Instead of taking us directly to the church of space, I noticed the guards were taking us through what would be considered the scenic route, if anything. During the walk, Amity lost interest in the dragonborn and started to whistle as she looked around. I was honestly curious about it, but didn’t want to ask the guy, so I used my other option for that.

  [Dragonborns are hybrids that carry draconic genetic material. Due to the fact that dragon DNA is a super-dominant trait, draconic features can manifest even dozens of generations after the original hybrid]

  Oh, that’s interesting. I looked at Garos more closely, noticing how his red scales looked just a bit out of place, the same with his snout. Honestly, it was a bit weird looking at him, like looking at a warped reflection of me. If I were to guess, this would be the draconic version of the uncanny valley.

  “Erghm,” He looked a bit embarrassed. Oh, I think I stared at him a bit too much. Honestly, I would feel the same if I were in his place. “C-can I help you?”

  I blinked. “I was just wondering…”

  “Oh, no,” He shook his head. “I’m not a pure dragonborn. That was my great-great-great-grandmother.”

  I guessed that “pure dragonborn” meant the child of a dragon and another. I nodded in somewhat understanding. I then looked at the one guiding us through the city, approaching my head to his.

  “Your commander is taking a while,” I said. I knew that he was stalling for time to have us surrounded, or probably just have more soldiers with us, but it was just taking too long.

  He paled when I talked with him and started sputtering nonsense as I looked at him. That’s when I noticed the situation we were in. My head was almost as big as the guy in front of me, meaning that if I wanted, I could eat him in two bites, not that I would, of course, but he didn’t know that.

  It made me a bit embarrassed, to be honest. While people usually were a bit intimidated by me when I was smaller, it was because of what I was, but now it was a combination of that and the fact that I was much bigger than they.

  “Oh, shiny!” I heard Amity saying, and when I looked at her, she was already gone. I looked around and found her in what looked like a jewelry store, but there was no one inside, even though the jewels were on display… Oh, I see it.

  I sat down, my tail wrapping around my legs as I did so.

  “Could you ask them to just come here? There’s no need to evacuate the streets and act like you’re guiding us.” I had noticed the distinct lack of screams, and when I noticed the shop Amity was in was empty, I took notice that the street itself was empty, everywhere around us was deserted. There was only one explanation for that, and it was that the city guards did an amazing job of evacuating the people here, and the two guiding us, although they were clearly distressed, did an amazing job to bring us here.

  Both of them tried to play it off, but I just looked at the “people” keeping some distance from us. If I hadn’t noticed the lack of people around us, I wouldn’t have noticed their presence. It was very faint in my [Magicule Dectecion] skill, but I felt it anyway.

  Noticing they were detected, they approached. I felt space vibrate, and suddenly they were wearing very expensive-looking armor with red capes that flapped in the wind as they walked.

  Approaching me was an elf with light blue long hair. I didn’t even need to use [Appraisal] on him to know he was out of my league. If I were to guess, I would put him above even Jack in terms of the pressure he was giving off.

  He stopped a few meters before me, looking me up and down, and then he looked over at Amity. I saw his eyes widening a bit before slightly shaking his head and turning back to me.

  “I’m the captain of the royal guard, Jandar Inaro,” the elf said. “May I inquire what the Witch of Pride and a dragon would want in the royal capital of Dracona?”

  “We’re here just to go to the church of space,” I answered. Jandar raised his eyebrow at it.

  “Pardon me,” he said. “But I find it a bit difficult to believe a dragon would go to an EXCEED church, even less so the infamous Witch of Pride. The stories don’t exactly paint her as the religious type.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I tilted my head, looking at Amity. She was busy placing various jewels on herself as she looked at herself through a mirror in the store she was in. “It’s less us visiting the church to pray and more like going there to search for some people, maybe you can help?”

  He didn’t say anything, waiting for me to continue.

  “There is a group inside the church that was brought there without their consent, and I am here to retrieve them,” I explained. I could say the truth to them, but I didn’t know them enough to trust them with this information.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Sure, I barely know Amity or Farahio either, and told them anyway, but the situation is a bit different this time. For one that I didn’t need to tell them to accomplish my goal, different from Amity or Farahio. I had no other option but to trust them.

  “I am sorry, but I find it a bit difficult to believe that the Church of Space would be involved in kidnapping,” Jandar said. Yeah, who would believe that a church would be kidnapping people around, let alone people in another universe. But it still happened.

  I shrugged.

  “Yet, it still happened,” I said. When I noticed he was taking too long to think, I added. “That’s all we came here to do. If you don’t believe in me, you could ask her.” I pointed towards Amity.

