with the dragon soaring in the sky.
The dragon would eventually break through the formation’s blockade, attack the palace once, then return to massacre the city.
Albeco remembered that Green’s quest, [Mortals Beneath the Dragon], didn’t require fighting the dragon—just survival.
She couldn’t see the quest reward or the Hidden conditions, but she could still see the quest description.
“What on earth is this guy thinking… charging towards the palace like this, when the quest doesn’t even ask for a fight with the dragon? Is he really planning to just use the ‘Dragon-Summoning Flute’ and show off?”
“But I’ve already warned him, the ‘Dragon-Summoning Flute’ in his hand, because ‘Furkan’ and ‘Zug’ are mortal enemies, not only can’t calm the dragon of the snowy mountains, it’ll actually enrage it.”
“The only thing that can actually hurt the dragon—the Sword in the Stone—is in the square’s statue, and he hasn’t taken it either. Is he seriously counting on his mere mortal body to wound a dragon?”
The more she muttered to herself, the more unease built up inside her, making her grip the brim of her hat tighter.
After all, if anything happened to Green, how was she supposed to use him to farm coins from ruins later on?
“If things get really bad… I’ll just tell him the clues and key info myself, using this body. Anyway, he shouldn’t be able to recognize my loli form!”
“Shrink into the small cloak, change height and appearance, there’s no way he’d figure out it’s me—just treat it as an alt identity.”
Adjusting her clothes a bit, the skirt, which used to be below the knee, now only reached her knees—in short, she’d turned into a super cute little loli.
Her long golden hair stayed the same, but her iconic green eyes became a light purple.
No need to remove the school badge—she already looked nothing like before.
In this other world, underage college students were pretty common.
It wasn’t just a disguise on the outside; even her flesh and blood had been temporarily transformed. Of course, this effect was time-limited—at most five hours.
She certainly didn’t plan on being a loli for life.
Royal Palace Wall.
On the stone walls, hundreds of soldiers stood in perfect rows like statues, both hands gripping their spear shafts, spear tips adorned with silver filigree pointing at the sky.
A faint power connected them together, and an immense phantom appeared behind them, holding a spear, with pauldrons carved in rugged rock patterns.
These soldiers’ hearts and strength resonated as one, forming a “battle formation” that summoned a phantom capable of fighting across ranks.
The hundred-foot-tall phantom on the ground was like a giant beast, and though usually unstoppable in battle, the formation looked weak and powerless before the dragon, ruler of the skies.
The phantom’s thrown spears were easily dodged by the dragon, while dragonfire rampaged across the gigantic phantom, sapping the soldiers’ strength and will with its heat and oppressive power.
Whenever the dragon tried to break through the phantom, it would be dragged back by invisible force, but the spears thrown and thrust still could not touch it.
Spells rose like raindrops, yet bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s scales, while powerful, long-charged magic attacks—the kind that could wound—were always dodged with ease.
Behind the phantom was the royal palace itself. These were the Land Kingdom’s finest troops, the Warding Army—an elite force capable of facing most mythical creatures.
But this did not include the dragon before them.
Its flames could scorch the soul, its wings and spells could break any restraint, its armored scales offered terrifying resistance to both magic and weapons, and its blood flowed with near-infinite magic.
Clang!
Within the formation, some soldiers were starting to collapse, one after another dropping to one knee, scorching breath escaping their lips, sweat evaporating in the intense heat.
They’d been fighting the dragon for over twenty minutes. Now, nearly half were at the limit of exhaustion; once the phantom vanished, the descending dragonfire would instantly reduce them to ashes.
If they fell, there’d be nothing left in the entire royal capital to restrain the dragon—it could rampage freely.
At this moment, Green finally arrived nearby and saw, a hundred meters away, the soldiers of the Warding Army collapsing one after another atop the walls.
In his past life, he hadn’t been near the palace at this moment; by the time he arrived, most of the palace had been destroyed and almost everyone was gravely injured.
He remembered—the king himself had barely survived this dragon disaster.
The burning phantom raised its hand, for the last time pulling the dragon—who was trying to fly past—back to within a hundred meters, but its actions, now slowed by the exhausted soldiers, seemed as futile as before.
The dragon flapped its wings, magic dancing on the tips, about to break free of the phantom’s hold again.
Suddenly, a figure leaped out from behind the phantom, the ground shattering in his wake, and in a flash, the figure appeared before the dragon.
As the sound of breaking stone reached the dragon’s ears, its eyes caught the furious face of the figure wielding a massive hammer.
In the next instant, its vision flashed violently and plummeted straight down.
This dragon, lord of the skies and scourge of the royal capital, touched the ground for the first time, smashing a pit several meters deep.
“How dare you attack my kingdom!!!”
A roar, as the heavy hammer crashed down on the fallen dragon once more.
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