Oppa, I Drew a Dragon. Coming to Get You.
“...Hwaaaaah.”
“—Ah, Dame Knight! Good morning!”
“Ah, right. You’ve been working hard.”
“Dame Knight, how shall I prepare your breakfast?”
“The usual. Just some soup and bread will do.”
“But you really shouldn’t eat so little…”
“I’m a bit busy through today, so I’d appreciate something more substantial next time.”
Nearly three weeks had passed since Fenril became Freya’s knight.
At first, the household staff had found her difficult to approach — partly because of her appearance as a wolf beastkin, and partly because of the weight of the title itself. Before Fenril’s arrival, Jason had been the mansion’s sole knight and knight-captain both, and he had been such a thoroughgoing bastard that everyone assumed the new knight would be more of the same.
But what actually happened?
The only time Fenril ever looked the part of a proper knight was on her first day, when she had marched into Freya’s office in gleaming armor, full of confidence. After that, she simply reported to the office every morning with slumped shoulders and hollow eyes, then dragged herself back to her quarters late at night. Before long, the servants’ wariness had melted into something closer to pity.
So when she took her tea breaks during work and someone brought her a plate of fragrant cookies, her face would stay rigidly composed — while the fluffy wolf tail behind her spun in endless, blissful circles. The staff who witnessed that particular sight eventually found themselves able to greet her with a warm smile whenever their paths crossed.
Fenril, for her part, had expected some territorial hostility. After all, she was the proverbial rolling stone that had knocked the old one out of its place. Instead, the mansion seemed to have accepted her somewhere along the way, and she found she didn’t mind that at all.
…But wasn’t I supposed to be at my master’s side as a knight?
In all the time since her appointment, Fenril had barely done anything that could be called knightly work.
Paperwork. Paperwork. Paperwork.
From her first day straight through to last night, she had been drowning in documents so relentlessly that she was starting to wonder whether she was a knight or a clerk. Her gleaming armor had been worn exactly once. Ever since, it had hung unused on its stand. Dust was beginning to settle on it. She had begged the maids who cleaned her room to keep at least the armor polished to a shine — but an opportunity to actually wear it had yet to appear.
Her own wardrobe had degraded accordingly. Silk was out; as long as she could work through papers comfortably, anything would do. She now wore a cheap cotton shirt under a simple hard-leather vest and called it good enough.
Fortunately, her natural stamina and years of training meant she could endure this daily grind. Curmon, whose dark circles now stretched all the way down to his cheeks, looked so fragile that she half-wondered whether he could still walk. Had she ever seen him in his former, corpulent glory, she would have been genuinely horrified.
Still — last night I finally finished the big items. Today should be a little freer, right?
And today, her mood was genuinely good. The tail that usually hung limp and downward was swaying cheerfully side to side, sweeping the floor so thoroughly that the maids might as well have skipped their morning rounds.
Last night, she had finally conquered a mountain of paperwork more terrifying than any dragon. Budget allocations for territorial repairs, tax proposals, supply estimates for the new military camp — the Red Fangs — projected funding for the next quarter after the tax reductions… an absurd volume of documents, and she had cut through all of it.
There’s almost nothing left for me to do now. I can finally propose to my lady that I take up real knightly duties!
Whatever remained, Curmon could handle alone. Fenril would don the armor she had so carefully cherished, patrol the territory, and finally imprint upon its people the image of a noble, upright knight — not a criminal.
Knock, knock—
“Knight Fenril, reporting for duty.”
Convinced this would be her last morning reporting to an office instead of a training ground, Fenril’s knock rang out clearer and brighter than ever before.
“Um… my lady? There’s something I’d like to propose…?”
She pushed open the door with ambitious resolve — and the words died unfinished on her tongue.
“Ah, you’ve arrived, Dame Fenril?”
“...Oh. The office is awfully crowded this morning…? And I’m certain I finished that mountain of papers twice my height just last night…”
The documents she had definitely cleared the night before had been refilled to their original height. In front of Freya, Curmon’s eyes were trembling so violently they looked ready to fall out of his skull.
A cold shiver raced down Fenril’s entire body. Every beastkin instinct she possessed was screaming at her to turn around and flee this nightmarish space immediately. She did not. Instead, she edged carefully toward Freya.
“Dame Fenril. Do you remember the two elves who visited our mansion?”
“Pardon? Ah — yes. I remember.”
Originally, the secret had been shared only with Gordon. But Freya had decided that keeping her current closest aides — Curmon and Fenril — in the dark would only create problems going forward. She had thoroughly sworn them to secrecy before filling them in.
Curmon had a prior record, true, but he had long since shed his greasy greed along with the bulk of his flesh. Fenril had once been the boss of a crime syndicate that ruled the back alleys — and was now simply Freya’s loyal knight. Of course, that alone was not enough for Freya to trust them completely, so she had prepared several fail-safes. Concerned about damaging their morale, however, she had kept the existence of those measures between herself and Gordon alone.
“As for what has happened since then—”
Freya proceeded to brief Fenril on the situation exactly as she had already explained it to Curmon. She would be taking her family and the two elves, mounting Tene in her dragon form, and making a brief trip to the Great Forest — the homeland of the elven race. As Freya spoke, Fenril’s expression underwent a series of increasingly dramatic transformations.
