Shut Up, Malevolent Dragon! I Don’t Want to Have Any More Children With You

Vol 9. Chapter 83: The Fifth Shrine

TL Note: Guys, from here on, to avoid tautology, I will refer to the Primordial Dragon King as Noah.

It was rare to see the Primordial Dragon King and the Silver Dragon crown princess wearing the exact same expression of,

"We're amazing, the two of us!"

But if you saw them wearing the exact same expression of,

"Whew--we're completely screwed now!"

that was even rarer.

After all, the Hall of Valor was not a place the living could come.

And even if the two of them joined forces and pushed past every limit, they still could not cross the gulf between life and death.

Tiamat looked at the two of them as they instantly sank into despair, and for a moment, he did not quite know what to say.

As a primordial god who had been fallen for tens of thousands of years, he had long since lost any sensation about life or death.

But that did not mean Tiamat was incapable of empathizing with them.

Noah's case did not need explaining. As the Primordial Dragon King, revered by countless dragonkin, her prestige and title among the dragonkin were, in some ways, even greater than Tiamat's, who existed only in legend.

And as for Noa, if she was a dragon descendant who could combine Primordial Force and Chaos power, that meant she possessed talent and opportunity beyond what ordinary people could ever reach, and she was bound to have an infinitely bright future.

Yet now, their souls had left the mortal world, crossed the taboo line between life and death, and drifted down into the Pool of Passing in the Hall of Valor.

Passing on, passing on--washing away the past, cleansing the former life.

After a brief silence, Tiamat spoke.

"When that dragon descendant named Constantine came here back then, he faced the same predicament as you. He couldn't return to the real world. Even if he gained divine power, what use would it be? But Apollo told him: you must believe in your friends. Right now, they are probably doing everything they can to pull you back from here. So the two of you have already done everything you can. From here on, please trust your friends and family. Believe that they will definitely turn this situation around."

Hearing the Dragon God's comfort, Noa and Noah looked at each other, then nodded in tacit agreement.

"Then, before you return, I'll take you to continue looking around the Hall of Valor."

"All right. Thank you for the trouble, Ancestor," Noa said respectfully.

"Mhm. Follow me."

As he spoke, Tiamat stepped forward and continued along the white-jade stairs.

Noa and Noah followed behind him.

As they strolled and chatted, Tiamat asked about how Noa and Noah had met and come to understand each other.

The two of them held nothing back, recounting everything from their first meeting in the ruins of the far north, to later becoming one in purpose and standing together against foreign enemies.

Noa, however, did not mention that she was actually half human.

That awkward explanation could wait until the day her father came to the Hall of Valor himself.

After walking for roughly ten minutes, they reached the end of the stairs.

It was an open space, the ground also formed from pure white jade.

White mist drifted all around, giving it the feeling of a hidden paradise.

Standing here, the five divine palaces in the distance felt much closer.

Just as Noa was about to ask something, she saw a figure approaching at an unhurried pace through the pale mist not far away.

"New guests, Tiamat?"

Noa turned toward the voice, then her eyes widened slightly as she murmured:

"Chronos..."

It was not strange to see the fallen former God of Time in the Hall of Valor.

But in the real world, encountering even one primordial god was something an ordinary person would never experience in an entire lifetime.

And now Noa had met two at once.

Too bad it did not seem unlikely that she would soon witness four of them together under one roof!

"That's right. Another child of my dragonkin." The old Dragon God's voice could not hide his pride.

But Chronos only teased:

"Is that so? Then is this one here to inherit elemental power, or did Apollo pick another inheritor again?"

It seemed that the last time Constantine, a dragon descendant, had come to the Hall of Valor to obtain the power of light had become quite the running joke for these old men.

Tiamat smiled and shook his head.

"No. They came because of the Dragon God's power."

"They?"

Chronos stepped out of the fog and came closer. The moment he saw the two of them, he froze in shock.

"It really is 'they.' What is this? Normally there should only be one inheritor of divine power."

"These two are a special case," Tiamat said.

"Noa does not have any extra divine power, so Noah can only lodge her dragon soul within Noa. And Noa's body previously absorbed Chaos power. Combined with Noa's Primordial Force, it allowed both Noa and Noah to reach the Hall of Valor together."

Chronos's eye twitched as he could not help complaining:

"...Are you reciting a tongue twister about 'Noa'?"

The old Dragon God laughed out loud and scratched his white hair in embarrassment.

"Having the same name really is hard to tell apart."

"But... Noa..."

Chronos muttered the slightly familiar name as he let his gaze settle on the workaholic.

After a brief moment of eye contact, the "old time man" suddenly realized it.

"I remember you, dragon girl. You're Aurora's older sister."

So you still had to route it through Aurora first. Looks like the memory of primordial gods was only so-so too... Noa complained inwardly.

But she still replied respectfully:

"Yes, Ancestor."

When it came to old seniors who had lived for tens of thousands of years, if she was not sure what to call them, calling them "Ancestor" was never wrong.

"So... your family produced two inheritors of divine power?" Chronos looked rather surprised.

Noa lifted her brows and smiled.

"It seems... that's the case."

What she wanted to say was that it might be three.