  Jandar grimaced. “You probably don’t know, dragon, but I lived for a long time. I served four kings in my lifetime, and I am one of the lucky ones to have been present when the Witch of Pride caused an entire city to be submerged into the ocean and live.” He said, then looked at me. “Even if I don’t believe you, I have no other choice but to take your answers at face value.”

  Of course she did. I looked at Amity, who was now filled head to toe in jewelry and posing in front of the mirror. I already knew she was a walking nuclear bomb, so nothing new there. It’s just that I still find it a bit hard to believe a single person can have so much power.

  “Incidentaly, dragon,” He said. “You still haven’t introduced yourself.”

  “Oh, right.” I had forgotten to do so. We kind of just started talking about the reason I came here, and so, it slipped my mind. “I am Denaru Theris.”

  “Very well, Denaru Theris,” he said with a bow. I heard him sighing before getting up again and adressing me. “As I have no choice but to believe your words, I shall guide you to the Space Cathedral Plaza.”

  With just a wave of his hand, he dismissed the two guards that led us here. They all but ran from the place. The dragonborn even tripped and almost fell over, but his friend held him just in time. He will never live that down.

  I walked to the store to call Amity. She just tossed the jewelry she had on her in the counter, except for a gold collar with a massive blue gem. She placed a purple coin behind the counter for it and came to us. I noticed the wide-eyed stares of every single guard, including the elf. Before they could do anything, the captain cleared his throat, catching the attention of everyone, before we resumed walking.

  Amity tried to make small talk with the people around us, but they were too nervous to engage her, even the elf captain, so she started talking with me about random things as I was the only person with enough courage to talk with her. The conversation was about mundane stuff, food, places to go, and then she asked me about the loops and I told her basically everything, under that silencing spell of hers, of course.

  I should have imagined, but the moment I told her about the Gods appearences she started throwing a tantrum, pouting, and even shouting at the skies things I would consider blasphemous should I be the religious type, but nothing came of it, so I didn’t care.

  Eventually, we came into view of a massive building in a massive district filled with trees, grass fields, and lots and lots of statues of what looked like a cat person. There was a simply massive building in the middle of it, the size of which easily dwarfed the castle in the middle of the city that I could see even from here. They had a lot of fur and were looking upwards. With the usage of magic, sculpting marble statues that looked like the real deal would be a piece of cake; it was the only reason why I didn’t keep staring at them as we passed one of them.

  “That’s Theo,” Amity told me. “Or a statue of him, not like they care about showing themselves to me.”

  She was still pouting about that fact, figures.

  While one might ask how such a massive place and a bigger building couldn’t be seen from outside, I immediately felt the usage of spatial distortions to make the space inside a bubble way bigger than it should be. I was a bit sceptical about entering it, considering the last time I entered an expanded space I threw up, but I almost didn’t feel the bubble when I passed through it. It was like walking through a water curtain.

  There weren’t any people around, just more soldiers keeping guard from us. I had no idea how they managed to communicate that fast, but I was a bit impressed with how efficient they were at doing their job.

  We walked through the main path towards the, yeah, it was a cathedral no matter how I looked at it. The building was simply gigantic, with floating pieces of marble that lazily spun on their own axis. The building itself was filled with stained glass in so many places that I doubted it followed any safety guidelines from Earth, not that they would care about it when they had literally magic to reinforce the building itself, not to collapse on itself.

  We walked the starway to the front of the building and the first thing I noticed was the ceiling was even higher than it should be, I could feel how space was basically stretched, twisted and warped but still felt normal. Giant obsidian black pilars rose from the ground up to the ceiling, they were painted with deep blue vein-like lines and glowing white dots. The ceiling itself was obscured by a ethereal scene of the night sky shining and, very slowly, moving.

  In the middle of the room, surrounded by rows upon rows of wooden benches, was a circular altar made out of black marble with a massive statue of Theo made out of a blue crystal that shone in both my normal vision and under [Magicule Detection]. The altar itself was too far away for me, just outside of the massive door to the cathedral, to see properly.

  I then noticed a small group of people walking towards us. They had dark blue vests with gold lines etched on them depicting various runes at random with no connection whatsoever. From my understanding about runes, that was purely aesthetic rather than something practical like Jack’s overalls.

  The one leading the group of people was another elf, there surely are a lot of elves in high places in this world. She had a darker skin tone than the ones I’ve seen, long flowing blue hair and amber eyes. Even though she looked directly at me and Amity, if she was anxious she didn’t show.

  She stopped a few meters away from us and bowed.

  “Welcome, travellers, to the Church of Space. My name is Avorá, how can I help you?” She said with a smile on her face.