Nuoletta? Another high-ranking agent of the Mithril Vault?

Melita Ponia went on a "debt collection mission"? So this temporary "replacement" Nuoletta is also a dragon?

Hearing the voice coming from the ring, a few thoughts immediately popped into Gawain’s mind, and then he suddenly frowned, realizing something—

This time, I can’t joke about ’My Little Pony’!

After suppressing the bizarre thoughts in his mind for a moment, Gawain cleared his throat twice, and while gathering his thoughts, he said to "Miss Nuoletta" on the other end of the ring, "I see, I need to consult on some matters—possibly involving dragonkind, and I hope to discuss it in person."

"Dragon... I understand," Nuoletta’s voice paused for a second, "Please wait for a while, I’ll come to see you in about an hour."

Gawain blinked—another one-hour arrival. The high-ranking agents of the Mithril Vault, if nothing else, their prompt service attitudes are truly commendable. It’s unknown where this group of dragons nests when carrying out agent tasks, but thinking about it carefully, there are indeed a lot of suspicious points...

...

Dark red lava meandered over the desolate, blistering ground, with astonishingly hot cyclones carrying fierce and unyielding flames. Tornadoes of fire swept across a crimson sky like enormous fiery pythons, constantly sprinkling hot ash and fire rain—this is a world dominated by fire, where everything here, including soil and stone, maintains an uninterrupted state of turbulence and change rich with fire elements. A multitude of "creatures" based on fire elements existed in this place that seemed like hell to mortals, each having its extraordinary "life forms."

Fire sprites sprouting from stone crevices, magma jumpers leaping within lava, living heat waves swiftly riding the winds, various kinds of fire element creatures blindly burning, battling, consuming their long or short lives in this scorching world—however, an explosive noise capable of breaking space and a heart-palpitating roar suddenly resonated throughout the space, prompting the elemental creatures agitated in the land and lava lakes to scatter instantly—

"Damn you, cursed vermin!!"

Amidst the deafening roar, a shocking rift appeared abruptly in the scarlet sky. A colossal being composed entirely of burning boulders and viscous lava tumbled chaotically through the rift toward the ground, creating a large crater with a hundred-meter radius beside a lava lake. Then, the massive rocks wriggled and thundered, crawling out from the pit and slowly recomposing into an imposing flame giant.

The giant lifted its burning head, letting out another roar toward the sky, and in the sky where fire rain and ashes constantly drifted, several equally immense silhouettes were hovering—that was seven dragons.

The giant raised its arm, and a fiery bright spear began to form; however, even before it could hurl the spear, a dragon’s roar echoed from high above, instantly shattering the balance of elemental power. The flame spear split into pieces, and then lightning, frost, gales, and arcane power cascaded down like a storm, crushing the giant firmly against the cracked earth’s surface.

Low-level elemental creatures, capable of acting on instinct alone, had already fled cleanly at the beginning of this fearsome battle, leaving only mindless pure flames to rise from the fissures in the shattered land.

"You dare... in the domain of elements..."

A blue dragon descended from the sky, directly pinning the flame giant’s head underfoot. A deep and authoritative voice issued from the dragon’s mouth: "No one can owe a debt to the Mithril Vault—including elemental lords."

"You bunch of maniacs...fools...vermin!" The giant struggled mightily but became increasingly helpless under the effects of gravity magic. "The cycle is about to complete; it’s about to happen! Everything will be reshuffled and the whole world will be remade. What debt, what contract, it all means nothing! What you’re doing..."

"A young elemental lord indeed, you must have been born from the Fire Source less than a millennia ago—didn’t your elders ever teach you something?" A red dragon with thick scales and alloy armor plates embedded on its back sneered, interrupting the flame giant’s curses, he stepped closer, watching the giant’s eyes, "The world may end, civilizations may be rebuilt, but even if the planet crashes into the sun, you must settle your debt to the Mithril Vault before you die!"

The giant used all his might, letting out a broken, intermittent roar, under the foot of the blue dragon, "You... this group... madmen!!"

"It seems your elders didn’t educate you properly," the red dragon shook his head, "but never mind, we will complete this transaction. You’ve secretly hidden collateral initially promised to the Mithril Vault, and it’s already overdue by a century. Today, we bring the bill—upon your confirmation, the Mithril Vault will collect the overdue charges and collateral today."

The blue dragon, who had been pinning the giant’s head, also lowered its head, "Additionally, don’t forget to give a positive review for this transaction—"

A black dragon that had remained silent stepped forward. With a low incantation that was hard to discern, complex dragon language runes gathered before her, swirling to form countless spinning fanged arrows, which gradually approached the flame giant’s body. The latter screamed frantically, "Stop it! Stop it! You can’t do this! You—"

Sparks sprayed as the spinning fanged arrows effortlessly sliced through the stone shell like a hot knife through butter, the flame giant’s roars finally weakening, leaving only broken curses, "You vermin... you can’t take it... it’s what I painstakingly stole... it’s mine, my treasure..."

After a low, muffled boom, the elemental core within the giant’s body was breached by the fanged arrows, and its sturdy form finally began to disintegrate. A feeble and intermittent voice drifted into the air, "You... are just... a group of prisoners..."

