That was a lie. If Earth Dragons were harming people, then the campaign would lose all its meaning. On the surface, it looks like I’m the victor, but victims are still suffering from poisoning and the Earth Dragons are still killing elves. I can’t lie about that, but was forced to lie about it in order to protect our reputation.

But I don’t understand the nature of Earth Dragons. I don’t have the knowledge and memory of the previous owner of this body. I only have fragmented images of black shadows in my memory. Just how scary are these creatures?

"Earth Dragon Scales, huh?"

A voice suddenly came from above me. I looked up to see Lucia sitting on the tree looking down at me. I smiled bitterly. I’ve never been able to detect where Lucia is. Lucia’s magical skill is “Concealment”, so as long as she doesn’t appear on her own accord, she’ll never be discovered. She’s a definitely a first-rate assassin.

Lucia lightly slid down and forcefully pushed my hand away to sit in my embrace and snatched the dragon scale from me. Her usually sleepy eyes were full of energy as she said: “Damned Earth Dragons. They’ve killed so many elves and have headed for the capital. We’ve led campaigns against them numerous times but failed. It looks like we need the army to join in to be able to slay them…”

"Why are Earth Dragons…"

“Don’t you know? You’ve experienced it yourself once.” Lucia turned around to look at me and placed the scale on the lawn. She then closed her eyes and raised her palm at the scale. In her hand was a small fireball that started as a tiny star and grew bigger, eventually becoming the size of a billiards ball. And with that she smashed down onto the dragon scale.

"BOOM!"

The fireball was only the size of a billiards ball, yet when it made contact with the scale it exploded like a massive bomb went off. The fire spread into the air and almost burnt my hair, leaving a burn mark on the green lawn.

“Fu… Fu… Fu” Lucia was sweating and panting heavily after using her magic, while I was scrambling to put the fire out. God damn it miss! Could you please not try such dangerous experiments on the lawn? Do you realise that if it spreads, we’ll both be dead meat!?

I slapped something hard with my palm and paused for a moment before brushing aside the dust. The dragon scale didn’t even have a scratch and was glowing brightly on the lawn. Lucia’s fireball definitely hit it, and the power of it was needless to say, explosive. But there wasn’t even so much as a hint of damage on it. There was only a bit of dust which if you blew away would look as good as new.

“See? Earth Dragons are creatures that are protected by magic. Our magic is completely ineffective against them, unless the magic is on the level of high priests.” Lucia wearily leaned onto my chest and continued: “If it was just one of them, then we could ask the high priest to slay it, but we’re not facing one… We're facing hordes of them! There’s at least 20 of them. We don’t have 20 or so high priests, and you’ve seen for yourself how tired we are after casting magic. The high priest can’t beat that many of them.”

"D-don't blades work on them?"

"Here's a dagger."

Lucia suddenly pulled out a dagger from behind her for me. Where exactly did that dagger come from? I feel like my life is in danger if I hang around you…

I took the dagger and pointed it towards the scale, and stabbed down on it.

I heard a crisp sound and knew something wasn’t right. Cutting it with the dagger was akin to trying to cut a rock with it. It had no effect. The scale was so smooth, my blade just slid along. There was no way I could’ve damaged it.

“Do you get it now? That’s why I said we have no way of dealing with groups of Earth Dragons. If you were to say to me that they destroyed our capital, I’d believe you without a shadow of a doubt. It’s a miracle if you can return alive after encountering one.”

Lucia stretched out her arms knelt down by my shoulders and hugged me. She softly said: “Don’t do anything stupid If the palace gets destroyed, we can rebuild it. If we lose the capital, we can move. But there’s only one you”