Hi, Belba (1)
"Professor! I have a question! In your paper, you mentioned that ancient dragons didn't originally look like that. I'm really curious as to what form they actually took back then!"
"I published that paper barely a few days ago... You seem quite interested in dragons, aren't you? Why don't you pull up a chair so we can have a cup of coffee together?"
And that was how the student ended up in graduate school.
Submerging myself in the river for a long time seemed to clear my head. Opening the Shop, I bought an antidote, emptied it completely into the river current, and rubbed the solution over my skin like lotion. These were young children; even exposure to a trace amount of venom could trigger catastrophic results, and it was still a gamble whether an ordinary antidote would work in the first place.
Harboring a faint sense of dread, I returned to the shelter and brought the kids out. I had expected the clingy Miho to make the biggest fuss, but surprisingly, she remained calm and composed like a mature adult. The demon toddlers, on the other hand, were bawling their eyes out in absolute chaos.
A heavy sigh escaped my lips. It was typical behavior for children their age, but in an environment as brutal as this one, it felt dangerously out of place. Carry on like that, and you'll end up dead before you know it.
Right then, Miho strode forward and delivered a stinging slap straight across the demon boy's cheek. Full power. Crack! The sharp smack rang out incomparably louder than their sobbing, plunging the clearing into immediate, breathless silence.
Then, as though nothing had happened, Miho snuggled right back into my chest. The demon toddlers looked entirely bewildered, yet terror kept them from daring to resist her. Had she established a pecking order while I was gone? Kids these days are terrifying.
Regardless, I had a job to do. Today was the day to locate and rescue whatever intelligent beings were scattered around the vicinity. Packing up our supplies, I navigated through the jungle with the children in tow. As we advanced in an unexplored direction, bizarre dinosaurs of every imaginable shape appeared. Was that a Stegosaurus? It was a massive beast, roughly ten meters long, possessing a porcupine-like defense where the bony plates along its spine could suddenly elongate. Tricky to handle, but hardly a match for me.
Thwack.
Dodging the lethal tail spikes, I buried my blade straight into its flank—
"────!"
My knees nearly buckled. A crushing, suffocating pressure slammed into me, threatening to drag me into the dirt. Only then did I realize the dinosaur I had just slain was merely an infant.
Through the dense canopy of the rainforest, a monstrously colossal dinosaur glared directly at me. A Colossal Species. Wow. Holy shit. There was no way in hell I could win this.
Until now, I had assumed these giant apex predators were merely blessed with absurd physical might. I was wrong. The amount of mana churning in its core was at least ten times my own, if not far more. To make matters worse, as it entered combat stance, that terrifying total surged with every passing second. The sheer density of its mana felt suffocating.
"Run," I said. "Straight back to the shelter. Don't look back."
With a sweeping kick, I nudged the paralyzed children out of the creature's immediate strike zone, then steeled my mind to peak concentration. In truth, I didn't even need to force it. Every single nerve across my body flared with electrifying clarity. My flesh recognized that it had encountered an adversary on an entirely different plane from anything I had ever faced before, and it was involuntarily shifting into a desperate state of absolute survival.
Think. The priority wasn't killing the monster; it was getting out alive. Even so, there was no room for hesitation. One sloppy move, and I would be torn to pieces on the spot.
Which direction would it strike? If it attacked with its forelegs, it would be the left. The left hoof showed slightly more wear, marking it as its dominant limb. Or would it swing that massive tail? It might even cast a spell—with that much mana overflowing, magic was certainly on the table. My head felt ready to split. Every inch of that beast was a lethal weapon designed to kill me. A single grazing blow would leave me unable to stand again, and there were dozens of deadly factors to track at once.
Looking closer, every bony plate along its spine was radiating extreme, incandescent heat. That had to be the reactor sustaining such a colossal frame. I needed to watch out for that as well; the plates were overheated to the point where disturbing them might trigger a detonation.
Wait. Overheated?
The instant that realization hit, I threw myself sideways. Sure enough, a blue flame resembling concentrated plasma erupted with devastating physical force, vaporizing everything caught in its swath.
Can't you tell just by looking? I'm two seconds away from dying!
Leaping to my feet, I kicked off the earth and shot into the canopy. The beast paused for a fraction of a second, then kicked the ground just as I had.
BOOM!
With a numbing shockwave that rattled my bones, that gargantuan bulk rocketed into the air, landing right in front of my face. This was insane. How could something of that mass possess mobility comparable to mine? Ducking under a vicious tail sweep, I plummeted back toward the ground. Above or below, there was hardly any difference. Watching the splintered treetops rain down around me like debris, I couldn't help but harbor genuine doubts.
