It had to happen one day.

Vainqueur had pushed his minion to breed, something which he had proven surprisingly terrible at. No matter the setbacks, his chief of staff had persevered, trying to do his duty and satisfy his master.

And he had overbred.

“Minion!” Vainqueur barked. “Minion!”

His chief of staff didn’t respond, laying on the drenched inn’s courtyard with his armor on. The warm, steely plates looked as if they had been hit by King Wotan’s lightning, and his manling inside was half-dead. Even his tail had gone limp!

They had found him like this, among the wreckage of his bedroom. And he hadn’t woken up hours later.

“I told him not to do it,” Goblina lamented with a sorrowful look, while Chocolatine held the unconscious chief of staff in her arms. Vainqueur’s minions had gathered in a circle around Manling Victor, alongside a few faces the dragon didn’t recognize; all the magic-users present kept casting spells on the Vizier, to no avail. “I warned him! I warned him!”

“It seems the shock was too much.” Corpseling Jules shook his head. “It is a miracle he didn't die on the spot. If he hadn’t reached for his potions before falling unconscious, he would have left us...”

“You, healers.” Vainqueur turned to Untasty Allison. “Wake him up!”

“We’re trying, Your Majesty!” the dryad said, Knight Kia casting [Full Heal] on the dragon’s friend. “His body functions are normal, but his soul…”

“His soul almost reached enlightenment,” some redheaded manling explained. “He has experienced a bliss so great, that his soul is afraid to return to its mortal coil and find everything else disappointing. Until Victor realizes that this universe still has pleasures to offer, other than what he saw, he will not wake up.”

“What greater pleasure could there be than serving me?” Vainqueur replied, looking down on his chief of staff. “Minion! Minion! I have a challenge to win! MINION!”

His friend’s body didn’t even twitch.

“I should not have pushed him,” Vainqueur realized, his heart full of regret. “If his boundless love for me is not enough to wake him up…”

“He is still alive,” the redhead said and shrugged. “So he is still bound to this world. Just give him time to recover from his divine vision.”

“How long will it take?” Allison asked the redhead.

“It depends. It took me a full week of mind fantasies to work myself back to the waking world.”

“A week?” Vainqueur frowned. “My fairy hunt challenge is due to begin in a few days! I cannot wait for a week!”

“Fairy hunt?” Kia asked, looking up at the dragon with raw desire.

“Will there be princesses?” Gorynych asked, salivating.

“You are not invited!” Vainqueur lambasted both of them, before turning to his other minions. “No matter. I will carry him in my hand.”

“No, Your Majesty, don’t!” Allison pleaded. “He is completely helpless in this state, and he needs medical attention.”

“There is no place safer than my side,” Vainqueur insisted. “You can heal him on the way to the fairy farm.”

“Your Majesty intends to attack it while carrying Victor in their palm?” Knight Kia asked. “It’s too dangerous to take him there. A random spell and he would die for good.”

The dragon grumbled but considered her words. His minion may indeed be too vulnerable, and the dragon lacked the funds to raise him again for now… “Dragonly goblin.”

“Yes,” Goblina asked, her face the very picture of worry.

“As befitting of our alliance, I shall leave my chief of staff in your lands, until my minions nurse him back to health and I can summon him back to my side,” Vainqueur said. “If anything happens to him while I am away, I will burn this island to cinders. Am I clear?”

The goblin reeled a bit at the threat but nodded. “I have the best minions in the world,” she said. “A week? We will have him woken up in three days flat! But what about the Tarasque?”

"Obviously, you feed him while I am absent. Minions, I expect you to prove yourself better than her servants,” Vainqueur told his own lackeys. A little minion competition could only increase their productivity. “I must leave and put Icefang in his place by burning the fairy farm first.”

“I’m coming with you then,” Knight Kia said.

Vainqueur looked at the uppity manling. She must have had a square root nine intelligence score not to understand that he didn’t want her around. “No.”

“Can you take me, please?” the [Paladin] all but begged him, joining her hands. “Please, I need action!”

“How much then?”

Knight Kia froze. “How much what?”

“How much will you pay me for the privilege?”