The blue dragon looked down at the quickly extinguishing stone head, pressing down with all its might to crush it to pieces, "Thank you for the feedback, your review has been received."

The lifeless Elemental Body crumbled into hot stone fragments, clattering to the ground.

A tiny flame, no bigger than a candle, popped out from between the rocks, angrily screeching as it scampered away, its shrill voice echoing far, "I’ll be back! I’ll be back!"

"Next time you reincarnate, make sure to ask your elders about the world’s going rates!" the red dragon shouted far after the escaping little flame, "We won’t charge a consulting fee this time!!"

The blue dragon, on the other hand, shook its head, a faint golden projection screen appearing in front of it. After activating the work system, she seriously began recording the attendance report for this session, "In summary, after the service was completed, the client gave a sincere and enthusiastic review. Due to the tight schedule, the client didn’t have time to select the star rating. With unanimous agreement from the agents present, we assume it should be a default 5-star rating..."

"Melita, stop recording those, you can write them down slowly when we return," the Black Dragon who had previously summoned the spear edge stepped forward, speaking in a somewhat young and tender voice, "Let’s clean up these things first."

"Ah, sounds reasonable," the Blue Dragon — Melita Ponia — put away the pale golden panel in front of her and looked down at the pile of still-hot rocks on the ground, "Hidden for a hundred years... This fire elemental lord almost broke the debt-evading record in the Mithril Vault. Let’s see what treasure this guy hid that was worth the risk of violating the Dragon Oath contract..."

An invisible magic power swept over those hot stones, dispersing the last bit of malice lingering on these elemental residues. The already fragile stone shells silently turned to dust and drifted away with the wind, finally revealing the "treasure" wrapped tightly within these remains.

It was a piece of metal with a silver-white base and black inlaid decorations on the surface.

It resembled a shield but did not match the style of any shield currently in the world. It had a very symmetrical diamond structure, with a raised side that still emitted a faint, weak luster to this day. The energy tremors caused by dragon language magic hovered around the shield, and a deep, pleasant humming sound resonated from the ancient, sturdy metal, akin to some form of resonance.

Several dragons gathered around — these massive creatures craned their necks, crowding around to look at the metal piece, which seemed almost ’tiny’ to them, like a group of humans squatting around a small stone. After a few seconds of silence, expressions of baffled curiosity appeared on each dragon’s face, covered with scales (or biomimetic skin).

"...What is this thing?" A particularly robust Red Dragon muttered, cautiously picking up the piece of metal with two "fingers" from its foreclaw, "An elemental lord risking debt collection by the Mithril Vault just to collect this thing?"

The same Red Dragon, whose eyes had been replaced with electronic prosthetics, grumbled, "This is a human’s shield, isn’t that obvious enough?"

"I know it’s a human’s shield, but I don’t understand why an elemental lord would consider it so important..."

At this moment, Blue Dragon Melita suddenly interrupted the conversation among the other dragons, "My friends, I think I recognize the sign on this shield."

As she spoke, she raised her foreclaw, pointing to the mark on the surface of the diamond-shaped shield — the material of the shield itself seemed quite unusual, remaining intact and undamaged after centuries of elemental erosion. However, some metal parts on its surface were evidently later additions, and the mark was on those added metal plates, already showing severe signs of weathering and erosion.

But its general outline could still be discerned: crossed sword and plow.

"...I think I remember... Ah! The last time we were running around verifying if those deceased clients had any signs of resurrection, it seemed to be because of the owner of this mark..." The particularly robust Red Dragon exclaimed, showing an expression of unpleasant memory, "This seems to be something that belonged to that human, Gawain Cecil?"

Melita nodded seriously, "It should be so."

The dragons present fell silent. These powerful extraordinary beings looked at one another, suddenly feeling that this originally straightforward debt collection task had suddenly become complicated.

"...The Mithril Vault operates with integrity, we should contact the lost item’s owner..."

"But this is a lost item from a century ago, and if the owner doesn’t claim it past the deadline, it equates to automatic relinquishment of ownership."

"But the owner has been lying in a coffin for over a hundred years; the overdue responsibility should be borne by the specific responsible party, right?"

"But the responsible party is also dead!"

"...Try summoning the spirit?"

"I don’t think that’s feasible—and could you please stop mentioning summoning spirits?"

"Hold on, friends," Melita finally couldn’t help but speak, interrupting her colleagues’ increasingly heated discussion, "Before discussing the lost item claim process, shouldn’t we carefully study this shield again? Don’t you think... even if this shield belonged to a human legendary hero, it’s not worth the risk for an elemental lord?"

"Melita, do you mean..." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"The main material of this shield has issues—look closely."

...

An hour doesn’t require too long of a wait. Soon, Betty came running to tell Gawain that a stranger claiming to be a high-ranking agent had arrived outside the Cecil Palace.

Not long after, a beautiful and elegant lady walked into Gawain’s study, wearing a snow-white gown, with pale golden hair cascading over her shoulders, and a teardrop mole at the corner of her eye.

"Hello," the elegant and beautiful lady slightly bowed to Gawain, wearing a professional, gentle smile on her face, "I am temporarily acting as Melita’s high-ranking agent, you can call me ’Nuoletta’."

Gawain controlled his curious scrutiny and nodded to the lady before him after instructing Betty to close the door, "I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Nuoletta."