"Huh? No, he isn’t."

"Oh, then where is he?"

"He’s dead."

"What ? He’s dead? How can you be so sure?" Austin asked with a worried look on his face, but the dragon lady simply raised one hand before twirling her finger lazily, and a small sphere of condensed air shimmered into existence above her palm.

Within this condensed sphere, there was a tiny core releasing deep tendrils of green-black smoke from its surface.

The ominous gas swirled within the sphere before being reabsorbed into the core, then seeping out once again.

"That’s because I’ve got this." She replied softly, and Austin stared at the glowing core.

"What’s that?" Austin asked. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

"It’s his demon core. I found it in the forest and shrunk it down to this size so it would stop poisoning everything nearby. It’s the reason the air within that forest was so hard to breathe." The dragon lady explained, and the realisation instantly dawned on Austin.

"Wait a minute, so this is what’s been causing the poisonous air? It’s the reason the soil has been ruined for centuries?"

"Yep. His corpse rotted in that forest for a long time, and the core kept leaking that stuff out the whole time as well." She explained, and Austin nodded in understanding.

Until now, he had never been certain that demons truly existed, but it seemed they truly were a part of this world.

"So demons truly exist, huh." He muttered softly.

"Yes, they do, but just like dragons, the ratio of demons to humans is one to ten thousand."

"There are that few?"

"Yeah. If there were many of them, you’d probably have known they existed by now, but with how few they are, they’re able to easily blend in with those around them, causing chaos and destruction wherever they go."

Austin pondered on what she said and could understand the sense behind it.

Just like demons, if dragons were as numerous as humans, all other races would easily have been enslaved, because based on what he had noticed so far, Austin was certain this dragon lady was strong enough to fight against thousands of awakened humans on her own.

This realisation dawned on him, and Austin unwittingly muttered to himself, not knowing his voice was loud enough for the dragon lady to hear. "You’re amazing, you know that, right?"

And this made the dragon lady really happy.

"I know, right?" She grinned proudly.

Strangely enough, she seemed to genuinely enjoy being praised, because it really made her happy, and Austin couldn’t help but smile as he added a little more.

"Seriously, thanks to you, the land out there can actually start healing now."

"You really like saying thanks a lot, huh." She said, catching Austin by surprise.

"Is that bad?"

"Not exactly, but there’s no need to thank me all the time. I just brought the core to show you what almost killed you back in the forest. I wasn’t expecting you to thank me every single minute for it."

"You brought it to show me?"

"Yeah. You were coughing your lungs out back there, so I figured you’d want to know what almost killed you." She twirled her fingers again, and the floating sphere drifted gently through the air until it hovered just in front of Austin’s face.

Austin stared at it, feeling fascinated that something so small could be so dangerous, but this reality also made him feel a little unsettled.

This was because he knew that if he were to so much as touch it, everyone in the mansion, except for the dragon beside him, would likely drop dead within seconds.

He was certain of this because he recalled how violently his own body had reacted to the poisoned air deep in the forest.

Thinking about how he had survived now, it really had been nothing short of a miracle that he had made it out alive.

"You can take it, if you want." The dragon lady said casually after noticing how Austin kept staring at it.

"I can?"

"It’s a demon core. You can absorb it or use it for something else, whatever you want, but normally, absorbing something like this would kill a human instantly." She warned with a shrug before continuing.

"But since you’re in a symbiotic contract with me now, I feel you’d be fine."

"Right, that reminds me." Austin sat up properly before turning to face her.

"What exactly is this symbiotic contract, anyway?"

He asked, and the dragon lady began to explain.

She told him about the bond the two had formed the moment he had freed her.

She also explained how their fates were now tied together, and how harm to one would echo onto the other.

She explained a few other important things relating to what the symbiotic contract meant, and Austin listened attentively to everything she said.

He even asked a few questions here and there, and before he knew it, somewhere between their explanations and conversations, the two of them ended up talking for what turned out to be hours.

During this time, Austin learned her name, which happened to be Tatiana.

He also learned that she had spent her entire life living with her mother in a cave just beyond Blacksand Forest, and that everything Tatiana knew, including fighting, flying, and even her blunt way of speaking, had all been taught to her by her mother over the years.

But this wasn’t the only thing Austin had come to notice during his time with Tatiana, because despite how the stunning dragon lady seemed older than every other elf in Elmfield County, he realised that Tatiana was still remarkably young by dragon standards.

She had practically described herself as a hatchling in dragon terms, but in human terms, she would be roughly around Austin’s own age.

"So, what are you planning to do now? Will you be heading back to your cave, or somewhere else entirely?" Austin asked, and Tatiana turned her head toward him.

"Are you trying to kick me out?"