Dawn.
The glimmer of the moon was fading rapidly, its light being siphoned by the sun rising to the east. Hajime, Yue, and Shea were already ready to depart. The three of them were standing outside the Water Sprite Inn, their packs filled with riceballs for the road.
Despite the extremely early hour, Foss had prepared breakfast for them without complaint.
Truly a first-rate inn. Always one to give credit where credit was due, Hajime thanked Foss profusely for the riceballs and the service.
They quickly left for the north gate, the morning mist still clinging to the ground. The path beyond the gate stretched on toward the mountains. The foot of the mountains was a hard day’s ride on horseback, so on Steiff it would take them only a few hours.
Today would mark the fifth day since Will Cudeta’s party disappeared in the mountains. Chances were they were long dead. Hajime doubted he’d find anyone alive, but there was always the possibility they’d survived against all odds. If he did bring them back alive, that make Ilwa like Hajime all the more, so he wanted to start looking as fast as possible. Fortunately, the weather was fair. The perfect day for a search.
The sounds of a town waking up could be heard as they headed down the main street.
After a few minutes, they reached the north gate.
As they approached, Hajime sensed a few people standing by the exit and narrowed his eye. They weren’t moving.
As the morning mist cleared… he saw Aiko, Yuka, and the other six students.
“I think I can guess what you’re here for, but I’ll ask just in case.” Hajime glared at Aiko.
Aiko faltered under his withering gaze, but she stood her ground. A few feet away the students were stroking their horses and talking about something. They noticed Hajime and the others and walked over to Aiko.
“We’re coming with you. You’re looking for a missing person, right? It’s better to have more people looking, then.”
“No thanks. If you want to come, you’re welcome to, but we’re not going together.”
“Wh-Why not?”
“Because of the difference in our speed. I’m not going to match your slow place, Sensei.” Hajime stared pointedly at the horses standing behind Yuka. From the looks of them he doubted they could even handle having people ride them, but he didn’t say
anything. Even if they’d been the fastest horses in the realm, they couldn’t hope to match a motorcycle’s speed.
At Hajime’s words, Yuka looked around, then tilted her head in confusion. As far as she could see, there wasn’t any other means of transportation in sight.
“You’re saying we’re too slow, but… hey, Nagumo. You’re not going to say something crazy like you can run faster than these horses or anything, right? Just because you don’t care about us anymore doesn’t give you the right to lie to us, you know? And if you really can run faster that’s even worse… Honestly, that crazy pressure you released yesterday was like that too, it’s like you’ve stopped being human.”
Hajime was taken aback by Yuka’s bluntness. Though he couldn’t deny that he probably could outrun a horse just by running. In a sense, he really had stopped being human. Yuka hadn’t actually intended to say that, but her annoyance had just boiled over and she’d let it slip. However, her observations had been rather astute.
Hajime met Yuka’s gaze. She was glaring at him, whether warily, antagonistically, or something else altogether he couldn’t tell, but he let out a very deliberate sigh. Realizing explaining would be too much of a pain, Hajime wordlessly pulled Steiff out of his Treasure Trove.
Everyone’s jaw dropped open as they saw a motorcycle appear in thin air.
“Get it yet? Even if they sound like lies to you, they’re not. Hell, I probably could run faster than those horses. I’m not trying to bullshit you guys. There literally is that much of a difference in our travel speed.” Everyone was still too shocked by Steiff’s sudden appearance and its otherworldly, at least as far as this world was concerned, nature to say anything.
Finally, the motorcycle enthusiast of the class, Noboru, spoke up, a quiver of excitement in his voice.
“D-Did you make this yourself too Nagumo?”
“Yeah. Anyway, we’re going so get out of the way.” Hajime made to mount Steiff, but Aiko, as always, stopped him. She was determined to join them by any means possible.
There were two reasons for her stubbornness.
First, she wanted to be sure what Hajime had told her last night was the truth. That a classmate had tried to kill him was a serious allegation, and she had to be 100% sure Hajime hadn’t just been mistaken. And if he hadn’t, she had to know who he thought this would-be murderer was. She needed more information. If there was even the slightest chance of preventing further misfortune, Aiko wanted to do everything in her power to help. And since there was no guarantee she would ever see Hajime again after their search was over, this was her only chance to catch him.
The second reason she wanted to tag along was to search for their own missing student, Yukitoshi Shimizu. They’d been looking high and low for him, but no one in the outlying villages had seen anyone matching his description.
The only place they hadn’t been able to gather much information from was the mountain region, where people normally didn’t live anyway. Regardless of whether he’d been caught up in some kind of incident or left of his own volition, it was unlikely that he’d ended up in the mountains, so they’d avoided it until now. However, as the opportunity had presented itself, Aiko was hoping to join up with Hajime in order to search for clues about Shimizu’s whereabouts.
Though it was half-coincidence that Yuka and the others were here too.
In order to ambush Hajime on his way out, Aiko had gotten up even before the crack of dawn. Yuka, who’d slept very little because of the previous day’s events had just happened to spot Aiko leaving her room.
Dressed in traveling gear as she was, there was no way she could have fooled Yuka. After learning that Aiko was going to try and join Hajime on his quest, Yuka had said “Then I’ll come too! Just give me 40 seconds to get ready!”
She insisted that if Aiko was going, the Ai-chan defense force would too, and she woke up all the other students and got them to tag along.
They didn’t wake the knights, though, as they figured they’d just get into another fight with Hajime, so they just left a letter telling them to wait at the inn. Whether or not they actually would was a different matter… Aiko sidled up to Hajime and whispered to him quietly.
It was obvious she didn’t want others hearing what she had to say. This close up, Hajime could tell that she was hiding the dark circles under her eyes with makeup. Did she not sleep at all last night?
“Nagumo-kun. As a teacher, I have to know more about what you told me last night, so until you agree to sit down and have a proper talk I’ll never let you out of my sight. And if you do manage to escape, I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth. I’m sure you’d like to avoid that, right? It can be while we’re traveling or searching even, but I need you to make time to talk. If you do that, then I’ll be willing to say our farewells once your job here is done… for now.” Seeing the determination in her eyes, Hajime regretted telling her that last bit of information the previous night. Despite how much she ended up running around aimlessly, Aiko was stubborn to a fault. Even if he slipped away here, he could easily see her organizing the entire knight corps of the kingdom to search for him.
He looked up at the sky, and saw it was quickly growing brighter. If he wanted to find Will alive, he didn’t have time to waste on a long question and answer session.
I guess you reap what you sow. Hajime sighed deeply, then met Aiko’s gaze. “Fine. You can come with us. Though I doubt we’ll have any time to really talk.” “That’s fine. There’s just some things I want to confirm with you directly.”
“Haah, you just don’t give up, do you, Sensei? No matter what you do or where you are, you’re still our teacher.”
“That’s right!” Aiko proudly puffed out her chest. Seeing that negotiations had ended
favorably, Yuka and the others breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hajime, we’re taking her with us?”
“Yep. Because no matter what happens, she’ll never stop being my teacher. She never compromises when it comes to her students. If we leave her here now, she’ll just get more annoying later.”
“Hmm, she sounds like a really nice teacher.”
Yue and Shea were surprised at how easily Hajime gave in. And when they heard his grudging praise of her, their respect for Aiko rose considerably.
For his part, Hajime admired her dedication to her students, too. Even if he no longer considered himself a regular human, or his former peers his classmates, he still believed Aiko was one of the few adults who deserved his respect.
“But that motorcycle can’t fit more than three people. What are you going to do?”
Yuka pointed out a fatal issue. The horses would be too slow and Hajime would never dream of making Yue or Shea stay behind so Aiko could ride in their place. Hajime casually put Steiff back into his Treasure Trove and instead pulled out the other vehicle he’d made, Brise.
It resembled the Hummers the American military once used. Not only did it have a thick armor plating, but there were numerous deadly weapons installed onto its frame. The entire thing was painted matte black, too. Minus the rear turret, it was modeled after those pick-up trucks, and looked like it could easily run over anything in its path.
The students had already figured out Hajime must be using some type of artifact to materialize and dematerialize these massive objects at will, but they were still impressed. Seeing him now it was hard to imagine anyone had once called him incompetent.
“Those of you who can’t fit inside go sit in the trunk or something,” Hajime said as he got into the driver’s seat.
Brise tore its way down the straight path, the mountains growing closer every minute. It was nowhere nearly as well maintained as an actual highway, but Brise had built-in suspensions. On top of that, its wheels were enchanted with the same ground leveling skill that Steiff had, so even the guys sitting in the metallic trunk attached to the back didn’t feel any real discomfort.
The reason he’d bothered adding a trunk when he had the Treasure Trove was because he really wanted an opportunity to sit in the back and fire a gatling gun while on a high speed chase like in movies. His hobbies showed through a little in his creations.
The seats inside the car were all bench seats. Hajime was in the driver seat, with Aiko next to him, and Yue next to her. The reason she was next to him was so they could talk. She hadn’t wanted any of the other students to hear just yet, so she’d insisted that she sit next to him.
Normally, the seat next to Hajime was reserved for Yue, but he’d explained the situation to her and she’d reluctantly agreed to let Aiko sit there for now. Aiko and Yue were both quite tiny, so there was a lot of leftover space.
Meanwhile, the back where Shea was sitting was a bit cramped. Shea, Yuka, and Taeko all possessed relatively… stacked assets, so they took up a decent amount of room. Among them it was only Nana who was flat. She glared enviously at the other three girls before looking down at her own modest chest. She gave them a forlorn pat, but they were nowhere near as bouncy as the others.
However, it was Shea who felt the most uncomfortable. She was sandwiched between Nana, who kept shooting jealous glances at her breasts, and Taeko, who kept pestering her with questions about her relationship with Hajime. A forbidden love between different races got every young high school girl’s heart racing, after all.
Shea did her best to answer all the questions, despite being overwhelmed by Taeko’s enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Yuka was resting her chin in her arms and looking out the window. She tried to look uninterested, but it was obvious she was curious too. She kept stealing glances at Shea, as she was the one most curious about how they had met.
Meanwhile, Hajime and Aiko’s conversation was heading in an interesting direction.
Aiko had gleaned as much information as she could from Hajime. The more she learned, the more she was convinced someone had tried to kill him, but she still didn’t want to believe it. When she’d asked him if anyone seemed particularly suspicious, Hajime had just snorted and said that everyone did.
