Dragon Blood
“Ehehehehehehe!!!”
The mysterious man laughed for a long while at our frozen forms before his face twisted into something savage.
“—Black hair and red eyes. Yes… of course the Great One would never abandon me!!”
With that voice steeped in madness, a vicious wave of mana crashed over us.
“You think so too, don’t you? Hm? Taylor Winchester!!”
“Kh.”
I spread my own mana to cancel out the force slicing through the air, but the absolute difference in volume was overwhelming. In an instant the aftershock flattened the three behind me before they could even brace themselves, and I could not escape internal injuries either.
Cough.
“It’s all because of those weak, useless trash! They couldn’t even keep the heroes occupied until I finished summoning a mid-rank demonic beast!”
His voice dragged information up from the deepest recesses of my memory. After the tutorial—after the entrance-ceremony terror attack—Elizabeth had told me while I lay in the infirmary:
‘The mastermind still hasn’t been caught.’
The ringleader of the terror had escaped and was still at large.
“Light of Dawn…!”
No wonder the heroes had scoured the academy like they were hunting rats and still come up empty. He had been hiding inside a dungeon on the academy’s outskirts the whole time!
While I reeled from the impossible situation, the man curled his lips in a mocking sneer.
“Kuhehehe. Oh dear, oh dear… I’ve been found out.”
He raised the staff in his hand and poured out a murky violet light.
“Then for my sake—and for the Great One’s sake—kindly die!!”
The next moment, the Goblin Knight that had stood motionless finally moved.
—Kwaaaaaaaah!!!
Red eyes blazing, it charged us with a crushing pressure that no first-floor boss of a beginner dungeon should ever possess.
“An enhanced species from Light of Dawn already…?”
I thought the boss felt off, but they used that method this early?!
Enhancement was a technique Light of Dawn employed frequently in the late story: through a dark ritual they poured the Demon God’s mana into a monster. The creature lost all reason, but its vitality and stats multiplied dozens of times. In the game it had driven the protagonist into crisis after crisis.
But that was late-game content—after the hero had already gained real power. Right now I had none of the means the protagonist once used to handle an enhanced species.
“Kuhuhu. You even know about enhanced species… Leaving you alive would have been far too dangerous. That’s one more reason I absolutely must kill you!”
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
A Goblin Knight was normally a higher goblin that swung a greatsword as large as itself. The one before me, however, had apparently sold off its trademark blade; both hands were empty. Instead, its body—swollen far beyond normal by the enhancement—launched into a high-speed body-slam charge.
“Kill them all, Goblin Knight!”
The giant beast closed the distance in a single breath.
—Kwaaaah!!
That massive frame hurtling forward at such speed felt like a dump truck barreling straight at me.
“Kh!”
I barely twisted aside, yet it never slowed. It kept running until it smashed into the far wall of the chamber.
And then I finally understood why the dungeon had been shaking the entire time.
KWA-BOOM!!!
A thunderous explosion rocked the dungeon; the wall the creature struck simply collapsed. Both the Goblin Knight and the wall must have taken the impact, yet while the stone shattered into rubble, the monster’s iron-hard hide showed only dust and dirt—not a single scratch.
“You idiot, don’t stop—attack!”
The man’s staff flared again. In the same instant the beast shot past me at a speed I could not even track.
“Oh sh—!”
KWA-BANG!!
A residual image streaked across my vision, and only afterward did searing agony explode from my shoulder.
“Aaaargh!”
Where my right arm should have been, there was nothing.
Fuck, my right arm!!
Even as my face twisted in pain I forced my mind to work, searching for any way out. No plan I could invent led to walking away alive.
—Kwaaaaaah!!
As if declaring there would be no second chance, the giant body kicked off the ground and charged again.
Thud. Thud! Thud!!
The Goblin Knight’s approach filled my vision in slow motion, yet my body refused to move. There was no dodging this.
So this is as far as I go.