“So while I’m away, I’ve set aside the work that will need doing.”
“Uh… yes? Th-this is all of it?”
“I’ve only pulled the most urgent items from my usual workload.”
“.............This?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
Fenril blinked at the sheer volume of papers Freya had labeled “immediately urgent” and “a portion of my usual work” for the few days she would be gone. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again with a blank, stupid question. Freya merely tilted her head, as if she genuinely could not see what the issue was.
Is this person even human?
Looking at that reaction, Fenril genuinely began to doubt whether the woman standing before her qualified as a member of the same species. Freya was running an entire territory. Small as it was, it was effectively a miniature nation — and given how thoroughly wrecked the administration had been, and the complete absence of any dedicated personnel office, Freya had been personally handling this volume of paperwork every single day since she took over in earnest.
“Gordon will explain the details of each task, so I’ll leave things in your capable hands while I’m away.”
“Ah… m-my la… mmph—!”
“Eek…?! S-spare m—!”
“Yes. I shall diligently assist. Have a safe journey, my lady.”
“Gordon really is so reliable~ Well then, I’m off~”
Fenril and Curmon both reached out toward Freya as she calmly handed off her work and made to leave the office — only for Gordon to intercept every last attempt without breaking stride.
Bang—
“—Well then. Shall we begin?”
“......Fucking hell.”
The office door shut with a cold finality, and Fenril — former crime-syndicate boss — let fly with a choice piece of street language she hadn’t used in quite some time.
“The coachman said he’d come back in a few days, right?”
“In five days.”
“Well, that should be enough.”
The Evergarden party had left the mansion by carriage and entered the secluded forest path where Tene had once lived as a vagrant. They had paid the coachman a generous tip in advance and asked him to return to this spot at roughly the same hour in five days’ time. Taking an Evergarden carriage out openly risked being noticed, so they had hired a tight-lipped driver on Gordon’s recommendation — and padded his fee accordingly.
“There — isn’t that it?”
“Oh, I think I can see it now.”
Pushing through the mountain trail and deeper into the woods, the party finally emerged from the dense trees. What greeted them was a vast open clearing — not one formed by nature over ages, but a broad, empty expanse that looked as though something enormous had recently flattened everything in its path.
“Whoa… this is weirdly nostalgic. Ah! I used to sleep with my head right over there!”
Tene, the very architect of this clearing, pointed cheerfully at something as the old memories came flooding back, her face bright with a pure, sunny smile. At the tip of her finger sat a boulder so massive it made Darian look small by comparison.
“Well then — shall we get started, Tene?”
“Oh — right.”
Felix’s signal yanked Tene out of her reminiscing, and she trotted out to the center of the clearing. The six people watching her back each reacted differently.
“Feels like it’s been a while since we saw Tene’s dragon form.”
“Right? She’s been stuck in human form ever since she met us.”
Rosaria and Felix, who had witnessed the dragon once before, were calm about it.
“A dragon, huh… I’ve only ever seen them in big movie theaters. First time seeing one for real. I’m a little excited.”
“Indeed. The children have seen her, but we never have.”
Darian and Freya — who knew of Tene’s past life but had never seen the dragon — looked mildly anticipatory.
“Awawawawa…”
“St-st-st… stay calm, Shalle. Th-that person s-s-said she w-won’t h-h-hurt us… r-r-right…?”
And last of all, the two elves were trembling so hard they looked ready to tip over backward on the spot, clinging to each other for dear life.
So the six of them waited, each in their own state of mind.
“Hoo… hup…!”
Ziiing—
Tene settled into the center of the clearing, closed her eyes, and pressed her hands together. Thick, heavy dragon horns erupted from her forehead; a long, powerful dragon’s tail unfurled behind her back.
And then—
“Kraaa…aaaaaah…!!!!!”
—Kugung. —Kugugung.
The earth beneath her feet cracked and sank. A thunderous roar rolled out, and dark mist began to pour from the space around her.
“Ah. We’re dead.”
“OallpowerfulWorldTreeguideuswitheternallightOallpowerfulWorldTreeguideuswitheternallightOallpowerfulWorldTreeguideuswitheternallight—”
“...This is no joke.”
“....?!”
A tingling scent of death brushed lightly against their noses. A killing intent so vast it made their legs buckle simply from standing in its presence washed over them entirely — and Freya forgot, for a moment, even how to breathe.
—Thump. Thump.
The clearing, which moments ago had been bathed in bright sunlight, was swallowed by darkness in an instant. The deep, resonant pulse of a dragon’s heart — saturated with overwhelming power — rolled quietly through the silence.
The Black Dragon, known by countless epithets — World-Ender, Eternal Darkness, Mad Dragon of the Thousand-Year War, Death Itself — had finally revealed her true form, and she was roaring with magnificent force.
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—So? Cool, right?! I practiced this before bed, memorizing it and everything — it hits different, doesn’t it? Right? Isn’t it cool?!
"Hey!! The elves fainted again!!"
Hup.
And just like that, she got scolded.