Hajime had floated the possibility that it might have been Hiyama. He was, of course, right on the mark, but at present he only saw Hiyama as one of the possible suspects.
With the limited information she had, Aiko couldn’t come to a definitive conclusion either. Even if she could, Aiko wasn’t sure how to bring a potential murderer back on the right path, nor did she know how to make them atone for their crime.
She continued agonizing over it for a while longer, but the gentle rolling of the truck and the soft sheet she’d wrapped herself in beckoned her to the land of dreams. Finally, her head drooped forward, and she fell fast asleep onto Hajime’s lap.
Had it been anyone else, Hajime would have flung them off him. However, he couldn’t bring himself to do that to Aiko, so after debating with himself for a few seconds, he decided to just leave her be.
Besides, it was his fault she hadn’t slept last night. After all, it was the overload of information he’d dumped on her that had kept her up.
“I guess it’s fine,” he said in a rare display of tolerance. “Hajime, you’re nice to Aiko.” “Well, she has done a lot for me.” “Hmmm.”
“Yue?”
“……”
“Come on, Yue, don’t ignore me. Please?”
“Let me sleep on your lap next time.”
“Sure…”
The two were soon flirting openly with each other, despite the fact that Aiko was still in his lap. In the back were two girls watching the spectacle up front with great interest, one girl staring out the window pretending not to care, but still stealing glances every now and again, and one sulking bunny girl. Behind them, three jealous pairs of eyes were burning a hole through the back window.
It was hard to believe this group was headed into dangerous territory where one highly skilled adventurer party had already gone missing.
The Northern Mountain Range. Mountains ranging from 1000 meters above sea level to 8000 meters above sea level existed within the range, and the flora and even environment varied drastically from mountain to mountain. One mountain might be covered in trees with leaves the vibrant color of fall, but the next mountain over would be a dense green jungle. And then there were mountains that resembled desolate wastelands.
Moreover, no matter how many mountains one scaled, they would only see a sea of mountains extending infinitely northward. The first four rows of mountains had been somewhat explored, but past that was unknown territory.
A number of ambitious adventurers had tried mapping the entire range, but as the strength of the monsters grew with each progressive mountain, no one had yet managed to scale the fifth row.
The highest mountain in the first row was the so-called Sacred Mountain where the Holy Church’s headquarters were.
The section of the range Hajime was approaching was about 600 kilometers east of that point. Directly in front of them was a towering slab of rock covered in the blazing red and yellow hues of fall. Those well versed in botany would notice various spices and herbs dotting the landscape as well. The mountain’s vast bounty was one of the main reasons for Ur’s prosperity.
Hajime stopped Brise at the foot of the mountain, and the students spent a moment enjoying the breathtaking view.
A few of the girls let out murmurs of appreciation. Meanwhile, Aiko had finally woken up, and was as red as the leaves behind her as she apologized profusely to Hajime. Fortunately, everyone else was too focused on the scenery to notice.
Suppressing his desire to enjoy the view for a little while longer, Hajime put Brise back in his Treasure Trove and pulled something else out.
A thirty centimeter long model bird and a ring with a tiny stone embedded inside it.
The body of the bird was gray, but it had a crystal affixed to its head.
Hajime put the ring on, pulled another four model birds from his Treasure Trove, and threw them into the air. Contrary to expectations, the model birds did not fall to the ground. Instead, they floated freely in the sky. Aiko and the others gasped in surprise.
The four birds circled in place for a few seconds before gliding toward the mountain.
“Umm, what exactly…” Aiko trailed off as she watched the artificial birds glide away without making a single sound.
Hajime’s reply was “Scouting drones.” In a sense, these objects were even more unfit for a fantasy world than his guns or cars.
Hajime had crafted them with the same remotely controllable ore that Miledi had used to make the golems they’d fought in the Reisen Labyrinth. He’d stolen… or rather been gifted a large quantity of them before they had been unceremoniously thrown out.
While he had no aptitude for gravity magic, he had succeeded in using his creation magic to enchant ore with gravity neutralizing magic, effectively creating floatstone. By infusing a spirit stone with gravity control magic, he had successfully created what he had dubbed esperrock. That was the nature of the crystals embedded into his drones.
Like the golems’ eyes, by pouring mana into the esperrock he could reflect what it was seeing to another esperrock. This was how Miledi had kept track of Hajime’s movements in the labyrinth.
Hajime had added a fragment of esperrock to his devil eye, so he could check what the drones were seeing whenever he pleased.
However, the brain’s processing power was finite, and having four drones circle far overhead already brought him close to the limits of his brain’s ability. Hajime couldn’t figure out how Miledi had managed to control 50 golems at once.
Though, ever since he had learned Riftwalk, he had been able to train his brain’s processing power like any other stat, and he had grown to the point where he could control a single drone with absolute precision without any noticeable drop in his own movements. Furthermore, when he activated Riftwalk, he could accurately control up to seven drones. Though that came with a time limit.
This time, though, he’d just brought his Ornises out to scout. They had a wide area to search, so he figured they would be useful.
As they watched Hajime’s Ornises fly off into the distance, Aiko and the students swore to stop getting surprised at every little thing Hajime did. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to make good on that oath for a while.
Meanwhile, the party continued down the path Will had supposedly gone up.
According to the reports, the more dangerous monsters only started showing up a little over halfway up the mountain. In which case, it stood to reason that Will’s party had been
investigating that area. Hajime sent his Ornises out ahead to scout the area while he set a grueling pace.
After a little over an hour of walking, they finally reached their destination. They stopped there in order to investigate more thoroughly, and because…
After a little over an hour of walking, they finally reached their destination. They stopped there in order to investigate more thoroughly, and because…
“Haah… Haaah… F-Finally, we can take a break…Ugh… Haah… Haah…” “Haah… Haaah… Are you alright… Ai-chan-sensei?”
“Ack… Urgh… Can we rest now? Haah… Haah… We can, right? I’m sitting down, okay?”
“Ahhhhhh…”
“Haaah… Haaah… You and your friends are monsters, Nagumo…” Aiko and the students had even less stamina than Hajime had expected.
Of course Aiko and the others had far greater stats than most people in this world, so climbing this far wouldn’t normally tire them out so. However, Hajime had been going so fast that they’d had to sprint all out just to keep up. And sprinting nonstop up an unfamiliar mountain path was more draining than they had expected.
Aiko was kneeling on the ground, panting for breath. Noboru and Akito were lying on their backs, gulping in huge lungfuls of air. Meanwhile, Nana looked like she was about to puke.
Surprisingly, Yuka and Taeko weren’t on the ground. They were leaning tiredly against a tree, but they didn’t look ready to collapse just yet. Probably because both of them had more frontline-centric jobs.
Yuka’s job was Acrobat, while Taeko’s was Whip Master. The former was a job that specialized in throwing weapons such as knives or darts, while the latter, as the name suggested, was proficient in whips, though they were also skilled in using all rope-like objects.
The sight of the delinquent-looking Yuka juggling knives, while the flashy Taeko swung a whip around was… depending on who you asked, either extremely surreal or extremely fitting. The class was split fifty-fifty on it.
Atsushi and Noboru were frontliners as well, but… their stamina was clearly lacking in comparison. Had anyone pointed it out, their hearts would probably have broken right then and there.
Hajime sighed as he looked over at the other students. Though in the end he was planning on searching the area anyway, so he supposed it was fine to let them take a break in the meantime. He decided to investigate a nearby river while they rested. Thanks to the view from his Ornises, he had a pretty good idea of the overall geography. He told Aiko where the river was and left the students there. It was likely Will’s party had stopped there
to rest, too.
Hajime headed deeper into the mountains, with Yue and Shea in tow. The dried leaves littering the forest floor let out a satisfying crunching noise as they marched through the forested mountainside. Soon enough, they heard the sound of rushing water, indicating the river was nearby. The sounds of nature were pleasing to the ears. Shea especially was enjoying the walk, her rabbit ears flopping about happily.
The river was just a little too large to be classified as a stream. Shea, who had the best senses of the three, started scouting the area. Just to be safe, Hajime also swept their surroundings with his Ornis, but there didn’t seem to be any monsters nearby. Sure that there wouldn’t be any unpleasant surprises, the three of them sat down on a nearby boulder to discuss their strategy.
Halfway through, Yue kicked her shoes off so she could dip her toes in the river and relax for a bit. Hajime didn’t want to waste time, but as it was unlikely Aiko and the others had recovered sufficiently yet anyway, he let it slide. It was obvious he spoiled Yue. Shea ended up taking advantage of his magnanimity as well.
Thinking they might have gone upstream, Hajime sent one of his Ornises further up to scout while he watched Yue splash about in the shallows. Shea was barefoot as well, but she’d chosen to just dip her feet in. It seemed she was just enjoying the ticklish sensation of water rushing past.
Finally, Aiko and the others recovered enough to catch up to Hajime. They weren’t very happy about being left behind, so they glared testily at the trio when they arrived.
However, the guys’ expressions changed instantly when they saw Yue and Shea playing in the river, barefoot.
“This is heaven,” they exclaimed, and the girls’ cold stares turned toward them. The guys trembled under the weight of their collective glares. Upon noticing everyone’s arrival, Yue and Shea got out of the river.
Aiko and the others collapsed near the riverbank, and busied themselves with the task of replenishing lost fluids. Atsushi and the guys’ leering gazes had bothered Yue and Shea a little, so they also glared at the boys on their way out, causing them to avert their gazes in fear. Aiko and the girls all turned to look at Hajime. They’d all heard a lot from Shea about his relationship with the two girls, so they were glaring at him in mild annoyance.
“Fufu, you seem to treasure Yue-san and Shea-san a lot, Nagumo-kun,” Aiko spoke with a smile.
No matter what he said, he doubted they’d like the answer, so Hajime just shrugged his shoulders. Still, Yue’s next action provided enough of an answer. She walked up to Hajime and plopped into his lap. Then, she wriggled her butt until she found a comfortable position.
“…Good.” After that, with a satisfied expression on her face, she leaned back. All but stating that she trusted Hajime completely. Feeling left out, Shea hopped up behind Hajime and hugged him. Hajime’s back was enveloped in twin mounds of pleasure.
Aiko and Yuka blushed, while Nana and Taeko started squealing. The guys, meanwhile, were gritting their teeth in frustration.
Hajime didn’t bother trying to peel them off. Instead, he turned away, clearly embarrassed.
