Tilly began to panic.
In truth, she had no idea it was a best-of-three match.
She hadn’t heard a word of Mama Leia’s rules, her mind consumed instead with schemes for a surprise victory.
Now, she regretted it deeply.
If she could start over, she’d simply flop to the ground and wail. Mama Xuefei would surely forgive her!
“What magic did Leia teach you?”
Xuefei circled Tilly, her smile as gentle as ever.
“Wu, I forgot.”
“That figures. She couldn’t possibly have taught you any magic. Leia must have a shred of conscience left. Come on, Tilly—hit me with your favorite spell. We Evil Dragons are born with boundless magical power.”
“Mm, I’ll do my best, Mama!”
As always, Xuefei placed one hand behind her back and raised the other in invitation, the picture of a reliable and elegant female knight.
Tilly clenched her little fists and pressed her legs together in a pigeon-toed stance, as if gathering her strength.
Then she tilted her head back, opened her mouth wide, and spread her arms, just like a member of a choir. The gem pinned in her hair sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight.
Xuefei couldn’t shake a nagging sense of familiarity.
Tilly’s spellcasting was much like unleashing her dragon breath, though her limited physical strength made the whole display adorably endearing.
Sure enough, Tilly anchored her dragon tail to the ground, her waist and head arching into a graceful curve. Even in her youth, her figure held the promise of a budding beauty.
Xuefei braced herself.
She was curious just how potent Tilly’s dragon breath truly was.
But then her eyes flew wide as she glanced out the window. The sun had vanished without a trace, plunging the entire sky into pitch blackness—as if time itself had leaped from afternoon straight to the dead of night. Xuefei recalled that Orman could alter the heavens too, but Tilly’s feat was clearly something more than a mere change in the weather.
Xuefei wanted to shield Tilly, but she quickly realized the little dragon wasn’t suffering or straining. On the contrary, she seemed thrilled. Her scales were unfurling across her body, and her arms showed faint signs of draconian transformation.
Before Tilly’s mouth hovered an inky black orb, a swirling vortex like a miniature black hole that devoured the surrounding air. Space itself grew unstable in its wake.
In an instant, Tilly’s eyes snapped open.
They were a vivid blood-red.
Xuefei remembered how Leia’s eyes would shift from orange to crimson when channeling certain spells.
“Wu wu ao~”
As Tilly rose joyfully to her feet, Xuefei realized that everything around them had changed.
They stood now in a pitch-black city.
Its architecture was unfamiliar, its location unknown. Countless dense buildings hemmed them in, their oppressive weight suffocating. The windows stood out in stark contrast, glowing faintly white, transforming the space into something like a tangible black fairy tale.
Everything was unknown.
But one thing was clear to Xuefei…
This was a barrier.
The place was utterly deserted. Leia, Tilly—no, even Tilly herself had vanished. Tilting her head back, Xuefei beheld a crimson moon hanging overhead.
“This is the sight I glimpsed back then—the one I felt from inside Mama’s belly. Ah~, it was like I burst right out of her stomach, ya~.”
Was this some kind of joke?
Tilly could wield a barrier?
It seemed Xuefei really was raising one extraordinary little Dragon Girl. She was certain now: Tilly would grow powerful enough one day to shake every plane of existence.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down Xuefei’s brow.
She had once fretted that Dolores’s birth might leave Tilly feeling inferior due to their imbalance in strength. But that worry was clearly needless.
“Tilly, have you reached Super Tier already?”
For now, there was no way to know.
Xuefei resolved to get serious.
A mental assault? A physical strike? Or something aimed straight at the soul?
“Mama, I used to imagine if the world outside was as terrifying as the pains you endured. That’s why I was always so scared…”
Her voice carried unmistakable sadness and curiosity, laced with childish excitement.
The words seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere. Any ordinary person would have been too terrified to speak, but Xuefei felt no fear. Perhaps her own power had advanced, but deep down, she preferred to believe it was because this was her daughter—and on some instinctual level, she knew her child posed no threat.
Even so, it wasn’t a certainty…
“So, Tilly, what do you think now?”
“The world isn’t all that friendly. But there’s Mama Xuefei. With Mama Xuefei here, everything turns out just fine.”
Xuefei wasn’t sure what came over her, but a sudden swell of accomplishment bloomed in her chest.
Was Tilly praising her?
Hehe, it had to be.
Tilly’s voice droned on like some spectral narrator from a TV drama, but now they were trapped inside her illusory space—the kind that devoured anyone unfortunate enough to get pulled in.
“Will I ever have to leave Mama?”
“No one stays by another’s side forever, Tilly. No one lives eternally. There is no such thing as [Eternity] in this world.”
“So Mama’s going to abandon me, huh?”
“How could you think that…?”
“See? Mama really is going to abandon me.”
“Tilly, Mama would never abandon you. I promise. Why are you suddenly so worried? Did you have a nightmare?”
Xuefei clenched her fists tight.
As expected, Tilly had devoured souls before. Otherwise, she never would have sensed the malice lurking in the world.
Several squid tentacles as thick as pythons burst through the floorboards, wreaking havoc on the city. In that instant, Xuefei’s magic flared to life. She shifted her position in a flash, dodging the chunks of rubble hurtling through the sky. She refused to get pinned down by those monstrosities or let the tentacles snag her.
“…I hate being abandoned, Mama. Don’t leave me.”
The words rippled outward like sound waves across an endless sea. Beneath the hazy glow of the crimson full moon, Xuefei glimpsed a massive giant dragon coiling through the empty air. Its presence didn’t yet rival Leia’s, but by any normal measure of awe, it was utterly terrifying.
“Surge…”
Xuefei raised her hand, magic surging through her body. But a moment later, she let her arm drop.
No. She couldn’t unleash a large-scale spell here. What if she hurt Tilly?
A sudden thread of warmth made Xuefei freeze in her tracks.
It felt like the ultimate comfort after bone-deep exhaustion—a warm bed beckoning her to surrender. All she had to do was stop fighting, and she could drift off into peaceful slumber. A voice whispered insistently in her mind: she was so tired.
This seasoned “former hero” quickly grasped the true nature of the domain.
“Tilly, don’t try to hypnotize Mama, or I’ll have to spank your bottom!”
The good news was that Xuefei knew exactly what Tilly was attempting: manipulating her soul. It was laughable—like bringing a hatchet to carve a master’s sculpture. Hypnotizing her? Please.
The bad news was that Tilly apparently couldn’t hear a word she said.
Was this some kind of “inner world” deep within the soul? If so, it explained Tilly’s behavior perfectly. Xuefei inwardly griped for the umpteenth time about all the bizarre worlds she’d stumbled into over the years—and now here she was, trapped inside her own daughter’s barrier!
“Tilly?”
An invisible force gently cradled Xuefei’s body and lifted her into the air. She didn’t resist. The moment she decided not to harm Tilly, the battle’s outcome had been sealed.
“Mama… Mama… I want… to eat Mama!”
