The Evil Emperor's Fragile Heart

Two days later, the whole group decided to return to the capital city. Grandma, Grandpa and Physician Kale shared a carriage, while King Jaren, Jules, Mana, Raven and Fox decided to ride a horse.

Fox's parents bade him a slightly teary farewell, but he promised to send regular letters to his mother through his letter machine, so they were quite happy. Besides, their son was going to the prestigious IMARI, which made them very proud. Everyone in their village would be quite envious! Vanilla was sad to see Mana leave, but promised to keep the vanilla farm running diligently. Mana had full faith in Vanilla's skills. The chef and his wife, too, were sad at their departure, and they also promised to keep the cacao farm running nicely. Mana would be receiving regular updates on both farms from the managers King Jaren had appointed for her. Once the production hit a certain milestone, Mana planned to start a bakery in the capital city. She was also considering a perfumery, since she found that people of this world simply used sachets of dried flowers and spices as perfumes – and she missed the convenience of liquid perfumes that she could simply dab on her skin. Mana had learnt how to make perfumes on a whim when she had spent a semester in Paris as an exchange student during her law school days, so it wouldn't be too difficult for her to produce some. She expected to have some free time to dabble in these things once they were back in the imperial palace.

Azar slept through most of the journey. Grandma had made something similar to a baby carrier – one for Mana and one for Raven, which both Mana and Raven wore on their front, and Azar happily curled up in it and dozed off, sometimes with Mana and sometimes with Raven. Occasionally, he would wake up and fly around a bit, then sit on King Jaren's shoulder. It was clear to everyone that after his Mommy and Daddy, Azar's favourite was his Grandpapa. After all, King Jaren was the one who doted the most on the little dragon.

They travelled slowly, despite the repeated letters from the capital city, and the originally three days' journey ended up lasting over six days. Physician Kale, who had absolutely no desire to obey Queen Sora's summons to treat her aide, kept running around, making detours on the pretext that Grandma and Grandpa had been living in hiding for so long and they should take a look at how things have changed in the last decade and a half. In the end, the trip back to the capital ended up becoming a family tour and all of them enjoyed it very much. Jules got to show off his fantastic barbeque skills again, too – and Azar was especially affectionate with his Uncle Jules for a while after he'd eaten enough roast meat to add up to double of his own size!

Jules had been astonished at the appetite of his dragon nephew. "Are you sure you feel ok?" he asked the baby dragon, whose tummy had become as round as a ball after eating so much.

"Uncle Jules! Belly rub!" Azar commanded imperiously.

With a chuckle, Jules rubbed the little dragon's belly with gentle fingers. Azar purred happily and cuddled up with Jules.

"He's going to grow up into a spoilt brat," Mana complained, but no one paid her any heed.

"He's the only known dragon in the world right now," Jules pointed out, continuing the belly rub. "Why shouldn't he be pampered?"

"And he's unbelievably cute," Fox murmured.

"He's growing fairly fast, though, isn't he?" Grandma asked. "He seems a little bigger after every meal. I'm glad I made the carrying pouches adjustable."

"Does anyone have any idea how big he'll get?" Grandpa asked. "Raven, were you able to find anything useful in the library?"

"Not too much," Raven replied, disappointment ringing in his voice. "I did find an old drawing, but I'm not sure if it was to scale. If it was…then Azar will probably grow big enough that an adult human would be smaller than a single scale on his body."

"Azar grow big," the little dragon murmured sleepily.

Everyone was stunned and stared at the small creature napping happily in Jules's arms right now. It was difficult to imagine that he would grow so big!

"Should I start buying wastelands from our neighbouring kingdoms?" King Jaren wondered. "It requires a huge amount of magic and a lot of time, but we can turn wastelands into semi-fertile forest lands…if Azar will grow that big, he'll need a lot of space to live freely, right?"

"You can do that?!" Mana asked, astonished.

King Jaren nodded. "I end up buying land almost every alternate year because of the high immigration rate into our Emerald Kingdom," he said. "In fact, the Pearl Kingdom sent in a memo recently, but the price they asked for was ridiculously high, so I didn't reply to them…but if it's for my grandson, I'll buy all of it."

"Perhaps we should wait for Azar to grow a little more," Raven said mildly.

Mana nodded.

Thankfully, she and Raven had almost infinite storage space – it was one of the secret functions of Mana and Raven's engagement rings that had been especially taught to them by King Jaren – the two of them had a shared storage space that could only be accessed through their rings, and no one other than the two of them could get in. It was a hidden technique exclusive to the royal family of the Earth Kingdom, and there were a lot of parameters which needed to be satisfied before a couple could open up a shared storage space. Fortunately, Mana and Raven were extremely compatible, and their magic resonated with each other, so they were able to open up their space successfully. Initially, the space had taken on the appearance of a small piece of land with a little spring and a grove of trees. After Raven inherited the legacy of the ancient master, the space had expanded to the size of a valley, complete with a small hill. The little spring had transformed into a majestic waterfall, and the grove had expanded into a full-fledged forest. And most recently, once Mana's Shadow Poison was gone, the space had become big enough to house an entire city…perhaps even more.

The best thing about the shared space was that Mana and Raven could freely plant any seeds they felt like and they would be fully grown in a few hours. They weren't able to take in any animals or humans other than themselves into their space, though – until Azar appeared and happily flew into the shared space the first time he went herb-hunting with Raven!

It was thanks to this shared space that Mana had a mobile cacao farm and vanilla farm, and Raven had a magnificent herb garden that even the most accomplished physician would envy. Azar really liked the shared space, but he was very obedient and never entered it unless he was alone with Mana and Raven, since they had strictly instructed him that it was a big secret. Other than King Jaren, no one even knew that Mana and Raven had this secret space at all.

King Jaren had a shared space with Queen Dora, and he had told Mana and Raven that it was about the size of his private garden in the imperial palace. After Queen Dora's death, however, the plants in the space were somewhat withered, and Queen Dora's favourite peach tree had almost withered. Queen Sora had no idea that such a thing existed, and King Jaren had never been inclined to tell her, either. He had long decided that he would disclose the secret of a couple's shared space to his children only if he whole-heartedly approved of their chosen partners. Prince Mars wasn't on the approved list yet, so Princess Astra didn't know, and Jules was still single, so he hadn't been told, either.

When Mana peeked into the shared space in the middle of their journey, she was speechless with shock.

"How on earth did you manage to gather so many?!" she asked Raven.

Raven scratched his head sheepishly. "Actually…it's all thanks to Azar," he told her.

The little dragon kept dragging Raven off into the woods every time the group stopped for a break. The two of them would disappear for a while and then return covered in leaves and dirt, but with sparkling eyes and broad grins on their faces. While Azar didn't know about his Daddy's alter ego of Naver, the poison expert – the little dragon instinctively knew that Raven was interested in rare herbs of all sorts, and found a lot of them for Raven.

Without the shared space, Raven wouldn't have been able to pick up even a fraction of the herbs that he did, let alone plant them in his secret herb garden!