However, a second later his expression turned serious.
“This is…”
“Hm…did you find something?” Hajime stared off into the distance, muttering to himself. Aiko and the students all gazed at him intently.
“Further upstream there’s a… shield, I think? And a bag… They both look new. This might be what we’re looking for. Yue, Shea, let’s go.”
“Okay.”
“Roger!”
The three of them stood up at the same time, then started packing up.
Honestly, Aiko and the other students were hoping to rest for a while longer, but they were the ones who had insisted they come along. Plus, it seemed Hajime had found some kind of clue. They roused their exhausted bodies and pushed themselves forward, struggling to keep up with the hellish pace Hajime set.
When they arrived, Hajime found a small metallic shield and a bag, just as he’d seen from his Ornis. However, what the Ornis had not been able to show him were the details. The round shield was dented in the center, and one of the bag’s straps was ripped.
They cautiously examined their surroundings. Upon doing so, they discovered that one of the nearby trees had had its bark ripped. Furthermore, it was stripped a full two meters up the tree’s trunk. It looked like someone had meticulously scraped off all the bark, but judging from the height, no human could have done that.
Hajime asked Shea to scout the area with her ears, while he activated his own perception skills. Cautiously, he walked past the scraped tree.
The further he went, the more he found evidence of a fierce struggle. A tree snapped in half. A broken sword lying in the grass. Traces of blood. The more they found, the grimmer the students’ expressions grew.
They’d already had their spirits broken once by the imminent fear of death, back in the Great Orcus Labyrinth. It was obvious from their pale faces that the scene had brought back memories of that time. Hajime could tell they were struggling to keep their composure.
He kept an eye on them as they progressed through the forest, absorbing each piece of evidence as he passed by it. Suddenly, Shea found something sparkling up ahead.
“Hajime-san, this is a pendant, isn’t it?”
“Hm? Yeah… looks like it might have belonged to one of them. Let’s find out.”
Hajime took the pendant from Shea and brushed the dirt off. As he did, he realized it wasn’t just a pendant, but a locket. He opened it to see a portrait of a woman. She must have been someone’s lover, or maybe their wife. Wasn’t that helpful as far as clues went, but considering how new it looked, it most likely belonged to one of the adventurers they were searching for. Hajime decided to keep it just in case.
They found a few other articles scattered about, and kept the ones that looked like they had been significant to their owners.
Searching the area took quite a bit of time, and the sun was beginning to set as they finished. They’d probably have to make camp for the night soon.
So far the only other living creatures they’d seen on the mountain had been animals. They’d been on alert for the monsters that had attacked Will, but they hadn’t even seen a single hostile creature.
They were relatively close to the summit at that point. And, while they hadn’t passed over the first mountain yet, they should still have encountered a few weak monsters so high up. It was unsettling how quiet their journey had been.
A short while later, Hajime sent out his Ornises to scout the area the previous adventurers had supposedly been requested to examine. About three hundred meters to the east, he found signs of large-scale destruction. Hajime hurried over, forcing everyone to go even faster to keep up.
They found a river larger than the almost-stream they’d stopped at earlier. There was even a small waterfall further upstream. Normally, said river would flow all the way down to the foot of the mountain, but something had gouged huge furrows into the earth, diverting its flow. The furrows were so precise that it looked like they’d been cut by a laser.
Not only that, but the earth and trees around the gouged earth had been scorched black. Some of the trees had been snapped clean in half, the upper halves of their trunks sometimes tens of meters away. Thirty-centimeter long footprints remained in the muddy riverbank.
“So this is where the fight really picked up… Judging by the footprints, we’re dealing with some huge monster that walks on two legs… Supposedly, Bulltaurs roam around the area two mountains over, but the way the ground was cut clean through…”
The Bulltaurs Hajime was referring to were a kind of cross between the Orcs and Ogres usually found in RPGs. They weren’t very intelligent, but they always roamed in packs, and their special magic was an inferior version of Diamond Skin, Steel Skin. They were a powerful race known for their high defensive capabilities. However, adventurers had only ever encountered them after cresting the second set of mountains, and even then they never crossed the peak to the village side of the second mountain range. More importantly, they didn’t have any magic that would let them make such precise cuts into the ground like that.
Hajime squatted down and examined the footprints. He wasn’t sure if they should head
downstream or upstream next.
So far the traces of battle they’d found had suggested Will and the others had fled upstream, but he found it hard to imagine they’d continue heading in that direction after such a fierce fight. Considering their physical and mental exhaustion, it would have made little sense for them to flee away from town.
Having come to that conclusion, Hajime sent his Ornises upstream, electing to take the downstream path himself. Since the footprints were all near the riverbank, it was possible Will and the others had escaped into the river. Exhausted by the fighting as they must have been, they’d probably opted to let the current carry them away.
The others agreed with Hajime’s hypothesis, and they began trekking down the mountain.
Eventually, they came across another waterfall. This one was far larger than the tiny drop they’d seen earlier. Hajime, Yue, and Shea all jumped off the cliff and landed nimbly on the rocks below. The misty breeze characteristic to all waterfalls blew past them. It was a refreshing reprieve, tired as they were from searching all day.
It was at that moment that Hajime’s Sense Presence detected something.
“Wha…! No way…”
“Hajime?” Yue was the first to react to Hajime’s outburst. Hajime closed his eyes and concentrated. A few seconds later he opened them again, the surprise evident in his voice.
“Man, you’ve gotta be kidding me. My Sense Presence detected something, but it feels human. And it’s… coming from behind the waterfall.”
“There’s a living person down there!?”
Hajime nodded in response to Shea’s question.
“Just one?” Yue asked, to which Hajime’s response was a simple confirmation.
Aiko and the others looked shocked as well. It was only natural, as while it was still theoretically possible someone had survived, Hajime hadn’t actually expected to find anyone alive. Five days had passed since Will’s party had gone missing. If the survivor was one of them, it’d be a miracle.
“Yue, I’m counting on you.”
“…Okay.”
Hajime didn’t take his eyes off the pool of water surrounding the waterfall. Guessing what Hajime wanted, Yue raised her right hand and activated her magic.
“Liquid Rampart. Wind Wall.”
The water around the waterfall was pushed to either side, the wind wall keeping the resulting spray from soaking them. Yue looked like Moses parting the Red Sea with her hand outstretched like that. The spell Liquid Rampart made barriers of water, and Yue had used the existing river water to create hers.
Aiko and the students’ jaws dropped open in shock yet again as they watched Yue cast two different elemental spells without an incantation or even a magic circle. The ancient Jews had probably been just as surprised when Moses had performed his miracle.
Yue’s mana supply wasn’t infinite, so Hajime ushered everyone along. They walked past the waterfall into the cavern behind it.
The cavern angled upward, and it opened up into a rather spacious room after they got through a narrow passage. Water and light poured into the room from above, the water creating a large puddle in the center. Seeing as the puddle didn’t overflow, it stood to reason that it connected to the river somehow.
They found a man in the furthest corner of the room. As they approached, they could make out his features better. He was young, probably no more than twenty, with graceful features. At the moment, though, that graceful face was pale as a sheet, ruining the effect. However, he didn’t seem to be injured, and his bag still had a little food left in it. From the looks of it, he was just asleep. His pale features were probably due to the terror of hiding out alone.
Aiko looked at him, clearly worried, but Hajime was in a hurry to find out who he was.
He flicked the sleeping man on the forehead with his artificial arm.
“Guwah!” He awoke with a scream and covered his forehead with both hands. Aiko shuddered at Hajime’s callousness.
Hajime ignored Aiko and crouched down in front of the crying man. He didn’t bother mincing words.
“Are you Will Cudeta? The third son of the Cudeta family?”
“I, uhh… Who are you guys? What are you doing here?” The man’s eyes darted about wildly. Hajime got his hand ready for another flick and rested it against the man’s forehead.
“Answer the question. Every time you tell me something other than an answer, I’m going to flick you twice as hard as the last time.”
“Huh!?”
“Are you Will Cudeta?”
“Umm… Uwaah, yes! I am! I’m Will Cudeta! That’s me!” The man stammered for a moment, but Hajime’s sharp glare silenced any protests he might have, and he answered with more vigor than his pale face would suggest.
So he really is Will Cudeta. By some miracle, he had actually survived.
“I see. I’m Hajime. Hajime Nagumo. I’ve come looking for you at Chief Ilwa Chang’s request. I’m glad you’re alive.” That’ll make life much easier.
“Ilwa-san sent you!? I see. I guess… I owe him another debt for this. Umm, thank you for coming here. If Ilwa-san sent you, you must be pretty strong.”
There was a mixture of gratitude and respect in his gaze. It seemed he wasn’t too bothered by that earlier flick to his forehead. He seemed like a surprisingly nice fellow. Completely unlike that other pig-faced noble Hajime had encountered.
Glad he didn’t have to beat an answer out of Will, Hajime motioned for Yue and Shea to introduce themselves before asking what had happened.
In short, this was what happened to them:
Will and his party were climbing up the same mountain path Hajime had taken when they were set upon by ten Bulltaurs.
Unwilling to take on such a force, the party began to retreat. However, more and more Bulltaurs kept on coming and, before long, they had been driven up to the river a little over halfway up the mountain.
Surrounded and driven into a corner, the party’s paladin and swordsman gave their lives to let the others escape. Forced further upward by the advancing horde of Bulltaurs, the party arrived at the second river, only to meet their doom.
A black dragon was waiting for them.
The moment they burst out on the riverbank, it had fired its searing breath at them, sending Will flying into the river. As he was being washed downstream the last thing he’d seen was one member of the party get completely incinerated, while the remaining two were trapped between a dragon and a horde of Bulltaurs.
After falling down the waterfall he’d stumbled into this cavern, and had been hiding inside ever since.
His tale sounded pretty similar to a certain someone’s.
Will’s emotions got the better of him halfway through his story, and by the time he finished he was in tears. He’d basically forced his way into their party, and yet the adventurers he’d traveled with hadn’t so much as looked annoyed when he asked them to teach him their skills or share stories about their adventures.
And yet he hadn’t even tried to save them. He’d just hidden down here in this cave like a coward, praying for someone to come save him.
He hated himself even more for feeling relieved when help had finally arrived, even though his comrades had all died.
Those feelings had all come to a head when he recounted his tale, which was why he was a sobbing mess.
