A Villainess Should Be Strong

After the abrupt ending that she went through, Estelle immediately set her ship on autopilot as she began to venture across the skies, crossing the borders stealthily while masking her existence and making her way towards Vaitral, the draconic country.

According to the estimations, it would take Estelle a full day to reach the other country using the highest setting on the turtle ship's speed. She also had to consider blockages and inconveniences like turbulence, but Estelle mad3e sure to equip the ship with features that could resist instability from all causes.

She had a lot of thoughts in mind, but the most dominating one was Heine. If she was right, then the man must've already predicted that she would unlock her powers right about now. Previously, he was the one who got the most excited about being contracted as one of the Constellations' members, so why was he dipping out now, leaving no traces to be seen?

Estelle originally planned to search for him, but she realized that if Heine wanted to hide, then she could probably do nothing but wait until he comes to her. The current her wasn't strong enough to overcome Heine's brains. Heine might not have the same innate potential as her, but he knew so much more than her. Undiscovered information, secretive tactics, all of it would topple Estelle down. Thus, she decided to rescind that thought and continue forth on her next travel.

Her goal was an earring. She did not know the details of it yet, but it was supposed to be discoverable even without instructions.

The Absolute mentioned a strong dragon. So famous that she would be able to locate the dragon even without any information on their name. This dragon would hold the second half of Estelle's jewellery set, which would elevate her powers even further upon activation. She wondered if she would have a special reaction to the object she sought.

On her map, she traced the places she was going to visit. She didn't know the identity of the dragon yet, but when she had asked Frey the previous night, she gave her four possible great dragons that could be what she wanted to look for.

First, the Eternal Fire Dragon Eneiryn.

Second, the Immovable Ice Dragon Evalir.

Third, the Platinum Sword Dragon Ehrendil.

Last but not least came the fourth, the Sacred White Dragon Ephylth, who was known to be the strongest of all four.

She had marked the three dragons' locations, but according to Frey, the last great dragon, Ephylth was nowhere to be found for a long time. No one knew what had happened to her, but the records say that her life force is still intact- indicating that she was still alive somewhere.

Those four dragons lived in separate territories. Although they accepted the quartet group and did not deny each other's powers, they weren't exactly fond of each other. The quartet title acted more like a guarantor. Like a very fragile peace treaty, it made the dragons be bound to this specific role and prohibited them from behaving too recklessly with their powers.

If not, then each dragon with their own special power would be able to destroy the country from its insides. These four dragons were also the territorial rulers of their own lands. The four sections that separated Vaitral into different terrains. Apparently, Ephylth herself was the one who suggested this idea and made it happen.

The four sections' characteristics were aligned with each dragon's powers. Eneiryn's lands tended to be hotter, and there were active volcanoes scattered everywhere. The same went for Evalir, who stayed in the cold and deserted lands.

Ehrendil and Ephylth's lands were not so much completely dependent on their ruler's ability. Instead, they had more open climates and could embrace the four seasons, whereas for the other two lands, they only had one climate to stick with.

Each section was also named after their respective patron dragon.

Vaitral was located the farthest from the other countries. It was positioned in the upper left corner of the continent's map, and it was known to have harsh climates that a normal human being wouldn't be able to survive in. Its terrains were rocky, and only a select few tribes of draconic men decided to use their humanoid form and live in settlements. The others preferred to keep their dragon form and live inside caves or in the depths of mountains, so naturally there would be a lot of untouched land.

To put it into perspective, Vaitral was possibly one of the  cleanest country since the dragons did not have much interest in pillaging mother nature. There was a stereotype of dragons constantly taking and hoarding treasures, but that trait was restricted to those who regularly went out of the country and some other outliers. Other than that, the dragons were mostly civil creatures, but they did have a certain tendency to dislike those weaker than them.

With these primary information at hand, Estelle was currently heading towards her first selection, the lands of Ehrendil. She thought that the dragon would be the easiest one to deal with if she wanted to get used to Vaitral's lands. After that, she would slowly make her way into other lands, and end in Ephylth. The reason for this being the White Dragon's disapppearance, which would render her mission impossible to do.

"Dragons seem like interesting creatures," Unlike the other races, dragons and beastmen had different species mingling inside their entire population, and each species had their own lifestyles and characteristics.

That was why, in terms of diversity, Vaitral and Eliredien's rate surpassed the other three countries by a mile. Of course, since Elysium was built specifically for diversity, it was the only one who could come in terms with those two.

Nevertheless, Estelle wanted to have somewhat proper knowledge before jumping into Vaitral straight away. Yesterday, after she went to bid Frey goodbye, she had looked up books about Vaitral.

She also wanted to copy the entire library's contents to study on a later time, but Frey told her that each important book was encrypted in a special procedure that would take even the highest royal some time to unlock because of its sensitive content. If Estelle wanted to transcript the book, it wouldn't be able to succeed using magic.

Considering the time span, Estelle decided to choose some interesting books that she wasn't able to access that very moment so that Frey could transcript them for Estelle in her free time. Since Estelle did have the status of a royal- a highly discussed hot topic in the elven country right now, Frey did not object to her request and ensured her that it would be under progress very soon.

Entrusting that job onto the Witch, she began going over what she was able to gain from her study trip. First, Frey was truly an absolute maniac at magic. There was certainly no doubt in her abilities and her position. Although Frey was somewhat reluctant to speak truthfully at first,

Frey had conveyed to her that others tended to say that what she said doesn't make sense. They would never be on the same page when thinking, so she naturally also grew tired of talking about her work. However, Estelle was able to process Frey's meaning to the greatest heights, taking in the important information and extracting the theories from it.

Frey found Estelle's existence to be somewhat of a breath of fresh air, and not only did she share what her knowledge contained of, Estelle also began to open up about her own discoveries and theories. Both of them were magic maniacs. Aleksei was the complete opposite of them since he hated learning theories and just preferred putting things into practice straight away, but he sat through the entire session and accompanied the two ladies as they spoke to each other with great vigor.

Thus, Estelle was able to gain a lot of knowledge in regards to magic applications and new innovations- something that she had sought for since long ago. Frey was the genius mage she was looking for. She was able to expand on the usage of normal magic, something Estelle deemed as impractical, and expand it into a much larger division of ideas.

She was truly someone blessed with a godsent intelligence. Although she hadn't seen every single person on this world yet, she was sure that Frey was one of the strongest in terms of magic theory. Much more than the Eire sisters. Minerva had the capability to grow stronger in the future, because her ability was able to be upgraded with just mere research.

As of now, however, Frey was the best contributor to her magic learning journey.

Estelle reached Ehrendil the next day, successfully getting out of the ship and reaching the rocky lands. From a distance, she was immediately able to see a dragon flying high in the sky, marking the truth of her arrival in the draconic country.