"Was that your brother?" Kurose Akira asked as he looked at Wyvernis.
"Yeah!" Wyvernis replied with obvious annoyance. "He must be following orders from those old fossils, trying to drag me back to face clan punishment!"
After a brief silence, Akira immediately understood what kind of mistake Wyvernis had made.
He spoke slowly and evenly. "If you have nowhere to go right now, you can stay in my guild."
Wyvernis blinked, curiosity flickering across her face. "Does your guild have a nice, soft swamp I can laze around in?"
"No."
"Then I'm not going."
"..."
Akira found himself at a loss for words. Her preferences were… truly unconventional.
Still, according to records, black dragons really did favor environments like swamps and wetlands.
But there was no way he could build an entire swamp inside the guild. Black dragons liked to submerge their massive bodies completely in muddy marshes, and there simply wasn't enough space within the guild to accommodate that kind of indulgence.
Besides—who in their right mind would build a swamp inside their home?
What puzzled Akira even more was this: despite Wyvernis's love for rolling around in mud, her pitch-black scales seemed to possess some mysterious property. Not a speck of filth clung to her body, nor did she carry any foul odor. Instead, she emitted a faint, almost intoxicating fragrance.
Not long after, Wyvernis delivered them near the village.
The moment she touched down, her enormous draconic form shimmered and shrank, transforming into a beautiful young girl with long, straight black hair.
Seeing Wyvernis in her human form, Akira couldn't help the flash of surprise that crossed his eyes. His gaze lingered on her for a moment longer than intended.
"What are you staring at?" Wyvernis asked, hands on her hips, clearly confused.
"Oh, nothing," Akira replied with a small smile, shaking his head casually. "I just didn't expect a black dragon who loves wallowing in swamps to turn out to be such a pretty young girl."
With that, he shifted his attention toward the villagers who had gathered around them.
"A… a dragon!"Fear and reverence mixed on the villagers' faces as they recalled Wyvernis's massive true form.
At that moment, an elderly man with graying hair and a face partially covered in snake scales stepped out from the crowd. His scales were denser than those of the other villagers, nearly covering half his face.
He was the village chief.
Though merely human, Akira knew from earlier information that the man had already lived for over a hundred and fifty years.
Hunched over, the village chief approached Akira cautiously. His voice trembled as he asked, "Great Adventurer… has the monster in the swamp been dealt with?"
"Yes. It's dead," Akira answered, nodding.
"That's wonderful! Our village can finally return to peace!"The chief let out a long sigh of relief, the deep wrinkles on his face seeming to ease slightly.
Then he looked back at Akira, his weathered eyes filled with hope and gratitude. "May I ask—during the battle, did you happen to find the treasure it stole from us? If you can return it, I will reward you handsomely on behalf of the entire village."
"Treasure?" Akira paused, replaying the scene in his mind.
The snake-man's body had been completely incinerated by Wyvernis's dragon breath—reduced to nothing but ash. There hadn't been any loot left behind.
"I didn't find anything," Akira replied. "The snake-man's body was burned to ash."
"Burned to ash?"A flicker of confusion and disappointment crossed the chief's face. "That's impossible… how could that treasure be destroyed in battle?"
"I'm certain there was nothing," Akira said firmly, though a trace of doubt crept into his thoughts.
He clearly remembered checking the remains. Aside from ash, there had been nothing at all.
If such a treasure truly existed, he couldn't have missed it.
"Also," Akira continued, his tone turning colder, "if you wanted adventurers to retrieve a stolen treasure, that should've been stated clearly in the quest description. Not hidden away like this. Or is there something you're deliberately keeping from us?"
Normally, once a quest was completed, returning to the guild to submit it would be enough. But Akira had chosen to come back to the village because he sensed the presence of a hidden quest chain.
After all, this village had been founded by a human man and a female snake-person.
And yet the quest target had been to hunt a snake-person.
That connection alone was suspicious.
The village chief's reaction only confirmed it—there really was a hidden quest.
"Th-this…"The chief's expression grew heavy. After a long silence, he finally spoke. "Very well. We did conceal the truth."
"Please, Adventurer, listen carefully. The story goes like this…"
The village chief explained everything in detail.
It turned out that the female snake-person ancestor possessed Medusa blood. She had fled her tribe and come here with her lover.
As for the snake-man Wyvernis had just killed—he was actually her former fiancé.
Of course, he hadn't come to reclaim his bride. That female snake-person had already died over a hundred years ago.
His true target was her heart.
Legend said that a snake-person who drank the blood of the Medusa Queen would gain unimaginable power, and that power would condense within their heart.
Even after death, the heart would remain intact, passed down to the next snake-person.
And that woman's heart was exceptionally precious.
Other snake-people had only consumed blood diluted across countless generations, leaving behind only faint remnants of power.
But she was different.
She had consumed pure blood directly from the Medusa Queen—blood that had never been drunk by anyone else before.
No one knew how she had obtained it.
But because of it, her heart became a priceless treasure coveted by the entire snake-person race.
That was the real reason she had fled her people.
The problem was—no one in the village knew where their ancestor's heart had been hidden.
All they knew was that the snake-man had been searching for it deep within the swamp.
Most villagers believed he had already succeeded.
After all, strange, dazzling lights had once flashed in the swamp—like the birth of a rare treasure.
But now, hearing Akira say there was nothing at all, confusion spread across their faces.
Meanwhile, Akira's thoughts drifted elsewhere.
How had that female snake-person obtained the Medusa Queen's blood?
And where had she hidden her heart—so well that even her descendants knew nothing about it?
"Great Adventurer!" the village chief pleaded. "Please help us recover our ancestor's heart! We're willing to offer an even greater reward!"
[Hidden Quest Triggered: Search for the Snake-Person's Heart!][Quest Rewards: 10 Gold, 50,000 EXP, 1 Epic-grade Equipment]
But Akira felt no excitement at all.
The swamp was vast. Searching for a hidden heart there would be like looking for a needle in the ocean.
Unless…
[You have received a message!]
"Hm?"Akira raised an eyebrow and opened the chat interface.
[Xia Yu: Damn it! Akira, whatever you do, don't go into that cave on the south side of the swamp! The moment I went in, I stepped on a trap and got petrified instantly! I had no choice but to revive with a resurrection coin. Thank god my adventurers were fine—but I couldn't bring out that silver-scaled armor set! I'm seriously cursed. Huge losses this time!]