“I-I’m the worsht. Everyone died, but even though I wash usheless, I survived… and then… I even felt happy when I learned I wash shaved!” Will’s sobs echoed through the cavern. No one said anything. No one knew what to say to the sobbing young man who blamed himself for his comrades’ deaths. Yuka and the others especially so, because they understood exactly what he was feeling.
Aiko gently patted Will on the back, her expression pained.
Yue was as expressionless as always, while Shea was at a loss for words.
But when Will finally paused to take breath, the person everyone had least expected to say anything comforted him.
Hajime.
He walked over, grabbed Will by the collar, and hoisted him up into the air. When he spoke, his tone was surprisingly gentle.
“What’s so wrong about wanting to live? What’s so bad about being happy that you survived? Those feelings are the most natural thing in the world. For a human, wanting to survive is a praiseworthy trait.”
“B-But… I…”
“If you feel bad for your dead comrades… then live on. Even if you have to crawl on the ground dredging for scraps, survive. As long as you keep struggling… eventually, the day will come when you realize there was meaning in you surviving this day.”
“Live… on.” Tears still in his eyes, Will blankly repeated Hajime’s words.
Hajime thrust Will back to the ground and mumbled some words.
“What the hell’s wrong with me?” His speech had been half-directed at himself. When he’d heard Will lamenting his own survival, it had somehow felt like he was saying it was a mistake for Hajime to have survived. That was what had gotten Hajime so worked up.
Of course, that was just his persecution complex rearing its ugly head. What he’d done wasn’t much different from a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Despite how mature he tried to act, Hajime was still a seventeen year old boy. He still had a lot of growing up to do.
Having realized his mistake, Hajime was stewing in a rare moment of self-loathing.
Seeing his expression, Yue walked over and gently took him his hand in hers.
“It’s okay. You said the right thing, Hajime.”
“…Yue.”
“Live, with everything you’ve got. We’re going to survive together, right?”
“Haha, you’re right. No matter what comes our way, we’ll make it through alive. I promise I won’t leave you alone.”
“…Good.”
Before long, Hajime and Yue were lost in their own little world, Will’s existence completely forgotten. I’m really no match for her, Hajime thought as he gently stroked Yue’s cheek. She nuzzled happily against his hand. Shea was, of course, glaring at them reproachfully. Her ears were twitching angrily, as if to say “How dare you leave me out again!”
Meanwhile, Hajime’s words had really hit home to Aiko and the others. They were the words of someone who’d had to change his appearance and even the very core of his being to crawl out of the abyss alive. Ever since their reunion he’d always been cold and
aloof, but for the first time they’d seen him get heated up.
His passion resonated just a little in the hearts of Yuka and the others, who were still trapped by the fear of death. His words felt like the first rays of spring after a long and cold winter.
For a while, the students all stared at each other, lost in their thoughts. Will was still in a daze after being unfairly yelled at and then unceremoniously thrown away. Shea was still desperately trying to get Hajime and Yue’s attention, while the latter were still lost in each other’s eyes. The mood was so sickeningly sweet that one would think Hajime had transmuted the air to sugar.
Finally, Will managed to get everyone’s attention, and the party began preparing to descend. There was still an hour until darkness fell, so if they hurried they could reach the foot of the mountain before the day was up.
True, the sudden appearance of a Bulltaur herd and a black dragon were worrying developments, but they weren’t part of Hajime’s mission. Besides, it was unreasonable of anyone to expect Hajime to investigate those incidents while protecting such a weak group.
Will realized he’d just be a burden too, so he agreed that they should withdraw. Atsushi’s sense of justice compelled him to argue that they should investigate further and save the townspeople from their plight, but with such dangerous monsters as Bulltaurs and black dragons roaming about, Aiko was having none of it. So, in the end, it was decided they would leave the mountain.
But of course, it was too much to hope everything would go according to plan. The moment the group exited the waterfall cavern using Yue’s magic, they were greeted by a fearsome sight.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” A dragon, its scales jet black and its eyes glinting a cruel gold, glared down at them from the sky.
It was easily seven meters long. Claws as big and sharp as swords jutted from its forelegs. The wings sprouting from its back were glimmering faintly, covered in a sheen of mana.
That explains it. Every time the dragon flapped its wings, an unbelievably powerful gust of wind blew past them. Still, what stood out most of all were the two eyes that glowed as gold as the moon amidst a sea of pitch black. Its pupils were slitted, giving them a reptilian appearance, while its eyes were narrowed in a dangerous glare, making the light they emitted all the more beautiful.
It let out another low roar. The overwhelming pressure it exuded was far greater than the wyverns Hajime had fought at the bottom of the Reisen Gorge, the Hyverias. Most people considered Hyverias among the most dangerous monsters that roamed the surface, but this black dragon made them feel like nothing more than little birds. Truly, its majesty made it fit to be called the ruler of the skies.
Aiko and the others froze in place, deer caught in headlights. Will was trembling so
fiercely that he looked ready to collapse on the spot. He was probably having flashbacks to the last time he’d been attacked.
He had expected a suitably powerful monster when he saw the furrows in the ground, but he hadn’t expected something as deadly as the black dragon currently in front of him. This was at least three times more powerful than what he’d anticipated.
He was sure its strength couldn’t compare to the Hydra he’d fought at the bottom of the abyss, but it was at least as powerful as the monsters he’d found 90 floors down.
Upon spotting Will, the dragon’s gaze focused on him. Then, it suddenly reared its head back and opened its jaw, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. It began focusing a tremendous amount of mana into its mouth.
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaa! A strange keening sound echoed throughout the sunset orange mountains. Hajime suddenly remembered Will describing the breath that had gouged out part of the river and incinerated an adventurer on the spot.
“Everyone, run!” Hajime leaped to the side as he screamed. Yue and Shea followed suit. However, most people… No, everyone else didn’t react to Hajime’s warning.
They couldn’t. Aiko, Yuka, the other students, and even Will were still frozen in place. Aiko and the others were too surprised to react properly, but Will was frozen in fear. He couldn’t even summon the presence of mind to look away.
“Tch!”
“Hajime!”
“Hajime-san!”
Hajime used Telepathy to relay orders to Yue and Shea, then used Supersonic Step to return to the spot he’d been in seconds ago, putting him directly between the dragon and the students.
Normally, he would have just left them to fend for themselves, but he didn’t hate Aiko and the others enough that he’d be comfortable just watching them die. And if he let Will, who by some miracle had survived, die, then what was the point of him accepting this mission in the first place? He’d taken on a contract to bring Will back if he found him alive, and he wasn’t one to renege on his promises.
Hajime pulled a two-meter tall coffin-shaped shield out of his Treasure Trove and connected it to his prosthetic left arm. He started pouring mana into it, and a giant spike popped out of the bottom half with a pneumatic hiss. He thrust it into the ground as hard as he could.
A second later, the dragon’s black breath cut through the air with the precision of a laser. It traveled faster than sound, smashing into Hajime’s shield with a thunderous roar not even a second after it had been fired. The waves of heat radiating off the black laser were so great that they melted the ground around him.
“Guoooooooh!” Hajime let out a bestial roar as he pushed back against the breath’s
force. Hajime’s body, along with the shield, began to glow a deep crimson. He was using his Diamond Skin. His magic held out for a while, and even pushed the breath back a short distance, but finally the breath broke through and slammed into the shield once more.
And yet, his shield withstood the impact. Heat powerful enough to break through his Diamond Skin assailed the shield, slowly melting through it. However, every time it looked like the breath would break through, Hajime mended his shield with his transmutation.
Though he’d driven the spiked bottom of the shield into the ground, the force was still enough to slowly push him back. Hajime transmuted spikes into the bottom of his shoes as well, then cast Diamond Skin once more. He pushed his left arm a little further out, while supporting the shield with his right as well.
Hajime’s shield was made with a mixture of taur and shtar ore, and layered with an outer coating of azantium.
Since he was a Synergist, he could withstand an attack powerful enough to melt even azantium. So long as the ore bought him a few seconds, he could always transmute it back to perfect condition. And even if someone did manage to somehow break past the azantium layer, they’d then have to contend with the shtar layer underneath. As shtar’s hardness was proportional to the amount of mana poured into it, so long as Hajime had mana left to spare, it would never be broken.
Since it took the breath more than a few seconds to melt through the azantium layer, the dragon had no hope of piercing Hajime’s shield. However, it did possess enough strength to blow him away along with his shield.
Even Hajime, with his superhuman strength, was slowly getting pushed back. There were deep divots in the ground made by the spikes he’d transmuted into the shield and his boots as he’d been forced back.
Hajime, with his inhuman stamina, his shield, and his Diamond Skin ability wasn’t in any real danger of taking damage, but the people behind him would be incinerated by the dragon’s breath, leaving not even ashes behind, if he was blown away.
As he was fretting over what to do, he suddenly felt something soft at his back.
“Nagumo!”
“Nagumo-kun!”
He glanced back in surprise. To his utter amazement, Yuka and Aiko were trying to support him by pushing his back with all their might. It looked like they’d finally returned to their senses, saw Hajime being pushed back, and had come to help.
Aiko simply looked desperate, but Yuka’s face, illuminated by the red and black fireworks display that was Hajime’s mana colliding with the breath weapon, was deathly pale. She was trembling, not because of the force crashing into them, but because the trauma of what had happened in the labyrinth was still haunting her. The fact that she was still trying despite that was proof of her courage.
Seeing those two brought Atsushi back to his senses as well. With a spirited yell, he ran up to Hajime, and a second later Taeko, Nana, and even Will followed suit.
The barrage showed no signs of stopping. The heat had long since evaporated the river water, so the force of the impact kept sending half-melted stones flying out of the riverbed.
Hajime could no longer tell how much time had passed. It felt like an eternity to him, but in reality scarcely 10 seconds had gone by. He grit his teeth in determination, and at the same time, he heard the long awaited voice of his salvation.
“Heavensfall.” A whirling black sphere that was about four meters in diameter appeared above the black dragon’s head. Its darkness was so absolute that it felt as if one would be sucked into it if they just stole a glance at it. That ominous black sphere fell to the earth, crushing the dragon beneath it.
“Graaaaaaaaaah!?” The stream was interrupted as the dragon roared in pain, grounded by Yue’s sphere, but her spell was far from done. It pressed down on the dragon with even greater force, enough to create a dragon-sized depression in the ground.
