Chronicles Of Sen Krendrath

Chapter 6

When the marquise had invited Kyle to a private breakfast in her apartments, Kyle had expected everything but an actual breakfast. Maybe a poisoned meal, or being made into the breakfast, or maybe fed to a lion. Not an actual, pleasant breakfast with the lady of the house and the Count of Valmere.

Of course, she had four knights ready to chop his head off at any moment, alongside a few catkin butlers, but he was thankful for the meal all the same. It had been a while since he last ate beef and cooked vegetables with a fork.

Thankfully, he didn’t taste any poison in the meal. He guessed yesterday’s fiasco taught them a lesson.

“This is humiliating,” the marquise said, lounging in a mink chair while petting a winged lion in one hand and sipping a glass of wine with the other. Kyle guessed she had taken more than a few drinks. “A red dragon empties our pantry and then decides to take a nap at my front door. Why did the gods send this calamity? Is he still there?”

“Yes, my lady,” an armored knight in full plate armor replied, glancing through the window. “He is resting on his back, with a hand on his belly. The poison should have killed him thrice over by now.”

“Why did you have so much poison on hand in the first place?” Kyle asked, too curious for his own good.

“Intense war politics,” the marquise replied without giving more of an explanation, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “I cannot take this anymore! Someone groom me!”

One of the catkin attendants, a thin, frail, humanoid cat wearing butler clothes, groomed the back of the marquise’s ears with a paw, soothing her. “Kyle, is it?” she asked him suddenly. “What is your level?”

“I’m level seven, madam.” Five levels in Outlaw, two in Monster Squire.

“A level seven taming a dragon?” She sneered at him with resentment. “I do not believe you.”

“Do I look like a dragon tamer to you?” Kyle replied with a sneer of his own.

“He listens to you,” the Count of Valmere said, having removed his sweat with a now wet handkerchief. “You saved my life.”

“Listens is a bit exaggerated. That creature is a goddamn wrecking ball, all I can do is try to steer him in one direction and hope he doesn’t burn too many houses.”

“We could mount a surprise attack while he sleeps,” a guard proposed.

“Yeah right, try to kill the invincible dragon who ignores arrows and thinks your best poison is pepper. Maybe you will give him a better Ability this time.” As he drew glares from the nobles and their guards, Kyle cursed his tongue. When he had noticed Sen didn’t understand sarcasm, the adventurer could no longer help himself. It helped relieve the stress of dealing with the wyrm.

“Use another tone with your better, ruffian!” one of the guards spoke up, barely restraining himself from hitting him in the face with his iron gauntlet. His mistress interrupted him with a mere gaze.

“Where do you come from?” the marquise asked Kyle. “Your accent is not Gardemagnian. It sounds vaguely Prydanian.”

Her tone told Kyle this wasn’t a good thing to flaunt. The Fomors of Prydain had shed much blood in their attempted conquest of Melromac, and their Wild Hunt still attacked ships approaching their island. “I come from America,” Kyle admitted, before adding, “Earth.”

“A Claimed,” the marquise nodded. “Show me.”

Kyle pulled back the sleeve on his left arm, revealing a crimson, shining tattoo representing a twenty-faced dice. “The mark of Dice,” the Marquise recognized. “I should have known only a chosen of the luck god could befriend a dragon.”

Some luck. This world sucked. It was full of brigands, man-eating monsters, dragons, oh, and stuck in the Middle Ages! He hadn’t been able to take a hot bath for months! All because he saved some girl he had a crush on from getting mugged, only to be stabbed and left to bleed in an alley. And if death hadn’t hurt enough, getting forced to join a band of outlaws to survive right afterward had been just as harrowing.

But he understood where that comment came from. People from Earth reincarnating in Outremonde after being branded by the local gods were a known occurrence, and most sported unique Abilities allowing them to make a life for themselves. The phenomenon even caused the rise of a new religion, the Esoteric Order of the New World.

But Kyle didn’t care about becoming a hero or a local curiosity. He just wanted to survive, get laid, and return home.

Also, befriend? Kyle would have run away if he could. Unfortunately, the dragon would probably track him down in no time, that beast had keen senses. “Look, lady, I’ll try to lure him off your lands, but I don’t promise anything. Just don’t try to steal his stuff again, okay?”

“My lady, why did you ask for this rapier in the first place?” the Count of Valmere asked.

“This is a family heirloom,” the marquise replied. “My ancestor, according to legends, befriended a human adventurer and tricked a King of Melromac into giving the boy his daughter’s hand. As a reward, the human gave my ancestor his prized rapier and the marquisate of Blenheim. Catkins ruled Blenheim ever since.”

Ah, that explained all the felines running around.

“Looters stole that rapier from my great grandfather’s corpse during the Century War, but I had no idea it ended in the claws of a red dragon,” the marquise said, a maid refilling her glass. “I did not know one befouled the country, let alone Sen Krendrath.”

“He’s got a reputation?” Kyle asked, eager to know more about the wyrm.

“He was the bane of Midgard for centuries, before vanishing fifty years ago,” the Count of Valmere said. “Legends say he fought a Wild Hunt party single-handedly and traded blows with a level sixty-seven elf knight.”

From what Kyle had heard, only the now legendary Shining Knight approached that level. Which meant the dragon might as well be invincible. “Yeah, and now he has taken two levels in Noble.”