"How could this happen?!"
We had come in high spirits, certain we'd succeed. After all the effort it took to reach the spot where I'd first seen the lights, reality still let us down. We searched the area for a long time, but aside from a small pond, there was nothing in the surrounding stretch of land except dense shrubs—not a single person in sight.
"Are you sure you didn't see it wrong?" Brennan was starting to doubt it. "In a godforsaken place like this, how could there possibly be an enemy base?"
"It shouldn't be wrong…"
I was very sure of my judgment, but even so, a trace of uncertainty crept in.
The firelight I'd seen earlier had clearly been from humans using torches for illumination. It had flashed only briefly before disappearing, which suggested they were deliberately hiding their trail.
And in a remote mountain interior like this—nothing for miles in either direction—you could basically rule out random passersby in the middle of the night. If anyone was active out here, it could only be a bandit hideout.
"I agree it's not that simple," Cyrae said firmly, taking my side. "When you saw the firelight, did you notice anything else?"
Her question jogged my memory. When I'd been flying high and was just about to punch through the cloud layer, I'd faintly heard a strange, low rumbling coming from this direction. It was somewhat like the roar of a ferocious beast, but it wasn't anything I'd ever heard before, so I couldn't tell what kind of creature it belonged to—especially since my attention after that had been completely stolen by the Sunship Star hanging in the sky. If Cyrae hadn't asked, I might've forgotten about it altogether.
"A beast's roar?"
Cyrae seemed to recall something. Without another word, she led us straight back to the pond where we'd started, then pointed at the water and said, "From what I know, the mountains around here are scattered with natural caves of all sizes. Some of the larger ones could easily hold over a thousand people. If we can't find them outside, it's possible that bandit gang led by a dragon is hiding inside one of those caves."
"But what does that have to do with this pond?" Adrian was confused at first, but the next second he caught her implication. "Oh—are you saying the entrance is under the water?"
"Do you mean they're all getting in and out by diving?" I frowned. "Wouldn't that be way too inconvenient?"
An underwater cave wasn't strange in itself, but if the enemy numbers were as large as we'd heard, having dozens of people constantly entering and leaving that way still didn't feel practical.
"You've heard of dragon-speech magic, haven't you?" Cyrae's tone shifted as she began explaining secrets about dragonkind. "If it's dragon-speech magic, then none of this is a problem."
It turned out that although dragons on the Eldoria Continent were naturally powerful and not particularly adept at conventional magic, their unique physiology allowed them to learn a special technique later on—using sound, that is, their roars, to create resonance and directly drive the elements. That technique was known as dragon-speech magic.
By Cyrae's reasoning, the low rumble I'd heard earlier likely fit that description.
Dragon-speech magic sounded impressive: it could manipulate all types of elements without relying on the caster's own elemental affinity. But because most dragons could only cast it through variations in their own voice, they had to reveal their true form—and their control over the sound was nowhere near as precise as what ordinary spellcraft could achieve. If anything, it could even be described as crude.
"So that means the dragon was controlling the water in the pond to help the others get in and out of the cave!" Brennan finally understood.
The answer was simple enough, but in his mind that still meant we'd have to dive to enter. As soon as the words left his mouth, he started stripping off his outer clothes, preparing to jump into the pond.
"No need to rush. I can try this level of elemental control too," I said quickly, stopping him.
This just so happened to be my specialty.
I switched into my blue-winged state and gently swept my arm forward. Only seconds ago, the ground here had been covered by a bottomless-looking pool. But in the blink of an eye, the water in front of us began to blur—then vanished completely, as though it had never existed at all.
"Angels can do that too?" Brennan stared as if he'd been struck dumb. He'd never heard of an angel making water disappear out of thin air, especially when he hadn't seen me cast any magic from start to finish.
But with a deep, shadowy opening at the bottom of the pond now fully exposed, he didn't have time to dwell on questions. He immediately took the lead and jumped down.
"What's wrong?" Adrian asked, noticing that Cyrae moved quickly to follow, while I stood there frozen in place. "Does something feel off?"