This was the gravity spell Heavensfall. One of Yue’s newly acquired spells. That whirling black sphere increased its gravitational force in proportion to the amount of mana poured into it. It could also change the gravitational orientation of its target, making it a very versatile spell.
When used on oneself, gravity magic required surprisingly little mana. However, when used on other objects, the air, or other people, it required exponentially more. Even Yue had needed ten seconds to cast it. Plus, it drained an alarming amount of her mana. Though she still hadn’t completely mastered the skill, so it was likely she’d be able to cut down the cast time and mana cost the more she trained.
The ruler of the skies had been forced to the ground, and it didn’t take kindly to that. It mustered all of its strength and rose to its feet. However, before it could do anything else, Shea came hurtling down toward it, Drucken at the ready.
“Here’s the finisher!” Shea yelled, rabbit ears flapping wildly in the wind. She used numerous shotgun blasts to accelerate her fall, swinging her hammer down at the dragon’s head.
There was a thunderous impact as she landed.
The force of her blow created a crater so large that it looked like the area had just been bombed. Her smash had been a magnitude more powerful than the one she’d used on the Miledi Golem.
The reason being that of all the improvements Hajime had added to Drucken, chief among them was enchanting the compressed azantium that made up her hammer with gravity magic. However, instead of neutralizing Drucken’s weight, he’d multiplied it, so it could grow even heavier depending on how much mana was poured into it. As it was, Drucken resembled the hundred ton hammer from a certain famous manga.
Anyone or anything that took that head on would likely be annihilated. If they took it head-on, anyway…
“Graaaaaaah!” A fireball hurtled toward Yue from amid the dust surrounding the dragon. Yue adjusted her gravity so that she “fell” to the right and avoided it. However, she had to cancel Heavensfall in order to do so.
As the dust settled, Hajime could see that the dragon had managed to avoid Drucken by a hair’s breadth. It had pulled out every last ounce of its strength in order to do so.
The dragon circled in place, swinging its tail angrily at Shea.
“Wawawa!?” Shea managed to just pull Drucken out in time, and use it as a shield. At the same time, she leaped into the air, deadening the impact, but sending her flying backward through the trees.
Having regained its footing, the dragon rest its golden-eyed gaze on Hajime… or rather right past Hajime and at Will.
Hajime quickly returned the shield to his Treasure Trove and pulled out Donner and Schlag, firing them as fast as he could.
A barrage of bullets slammed into the dragon, leaving a trail of red streaks in their wake. Unable to dodge such a fast attack, the dragon was blown backward into the river. A massive spray of water rose into the air as it fell.
Realizing it was dangerous to keep the fighting near Will, Hajime charged after it. He reloaded Donner and Schlag as he ran, firing a second barrage soon after.
The dragon rose from the river with a roar, sending another wave of water splashing everywhere. It ignored Hajime entirely and fired another fireball at Will.
“Ah!” Hajime had launched this series of fierce attacks to draw the dragon’s attention to him, but it appeared that it had eyes only for Will.
“Yue!”
“Okay— Liquid Barricade!”
Will let out a very unmanly shriek and shrunk back. However, before the fireball could hit him, a giant wall of water rose up to protect him. The fireball dissipated as it slammed into Yue’s Liquid Barricade.
“W-We’ve gotta help them!”
“Y-Yeah!”
Barely able to keep up with lightning pace of the battle, Yuka pulled out her artifacts, a collection of legendary throwing knives. There were twelve of them and they had the unique ability to attract each other, so as long as Yuka kept one in her hand, she could recall all the others. She wrapped her knives in a wreath of flame and threw them at the dragon.
At the same time, Atsushi pulled out his twin shamshirs and swung them down. His job
was “Arabian Kirito” and his artifacts let loose razor sharp blades of wind every time he swung them.
However, Yuka’s flaming knives and Atsushi’s wind blades didn’t even so much as scratch the dragon’s jet-black scales.
Dismayed, Yuka and Atsushi nevertheless dutifully readied their knives and shamshirs once more. Seeing them struggle so desperately, Noboru, Akito, Nana, and Taeko all found their courage and started firing long-range attacks from behind the safety of Yue’s water barrier.
“Gwaaaaaaah!” This time their attacks didn’t even reach the dragon, as its roar blew all the projectiles away. The ferocity of the roar and the intensity of its glare left them trembling in fear once more, and Taeko and Nana even fell over.
“Tch! Sensei, take those fools and get out of here!” “But… Nagumo-kun…”
Their spirited display of courage had ended in vain, leaving the students shivering in terror. Hajime could tell they’d be of no use, so he urged Aiko to take them somewhere safe.
However, Aiko hesitated. No matter how he acted, Hajime was still one of her students, and she was loathe to leave him behind to fight such a powerful monster alone.
Meanwhile, the dragon had finally risen out of the river and flown back into the sky. It unleashed a torrent of fireballs at the ground below. As always, its target was Will.
Hajime was bombarding it with bullets, but he wasn’t able to attract its attention in the slightest. The dragon’s scales were as hard as the scorpion Hajime had fought in the past, and even his full-power railgun shells did little more than dent them.
Its focus was completely on Will. It was almost as if it was being controlled by something. A robot obediently following out its orders. Only attacks powerful enough to interfere with its efforts to kill Will could grab its attention, and even then only temporarily.
Hajime had no idea why whoever was controlling this dragon wanted Will dead, but it made his job easier. He shouted out his plan to Yue.
“Yue, focus on protecting Will! I’ll get the dragon!”
“Okay, got it!” Yue instantly swapped her gravitational orientation to Will, zoomed toward him, and righted herself just before colliding with him. She was mildly annoyed at the fact that Aiko and the others couldn’t even get out of the line of fire, but considering their level of skill, she realized it was to be expected.
“If you don’t want to die, get behind me…” Yue had zero interest in the students, but as Aiko was someone Hajime seemed to respect, she at least made a token effort to protect her. Besides, it would just make her life harder if they started moving around, so it was easier on her to keep them quiet.
Taeko, Nana, Noboru, and Akito all scuttled about in a helpless panic, but Yuka, Atsushi, and Aiko at least had the presence of mind to retreat behind Yue’s ice barrier, cursing their helplessness all the while.
In truth, they were at least a little stronger than this. However, even after learning Hajime had survived, even after finding the strength to stand up once more, the trauma they’d experienced that day wouldn’t disappear so easily. The day they’d nearly been slaughtered by the Behemoth and the Traum Soldiers, the day they’d seen Hajime “die” had been imprinted firmly onto their minds and hearts.
And even if they could fight at their full potential, the dragon’s strength was on a completely different level. They wouldn’t even be able to scratch its scales. All they could do was watch the battle unfold as they hid behind Yue’s beautifully crafted ice wall.
Knowing that Will was safely under Yue’s protection, Hajime was finally able to go all out.
The dragon was still wholeheartedly focused on tearing down Yue’s barrier. Realizing fireballs wouldn’t be enough, it once again arched its head back and began concentrating its mana.
“Hah, this is the first time I’ve been ignored even after shooting at something… Well, I’ll just have to make sure you won’t be able to ignore me any longer!” Hajime holstered Donner and Schlag, then pulled Schlagen, his anti-materiel rifle, out of his Treasure Trove. After that, he activated his Lightning Field. Red sparks started shooting down Schlagen’s barrel.
Realizing whatever Hajime had up his sleeve might be fatal, the dragon finally turned its gaze to him. As expected, it couldn’t ignore something so dangerous.
Hajime fired the same instant the dragon unleashed its breath. A single red streak and a cloud of black death collided with each other, creating an explosion of crimson and black.
The resulting shockwave was so ferocious that it uprooted nearby trees and sent them hurtling through the air. In terms of power, Hajime’s bullet and the dragon’s breath were about equal.
However, there was a fundamental difference in the composition of the two attacks, which was the decisive difference. The dragon’s breath weapon was a continual attack, while a Schlagen was designed to pierce through a single point. That was why the bullet was able to come out the victor.
The bullet slammed into the dragon’s head from below, making it snap backward. The full metal jacket bullet had packed quite a punch even after making it through the cloud of death.
However, it was nowhere near a fatal wound. That being said, with the breath’s trajectory so abruptly changed, the dragon didn’t have time to stop the outpouring of mana in time to prevent it from losing a few teeth and one of its wings.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Roaring in pain, the dragon fell to the ground in a
spectacular tailspin.
Hajime quickly used Aerodynamic to avoid the breath, and then used it again in the air, along with Supersonic Step. His foot slammed into the dragon’s unprotected stomach, powered by both the accelerated speed of his fall and the strength of his Steel Legs skill.
The dragon’s body doubled over as his kick collided. The force of the impact sent cracks running through the ground. It let out another agonized roar, but clearly hadn’t actually taken that much damage. After all, its scales were tough enough to fend off a railgun.
Still, fact was that Hajime hadn’t expected his kick to do much to begin with, so he swiftly raised his left arm. It let out a high pitched metallic whine. Then, he activated one of the gimmicks he’d installed into it, the high frequency oscillator, before bringing it down on the dragon.
“Ever feel what it’s like to get sucker punched?” There was a dangerous gleam in Hajime’s eyes and feral grin on his face. He mercilessly brought his fist down on the dragon, something that had pulverized a boulder in one blow.
There was a loud boom, which made cracks start appearing on the dragon’s scales, but with the way the impact had been transferred, Hajime was certain there must have been some damage to its internal organs as well.
“Graaaah!?” Blood spurted from the dragon’s mouth along with a roar this time. This was more pain than it had ever felt before. Its eyes were still glazed over with confusion, but it already realized it’d be dangerous to let Hajime remain near it. It poured an enormous amount of mana into its remaining wing and unleashed a gale of epic proportions to blow him off it before quickly returning to a standing position.
Hajime once again used Aerodynamic to leap out of harm’s way, but not before leaving a few presents for the dragon.
The dragon warily eyed Hajime, but was suddenly rocked by an explosion originating from its stomach. The blast was powerful enough to send the dragon hurtling through the air. Hajime had stuffed some grenades in the cracks in its scales before flying to safety.
“Kraaaaaaaaah!” The dragon doubled over in pain, letting out more of a whimper than a roar. Its head drooped over and blood dripped from its mouth. This time it had been grievously wounded.
Its attention was now fully on Hajime and not Will. It opened its jaws once more and let loose a torrent of fireballs.
