The Dragon Lord's Aide Wants to Quit [BL] Chapter 428: No Instructions Included

Dragons sure liked decorating their caves, huh?

While one couldn’t exactly call this particular crypt beautiful, it wasn’t difficult to imagine it had once been so before the place was reduced to ruins.

Everywhere Riley looked, there were traces of marble. Marble walls, marble pillars, marble floors. Frankly, it looked as though the white dragons had discovered marble one day and collectively decided to make it their entire personality.

So, okay, maybe would’ve been a better word than

After all, this was Riley’s first time seeing a supposedly difficult-to-find dragon crypt complete with what looked suspiciously like some sort of reception hall, as though the place had actually been designed with visitors in mind.

How very surprising.

Especially considering how closed off this particular clan had apparently been even before it was wiped out. Not to mention how dragons generally remained tight-lipped about the locations of their ancestral crypts, even to their own younglings.

But as humans would say...

Riley and Kael carefully snaked their way deeper into the crypt.

Thankfully, actually reaching it hadn’t proven particularly difficult for them.

Well... not that the circumstances behind it were anything to celebrate. After all, they wouldn’t have known about this place if not for that immensely tragic incident.

After the fiasco at the dragon estate, Lord Karion had personally investigated every lead connected to the Forbidden Flames, eventually uncovering the location of the white dragon clan’s crypt. Thanks to that, the two of them were able to bypass countless dead ends and make a beeline for their destination.

Otherwise, they could’ve easily spent the next six months wandering around just like the older Dravaryn couple once had. Worse, they didn’t even have that kind of time to waste. By the time they finally found the ancestral burial grounds, that strange woman could’ve already claimed the relic and come knocking on their door instead.

Then again, this advantage barely leveled the playing field as getting there quickly still didn’t mean shit when the monsters they were chasing had arrived even earlier.

In fact, after seeing the level of familiarity that woman who gave Riley the absolute heebie-jeebies displayed toward the place, they could now be more or less certain that this wasn’t her first rodeo.

Which, as one could probably imagine, meant the crypt was absolutely infested with wyverns.

Now, how exactly were Riley and Kael managing to stay hidden while practically breathing the same air as these guys?

Simple.

The entire crypt reeked of dragon mana.

As the burial site of generations of dragons, the crypt was saturated with a lingering aura so dense that masking their own mana signatures became surprisingly easy. Ironically, the ones that stood out were the wyverns. The overwhelming concentration of dragon mana made navigating the crypt difficult for them, forcing them to rotate in batches while those who’d already begun showing signs of deterioration withdrew to recover.

Surprisingly, this time around, he wasn’t as concerned about disguises or hiding. Instead, what worried the black dragon the most was finding the relic before the Wyvern Queen did.

The problem was...

How was he supposed to use the gifts currently sitting on his person to locate the remaining claw?

See, they actually went to the crypt with a come-what-may attitude after failing to figure out how the relics actually locate each other.

While it was a good thing he already had two of them, and one would assume it would help in testing things out, well, he was pissed to report that no such conveniences happened.

Maybe it was because he already had both, with one of them literally coursing in him, but even the most embarrassing methods he could think of weren’t working.

Riley frowned as he remembered trying different poses and states of mind.

Nothing.

He even tried taking off his ring, much to no avail.

Maybe it required some sort of activation phrase?

So he quietly muttered what he generously called an incantation, despite having absolutely no basis for doing so.

When that failed, he tried another.

Then another.

Soon enough, he found himself cycling through increasingly questionable gestures that, in hindsight, probably looked less like someone activating an ancient relic and more like a man trying very hard to communicate with invisible pigeons.

Across from him, back at the comforts of his MBE office, Kael silently watched the entire ordeal.

Riley caught the look.

"Oh, don’t you dare," he whispered, narrowing his eyes at his mate. "If you’ve got enough free time to judge me, then why don’t you try using your damn ring instead? Maybe should be the one standing over there chanting."

The golden dragon merely continued looking at him.

It wasn’t even a particularly expressive look.

Somehow, that made it worse.

Even the children attempting to crowd him seemed to have collectively decided that moral support was beyond their capabilities this time around, because not one of them had anything remotely encouraging to contribute to the situation.

Heck, they couldn’t even hide the secondhand embarrassment on their little chubby faces!

Eventually, Riley let out a defeated sigh.

He’d figure it out when they actually got there.

It wasn’t as though the primordial dragon had thoughtfully left behind an operating manual explaining how his gifts were supposed to function, and they certainly didn’t have the luxury of standing around experimenting while the wyverns continued combing through the crypt.

Besides, he figured that if even he, with two relics already in his possession, couldn’t figure it out right away, then perhaps the Wyvern Queen would end up playing the very same guessing game if she managed to obtain it before he did.

With the darned gifts still refusing to give them any sort of feedback, and with the two of them already racing an entire group of wyverns through the very same crypt, Riley couldn’t help wondering if he should’ve given those chants another chance as they continued deeper inside.

Maybe added a little interpretive dancing while he was at it.

Because now what?

How exactly were they supposed to search this enormous crypt while simultaneously infiltrating a place that was practically crawling with wyverns?

Better yet, if he were the white dragon who once owned such a relic, just where would he even attempt to hide something so important?