Chapter 12: The Dragon Kingdom

Opening her eyes once again, Gin felt that no time had passed. Waking up, she realized that it was still dark outside. But more noticeably, Velzard was sleeping right next to her, snuggling with her as if she was a hug pillow.

"Wha-what are you doing?" Gin asks, extremely surprised.

"You've been asleep for more than a month. I've been getting lonely without you," Velzard replies faking sadness.

Being surprised that a whole month had passed, Gin quickly gets up and runs to the Town Hall, into Emilia's office.

Bursting into the room to find Emilia doing paperwork, Gin is surprised by multiple things. First, there is actual paper. Second, instead of just having wooden objects since no one knew how to work with metal, there are actual metal decorations, furniture, and supplies. But most importantly, Emilia had successfully evolved into a Dragon Elf, and had a disaster rank of high A-.

Bringing Gin up to speed on recent events, Emelia sat down and slowly narrated what happened this path month.

First thing, the Dragon Elves. Neither their evolution nor the town had any problems. The evolution was right on schedule, taking 3 full days, and the Dragon Elves were reaching the same level as the Dragonewts at low A-. And there were no invaders during this time.

There were, however, invaders the week following that. Ogres, who's settlement got destroyed by the newly formed Western Nations who rose together after the fall of the Ultra-Sorcery Kingdom coming together in an attempt to clear out the monsters of the Great Forest of Jura. Their previous settlement was the largest in Ogre history, but unfortunately the attacking army was too large, and most of their people were killed. Some non-combatants and a small number of soldiers came together and grabbed a number of lost children and ran away. They were headed towards the newly empowered Eastern Empire, but needed a break so they stopped near the boarders of Gin's still unnamed territory.

When they realized that there was a village nearby, the ogres decided to invade after seeing that a majority of the village was female as well as the fact that there was next to no metal structures, meaning that the village would most likely not have the best defense.

But they couldn't be more wrong, as once they fired the first shot, a flaming arrow in hopes of starting a large disruptive fire, a terrible foe had stopped them in their tracks. Literally, as they were all frozen, unable to move.

Velzard was planning on killing them and taking their gear, but Emilia insisted on asking them to serve their master, Gin. Seeing as they had no hopes of winning or even surviving without agreeing, the ogres submitted.

In the Ogre tribe, of the one hundred and three (103) in the group, about half were kids. Half of the remaining were non combatants. That didn't leave many soldiers, and when they submitted, they realized that their situation would probably be better, since they didn't have any guarantee that the Eastern Empire would spare their lives.

Of the 25 non combatants, 20 of them could work with metal. 5 of those 20 were excellent at working with metal. 15 of them were specifically weapon smiths, with one of them being a master swordsmith specialist. That was how the village got access to metal workers to make metallic decorations, furniture, tools, and most importantly weapons.

The ogres wanted their own settlement for now, so they cleared some of the trees in the northern part of the territory to make space for a village at the boarder. One of the 5 non-combatant ogres who also didn't work with metal knew how to make paper, so that was also where the paper came from.

Liking the report, Gin was about to head out and visit, but as a parting note, Emilia told Gin that there was one ogre that stood out among the rest and would make for a great subordinate in the future.

Gin met up with Velzard, who waited outside, and flew to the Ogre Village.

Using [Analysis] to check out the ogres, Gin learned that not including the children, the ogres averaged out at high B- rank, with the combatant ogres being high B rank. But standing out amongst all the rest was a young teenage looking female ogre, who without being named was somehow a low A- level, very close to the average villager of the Gin's capital town.

Seeing that the Ogres still hadn't finished settling down, she decided to come back at a later time to get to know the ogres and to establish her rule over them. Plus, if they were obedient enough, she would name that outstanding Ogre and promote her to leader of the village.

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Flying back to the village, Gin was eager to do some more combat training.

On the way back, she had [Great Sage] tell her all her upgrades from evolution, and she was shocked by what she heard.

{Received. The user has had substantial gains with the evolution.

The two Intrinsic Skills gained were [Light Horn] and [Light Fangs].

There were a lot of weaker light magic spells gained, the important ones being <Light Barrier> and <Holy Light Purification>.

Gained Extra Skills [Barrier], [Magic Jamming] and [Dragon Aura].

[Self-Regeneration] evolved into Extra Skill [Ultraspeed Regeneration]

Extra Skill [Particle Manipulation] combined with [Barrier] and [Magic Jamming] evolved into Extra Skill [Magic Manipulation]

Gained [Holy Attack Resistance]

[Abnormal Status Resistance] evolved into [Abnormal Status Nullification]

[Natural Elements Resistance] evolved into [Natural Elements Nullification]

[Though Communication], [Thought acceleration], [Lie detection], and [Analysis] combinded together and evolved into the Unique Skill [Detective] which also includes [Memory Reading] and [Past Sight].

EP Value increased from 228,009 (A+ rank) to 611,630 (Special A Rank).

Unique Skill [Entertainment] evolved into [Entertainment King Dionysus]. (A/N: If you have a better name for the God/being associated with entertainment, I am open for suggestions.)

Other Unique Skills failed to evolve at this time, as they couldn't combine with anything to increase the success rates.

}

Hearing that she had an ultimate skill, Gin immediately tried to hide this from Velzard, but before she did anything, Velzard said with a smile, "Don't worry little sister. I won't tell anyone about your upgraded skill. But you should think of hiding it so no one knows about your secret weapon."

"Also, if you're wondering why your EP Value increased by so much, it wasn't just because of your evolution. I was pumping my Magicules through you, which further increased your growth," She said with an older sister type smug look.