They exploded at random, like a burst of anti-aircraft fire, but none of them even came close to touching Hajime. Using a combination of Aerodynamic and Supersonic Step, he nimbly wove through the barrage of explosions, leaving afterimages in his wake. He continued using hit-and-run tactics to whittle down the dragon’s strength.
He used Donner and Schlag to target its claws, gums, eyes, tail, basically any spot that seemed even mildly unguarded. Then, whenever he saw an opening, he’d close in and use
his oscillator arm to pound the dragon’s head, flank, and any other vital areas he could reach.
“Graaaah! Gwaaaah!” The dragon was clearly in agony at this point. Its scales were cracked everywhere, and blood was pouring from its mouth in great gouts.
“Holy shit…” Atsushi muttered in awe as he watched the battle behind the safety of Yue’s ice wall. Yuka, Aiko, and the others all silently nodded in agreement. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the spectacle unfolding before them. Even Will was watching with such unabashed excitement that it was hard to believe he’d been shuddering in terror mere minutes ago.
Halfway through the fight Shea had returned and had been about to join in, when she’d been stopped by Yue, who had guessed Hajime’s true purpose for fighting so savagely, so she was standing next to her as a spectator. She’d been blown away without a chance to strut her stuff, which left her a little dispirited, though. Her bunny ears were drooping over too.
The reason he didn’t finish the dragon off with Schlagen, Orkan, or any of his other heavy duty weapons was to show just how powerful he was to Aiko and the others.
He was using the dragon to show off different combat strategies. After all, while the dragon’s attacks were powerful, its huge frame made it an easy target, and its telegraphed attacks showed that as long as it was easy to dodge, a powerful attack meant nothing. The fact that he was practically using this fight as a lesson showed that he wasn’t even breaking a sweat fighting such a weak opponent.
He wanted to make an example of his power on the off chance that Aiko told the Holy Church, the king, or Kouki about his blasphemous remarks after they parted ways. He wanted to show her that there was nothing even an entire nation could to do stop him.
It might’ve looked like Hajime was just using the dragon as his punching bag, which he was, but its tenacity still impressed him. He had managed to crack its scales, but he still hadn’t been able to shatter a single one. Its stamina and defensive power were truly admirable. Out of curiosity, he had used Ore Appraisal on the scales, but there’d been no reaction, which meant that if the scales weren’t organic matter, they weren’t any kind of material Hajime could transmute.
After a while, Hajime decided he’d put on enough of a show. Deciding to finish it off, he quickly stepped into the dragon’s blind spot, then kicked it onto its back once more. Taking advantage of its sluggish movements, he pulled his pile bunker out of his Treasure Trove.
Atsushi and the other guys began murmuring to each other, but Hajime ignored them and fixed the anchors in place. Once that was done, he activated his Lighting Field. He’d picked the pile bunker because he hadn’t tested it out at full power yet, so wanted to see what it could accomplish.
He set the azantium-coated stake spinning, making sparks fly off the bunker. He had no doubt his four ton stake would instantly kill the dragon.
However, as the saying went, even a cornered mouse would bite a cat. It was when a beast was wounded that it was at its most dangerous. It seemed black dragons were no exception.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” With an ear-splitting roar, the dragon let loose a monstrous shockwave. It was no more than a haphazard explosion of mana, but it was powerful enough to shake loose Hajime, who’d not only strengthened his already ridiculously powerful body to the limit with body strengthening, but had also had the pile bunker’s anchors to keep him in place. The force nearly wrenched his artificial arm out of its socket. The dragon then rolled over in an attempt to send Hajime flying.
“Uoooh!?” He stumbled back a few steps. That was enough to foul his aim, and his pile bunker fired harmlessly up toward the sky. Hajime spared only a glance to the stake that had vanished into the horizon before turning his attention back to the dragon. He correctly predicted that it would attempt to take Will with it in a final futile act of resistance.
“Tch, Shea!”
“R-Roger!”
Hajime chided himself for letting his guard down before calling out to Shea. Using the ice wall as a foothold, Shea leaped into the air, then hurtled toward the dragon like a meteorite, using her shotgun blasts to propel her forward. She was determined not to miss this time.
In perfect condition the dragon might have stood a chance at dodging, but weakened as it was, it had no hope of escaping Shea’s wrath.
Shea poured as much mana as she could into Drucken, turning an already heavy warhammer into a dense force of destruction. It slammed into the dragon’s head with a resounding crash.
The force of the blow had Shea doing a near handstand as her body flew into the air, and the dragon’s head slammed into the ground with earth-shattering force. After the shockwaves died down, silence reigned on the mountainside.
“Phew. That should make up for my mess up earlier. But man, this thing’s tough…” Shea exclaimed in surprise as she put Drucken away.
Her surprise was to be expected, as while many of the scales on its head had cracked, and some had shattered, it was in surprisingly good shape. Its defensive power was truly fearsome.
“Hmm? Yeah, looks like it’s at least as tough as the monsters in the abyss. Wonder how many mountain ranges it had to pass to get here.” Half-amazed, half just annoyed, Hajime walked up to the collapsed dragon. His Sense Presence told Hajime the dragon was still alive, so he moved in to finish it off.
The giant spike Hajime’s pile bunker had fired into the sky smashed into the ground between them.
What perfect timing. Hajime was suddenly reminded of the idiom More had told him. “Only a fool kicks a dragon’s arse.”
Hajime activated his Steel Arms and pulled the stake out of the ground. He carried it on his shoulder as he circled around to the dragon’s rear. Then, he held the spike like a javelin, and prepared to toss it into the dragon’s ass. The massive black spike would be more than enough to finish the job.
Everyone grimaced as they realized what Hajime was planning on doing. True, shattering the dragon’s scales seemed like a daunting task, but this was still too much. Everyone except Yue and Shea shuddered at his merciless decision, but Hajime paid them no mind.
“Let’s see how you like this being shoved up your ass, you stupid dragon.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he plunged black the spike as far into the dragon’s butt as he could.
A second later—
“Aaaaaaaaah! How dare youuu!” The dragon let out an anguished scream as it opened its eyes.
As the spike had only gone in halfway, Hajime had been planning on punching it in further, but the dragon’s screams, which sounded very much like words, surprised him so much that he unclenched his fist.
“My backside~ My poor backside~” Its pained, agonized, and oddly impassioned scream was so unexpected that it shocked everyone stiff.
It would seem that this dragon… was no ordinary monster.
“Take it out~ Please take it out~” The voice that echoed through the riverbed sounded pitiful. And decidedly feminine. The dragon’s jaws weren’t moving, so she was clearly using some kind of wide-area telepathy to broadcast her voice. That made sense, as it was unlikely a dragon’s mouth and vocal cords would be able to produce anything resembling human speech.
However, it was impossible for monsters to understand or use human speech. The only exception being a strange fish with a human-shaped face. Leaving that aside, no other monsters had been seen using language of any sort.
Though the presence of a black dragon here itself was out of the ordinary. It made absolutely no sense for a monster on par with the creatures Hajime had faced off in the labyrinth to be wandering the surface like this. And if by some chance there was a dragon’s nest nearby, there’s no way it would have remained hidden.
That left only two possibilities. First, that it was an undocumented kind of monster that had come from beyond the fifth layer of mountains, where no one had ever explored. Or second…
“Are you… one of the dragonmen?” The dragon stiffened up upon hearing Hajime’s question. However a second later it let out a defeated sigh. It appeared that it hadn’t wanted the fact that it was a dragonman to be found out. Still, at this point, she could no
longer hide it. It would be pointless to try and deny it now.
“How could I make such a blunder…” she muttered regretfully. She wasn’t sure if the boy before her had found out because of how odd her movements had been while she was controlled, or because she’d accidentally spoke after being nailed in the ass… Chances were it was both.
“…Indeed. I am a proud member of the dragonman race. There are a number of reasons why I ended up here. I will explain all, so may I please ask that you remove that object from my anus? I am nearly out of mana. And if I was to return to my original form as is… suffice to say my backside would end up in a most… unsightly state.”
Hajime’d still been unsure when he asked, but it looked like his guess had been on the money.
Hajime was quite frankly amazed by this strange “luck” of his. Ever since he’d arrived in this world, he’d had a penchant of running into rare or unique existences. Yue was a vampire, a race thought to have gone extinct three hundred years ago. On top of that, she was royalty. Meanwhile Shea also exhibited traits of atavism, or at least that was the prevailing theory, and now he was face to face with a dragonman, a race thought to have gone extinct five hundred years ago. Fate seemed to enjoy matching him up with extraordinary people.
“…What are you doing here?” As Hajime was still pondering over his strange karma, Yue took over the questioning. Even for a vampire the dragonmen were a legendary race. And just like Yue, this dragon was quite possibly the last survivor of her race. Naturally, Yue was interested. Curiosity sparkled in her eyes.
“Like I said, I will explain so please take that thing out of me… My mana is nearly depleted… Hey, stop that! Don’t keep pounding it in! The stimulation— The stimulation will—”
“Yue’s the one asking questions here, you punk!” Hajime said, acting like a common thug, and started pounding on the spike with his fist.
The black dragon writhed and screamed. The solemn dignity she’d radiated upon their first meeting was nowhere to be found.
“What’s a member of a lost race doing here of all places, and why are you so determined to kill a single adventurer… I’m pretty interested in the answer myself. I suppose I can delay shoving this all the way through to your mouth until you answer at least. If you want to show me your gratitude, hurry up and talk.”
The dragonman’s actions had been so unnatural that he was willing to delay killing his enemy until he figured out the details of what had happened. Of course he didn’t stop pounding the spike in, just slowed down a little.
“Aah n-not sho hard~ I-I’ll talk, so stop!”
Aiko and the others were appalled by Hajime’s callous attitude, but he ignored them. But if he kept going the dragon probably wouldn’t be able to talk so he stopped. He kept
his hand on the spike so he could resume at any time though.
Relieved, the black dragon let out a sigh. She hurriedly began explaining what had happened. Hajime wasn’t sure if the sensuality he sensed in her voice was just his imagination or not
“I was being controlled. I had no intention of attacking you people. However, the man who took control of me ordered me to find and kill that young man and his comrades.”
She beckoned to Will with her gaze. Will started trembling again, but he bravely met the dragon’s gaze. Something inside him had changed after watching Hajime’s fight.
“But why? And how?”
