The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years (Web Novel KR)

They were told that it would take around three to four days for reinforcements to arrive at the Great Forest. This meant that he would be delayed much longer than expected.

In truth, Lukas wanted to stop worrying about the Great Dragon’s corpse and go to the major city, ‘Lirua’, as soon as possible.

Since it was a major city, there was a very high chance that it would have expert refiners, and he also wanted to analyse the Fighters there.

Bargan was incredibly shocked when Lukas expressed this to him.

“You don’t really intend to abandon the Ancient Dragon’s Corpse, do you, my Lord?”

“…would you like to have it? I really don’t care as long as I get a bit of the money and the heart.”

“Haha. That’s a cruel joke.”

Bargan shook his head at Lukas and let out a laugh. This showed just how absurd Lukas’ words were, as it was his first time seeing Bargan laugh.

Reluctantly, Lukas decided to stay in the forest until the Ancient Dragon’s corpse was properly taken care of.

The question that remained was how to efficiently make use of the time he now had on his hands, but luckily, Lukas found something he wanted to try.

He looked down at the Dragonling’s corpse.

It was the one who had killed dozens of Dragonmen with its extremely long prehensile tail.

This guy’s scales and tail were high-quality materials, but what Lukas paid the most attention to was its core.

[Heart of the Mutated Dragonling]

[The heart of a mutated Dragonling. Although it was only a young Dragonling, it had a huge amount of vitality inherited from its parents. If processed with a special refining method, there may be many uses for it.]

[※Because it was left unattended for a long time, most of the inherent vitality has dissipated.]

Visualised information.

It was the thing that Min Ha-rin called ‘Information Window’.

Lukas decided to call it that as well. He liked the name because it was simple and intuitive.

‘As expected, it lost its vitality because it wasn’t preserved properly.’

This was natural since it was left unattended for a long time after it died.

Though it was only a day or two, the heart was the organ that could be described as the ‘source of life’, so it wasn’t strange that its vitality would dissipate if it had nowhere to pump it to.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Blizzard reduced the temperature of the surroundings, it would have lost all of its vitality by now, and the Dragonling’s body would have begun to decompose.

Lukas decided to refine the heart of the mutated Dragonling with the knowledge he had. This was because he thought it was fine to experiment with it since its value was significantly less than the Ancient Dragon’s.

But in order to do that, he would need other materials as well.

Luckily, the place they were in could be called one of nature’s treasure troves. Thanks to this, he would be able to obtain the items he was looking for just by walking through the forest.

“We will help you.”

“Do you know anything about herbs?”

“…no.”

“Then it’s fine.”

Bargan’s expression at that moment was priceless.

Although it could be said that Lukas was just as ignorant when it came to the herbs in this world, he had the information window.

Thanks to that, he could easily distinguish different medicinal and poisonous herbs, and he was also able to learn their uses.

He didn’t have a mortar and pestle to crush the herbs, or test tubes and beakers in order to separate and combine them into different ratios. Moreover, he didn’t have any equipment with which to have accurate measurements.

But that didn’t matter.

Because Lukas’ collection of herbs could only be described as ‘researching to pass the time’.

—And so time passed.

Four days later, someone looked on intently as Lukas gathered dozens of medicinal and poisonous herbs that had many useful effects depending on how they were used.

“…”

The person half hid behind a tree, staring at his back.

It was Ashstar.

In fact, this wasn’t that surprising.

It had already been a few days since she’d begun staring timidly at him from a distance. It seemed that she wanted to tell him something, but she simply couldn’t muster up the courage to do so.

Nevertheless, Lukas didn’t approach her first and simply allowed her to continue looking at him.

But it seemed that today was bound to be a bit different from usual.

Ashstar clenched her fists at her sides and was walking up to him with a determined expression on her face.

Then, she opened her mouth and spoke in a cautious voice.

“Are you from Dragon God Island, Mr. Lukas?”

She was the first Dragonman, other than Bargan, who had gathered the courage to speak to him after he slew the Ancient Dragon.

Not to mention Igaru, who was a squad leader, even Guaba, who he’d thought had a relatively good relationship with him, was hesitant to approach him.

It wasn’t that they disliked him or anything like that. The voice had already proven that wasn’t the case.

Nevertheless, the problem was simple.

[Hirup Subjugation Team Squad Leader Ashstar]

[Level: 58]

[Occupation: Fighter]

[Race: Dragonman]

[Skills: Swordsmanship(Lv.7), Brawling(Lv.8), Charisma(Lv.4), Bloodthirst(Lv.4)…]

[Loyalty: 76]

[Difficulty: E]

They had an absurdly high amount of loyalty.

Ashstar was staring at Lukas with a gaze similar to the way one would look at a legendary hero or historical figure.

That was also the reason why Lukas was able to see so much of Ashstar’s information compared to when they first met.

‘More information is revealed as loyalty increases.’

For example, with Bargan, only his name, loyalty, and so on were visible at first, but as his loyalty increased, details such as his level, titles, occupation, race, and even his skills, were visible.

The same was true for Ashstar.

Her loyalty was 76, which was even higher than Bargan, who was Lukas’ actual subordinate.

Judging from Bargan’s attitude, it wouldn’t be hard for him to make her come under him with only a few words.

However, Lukas had no intentions of increasing his follower count at that moment. Bargan alone was more than enough.

‘…in any case.’

When he thought about Ashstar’s attitude when they first met, he couldn’t help but feel like she was an entirely different person.

Standing up, Lukas turned to look at her.

“Why do you say that?”

“I’ve heard that the Black Sorcerer and White Sorcerer who protect the Goddess can create mountains and cut the sky in two.”

“…”

Create mountains and cut the sky in two.

In other words, they were so powerful that they could affect nature, something only 8-star Wizards were capable of doing.

Suddenly, Guaba’s words rang out in his head once more.

The Goddess from Dragon God Island made it rain for decades, even to submerge an entire island.

‘To make it rain for such a long time over such a vast region…’

It was very strange. Who or what exactly was this ‘Goddess’?

Lukas shook his head, deciding to put aside his doubts about Dragon God Island for now.

“I’m not.”

“I see.”

He decided to shut that thought down before any unnecessary misunderstandings arose.

Luckily, Ashstar didn’t seem to have any strange thoughts. He thought he would be suspected because he was an outsider, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Lukas once again looked at Ashstar, or to be more precise, he looked at her status window.

[Difficulty: E]

This was the part that he was the most curious about.

What exactly did the difficulty mean?

In the case of Bargan, his difficulty was C, but the difference between him and Ashstar was not that big.

In fact, if the two of them were to fight, the odds of winning and losing would be almost even to the extent that a single paper-thin factor could influence the outcome.

This meant that the fact that one was C and the other was E didn’t necessarily have to do with their combat power.

He’d looked at others as well, but he had yet to find someone higher than Bargan. This was because the others tended to be F or E, like Ashstar.

“Squad Leader!”

It was at that moment that someone called out to Ashstar.

Ashstar, who was about to begin what she believed was a pleasant conversation with the hero she admired the most, immediately turned to face her squad member. Her expression at that moment would freeze the heart of even the bravest Dragonman.

Nevertheless, she had no choice but to quell her anger when she heard her squad member’s following words.

“Reinforcements from Hirup have arrived!”

When he heard that, Lukas looked up at the sky.

There, he saw a large squadron of sky carriages flying towards them with the sun at their backs.