'Oh, well I wasn't wondering since I thought it was just the evolution, but its good to know.' Gin thought.

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Arriving at an empty field a small ways away from the town, Gin and Velzard faced off once again, hovering high in the sky, ready to strike.

But this time, things were different. Although Gin was still heavily disadvantaged, she finally had a way of evening the playing field.

Using the energy from her Ultimate Skill [Entertainment King Dionysus], Gin launched powerful blasts of light towards Velzard.

But Velzard wasn't fazed, calmly maneuvering around the attack, an launched her counter attack, blasting multiple fast beams of ice.

Dodging and exchanging a few back and forths, the battle looked oven for a moment, until Velzard changed attacks and blasted a single large beam of frost.

Gin tried to copy one of Rimuru's moves, using [Inventory] to absorb the attack. At first, the move worked, but Velzard's attack overwhelmed Gin's defenses and froze her, causing her to lose the battle.

Falling to the ground, the ice cube that contained Gin shattered, freeing her.

"Hey! You used more power than before!" Gin playfully complained.

"That's because you were too weak before. You're still weak, but I almost used 10% of my power." Velzard explained smugly.

Surprisingly, Gin already had a good grasp on her skills, being able to use [Detective] to discover the attack trajectories and then use [Spatial Motion] to teleport out of the attack. She just needed to practice for a little longer to discover new tricks she could use during a fight.

Returning to the mansion in the town, Velzard proposed a suggestion to Gin, "I don't really have that much more to teach you. You've already got a good grasp on your skills, and I taught you all the light magic that I know.

If you want, I could bring you to meet your other big sister, Velgrynd, and train with her in the Eastern Empire. In fact, you could probably ask Rudra, Velgrynd's boyfriend, to teach you both swordsmanship, Light Magic, and Holy Magic, his specialties."

Liking the idea, Gin decided to go at a later time, once she mastered using her Ultimate Skill in battle.

Back in the town, Gin tells Emilia that she might leave again soon, once she masters her abilities more. she then tells her some of her short term plans.

These plans include tracking down some of the forest elves and inviting them to stay. Next would be to try to integrate the Ogres into the main town in hopes of creating an actual city before spreading out the population. Another goal was to capture and raise some lesser dragons. And the last goal Gin shared was her hopes of having the Ogre blacksmiths make a legendary sword for her.

As Gin finished sharing her goals with Emilia, she left for the training grounds once more.

A few days later, when Gin was resting after her afternoon spar with a group of Dragonewts to practice her group battle skills, Gin saw Emilia and the unnamed female Ogre run over to her.

"Its an honor to meet you, my lady," the Ogre greeted.

She then explained that recently, the Ogres finished settling in. And this morning, they encountered some merchants from the Eastern Empire that were returning from the western nations. Instead of going through the Great Forest of Jura to the the Empire, they traveled just south of it, which was how they ran into the Ogre tribe.

The Ogres didn't know what to do, so they quickly sent someone over to call for their sovereign.

Using [Spatial Motion] to teleport directly to the Ogre village, Gin quickly spots the merchants and teleports closer.

Gin wanted to make a good impression with the merchants to open up a small amount of trade. Of course, she would be cautious for spies, but for now it was important to show openness.

Forwardly greeting them, the merchant said, "Hello there. I'm Side Character Merchant A. These 2 guys with me are B and C." (A/N: I couldn't think of names for these guys who will never be shown again.)

Even though these old merchants seemed a little pervy, aggressively introducing themselves to the women present, Gin introduced herself calmly, "Good afternoon gentlemen. My name is Gin, leader of this nation."

"We just finished a great haul in the west, so we don't have any products to sell. But we do have a lot of coins, so if you have any special products that you want to sell, we are very willing to buy!" The merchants said.

Thinking for a moment, Gin decided not to sell the special clothes, as they didn't have a stockpile or any guarantee that others wouldn't steal their ideas. She decided that they would sell extra food. Since the Empire recently expanded, food prices have risen, so now was a good time to make a quick profit.

"That's great! We were almost running out, so we would love to buy some and make a profit when we get back." The merchant said, but then asked," By the way, what's the name of your country?"

Thinking for a moment, Gin finally realized that she still hadn't named the country. Using [Magic Manipulation] to look over her town as she was telleporting extra food reserves from the warehouses, Gin noticed that all the townspeople had something to do with dragons, as they had her own dragon blood flowing through them.

"The Dragon Kingdom," Gin declared domineeringly.

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After Gin finished dealing with the merchants, she returned to town, which she named Dragon's Nest. She brought back a small bag of gold coins. Even though the merchants had gotten the food at a low price, with their country's name now spreading to merchants, more would come.

As she arrived at the town hall, she met back up with Emilia and the female Ogre.

"Both of you, thanks for your hard work!" Gin said, praising them.

Then, surprising the pair, she offered to name the Ogre, as well as officially promote the two of them.

Agreeing, Gin thought of a name. With the Ogre's lusciously flowing white hair that gracefully flew overtop her white kimono, Gin declared, "From this day forth, you shall be known as Kaguya. And the both of you shall officially lead your respective races. Congratulations Emilia, Princess of the Elves, and Kaguya, princess of the Ogres."

With that, Kaguya's body emitted the white light of evolution, changing her from an Ogre to a Kijin.

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Extra Authors Notes:

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

If you did, please give me a comment and add the story to your collection.

I'm going to try my best to read and reply to comments so if you have question, feel free to ask things.

This is the beginning of a new arc and volume. For the most part, I already have the arc planned, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to recommend something.