“Allow me to start from the beginning. I am…”
In short, this was what happened:
There was something the black dragon needed to do, which was why she had left the dragonmen’s hidden village. That something was to investigate the visitors that had been summoned from another world. While there were many more details, the gist of it was a dragonman with especially good perception had sensed a huge outpouring of mana a few months ago, and had surmised that someone had come to this world.
The dragonmen had a policy of non-intervention when it came to the affairs of the rest of the world, but they couldn’t afford to remain ignorant about these mysterious visitors, and thus sent someone to investigate.
That someone had been the black dragon Hajime had just fought. Originally her plan had been to cross the mountains, then transform into a more human appearance and mix in with the people. From there she would have hidden her heritage as a dragonman and set about gathering information. On her way here, she had stopped for a rest in the valley between the first and second mountain ranges. As there were still dangerous monsters roaming that area, she had used the special magic granted to all dragonmen, Dragonification, to transform into her black dragon appearance before settling down to sleep.
While she was still sleeping, a man hidden in the shadows of a black robe had appeared before her. He had used a combination of dark magic to brainwash her and erode her mind little by little.
Of course most people would have been woken up by such an assault. However, this is where the dragonmen’s bad habit worked to the man’s advantage. As More had mentioned before when he was explaining the proverb, dragonmen were notoriously hard to wake in their dragon forms. Only a good kick to the arse could rouse them from their slumber.
That being said, dragonmen were also known for their immense willpower, and a dragonman of her caliber wouldn’t have been easy to control.
The reason that man had been able to take over her mind so perfectly was because…
“He was a truly terrifying human. His proficiency with dark magic was so great that I daresay he must have been some kind of genius. And he had had nearly a whole day to
work his magic on me. I may be fearsome, but even I cannot withstand such an attack…” She trailed off sadly, as if that had been the greatest blunder of her life. Unfortunately for her, Hajime was merciless with his words.
“So what you’re telling me is that you were in such a deep sleep that you didn’t even notice when someone was hovering over you casting magic on you for an entire day?” Everyone looked at her like she was an idiot. However the dragon only stared off in the distance and continued as if he’d said nothing.
She did, it seemed, have some semblance of an excuse. Flying across the sea had been an exhausting ordeal, but her mission required speed. So when she had stopped for a rest, she’d placed herself in a deeper slumber than normal. Either way, it was obviously her mistake that led to this situation, though she didn’t admit it.
The reason she knew this mysterious sorcerer had spent an entire day taking her over was because even under his mind control, her original personality and memories had remained. They had just been locked inside her. And it seemed her ears had picked up someone muttering “I can’t believe this took a whole day…” after she’d awoken.
After that, she’d been forced to do the robed man’s bidding, and had assisted him in bringing the monsters on the second mountain range under his control. Then one day the herd of Bulltaurs he’d sent over to the first mountain range had been spotted by Will’s party, and they had been ordered to eliminate all witnesses. The robed man was worried survivors might report their appearance, which, while unlikely, could have led people to guess there was someone in the mountains controlling monsters. In order to make doubly sure everyone was annihilated, he’d sent the dragon over as well.
Then, right as she’d found Will, she’d been attacked by an unknown entity who’d beat the living shit out of her. Fearing for her life, she’d started to panic. Which is what had caused the earlier mana explosion.
The rest everyone knew. She’d then attempted one last suicide rush at Will, as per her orders, when Shea’s skull-shattering blow had landed on her, followed by an extremely painful object shoved into her ass. The combined shock of it had blown away the mind control, returning her to her senses.
She wasn’t exactly sure if it was the head blow or the butt-spike that had done the job though.
“…Are you fucking kidding me.” Once the dragon finished her explanation, a low, trembling voice echoed through the silence. Everyone turned around in surprise. There was a murderous rage in Will’s gaze as he glared at the dragon, his hands balled up into fists.
“…Are you saying it’s not your fault because you were controlled… that it’s not your fault you killed Gale-san, Navare-san, Lent-san, Wisry-san and Kurt-san!?” The anger he’d felt at the death of his comrades had continually been building up underneath the mountain of panic that had occupied his thoughts until now. Finally, it had boiled over in a violent outburst of shouting.
“……” The black dragon didn’t reply. She stared quietly into Will’s eyes, absorbing his
pain and anger. That calm attitude only served to enrage Will further.
“Besides, who’s to say you’re even telling the truth! For all we know this is all bullshit you made up so we spare your life!”
“…Everything I told you just now is the truth. I swear it on my pride as a dragonman.”
Will opened his mouth to protest again. But he was cut off by Yue.
“…She’s not lying.”
“What proof do you have that…”
One look from Yue silenced Will. After he trailed off Yue returned her gaze to the black dragon and continued.
“Dragonmen are known for their integrity and loyalty. I’ve lived far longer than any of you. And when I was around, stories of dragonmen were far more common. She staked her pride as a dragonman on her story. It’s no lie. Besides… I know what a liar’s eyes look like, and she’s no liar.”
Yue gazed off into the distance as she said that last part. She must be thinking about what happened to her three hundred years ago.
There was no doubt her life before meeting Hajime had been full of lies and deceit.
Even the people she thought closest to her had turned out to be liars.
And it was because she’d averted her eyes from that truth that she’d been betrayed. Her somewhat unique life experiences had made her very sensitive to lies and liars. And her conclusion was that the dragon before them was no liar.
“Oh, I did not expect to see those who still knew of us in this day and age… Wait, how long did you say you’ve lived?” Thinking that there were still people alive that told stories of her people’s race, the dragon spoke in a pleasantly surprised voice.
“…Long. I am a survivor of the vampire race. Three hundred years ago, our monarchs looked to the dragonmen as models of how to live, as well as how to rule.”
In other words, to Yue the dragonmen were symbols of righteousness. At the very least, she spoke of them with respect. That had played no small part in her decision to stop Will’s tirade.
When she heard about Yue’s heritage, the dragon was even more surprised.
“Unbelievable! A vampire… and three hundred years old at that… I see. Our sources from the outside world had told us the vampires had been wiped out, but I see their princess still yet lives. I believe your name was…” It seemed this dragon had lived at least as long as Yue, if not more. But the way she spoke about events, it seemed that while she kept a distance from the affairs of the world, she wasn’t ignorant of them. The dragonmen must send people out to mingle with other humans and gather news relatively often. Which is why she was surprised when she’d heard the vampires’ princess had survived. Needless to say, Aiko and Yuka and the others were even more shocked. Their jaws were
hanging open.
Yue headed the dragon off before she could speak Yue’s original name.
“Yue… that’s my name. The person I treasure most in this world gave it to me. Please use that.” She was blushing slightly, and holding her hands close to her chest, like she was cupping something dear.
Sparkling waves of happiness were radiating off her. When they saw her expression, the girls all looked like they’d spotted a buffet of sweets, while the guys blushed, captivated by her words. Even Will’s anger dimmed slightly.
But then he thought back to the kind adventurers who’d taught him so much, and he found his rage again.
“…Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that you killed them… Even if it was against your will… you still did it! Gale-san said he was going to propose once this mission was over! Just what did they die for…” He understood logically that the dragon wasn’t to blame. But he couldn’t help himself. Even if he understood it in his head, he couldn’t accept it in his heart. He ground his teeth together as a dark fog of anger enveloped his thoughts.
That’s a lot of flags he just raised. While appreciating the cliched nature of Will’s speech, Hajime suddenly remembered the locket he’d picked up.
“Will, did this belong to that Gale guy?” He pulled it out and threw it over to Will. Will caught it and opened it up. As he stared at the picture inside, his mouth turned up into a smile.
“This is my locket! I thought I’d lost it forever. I can’t believe you found it. Thank you so much!”
“Oh that’s yours?”
“Yes! There’s no mistaking it, the portrait inside is of my mother!”
“Y-Your mother?” Hajime stuttered, surprised at how far off the mark his guess had been.
When he asked Will why she looked like she was in her early twenties, he got a completely unexpected response.
“If I was going to carry around a portrait of my mother, it makes sense to have one of her in her younger days, right?” Everyone present realized he must have had a huge Oedipus complex. The girls all backed a few steps away from him. As an aside, Gale’s lover had been a guy. His full name was Gale Gaye. It was often said that a person’s name described who they were.
Will had calmed down a great deal after discovering his locket wasn’t lost forever. Though it was hard to ascertain whether or not that had actually helped. Even if he had calmed down, that didn’t mean his resentment had faded. And even after regaining his composure, he still insisted that the black dragon be killed. His reasoning was that there
was no telling when she might get brainwashed again, but everyone knew it was just an excuse. What he really wanted was revenge.
It was then that the dragon, in a voice full of remorse, proposed a solution.
“Whether it was by my will or not, the truth is that I stole the lives of many innocent people. If you say I must die for my crimes, then I shall accept that punishment. However, could you not give me some time? Before I die, I must at least destroy that dangerous man. That man is trying to create an army of monsters. The dragonmen have always kept their distance from the affairs of the continent, however after what he did, it is my responsibility to stop him. I cannot allow him to run free… I understand what I am asking of you is selfish. But will you please grant me the opportunity to stop this tragedy before it gets any worse?” Everyone’s expressions changed when they heard the words “army of monsters.” They all looked to Hajime. At some point, he had become the effective leader of their group. The one who’d fought the dragon off had been him, so it seemed natural to entrust the decision to him as well.
His response was as casual and swift as always.
“I really don’t give a damn about your responsibilities. You caused us quite a bit of trouble. So for that you’ll have to die.”
He raised his artificial arm and made a fist.
“Please wait! Y-You cannot seriously mean to kill me now, not after all I just said! I’m begging you, please let me go. Once I settle my affairs I’ll let you do whatever you want with me! So please! Think of the future generations that might yet be saved!”
Hajime ignored her and brought his fist down. But it never reached its intended target. Before he could pound the spike further in, Yue hugged him from behind. She lifted her face to his ear and muttered some words in a hushed tone.
“…Are you really going to kill her?”
“Hm? I mean yeah, we were pretty much fighting to the death a second ago…”
“…But she’s not an enemy. She never once directed animosity toward you. She was being controlled.”
Yue didn’t want to let the dragon die. As she had growing up respecting the dragonmen race, letting Hajime kill her would leave a bad taste in Yue’s mouth.
And while the battle had eventually devolved into the death match, technically speaking she had initially been after Will. And now they even knew the reason why. She had been robbed of her will, and forced to carry out her controller’s orders like a machine. In the first place, the only reason it had devolved into a death match despite how focused she’d been on Will was because of Hajime.