But that would be giving these old gods something to cling to, something to hope for.

If Noa said, "My father might come later, too,"

then these isolated, long-secluded, empty-nest old men would be waiting for Leon every single day.

So rather than that, it was better to say nothing at all.

Caring for empty-nest elders started with the Silver Dragon big sister.

"Mhm. Unbelievable, unbelievable," Chronos sighed, then asked again,

"Then is Aurora doing well in there?"

After a pause, Chronos added,

"And that purple-haired girl who slipped through a loophole. I don't know who she is, but what she did truly inspires respect."

"They're both doing well," Noa said.

"Xiaoguang... ah, I mean Aurora, has gradually awakened stronger time power."

"As for Teacher Safina, she's been fulfilling the duties of the God of Time as well. Last time, Uncle Constantine was able to successfully inherit the power of light because she helped."

The old time man nodded with satisfaction.

"Good. Very good."

They continued talking.

In the conversations that followed, Noa and Noah learned more techniques from Tiamat regarding developing divine power.

But as they talked, a powerful energy fluctuation suddenly surged from far away.

Boom!

A thunderclap exploded, and Noa hurriedly looked in that direction.

On a distant platform, through layers of pale mist, lightning flickered in and out of view.

The exchange was massive, back and forth, evenly matched.

"Did those two idiots start fighting again?" Chronos drew a breath. "Come on, let's go take a look, before they wreck her precious shrine again and she starts nagging the three of us old men."

Tiamat laughed heartily.

"Hahaha, fine. Let's go see."

"Uh, wait, Ancestors, w-we're going that far...?" Noa said awkwardly.

"I... I still can't transform into a dragon, so I can't fly, and Noah is only a soul without a body..."

"Easy, easy."

As his words fell, a pair of dragon wings snapped open in an instant.

Then Tiamat transformed into a massive gray-white dragon. His wings blotted out the sky, and his size was more than two or three times that of an ordinary Dragon King-class dragon.

Noa stared at Tiamat in dragon form, stunned, and sighed,

"Truly worthy of an ancestor..."

In the next moment, Chronos snapped his fingers, and along with himself, he teleported all three of them onto the gray-white dragon's back.

"Hold tight. We're leaving."

Tiamat beat his wings and flew toward where the thunder had come from.

Standing at the edge of the dragon's back, Noa looked down, and only then did she get a glimpse of the Hall of Valor's full panorama.

Especially the five shrines of different designs.

The one adorned with a dragon head should be Tiamat's shrine.

By that logic, the other primordial gods' shrines also carried symbolic emblems of their own — an hourglass, a sun, and the five great elements.

But when Noa looked at the last shrine, she could not find any sign that represented "wisdom."

That shrine was utterly ordinary, with no distinctive design at all.

"How can there be nothing at all..." Noa murmured.

Before long, Tiamat brought them to another, even broader expanse.

Rather than an open space, it looked more like an "arena."

At that moment, the two parties inside the arena seemed to be taking a break.

And the entire field had been wrecked by their sparring.

Noa looked to the one on the left.

Golden hair, golden eyes, standing with hands behind his back. Though he had just displayed astonishing combat power, once he withdrew his moves, he did not feel oppressive at all. If anything, there was a hint of warmth.

The one on the right was the complete opposite.

Even though the fight had paused, faint arcs of electricity still danced across him.

Noa could not see his face clearly. When the mist thinned a little, the other party had already picked up a hooded cloak from the ground and draped it over himself.

"Every time you make a mess like this, I'm the one who has to clean it up," Chronos muttered as he walked into the arena.

"Sorry about that, but what can you do? Zeus comes looking for a fight with me every few days."

The golden-haired old man called the other party "Zeus," so his own identity was obvious.

Apollo, the God of Light.

And that Zeus...

Noa quickly looked at the hooded figure.

But Zeus seemed to dislike meeting guests, and he also disliked listening to Chronos nag. He pulled up his hood and strode out of the arena.

"Ancestor Zeus..."

Noa stopped herself.

She wanted to meet the legendary God of Elements face to face--the god who governed war, and, in a true sense, the founder of the magic system on Continent Samael.

But he...

He did not seem very social.

By the time that lonely figure vanished into the distant white mist, Noa still had not seen his face, much less exchanged a single word.

"If you ask me, next time you and Ladon can go fight with him. These old bones of mine can't take that man's relentless bombardment," Apollo said.

"No, no. Among the few of us, only you can really trade blows with him," Tiamat said, his gaze shifting to Chronos, who was repairing the arena with time power. "You'd better speed it up. She's about to arrive."

"I know. Stop rushing me."

Noah raised an eyebrow.

"She? Ancestor, you were talking about it earlier too--she's coming. Who is this 'she'? Are there more than just the four of you primordial gods here?" Noa also asked what had been bothering her.

"And I saw the fifth shrine earlier, but that shouldn't be the shrine you prepared for Mevis, the God of Wisdom, right?"

Tiamat's thoughts shifted. After a moment of contemplation, he said slowly:

"Mhm. There are indeed more than just the four of us here."

"And the owner of that fifth shrine is also the owner of the entire Hall of Valor."