A Dragon's Curiosity

Returning to the secluded spot where the trio of warrior students stored their spoils of war, a lazy yellow-golden furred beast greeted them by wagging its tail on top of a small pile of fur and meat.

Little Lia had no sense of tension at all as the familiar lounged on top of the bodies, lazily shifting its tail to and fro.

Upon seeing its master, the wolf contemplated jumping up and greeting her, yet ultimately decided to stay where it was and give a low bark as a greeting instead.

Since Nisha did not call for it, there was no pressing matter at hand.

And indeed, the elf did not mind at all and had most of her attention placed on her friend, the blonde girl walking next to her with the other girl‘s support.

Her shortsword and shield were slung over her back and in its sheath, while Lisa cradled one of her arms.

A big angry gash went all the way from her wrist to her elbow and dripped a small amount of blood with every step she took.

The trio had fought their greatest battle so far against six [Starved Shredder Hatchlings], with each of the students taking care of two opponents.

That already put them at the top of the warrior class and they would likely have come out of the confrontation unharmed, but they were too unlucky.

Nisha barely had time to warn them of more incoming enemies when three more [Mad Stonetooth Boars] were attracted over by the noise of the fight and managed to create some chaos with their forceful entry.

Nisha and Unico rushed to split up the new enemies and take on more of the burden by increasing their power on the surface and holding back less, but it was not in time to prevent one of the boars from crashing into Lisa‘s shield.

Whereas each combatant had to manage three enemies, Lisa had made great progress so far by matching her advancement with the two anomalies in her company and was not even aware how much she soared compared to other warrior students.

Three mid second rank enemies were ultimately too much to adapt in the heat of battle and the boar threw her off balance, allowing one of the hatchlings to avoid her sword and rip a deep wound into her limb.

To Lisa‘s credit, she did not drop her weapon and succumbed to the rapid changes, but it reduced her presence in battle and only allowed the girl to protect herself with her shield most of the time.

Luckily, Nisha and Unico rapidly dispatched one of their opponents and lessened the burden on the injured team member.

“So the Twin Kingdoms demand that all their citizens learn how to gather information?”

Lisa was not discouraged by her injury, as long as the party really desired to continue their hunting spree, the [Royal Academy] had healers on call for the excursion, which were capable enough to treat an injury of this degree in a short amount of time.

Nevertheless, the group called for an early retirement after the blonde girl got wounded, enemies at the early to mid second rank just were not enough anymore for them to make significant progress.

Lisa went over to a tree root that was rather clean compared to the others around, either overgrown with moss or full of earth and plant debris, and watched as the other two in her group began working on the bodies they collected.

Whereas it was not uncommon to hand in monster corpses in one piece in exchange for contribution, the payment went up a bit if the materials were separated from the useless pieces first.

“No, it’s impossible to have everyone learn the same profession, no matter how determined the king was in the past.

Imagine if everyone became a farmer, who would guard the borders or build houses? It’s important to have a diverse range of jobs and professions available, or the community would collapse sooner or later.

Nevertheless, they did manage to figure out a trick that worked exactly like that, making it look like each and every traveller from the Left and Right Kingdoms had the possibility of being a spy.”

Unlike the other girl, Nisha had no trouble dealing with insects and used the blade of the dagger usually strapped to the belt on her waist to detach the forelimbs of the [Starved Shredder Hatchlings].

Even without any further processing, the blade-like limbs were sharp enough to cut through wood and fur alike, making it a prime material to craft swords and other blades.

It was a top second tier material, which was very sought after by crafters back at the academy, who bought them for contribution points.

Once the forelimbs got damaged beyond salvaging in the process of hunting the monster, the value of the body would drop sharply, as not many of the remaining parts were useful.

“Every citizen - like Unico - from the Twin Kingdom needs to pen a journal when they travel beyond the borders of their home, it is a very strongly enforced law.

Once per moon, the books get collected and sent back to the archives, where they get combined into one big account and then entered into the collection.

Because of that, the Twin Kingdoms have the greatest library of the continent, with many lost secrets and forgotten knowledge buried within.”

Lisa let a quiet ooh escape and was suitably impressed, whereas Unico kept quiet, yet gave his silent approval towards the stories about his homeland.

It was difficult for him to personally explain why he was not a spy, despite him certainly looking like one, and it would make his account untrustworthy.

He was quite relieved that the elf had read about the Twin Kingdoms before and was familiar with the circumstances of the journals.

Secretly, he had been quite tense as well. Before his family set out on this journey, the scribes and guards had prepared them for potential scenarios once someone accused them of being spies or being reported to the guards in another kingdom, thankfully neither the elf nor the blonde girl seemed particularly upset over the current state of affairs.

He had feared being locked up and subsequently being shunned at the academy, even having a nightmare about it one time.

The less the young man said now, the better it was for him.

“But how does that make them spies? Aren’t they just writing some stuff down?”

While Nisha and Unico never stopped to separate the bones, hides and claws from the downed [Mad Stonetooth Boars] and [Starved Shredder Hatchlings], Lisa went over the conversation again and tried to make the connection between the sneaky figures that stole important information and harmed the country under the mantle of the night with the sunny youth she liked to steal glances at when she thought no one was looking.