Since he knew Grandrake couldn’t hear her, the dragon took the knight’s silence for an admission of poverty. When she mustered the courage to speak up, it was to haggle. “You want me to pay you for working?”

“I do not want, I require to be paid to overlook your uselessness,” Vainqueur explained in terms that she would understand. “Being on an exclusive adventure with the best dragon in the world is an honor, of which you are unworthy. Without proper tribute, I cannot look the other way.”

Now that he thought of it, he could make an income out of it.

“That’s—” Knight Kia stopped herself from trying to overstep her minion station, and instead let out a long sigh. “You will need someone to talk with the locals. I can fill in for Vic.”

“As you filled in as my niece’s minion?” Vainqueur replied with contempt. “And I assure you that the locals will beg for the privilege of granting me guidance.”

“They won’t if they can’t understand you,” the [Paladin] replied. “Victor wrote down the farm’s location near Nagastan, and they don’t speak common or dragon there.”

Vainqueur opened his mouth to mock her further. “Ah, I will have a minion cast a translation spell on me before I leave! Your logic is flawed!”

“The spell will wear off by the time you reach the country. While I can cast it at will.”

Vainqueur was about to deny her anyway until he realized that without [Master’s Shield], he would have no way to heal himself in a pinch. The [Paladin] may be a subpar minion, she could help him recover from wounds…

“Fine,” Vainqueur said. “But you shall ride the zmey. My hand is too good for you.”

He could already imagine the moment when his chief of staff would sweep that inbred dragon right from under the knight’s nose...

Leaving the island of Teikoku behind, Vainqueur flew in a straight line towards his destination, flying across the sea and then reaching the massive mainland. Knight Kia told him that they would cross the Jade Empire first, the name stimulating a memory. Something about a dragon helping the local manlings “cultivate.”

Vainqueur would have loved to boast back and forth with this mighty kindred, but he was short on time. Icefang and his party had already left, and he needed to meet them at the farm not to default on the challenge.

The wyrm flew over the mainland for a full day, through the night and onto the next sundown while Gorynych struggled to follow. They crossed verdant forests, rice fields, and mountains; yet the manling cities they passed through seemed mostly deserted.

Their journey led them to dry lands between the ocean and an enormous chain of mountains which made the Albain Mountains look like hills. Vainqueur smelled the scent of scaled beastkin, from serpentine nagas to lizardmen, on the ground.

The dragon decided to stop at a large city on the way, a hive of round terracotta houses near a local forest. Unlike the manling stone and wooden hives to which Vainqueur had grown accustomed to, this place had been built mostly with red clay and bricks. Architects had focused on columns, pillars, and rounded roofs, while the dragon noticed the presence of tigers and elephants in vast pens nearby.

Like all the other cities they had flown over, this one seemed deserted; yet Vainqueur’s sharp senses noticed people inside the houses, too shy to face him.

“We arrived sooner than I thought!” Vainqueur rejoiced, as he landed in the empty plaza. “We may have time for a quick quest.”

“A quick quest?” Kia asked, leaping off Gorynych’s back as the zmey collapsed in exhaustion.

“Gorynych is thirsty…” the zmey said. “Gorynych needs mother’s milk…”

“I must train in my classes, and fill my hoard with new gold,” Vainqueur reminded Knight Kia of the purpose of life. “Now, announce my presence.”

“Like what, a herald?” Knight Kia asked, showing her lack of minionship.

“My chief of staff always announces my great and magnanimous presence to primitive natives,” Vainqueur told the uncultured biped, already regretting taking her on this trip. "Tell them that I bring them dragon civilization."

“Ah, alright,” the knight said, quickly casting the translation spell on both herself and the best dragon of all. “Oyé Oyé, brave citizens, we come to help!”

“For money!” Vainqueur reminded her, the manling making a face. “And tell them to bring me their cattle!”

The door of the rounded houses opened, a manling-sized black cobra slithering out. Vainqueur recognized it as a serpent beastkin, or naga; one wearing a red scarf around his mouth. “What is all this racket?” the naga hissed, before noticing Vainqueur and the paralyzed Gorynych. “Oh, another dragon adventurer party. Great. Look, if you come for cows, I will have to politely ask you to leave and never return.”

[Alpha Magnetism (Scales)] negated by [REDACTED].