"Hoo......"

Duanmu Huai sat in a noisy corner of the tavern and let out a sigh.

It had already been several days since he’d passed through the Subspace channel and returned to the world where Nolan and the others lived. Of course, compared to the chaotic mess the Mechanic Religion had made back then, thousands of years had now passed in this world. The three original countries—the Land of the Brave, the Magic Tool Country, and the Guardian Country—had long since vanished into the long river of History.

Even the nation that Princess Fureya and Princess Nolan later founded by unifying those three countries had already broken apart and completely perished many years ago.

Which was normal enough. The great currents of the world always go like this: long division leads to unity, long unity leads to division. Princess Nolan was indeed very smart, but that didn’t mean her successors were just as smart.

Only, even so, this world still couldn’t really be called "normal."

Based on the information Duanmu Huai had gathered over these past few days, this world was once again facing a threat known as Dragons.

At first, Duanmu Huai thought it was something like the Demon Clan from back then in this world, some kind of creation manufactured by the Mechanic Religion. But after actually meeting them, he found that rather than a created lifeform, these things felt more like the Evil Spirits he’d encountered before.

Yes, when he first heard "Dragon," what Duanmu Huai pictured was that kind of big lizard with wings that breathes fire. To be fair, most Dragons did look like that, but their biological traits were oddly lacking for a Dragon—for example, they feared silver, and they were afraid of sunlight. As long as you used a silver sword you could kill them, or you could drag them out under the sun and they’d burn up on their own.

The first time he saw that, Duanmu Huai was completely dumbfounded. Don’t tell him all the Dragons here had Undead Attributes?

He’d also asked the people of this world, but all he learned was that the war between Humans and Dragons had been going on for a very long time; no one knew exactly when it started.

But Duanmu Huai was sure of one thing: back when he had first come to this world, he’d never heard of such bizarre creatures, and there had been no similar Monster among the Demon Army. So at the very least, he could determine that these so‑called Dragons definitely weren’t remnants of the Demon Clan from back then.

After all, for this world, that was already thousands of years ago—ancient legend on the level of "Yu controlling the floods" or "Nuwa patching the sky." But for Duanmu Huai, it was just something from a bit over ten years ago.

By the way, Duanmu Huai had even found the village where he’d taken a rest back in those days—turns out, although the country had been destroyed, the village was still there, and even that inn was still around.

It had just been converted into a tavern.

Which happened to be where Duanmu Huai was right now.

Same place, different people, huh.

Duanmu Huai sat in the corner, watching the Maids walking back and forth in front of him, and couldn’t help but think back to when he’d come to this village as the so‑called Hero, and they had sent a girl to attend to him. Those days had been pretty pleasant, but unfortunately, this inn had undergone several rounds of renovation since then. While the building was still in use, it had basically turned into something completely different.

Besides that, there were a lot of other things that left Duanmu Huai quite puzzled.

Take this world’s current level of civilization, for example—Duanmu Huai honestly couldn’t quite make sense of it.

From what he’d observed, this world’s civilization level was somewhat similar to the period between World War I and World War II. For example, the cities here still used Medieval‑style city walls as Defense features, but there were railways and vehicles, and even ordinary Soldiers carried weapons like rifled guns. There was no television, but there were radios.

How to put it... it had that feeling of having just entered the Industrial Revolution.

If it were only like this, there’d be nothing to be surprised about. But there were some things that did genuinely shock Duanmu Huai.

Because of the Dragon threat, there were currently several countries in this world, and besides those, there were many abandoned settlements. These were called ancient ruins.

An average person, when they hear "ancient ruins," would probably think of the kind you see in movies first: grand Stone structures, exotic styles, architectural complexes that look very old.

So when Duanmu Huai saw, right before his eyes, a cluster of reinforced concrete modern high‑rises buried in weeds like some kind of post‑apocalyptic wasteland scene, he honestly had no idea how he was supposed to react.

You people live in Medieval houses, and then you call a modern city cluster "ancient ruins"?

What kind of cursed civilization development path is this?

Duanmu Huai racked his brains and still couldn’t figure out how things had ended up like this.

Anyway, the current level of civilization in this world still wasn’t enough to stand up to the Dragons. Low-level Dragons were just big lizards, but Advanced Dragons could use Spiritual Energy, and they were pretty capable. Ordinary guns and artillery were basically useless against them. Duanmu Huai had tried fighting them a few times, and his impression was that even in modern society, dealing with these Dragons wouldn’t be easy.

This was also why Duanmu Huai felt these Dragons were like Evil Spirits: their regenerative ability was extremely strong, and unless you used specific weapons, you couldn’t defeat them. Even if you did use the right kind of weapon, not just anyone could take down these Dragons easily. Of course, for Duanmu Huai, that was just perfect—he liked the kind of opponents that weren’t easy to kill the most.

Although Duanmu Huai still didn’t know the exact story behind all this, from the Spiritual Energy flow in Subspace earlier, he had at least formed a rough guess about the current situation.

The trash in Subspace had failed to invade that other world, and for some reason, this side seemed to have punched through the barrier between reality and Subspace—so they’d simply turned around and started invading this world instead.