The Last Dragon Emperor

Chapter 2 – A Knight's Pride (Part A)

The dormitory door slammed violently against the stone wall before Greg could catch the handle, and for a long, agonizing heartbeat, he simply stood paralyzed in the threshold.

His modest bed had been completely overturned, its thin straw mattress viciously ripped open so that pale stalks littered the wooden floor like a dusting of fallen feathers. His only spare training clothes had been slashed into useless strips and hung mockingly from the exposed rafters.

The small wooden chest that held his meager worldly possessions lay shattered in the far corner, its lid hanging pitifully by a single rusted hinge.

A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the ruined room, but it was not the peaceful quiet of a restful evening. Instead, it was a mocking, malicious stillness—the kind of ugly atmosphere that lingers like a bad scent long after the cruel laughter has faded.

Greg slowly stepped inside, his heavy boots crunching loudly over the splintered wood that covered the floor. He knelt carefully beside the ruined chest and reached into the debris to retrieve a small, carved wooden horse that now had one of its legs snapped clean off.

He brushed away the accumulated dust with gentle fingers before setting the broken toy safely aside on the floorboards.

The crude carving had originally belonged to another orphan who had washed out of the academy years ago, a boy who had pressed it into Greg's hands on his final day with a bittersweet promise that Greg would need a friend far more than he would.

A faint smile touched Greg's lips despite the deep ache in his chest, but the expression vanished instantly when his eyes drifted to the space at the bottom of the broken chest.

His hand flew instinctively toward his collar, reaching frantically beneath his sweat-dampened shirt to grasp the familiar leather cord that should have been resting against his skin.

He felt absolutely nothing. His mother's silver, dragon-shaped pendant—the one item he guarded more fiercely than his own life—had disappeared entirely.

A sickeningly cold weight plummeted into the pit of his stomach as panic threatened to overwhelm his usual composure.

Everything else in this wretched room could eventually be replaced, from the frayed old blanket and the spare linen tunic to the broken wooden horse, but the pendant was utterly irreplaceable. It was the absolute last thing his mother had managed to leave him before a sudden winter fever had claimed her life, severing his only tie to a family.

He had no clear memory of her face anymore—only fleeting fragments of maternal warmth, the faded melody of a gentle lullaby, and the soothing, cool touch of that silver pendant against his chest whenever violent nightmares woke him in the dark. Now, even that final thread of comfort had been maliciously stolen from him.

The sudden eruption of harsh laughter from the hallway pulled Greg violently from his thoughts, prompting him to turn slowly toward the open doorway.

A group of Roland's closest sycophantic companions lounged casually outside his room, carrying themselves with the arrogant entitlement of boys who believed they owned the entire building.

Cedric, a broad-shouldered noble with perfectly combed blond hair and an expensive silk doublet, leaned lazily against the stone wall with a cruel smirk.

"You look surprised, orphan," Cedric drawled, relishing the destruction.

Another apprentice stepped forward and kicked Greg's torn, soiled blanket further across the floorboards. "We were merely helping you clean this dreadful little room," the boy snickered, drawing another round of raucous laughter from the gathered nobles.

Greg's cold, calculating eyes swept methodically over each of their highly amused faces, not blindly searching for a target for his revenge, but carefully searching for the truth of the theft. "Where is it?" Greg asked, his voice dropping to a dangerously quiet timber.

Cedric raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow in mock confusion. "Where's what, exactly?"

"The silver pendant," Greg clarified, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached.

"Oh, I see," Cedric replied as feigned understanding dawned across his aristocratic face. "You mean that entirely worthless piece of rusted metal you keep hidden away? I suppose it finally found its way to the trash heaps, which is precisely where garbage belongs."

The surrounding apprentices laughed even louder at the casual cruelty, with one boy stepping forward to dramatically mimic Greg's voice in a high-pitched whine. "Oh, please don't touch my precious little necklace!" he cried out, causing the others to nearly double over in hysterics.

Despite the burning humiliation, Greg remained perfectly still, his unwavering silence and unblinking stare unsettling the nobles far more than any sudden outburst of anger ever could have.

Uncomfortable with the sudden shift in the atmosphere, Cedric pushed off the wall and stepped aggressively into the room until only a single pace separated him from Greg.

"You know," the young noble said, deliberately lowering his voice to a menacing purr, "I've always genuinely wondered why this prestigious academy even bothers to keep useless orphans around."

Greg met the boy's arrogant gaze without flinching, refusing to give ground as Cedric continued his verbal assault.

"You possess absolutely no mana, you have no family name to speak of, and you certainly have no future in this kingdom," Cedric spat, a thin, cruel smile stretching across his face. "You are simply occupying a bed that rightfully should belong to someone important."

That particular insult struck Greg far harder than any physical blow could have, not because it was remarkably clever or original, but because it painfully echoed the same dismissive words he had heard directed at him his entire life.

His calloused fingers slowly curled into tight fists at his sides as a dangerous temptation flared within him. For one terrifyingly reckless moment, every lesson of discipline and restraint drilled into him by the old knight who had raised him threatened to completely crumble into dust.

The primal urge to hit Cedric, to strike his smug face just once and make him truly regret his arrogant cruelty, burned white-hot in Greg's chest.

Then, drawing upon years of hard-won self-control, Greg slowly exhaled a shaky breath and forced his white-knuckled fists to relax. "I asked you where the pendant is, Cedric," he repeated with icy calm.

Cedric clicked his tongue in exaggerated disappointment, clearly annoyed that he hadn't managed to provoke a physical altercation. "Still so pathetically obsessed with trash," he muttered.

Before the noble could offer another taunt, the distinct sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the far end of the stone corridor, momentarily distracting the gathered boys.

A young servant girl appeared at the edge of the hallway, awkwardly balancing a heavy woven basket of fresh linens against her hip.

She couldn't have been older than fifteen, and the moment she saw the imposing group of noble apprentices blocking the path, she immediately lowered her eyes to the floorboards in submissive terror.

"P-please, forgive my intrusion, my lords," she stammered nervously.

Cedric waved a dismissive hand in her direction without even bothering to look at her. "Move along, peasant, we're busy here."

The girl scurried past the doorway as quickly as she could manage, but not before stealing the briefest, most desperate glance directly toward Greg.

There was something highly unusual in her wide-eyed expression—it wasn't the typical pity that servants usually reserved for the academy orphans, but rather a profound, gripping fear.

Greg watched her slight form disappear down the shadowy hallway, and a quiet, undeniable certainty immediately settled over his mind: that frightened girl knew exactly what had happened to his mother's pendant.

Without wasting another breath or offering a single parting word to the smirking nobles, Greg pushed past them and walked purposely down the corridor to follow her.

Behind him, Cedric loudly called out, his voice dripping with triumphant venom. "What's wrong, orphan? Are you giving up already? I thought you stray dogs liked chasing after discarded bones!"

Fresh peals of cruel laughter followed Greg down the damp stone corridor, echoing off the walls to taunt him.

He didn't allow himself to look back at his tormentors because he knew with absolute certainty that if he turned around to face them again, he wouldn't be able to keep walking away.