True, keeping Will alive was Hajime’s current mission, so by making Will her enemy she had made Hajime her enemy, but the truth was that Hajime’s real enemy was the man behind the dragon. If anyone should become the target of his ire, it would be him.
There was one other reason Yue had stopped Hajime.
Yue understood very well Hajime’s worldview. But she couldn’t see the dragon before her in the same light as the enemies they’d killed before. After everything she’d experienced as the vampires’ monarch, Yue had a good eye for people. And Yue could tell that the dragon truly had no intention of becoming Hajime’s enemy. Yue didn’t want Hajime to kill anyone that wasn’t truly his enemy. As for why, that was because…
“…If you compromise your own rules, you’ll start losing your humanity. Is killing her something you really have to do?” She was worried Hajime would start to break down if he actually killed someone who wasn’t truly his enemy.
Sensing Yue’s worries, Hajime cocked his head and thought about whether that black dragon really was his enemy. Hajime wasn’t so naive as to worry about whether his opponent was being controlled or not in the middle of a fight. He would kill anything standing in his way.
But was there any reason to execute a former foe who had since been freed from her mind control? Was that still killing an “enemy”? Hajime stared into Yue’s eyes, inches away from his own. As he considered his own principles, a strained voice interrupted them.
“Sorry to interrupt your flirting, but if you’re still debating, could you please remove this spike from my behind? At this rate I’ll die soon regardless of what you do.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Any foreign objects inserted inside me in my dragon form remain the same way when I revert to human form. Just imagine a woman with a spike this hard and large inside her… Do you think she could survive?”
Everyone grimaced as they imagined the sight. Yuka and the other girls unconsciously covered their butts sympathetically.
“I am maintaining this form with my mana, but that will soon run dry. I can last maybe another minute like this… I am interested in seeing what lies beyond death, but dying like this would be too unsightly to bear. Think of the future generations that might be saved!” While that last bit seemed rather out of place, her voice was very clearly strained. Hajime didn’t have much time to make his choice.
“…Fine.” With one hand wrapped around Yue, he decided that if he was hesitating this much already, it couldn’t hurt to listen to his partner’s advice. People often didn’t understand themselves very well. In which case, it made sense to do what would put the person he trusted most at ease.
With his free hand, Hajime grabbed the massive spike stuck in the dragon’s butt. Then he pulled with all his strength.
“Haaaahn! S-Slower please. I am still unaccustomed to such— Afwuu. Yaah, so rough! This— Aaaahn! Something— something strange is coming!” The spike had been driven pretty far up her asshole. So Hajime had to wiggle it around a bit and pull pretty hard to
get it out. For some strange reason, the rougher he got, the happier the dragon’s moans sounded. Hajime ignored her completely and continued pulling until finally it came free.
“Ahiiiiiiiiiiiii…! A-Amazing. I asked you to be gentle, and yet you showed not even an iota of mercy… This is the first time I’ve ever…” A few seconds after her incoherent rambling, the dragon’s body was wrapped in a cocoon of mana and gradually started to shrink. When she’d shrunk to about human size, the cocoon of mana dissipated.
What emerged from the cocoon of black mana was a beautiful woman. She had black hair and piercing golden eyes. She was sitting on her knees, supporting her body with one hand and rubbing her butt with the other. Her luxurious, thick hair fell straight down to her waist, and her disheveled bangs were stuck her blushing face. She was panting heavily, and her expression was ecstatic. Anyone would find her current appearance seductive.
She had the figure of a woman in her early twenties. Though her height was easily over 170 centimeters. She was very well endowed, and every time her shoulders heaved, her twin mounds threatened to spill out of her clothes. If Shea’s were melon sized, then this girl’s were watermelon sized.
“I can’t believe it… This is amazing.”
“S-So this is what a fantasy world is like.”
“Dammit! I know you’ve got some juice left in you! Come on, phone!”
The dragon’s beautiful appearance had a huge impact on Atsushi and the guys. The three of them were in the height of their puberty, so it was only natural. They all stooped over and spouted ridiculous lines. If this continued for any longer, they would be forced on all fours to hide their boners. Yuka and the others were staring at the guys like they were cockroaches.
“Haah… Haah… Thank you for sparing my life… My butt still feels weird… but it’s nothing compared to how much the rest of my body aches… Haah… Haah… to think pain could feel so sweet…” Both her expression and her words were rather ominous, or so Hajime thought. After a few minutes, she composed herself enough to sit up straight, and introduce herself calmly. Though her intermittent panting ruined the stately effect her sharp posture and crisp tone created.
“I have caused you all much grief. Please understand that I truly, truly am sorry for what I have done. My name is Tio Klarus. I’m a dragonman of the Klarus clan.”
Tio then went on to explain how the robed figure who was gathering a monster army was planning on attacking the nearby villages. And that he had already gathered a mob of three to four thousand monsters. Most of the monsters that inhabited the second mountain range lived in packs, so all he’d needed to do was subjugate their respective leaders, and the packs had followed.
The whole reason Hajime and the other students had been summoned to this world was because the Holy Church had feared the demons had somehow discovered a way to control monsters, so because of that, Aiko and the others surmised he must have been a member of the demon race.
However, when they said as much Tio shook her head, Tio explained that the black-robed man had been a black-haired, black-eyed human, and that while she’d called him a man, he was young enough to be considered a kid. She also distinctly remembered what he had said after taking control of her mind. Elated by his success, he had yelled, “This proves I’m better than him. I’m the real hero here!” He had seemingly harbored a massive grudge against this hero person.
A black-haired, black-eyed boy who knew the hero well and was a genius at using dark magic.
There was one person who perfectly fit all of those conditions. Aiko muttered “But that can’t be…” and she and the other students all exchanged troubled glances. As obvious as
it was, they didn’t want to believe it.
As they were worrying about what to do, Hajime, who had been using his Far Sight skill, suddenly realized something.
“Oh, so that’s…” When he’d heard Tio’s story he’d sent his Ornises out to search for the monster army and the black-robed man. One of them had spotted a large gathering of monsters, but… the numbers were off.
“You said three to four thousand right? Are you sure you weren’t a digit short?” Everyone’s eyes flew open in surprise. It appeared he’d begun his advance. The robed man was almost certainly aiming for the town of Ur. If they continued at their current pace they would be down the mountain in half a day, and reach the town in another half.
“W-We need to hurry back and warn everyone! Then we need to evacuate and ask for reinforcements from the capital… And then, and then…”
Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Aiko tried to think through her panic and figure out the best course of action. Against an army in the tens of thousands, even the ridiculously overpowered students didn’t stand a chance. Besides, they still hadn’t fully recovered from their trauma.
Aiko had basically no combat ability, Will was barely even an adventurer, and Tio was completely drained of mana. Forget stopping them, they wouldn’t even be able to slow the army down. Thus, Aiko’s plan of warning and everyone and running until reinforcements from the capital came was the best considering the circumstances.
However, while everyone else was panicking, Will quietly asked a rather odd question.
“Umm, Hajime-dono, couldn’t you do something about…” At his words, everyone looked expectantly to Hajime. Their eyes were filled with hope. Annoyed by their expectant gazes, Hajime casually waved his hand as if to dismiss the thought.
“Don’t look at me like that. My job is to bring Will safely back to Fuhren. I can’t fight a war if I’ve got to protect him. Hurry up and go warn the villagers.” Atsushi and Will were angry at how casually Hajime dismissed them. However, Aiko’s concern was elsewhere.
“Nagumo-kun, did you happen to see the black-robed man too?”
“Hm? Nope. I’ve been checking regularly, but all I’m seeing is a horde of monsters.”
Aiko hung her head sadly. After a moment of deliberation, she stated that she wanted to confirm whether or not the black-robed man was really Yukitoshi Shimizu, the missing boy they’d been searching for. As always, she put her students first. If the cause of all this trouble really was one of her students, then it was her responsibility.
However, there was no way they could leave Aiko alone among an army of monsters, and so Yuka and the others desperately tried to talk her out of it. Aiko hesitated for a bit, but then came up with another idea… namely that Hajime could accompany her. Tired of their constant arguing over whether to stay or leave, Hajime gave Aiko a cold stare.
“If you want to stay behind you can. We’re going to take Will back to the village.” With that, Hajime forcefully grabbed Will by the shoulders and started dragging him down the mountain. Will and Aiko tried to protest, saying they couldn’t leave this huge army alone, that they needed to confirm who the black-robed man was, that Hajime was strong enough to take on the whole army, and so on. Annoyed, Hajime let out a sigh and rounded on Aiko.
“Like I said before, my only job is to see Will to safety. I can’t fight an army if I’ve got someone I need to protect. Hell, let’s say for argument’s sake that I could kill them all. In a forested place like this full of boulders and rivers, there’s no way I could be sure I’d gotten every single one. Just give it a rest, okay. Even if we find out whether or not the kid really is a student, who’ll be left to warn the town? On the off chance that they’re actually stronger than us, we’ll be wiped out and the town will be caught totally by surprise. Just so you know, only I can drive Steiff and Brise, so if I go fight, you guys have no chance of making it back before the town’s attacked.” Aiko and Will fell silent. Hajime’s argument had made it clear how pointless and reckless their insistence that he go fight was.
“Well, my mast… Ahem, he has point. My mana is completely drained right now too. I understand your desire to act, but right now there’s nothing we can do. Our first priority should be warning the villagers. After a day my mana will be mostly recovered as well.” Tio followed up after Hajime, supporting his reasoning.
Was she about to call me what I think she was about to call me…? It can’t be, can it?
Realizing that was the best option in their current situation, Aiko reined in her worry and prioritized warning the town and the safety of the students still under her charge.
Tio was so drained of mana that she couldn’t move, so Hajime grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her down the mountain.
Atsushi and the other boys had been ready to fight each other for the right to carry Tio, but Yuka had quickly shut them down, and it seemed Tio herself wished to be carried by Hajime, which was why he’d ended up with the job.
But of course, Hajime wasn’t the kind of person to carry her nicely. Frowning in annoyance, he had grabbed by the legs and dragged her at first.
However, Aiko’s fierce protests had talked him into at least dragging her by the scruff of her neck. No matter what anyone said after that he refused to compromise any further. Tio herself had a look of ecstasy on her face too, which made everyone back away, thus resulting in this being the style she was dragged down the mountain in.
The party hurried to Ur as fast as they could, an army of monsters not far behind them.
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