The distance between those two images was just too far for her to match them together.

“It‘s not that every single traveller ends up being a real spy, but just imagine how many journals they write and how much information is contained within.

Even if the guards want to intercept the messengers tasked with bringing the scrolls back, can they check every single one by themselves? And the real secret information is hidden among the normal text, so perhaps they might miss it entirely despite reading the correct spot.

They are hiding their informants between normal folk, making it impossible to spot them just like finding one specific tree in a forest.“

Lisa had managed to roughly treat her wound by now, wrapping it with a layer of bandages.

Whereas the healers brought by the academy were entirely capable of healing her on the spot, the other groups also suffered various degrees of injury during the training and it was easier to do a light treatment now and visit the temple back at the capital, where a priest had more time and care to properly take care of the wound.

Confronted with an influx of new information, the blonde girl did not reply straight away and watched her two teammates as they went through the majority of the monster corpses and separated them into useful and useless materials and byproducts.

Several emotions tangled in her chest, albeit the most prominent one was relief that Unico was not confirmed to be a spy and would suddenly get taken away by the city guard.

With time to process and pick apart the conversation, more questions reared their head, which Nisha was glad to answer.

Curiosity was a trait that she understood well herself and found it comfortable to encourage the same thirst of knowledge in others.

“How do they manage to curate so many journals and pick what to keep and record for the big journals every month?

And since this has been going on for a long time, isn‘t their collection of history super massive?

That has to be so many books on past events and major affairs.“

The youth with the purple hue on his skin briefly looked up from the boar corpse he currently worked on and wondered if he should personally explain this question, yet he discarded the thought when he saw Nisha‘s confident expression.

Her perspective on the Left and Right kingdoms had been correct so far, where the broad strokes painted an overview without going into the details overmuch.

Some of the country's history and cultural differences were impossible to convey without being a born citizen, though the facts mostly overlapped with her portrayal.

Unexpectedly, the elf took her time to respond this time, lowering her eyes and working on an insect corpse.

Neither the blonde girl nor the youth urged her to continue, giving her some time.

Perhaps she needed a moment to gather her thoughts?

Either way, they nearly had conversed more than they had been hunting during this warrior excursion, so neither of the two felt impatient or the urge to hurry her up.

Nisha had her own reasons to pause, as she spotted a teacher standing on a branch of a tree near the edge of their current resting space, paying attention to the trio.

It was not uncommon for the instructors to roam the hunting area and check up on the fledgling fighters, the [Royal Academy] wanted them to gain hands on experience and not to throw them to the wolves without any assistance, more than one group had been rescued before when they ended up in a situation beyond their means accidentally.

Be that as it may, it was not quite honourable to discuss the peculiarities of the Twin Kingdoms openly, as spying remained spying, no matter how it was framed.

The only reason the other countries tolerated the citizens of the twin kingdoms at all was that they had found no success at shutting down the journals or preventing them from bringing back intel in the past, so they grudgingly overlooked minor infractions.

But knowing was one thing, and not letting it influence one’s actions was another matter entirely, so it would only worsen the situation for Unico if the teachers saw him in a different perspective, so the dragon waited until the teacher moved on before she continued.

“Yeah, their reputation as the biggest archive of the continent is not just for show.

The Left and Right Kingdoms have the greatest number of scholars among their populace, to the point where there are entire families with a long history of being royal scholars employed at the archives.

It’s almost as prestigious as being an adventurer here, which is a big cultural difference.

There are exams and special schools, just like our academy, to train the best intellectuals, with a generous fund from their royal families to ensure that their unique libraries and offices remain the best.”

After making sure that the instructor was gone, and it was safe to continue, the elf picked up speed with dismantling the spoils of war, they were almost finished with the most rudimentary selection of valuable ingredients, whereas most meat and damaged parts without much value would get left behind for the scavengers once they departed.

Unico can probably tell you more, there are many episodes in the history of his country that are closely related to study and books.

Of course not all of them are positive, one remarkable incident that I read about was telling the story of a nameless prince that was about to ascend the throne not long after the countries united to ward off the incursion from the south.

Afraid that the many scholars would portray him in a false light and leave a bad impression of him for future generations, his first edict as the king was to execute all traitors that conspired against the crown.

Coincidentally, he targeted the majority of scholars and for a time it looked like he was going to eradicate the entire branch of the job, almost offsetting all the progress his predecessors made when building up the countries after the last war.

Fortunately, his efforts did not come to fruition and a part of the librarians and academics survived by hiding in secret places.

It is said, as revenge for threatening and persecuting them, they refused to write down his name, ultimately erasing him from history except for an account of his atrocious deeds.

In a way, the fears of that young king came true.

Because similar episodes could happen in the future, there are both open and secret archives with communities of intellectuals of their own.”

The elf admired their farsight, as a few more tyrants tried to depose them, giving the academics a love and hate relationship with the crowns of the Twin Kingdoms, when the presence of another teacher made her crease her brows.

Although it was not unusual for them to patrol, the frequency was clearly different from the trips before.