"This is all nice and all—talking about time travel with a dragon—but we have captives to find, bossman." Bor's complaints brought Konrad back to the present. "We've been here half an hour."
"Right, sorry," he collected himself, becoming determined. "I'll let you out if you help us."
The enormous yellow eyes widened, thoughts of excitement flooding his mind.
Konrad didn't project those out—that nifty spell she gave him had some fine adjustments for that. And the other set of runes that'd widen the fissure took no more than a second to cast.
All he had to do was fight his last bits of reluctance—he had some serious trust issues.
"I'll help you," the dragon offered again. "I'll even heal the wounded—I can do anything shy of resurrecting the dead—sorry, but necromancy is my limit."
So necromancy was also a thing in this world—no, he wasted enough time. Focus.
Earth element, and shaping it. It might've been a spell not so different from what Nimrod used against him. His twin didn't teach him anything, though, only giving him headaches.
Channeling his mana had bent the ground to his will.
It wasn't as easy as shaping light into intricate illusions. Zoltan was right about other elements being less forgiving. But he had the mana and the experience now.
The ground shook, the tribesmen took a few steps back, and the fissure grew.
What dozens of goblins couldn't do—because of a slight case of death by his flames—his magic did in seconds. The depths opened to reveal a colossal crimson dragon.
She must've been a hundred feet long, but all skin and bones.
As soon as the fissure was wide enough, she squeezed through it, trying to reach the surface. The vast cavern no longer seemed that big when that majestic beast almost filled it.
She talked—well, thought—like a human, but she was a monster at her core.
Lizard-like scales, long talons, and enormous, sharp teeth. With her horns and spikes, even in this state, she looked way more threatening than the cheap copy in the dungeon.
And that was more than enough to burn him to cinders, if not for Lily's timely arrival.
The tribesmen had to take quite a few more steps back, struck with awe—but they weren't done yet. The dragon was in chains. Not visible ones, but Konrad could feel them.
Strands of mana bound her, so strong that his bracelets seemed child's play in comparison.
"What do I do with those?" Konrad asked when the ground stopped moving.
The beast might've towered over him even lying down, but she seemed exhausted already.
'Closing the fissure between the planes might be enough,' the dragon panted in his thoughts.
Not that it was helpful.
"And how exactly?"
He dabbled in siphoning mana away from other dimensions before, but this was on another level. He never tried to close those cracks. If anything, he attempted to widen them.
But they would never budge—he didn't have the power to manipulate space and time.
For that, his thousand mana points would've been a drop in the ocean.
Lily and the angels might have been able to do it, making him wonder how much more powerful they were than he was. The dragon pondered, too, quieter than before.
'To be honest, I hadn't gotten this far either,' she admitted, giving Konrad a headache.
It felt like she was probing his mind—without his consent—and he pushed back, hard.
"Hey," he snapped, squeezing both hands on his ears, expecting his brain to leak out. "If you're looking for something, ask. You said you'll behave, and you're already invading my head."
'Ah, I'm so sorry,' the dragon's thoughts pitched up. 'Force of habit.'
Konrad couldn't even imagine what it must've been like to spend a century here, alone.
He lived fifty years of his previous life as a loner. But to never even talk to anyone?
"I'll let it slide this once," he decided, "but tell me what you need instead."
'I hoped I could find some modern magic to combat these things,' she confessed. 'That mage researched travel between dimensions, and derived his banishment spell from that.'
Konrad still remembered the almost unreadable scribbles on the Green Mage's last codex.
The notes on the margins seemed excited, and they appeared when he wrote about—
"I have a rune circle that helps when siphoning mana from another world," Konrad noted. "The Green Mage invented that, too, but his notes were incomplete. And I only started a month ago."
'Oh, may I?' The dragon got excited again, not waiting for an answer.
At least her probing didn't want to burst his head this time, but she had a long way to go.
'This pentagram could work. If we changed this rune and that pattern—'
"What is happening?" Bor asked, losing his patience again.
Most of the discussion must've seemed one-sided.
He didn't bother projecting the dragon's voice out every time.
While most of the tribesmen watched the monster from afar, the chieftain had places to be.
"I, uh," how would Konrad explain that? "She's still sealed with magic. I need to break her chains." And if she wanted to use those pentagrams, "It might take another hour."
Bor groaned, but the dragon sent her voice through Konrad's magic again.
"I can distract the goblins for you—they have primitive minds. Look for a loose scale on my belly and take it with you. Through that, I'll guide you to the fugitives and keep you safe."
Right, she was hypnotizing them to dig her fissure up when they arrived.
Vargas seemed somewhat skeptical, though.
"How do we know you won't lead us into a trap?" the captain asked. But having shared their minds for a while, Konrad—while still not trusting her—knew that she wouldn't try.
"I'll stay with her and won't free her until you're out of the mines, safe," he promised.
He had no idea how he'd know what happened with his peers from this cavern, but this seemed convincing enough. Vargas nodded, preparing to head out with the tribesmen.
"Cut her head off if she does something stupid, kid," he instructed, and the dragon snorted.
Konrad wasn't sure if his adamantite blade could even scratch her scaled skin at all.
"Don't worry, I'm not that dumb to incur the wrath of demons and angels all at once," she said.
Of course, the schemer and the tribesmen weren't in on the secret about Gabrielle and Lily.
Still, confused as they were, they took her words and headed for the narrow tunnels.
That left Konrad and the sealed dragon alone within a minute.
She sighed, smoke escaping her long nose.
'I'll trust you with the process," she said. "I'll keep my mind's eye on your friends while you draw the runes. These should work fine, but it will take a lot of your essence."
Konrad reviewed the syntax she presented—recognizing the changes with surprise.
"Aren't these transmutation symbols?!" he asked.
He never reverse-engineered the silver-adamantite bracelets. They were all destroyed when he overcharged them, but now, seeing the runes, they all made an eerie sense.
'Yes, that'll make the mana crystallize, like when dungeons form,' the dragon explained.
"You want to make a dungeon crystal?" Konrad raised his eyebrow.
'I want my chains to materialize. And then, you'll cut them with your sword.'