The Mighty Dragons Are Dead

Only now, the singing voice was easily filled with sadness and pain.

“It’s a female voice, the Siren is a female, if it has a gender,” he listened silently, not rushing to search for her, fearing he might accidentally scare the Siren away.

At the same time, he carefully distinguished and sought the direction from which the singing voice came.

Eventually, he determined the direction of the singing voice to be to the front left, where there seemed to be several reefs connected together. He used his Eye of Magic to look, but because the distance was too far, he saw nothing.

“Captain Kostor, set sail in this direction toward that reef,” Liszt said.

“Yes, my lord!”

The Fresh Flower Vessel resumed its voyage, cutting through the sea’s sparkle under the light of the setting moon. It was unclear whether the sound of the vessel was too loud, drowning out the singing, or if the Siren had discovered the Fresh Flower Vessel and stopped singing. Liszt could no longer hear that sorrowful and moving singing voice, and as for the sailors, they heard nothing at all.

The sails billowed with the wind, and the oars moved in unison.

The Fresh Flower Vessel rapidly approached the reef.

Liszt’s Eye of Magic constantly worked, sweeping back and forth over the reef, still seeing no signs of magic. However, he guessed that the Siren was here, for this was the only area with reefs—if the Siren didn’t need the reefs to live and could drift anywhere in the ocean, then he would just have to accept it.

Finding a Siren that could move anywhere in the vast sea would be a challenge of hellish difficulty.

“Lower the boat, I want to personally search this area of the reef,” said Liszt after some thought, decisively embarking on the boat to start searching in the shallows within the reef.

The boat navigated between the shallow reefs.

Liszt’s Eye of Magic kept observing, and finally, when surveying near the middle of a rock, he saw a faint trace of magic in the shallow waters by the rock.

That speck of pure white light was so alluring in the night.

“Over here, quickly, row this way!”

The sailors rowed furiously, and the boat, like a swift arrow, shot toward the rock. The closer they got, the clearer the pure white magic radiance became in the vision of the Eye of Magic. He could now see the exact location of the light, nestled among the broken stones in the rocky waters.

Waves kept crashing against the surrounding rocks.

The boat’s progress became difficult.

But with Liszt’s guidance, they managed to inch closer to the source of the magic radiance.

At last, they were just fifty meters away.

The Eye of Magic could clearly see that it was a humanoid creature curled up into a ball. Strangely, there seemed to be a faint halo around the humanoid creature, the shape of which looked like a seashell. It was very faint and hard to see clearly, especially when the waves crashed and the halo flickered in and out of sight.

“Lord Landlord, we can’t move any further, the boat is grounded on the rocks below,” a sailor said.

“Get into the water directly.”

Assured by Liszt that there were no sea monsters around, he jumped off the boat, as the water here was already very shallow. Below the surface were various pebbles and stones, making it hard to stand firmly, plus the moonlight couldn’t illuminate the bottom, making the going very difficult.

Fortunately, Liszt was prepared; he took out a Crystal Lamp akin to a desk lamp, which could barely illuminate a small part of the water surface, as well as the stones on the seafloor.

Stepping on the stones, avoiding pitfalls, he let the seawater wash over his legs and waist.

He led a few sailors, groping their way forward bit by bit. When they were less than ten meters away, he could clearly see what the magic radiance was.

In the vision of the Eye of Magic, there was an enormous shell, inside which lay a shaking, magic creature curled up into a ball. A clear female silhouette was visible, yet there were other, fainter magical outlines around her. On the creature, there were also wings and fins.

Fin-like ears jutted out from behind her ears and fin-like wings extended from her back; her legs merged with the faint magic radiance around her ankles, making her feet indistinguishable.

The entire shell emitted a faint magic radiance.

He ceased using the Eye of Magic.

The white shell, stark in the light of the crystal lamps, lay stranded between two broken stones.

“My Siren!” Liszt’s heart raced with excitement, his mental fatigue disappeared in an instant, and his previous irritation quickly dissipated as he whispered to himself, “Don’t be afraid, I am actually a good person.”

At last.

He approached the shell.

It was a very standard scallop-shaped shell, with a diameter of about three meters. The surface showed radiating wave-like patterns, a perfect symmetrical structure without any other color—pure white.

“What a beautiful large shell!” Captain Kostor, following behind Liszt, exclaimed in awe.

The sailors also marveled, “My God, it’s so big!”

“So beautiful!”

“To think there’s such a large shell here, it’s even bigger than the tridacna shell at the entrance of Lord Landlord’s castle.”

Liszt’s brows raised in annoyance, not wishing these people to disturb him, he ordered, “Captain Kostor, take your men back and bring a large net. Later, we’ll pull the shell onto the ship.” He was definitely taking the Siren with him; since the Siren lived inside the shell, it was necessary to take the shell along as well.

“Yes, my lord,” Kostor quickly scolded the sailors and returned to the Fresh Flower Vessel to retrieve a net.

Once everyone had left.

Liszt rapped on the shell, “Hey, can you hear me speaking?”

His Eye of Magic observed the trembling Siren inside the shell, who wrapped her arms around her legs, curling up even tighter, clearly hearing Liszt’s voice.

Liszt paused for a moment.

Making his voice sound gentler, he continued, “You should be able to hear me talking. I am just a human passing by, a Noble Landlord, and these reefs are part of my territory. I heard your song; it was sad and painful. Is there anything I could do to help you?”

He wasn’t sure if the Siren could speak Serpent Script, but he had to try communicating first.

After all, she was a spirit of the sea and should be treated with gentleness.

If it had been a Sea Monster, he wouldn’t have hesitated to pry open the shell and kill it. But with the Siren, who had a feminine silhouette and an apparently graceful figure, he couldn’t be so rough.

“Don’t be scared, I really just want to help you. My name is Liszt Tulip, Lord of Fresh Flower Town. I am a landlord who believes in peace. I think whether they are humans, elves, or Sirens, we’re all part of nature and should live in harmony, not harm each other.”

He proceeded to talk non-stop about his peace ideologies.

This seemed to work, as the shivering Siren finally relaxed a bit. She turned her head as if to respond to Liszt.

However, at that moment, Kostor and the others came back, shouting, “Lord Landlord, we’ve brought the net!”

Startled by the commotion, the Siren curled up tightly once again.

Liszt’s face darkened as he turned to Captain Kostor and the others, barely containing his anger, he said in as low a voice as possible, “Shut up, stand still, no, move back—go back a hundred meters!”