Faced with the end, the thought that rose unbidden was regret for my party members.
If I die, they’re next.
Because I had forced my way into the story, Elizabeth, Enri, and Angela—who were supposed to survive until the very end—would die here.
Guess I got attached after all.
Thud!
An overwhelming impact swallowed me. My vision blacked out as I was flung away.
“Eheheh… I’ve eliminated a candidate for the Child of Prophecy. The Order will have to acknowledge me again!”
Recalling Aleister Crowley, who had hidden him here, the man laughed with oily satisfaction. After the grand plan to remove the Child of Prophecy had failed and he had been forced to flee the heroes, he was grateful for the chance the Order’s Hidden Blade had given him. He gazed down at the unconscious students.
Beautiful girls who had been with the Child of Prophecy. The blood of pure, high-mana maidens was the finest offering one could present to his god.
A brilliant idea seemed to strike him; he suddenly burst into mad laughter.
“Kyahahahaha! I’ll scatter their blood across the academy and announce that the Great One’s faithful servant has returned!!”
Imagining that glorious scene of his resurrection washed away every humiliation he had endured. Just as he reached toward the girls to put his perfect plan into motion—
Shff.
“Haa…?”
An utterly unexpected sound froze him mid-motion. He turned.
The Child of Prophecy—right arm gone, body drenched in blood—was rising to his feet.
“What? How are you still alive in that state?”
Every bone shattered, organs ruptured, blood loss already past lethal. Yet the black-haired boy stood there like a zombie, painted head to toe in crimson.
“Tsk. Disgusting.”
Annoyed that his pleasant fantasy had been interrupted, the man barked an order at his servant.
“Goblin Knight, finish that abomination.”
—Kwaaaaaah!!!
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The enhanced Goblin Knight was far too fast for a mere academy freshman to dodge and far too powerful for any trainee hero to block. Certain the boy would be pulverized, the man turned back to finish what he had started.
BOOM!!!
The sound of collision rang out. Smiling faintly at the certainty of the end, the man felt something massive slam into the wall beside him.
KWA-BANG!!
The Goblin Knight’s enormous body had been hurled into the stone.
“What…?”
He could not believe his eyes. He whipped his head toward the black-haired boy.
There the boy still stood, looking every bit as near death as before.
Did I give the wrong command?
The man gathered violet mana into his staff once more.
“Goblin Knight, eliminate the enemy before you!”
—Kwaaaah!
The beast wrenched itself free of the wall and charged as ordered.
BOOM!!
It slammed into the boy at full speed; the same thunderous blast erupted. Yet the massive body that should have crushed the boy’s frail flesh could not even push past a single raised index finger. It stopped dead.
“Impossible! This cannot be happening!”
He finally realized that the earlier flight of the enhanced beast had not been his mistake either. Into his panicked ears came the boy’s low voice.
“…This vessel is far too fragile to contain this body.”
Teeth broken, mouth torn to shreds, the words were nearly unintelligible—yet somehow they drove themselves straight into the man’s skull.
The black-haired boy—no, the thing wearing the shape of a black-haired boy—casually flicked the Goblin Knight aside as though discarding a bothersome burden.
“W-what is this…!!”
For the first time, true fear bloomed on the man’s face. At a glance he had noticed nothing. But when events beyond all common sense forced him to gather mana into his eyes, the truth was laid bare.
The entire dungeon chamber was drowned in a scarlet radiance so dense that nothing else could be seen.
“What in the world is this red mana!!”
An unimaginably vast mana he had never witnessed in his life filled every corner of the room. He could no longer think of the figure before him as human.
“This is inconvenient to move in.”
At those words the sprawling mana compressed in an instant. So much power gathered around the boy that even the naked eye could see the high-density mass forming. The crimson oval that took shape around him looked exactly like a dragon’s egg from myth.
“I am the dragon that swallows the world.”
Dragon Blood
With that arrogant activation phrase the egg cracked open—
and something was born.