They Wanted a Hero. They Made a Monster: Born at the Bottom
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 45: After the Monster Tide
What was Evan supposed to do?
He was genuinely dumbfounded.
No matter how he considered it, the Dragonkin before him had to be the Ancient Dragon’s daughter.
Yes, daughter. Evan had just checked.
The Dragonkin was covered in thick scales, and her features could have belonged to either sex. He had not distinguished the difference before.
That was a minor detail.
The real problem was that Parasitic Fusion could not be canceled.
Her condition now resembled Dylan’s. She had been infected, but remained one step short of becoming a puppet.
Could Evan send her back through the other rift before it was too late?
“I only half parasitized your child. Here, you can have her back!”
Ha. Evan could already imagine a dragon claw cutting his main body into four pieces, then burning, freezing, crushing, and dissolving them separately.
Where was the great dragon’s true body?
In the Deep Strata?
Probably not. Evan had no relevant information, but the monsters emerging from the rift were entirely different from those in Amethyst Deep.
They probably came from another monster habitat, or even another dungeon.
He would ask Dylan later.
If it was another dungeon, could the Ancient Dragon find a way out?
The dungeon’s lightning had forced the claw back, but the Ancient Dragon suffered only a minor wound and did not appear to have used its full strength.
If it could truly break through the dungeon’s rules, hiding on the Fifth Stratum would not keep Evan safe.
Being targeted by an Ancient Dragon was far too terrifying.
Fortunately, the situation was not yet beyond repair.
The Dragonkin had only been infected. Evan had not turned her into a puppet!
The Ancient Dragon probably did not know exactly what had happened to its child.
There was still room to save the situation!
There was ... probably.
“Oh ... this is terrible...”
Dylan had just returned to Hushwind, and the sight before him left him stunned.
Charred beams lay tangled among broken walls. Shattered support pillars leaned into neighboring roofs.
Streets that had once bustled with people had become continuous fields of rubble. Even the granite Guildhall was reduced to a few pillars jutting starkly toward the sky.
More than half the town had been destroyed.
As Dylan walked, the soles of his boots stuck unpleasantly to the ground. Congealed blood covered the street, with no way to tell whether it had come from monsters or humans.
Corpses lay everywhere, along with workers trying to dispose of them.
After the Monster Tide ended, the Kingdom of Concord and the Adventurers’ Guild jointly issued reconstruction quests.
Most of the people here had accepted those commissions.
In the center of town, the headless corpse of the enormous Three-Headed Serpent sprawled across the road.
A ring of venom surrounded it, and no one present dared approach.
Rumor said the President of the Relic Society had arrived ahead of everyone else, alone.
He had killed most of the monsters rampaging through the town and prevented the disaster from spreading farther.
Even so, many townspeople had been killed or injured. The adventurers had suffered far worse.
Of those who accepted the gate-defense quest, fewer than one in five survived.
Fortunately, Dylan had obeyed Boss and left the area to investigate the duke’s daughter.
With his limited strength, he would probably have joined the dead otherwise.
Even if Hushwind was rebuilt, it would remain far quieter and poorer than before for a long time.
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