"It's nothing… I just feel like my power is… kind of strange?"
Even as I answered, I was still completely bewildered.
My original plan had been simple: use water magic to part the pond. But when I was about to do it, I suddenly realized my control over the water element had inexplicably improved by a huge margin.
I tested it only slightly, and to my shock, I was able to convert an entire pond of physical water into a free, dispersed elemental state with ease—while the side effects that should've come with it were noticeably reduced. It was unbelievable.
"Did only one day really pass before I woke up this morning?"
I was certain of one thing: when I fell asleep in the inn at the imperial capital, Kyndrill, my strength absolutely wasn't at this level.
That meant the only variable in between had to be that elusive, ghostlike No. 18 Cyra—the one who had secretly attached to me and controlled my body for an entire day.
If that process had inadvertently deepened my understanding of my authority over the water element, then fine. But the more I thought about it, the more unsettling it became. What if No. 18 Cyra's influence hadn't fully faded from me? What if he was still controlling me without me even noticing?
"Why aren't you coming down?" Cyrae called out. She had already jumped into the now waterless pool, but when we didn't follow for a long time, she circled back and flew up again to ask.
"It's nothing!" I forced myself back to the present. "Now that we've found the entrance, rescuing people comes first!"
Worrying without any concrete clue wouldn't help right now. I grabbed the two of them and jumped into the now-empty pool, not daring to waste a second as I rushed into the opening first.
Sure enough, Cyrae had been right. The Transverse Mountain Range in the south of the Kingdom of Astralrealm was full of natural caves of all kinds, big and small—and the one we were slipping into was a limestone cavern.
We moved along the narrow entrance passage for only a short while before the tunnel rose into a dried-up basin. Two guards assigned to watch this spot were slumped nearby. From the look of it, they believed an underwater cave entrance was impossible to infiltrate, so they'd taken the chance to doze off—so much so that they hadn't even noticed the pool water had suddenly vanished.
Their laziness worked in our favor. Adrian didn't hesitate—he quietly took care of the two bandits, then led us onward along a path carved into the rock wall. Before long, we arrived at a hall so wide it was nearly a thousand square meters.
This was a textbook local limestone cavern. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites rose from the ground—some of them towering more than ten meters high.
And the bandit gang led by dragonkind had clearly made this place their hidden stronghold.
Firelight flickered throughout the cavern. There didn't seem to be much in the way of human excavation, but one feature stood out sharply: a massive platform in the very center, formed over many years by dripping mineral deposits. Coiled asleep atop it was an enormous, deep-blue dragon.
On the ground below, scattered in small groups, were countless human silhouettes—slumped together in awkward heaps. By the look of it, there were at least a hundred.
It was deep into the night, and the entire crowd was sleeping soundly. The hall was so quiet it felt eerie. They clearly had no idea their lair had already been breached.
The four of us hid behind an exceptionally thick stone pillar and watched the hall's every movement. Brennan couldn't help whispering his concern:
"What do we do now? We still don't know where they're keeping the hostages. There are so many of them—shouldn't we avoid alerting them for now?"
"I noticed several passages leading to smaller caves around this place," I whispered back. "I don't know which one the hostages are being held in. We should split up and search first."
To me, the fighting strength of a hundred ordinary humans wasn't much of an obstacle. All of them combined still couldn't compare to the dragon sleeping at the very center. But this operation involved Adrian's mother's safety. I didn't want a single mistake to make Adrian—who had already lost his father—lose another parent as well.
After we weighed it carefully, we decided to secure the hostages first, then carry out the purge afterward.
Once the assignments were set, everyone quietly dispersed. I was feeling my way toward a nearby tunnel exit when, by sheer accident, my eyes caught something on the dragon's platform—
It was as if an uninvited figure had appeared out of thin air.
The deep-blue dragon on the high platform noticed the newcomer even faster than I did. When it spoke, it used the human tongue:
"Why are you here? And the way you appeared… it seems different from how you used the 'Eye of Galadra' before."
From the tone, it sounded as though the two of them knew each other.