With monsters like this roaming around, could other dimensions even hope to invade? I seriously doubted it. Even if invaders charged in by the truckload like the ones I saw yesterday, they would never kill a beast like this. And this Colossal Species wasn't even the only one out there.
Is that so? I pondered the thought. Just how powerful would I need to become to defeat an aberration like this? Someday, perhaps. But certainly not today.
"Belba. Are the kids far enough away?"
"I don't have a choice."
Watching the beast charge up another plasma blast, I slowly brought my palms together as if in prayer. I had to focus every shred of will. This was my trump card, prepared from the moment I first laid eyes on the monster—a desperate gamble that could only be attempted by putting my life on the line.
ROAAAR!
With a deafening blast, a beam of concentrated mana erupted from its gaping maw. Matching its release, I channeled every drop of Dimensional Power I could muster and fired it straight into the torrent. My body held tens of times the Dimensional Power a single world could sustain. It mattered little how much mana the monster possessed; as the immense Dimensional Power compressed, it would swallow the mana whole.
The real nightmare began after that.
Light bloomed. Incomparably brighter and vaster than the sphere I had witnessed before, a blue orb resembling a miniature sun asserted its terrifying presence between the dinosaur and me. The moment the creature saw it, it wheeled around and bolted.
Too late. Did it really think it could outrun this explosion at point-blank range? There was no time to second-guess myself. I had to move. Inward.
I lunged toward the sphere, expanding as though it would detonate at any microsecond, and thrust my hands forward. The searing heat felt as if it would melt my flesh to the bone, yet I couldn't stop. If I could just deflect the blast angle, even by a fraction of a degree—
Clang—
Out of nowhere, Belba's barrier materialized in front of me, only to spiderweb with cracks and melt away in silence.
Blood burst through my exposed skin. My warped circuits snapped entirely. Blinded by light far beyond mortal limits, my eyes lost all sight. With every sense stripped away, nothing remained but agonizing pain. Particles of mana fused with Dimensional Power collided, shattered, reunited, and expanded in a violent, endless cycle—a colossal torrent of cosmic energy within which my strength was nothing more than the pathetic flutter of an insect's wings.
Yet I pushed forward all the same. Desperately praying that this fragile effort would yield a miracle. Praying that I would survive, no matter what.
Then, the entire world dissolved into blinding white.
I opened my eyes. I was still standing. Mana hybridized with Dimensional Power carried virtually no raw physical impact, so surviving the shockwave itself was natural. But my body... Unsurprisingly, it was wrecked to the point where I questioned why I was still breathing at all. A few minutes at best.
With an eerie calmness settling over me, I dragged my feet toward the path where the dinosaur had fled.
Well, look at that. It hadn't gotten very far at all. Unlike me, who had nudged the blast angle away at the final instant, the beast had taken the brunt of the detonation squarely. It slumped lifelessly against a shattered tree trunk, dead in total silence. So that was why I was still clinging to life. Its demise had spared me any further pursuit.
My hearing had yet to return. Even my vision was hazy and dim. It felt as though I was standing alone on an empty stage after the lights had gone out and the curtain had fallen. An overwhelming sense of solitude washed over me. Was this how it ended?
I tried to raise my hand to check my pulse, but my arm wouldn't obey. Giving up, I simply stared into the distant, empty air. What a shame. I had only just begun to grasp the fundamentals. If I had just one more chance, I felt I could have glimpsed the next realm of power.
Regret over my lack of strength gnawed at me. Why hadn't I pushed myself harder? Why hadn't I been more ruthless with my own growth? I had lacked a resolve forged by true life-and-death desperation. I had always left myself a margin of safety. Even when I knew the fastest path to power, I hesitated simply because it was dangerous. Even to myself, it felt pathetic.
Thud!
Just then, something pure white tumbled down from the sky above. Feathers? No, it was a person. A person with wings. On her exposed shoulder sat the crimson mark of an eye. Petite, smaller than me, with a face scrunched up and drenched in tears—an expression so ridiculous it almost made me laugh.
...She really came.
"I told you... I told you I was coming...!"
How did she get here? For a Watcher to intervene directly in a world couldn't possibly be a common occurrence. But none of that mattered right now. Belba. Potion. Shove one down my throat. Hurry.
As if hearing my thoughts, Belba let out a breathless, tearful laugh and wiped her eyes. She must have thought I was joking. I was dead serious, though.
"I'm right here! Why would you ever need a potion?!"
With those words, Belba placed her small hands upon my back. Amidst a sharp, pricking sensation, my faded vision slowly began to clear.