She'll Understand
She'll understand, right?
There were so many of them.
"Dragon~!"
"So the kid's really here?"
"Come one, come all! Flame Resistance Potions for sale~ Ten silver~"
"Should I just leave the food here?"
"Holy crap, look at this crowd…"
So many.
"Hey! Quit shoving, you bastard!"
"What the hell is this weeb."
"What did you just say?! After tasting my ultimate secret technique, will those words still leave your mouth?"
"Alright! Right now I'm live from the dragon's nest~"
"Dragon! I wasn't fighting!"
"Whoa, the Dragon Emperor is hella stylish."
"Please transform!!"
"Form a line! A line! Hey you! No cutting!"
There were way too many of them.
I stared at the throng packed shoulder-to-shoulder in front of my nest and felt an overwhelming wave of exhaustion. I'd expected plenty of Apprentice Heroes to show up eventually, but never in my wildest dreams had I imagined anything like this.
Twenty people at most, right? And even those, I'd figured, would trickle in one by one. Past a certain point I'd planned to start turning them away. No matter how much food or treasure they brought, my hoard was already overflowing — a few extra trinkets wouldn't even register. I'd only meant to accept a reasonable amount of food.
"How many people is this?"
A hundred, easy. And the truly terrifying part was that the number was climbing in real time. At this scale, the Apprentice Heroes clearly had some kind of communication network among themselves. Nothing else could explain a turnout this massive, this fast.
"What the hell were they thinking?"
Even so — hundreds of Apprentice Heroes? Wasn't that a bit much? The old days, you were lucky to scrape together ten heroes total. Now they were dumping them out by the hundreds. No wonder the ones who'd shown up yesterday had looked so much weaker than expected. That explained everything.
Of course there are duds when you've got hundreds of heroes!
No talent, no grit — just the Goddess's power slapped onto them so they could thrash around like wild animals. That was the reality of most Apprentice Heroes.
"Ugh…"
My head was starting to throb. Whether they noticed or not, the crowd kept trying every angle to force their way inside the nest. Thank goodness I'd sealed the entrance early. Without that, they would have been ransacking the place already.
"…They're circling."
Not every Apprentice Hero was stuck at the front, of course. Some were working their way around the nest, probing for gaps. Off on a high rock in the distance, a few were even lining up to dive in like it was a swimming pool. At this rate, a breach was only a matter of time.
A flick of my wings.
No more of this.
I'm throwing all of them out.
"Kyaaaah!"
"Wh-what was that?!"
"Ooooooh! The dragon has roared!"
"The little dragon is so cute!"
"Hm?"
Something odd mixed into the noise, but the sudden dragon's bellow froze the players solid. Most of the users who'd come looking for the Flame Dragon's nest were complete newbies — people who'd shown up just to gawk at a dragon's appearance. Faced with the real thing in a rage, they started edging backward. Game or not, a dragon's roar was more than enough to trigger a living creature's primal fear.
"Yes! Now that's a dragon!"
"It went kraaang. Kraaang."
"Man, I wanna ride that thing just once…"
A handful of users, though, only cheered louder and clung harder to the rocks in front of the nest. The type who figured that even dying was worth it for a single interaction with a dragon. They were trying every trick in the book to force their way inside.
And among them, the highest-leveled man — Leben — tightened his grip on a long sword and rose to his feet. The gap was barely wide enough for one person, but with a skill he could squeeze through. Leben turned his gaze toward empty air, where a small, translucent circle floated — a camera.
"Alright. Let's head inside, chat."
"I'm not running a raid right now. Killing a dragon is way too much."
Leben was a level-37 high-ranker and a streamer. His viewer count sat somewhere between one and two thousand — a mid-tier broadcaster with a decent name for himself. Until recently, he'd been part of a massive raid that had drawn most of the top rankers, streamers, and guilds.
The first main-quest boss to appear: the Corrupted Ogre Lord, the largest-scale raid yet. For a ranker, skipping it was unthinkable — a once-in-a-lifetime event. Leben had signed on…
"…That's not what happened. I just came to do something else. Hajin and I are cool."
While running the massive raid party, he'd been thoroughly dressed down by Hajin — a top-ten ranker and a streamer so big people called him a corporation. The reason was simple. The party was supposed to coordinate and cut down the surging ogre packs, but a catastrophic mistake on Leben's part had wiped the entire group. Twice.
Not once. Twice.
The losses piled up so high that raid leader Hajin tore into him hard. Sure, there was a bit of streamer kayfabe mixed in — a little WWE for the cameras — but a mistake was a mistake. Leben ended up vacating his spot in the party. Later, Hajin had played it up on stream, telling him to come back, fishing for content…
That bastard. Acting like he's so much better.
Just because he'd whale-spent his way into the top ranks, he strutted around like he owned the place. In raw skill they were about even — if anything, Leben had the edge. And if he claimed a dragon-related hidden piece here, that gap would close in no time.
Just you wait. I'm going to knock that nose of yours clean off.
Dreaming of the glorious future ahead, Leben squeezed through the gap.
The inside of the nest was surprisingly quiet. After the chaos outside, the stillness almost felt cozy — a soft warmth that clashed with the dragon's dazzling exterior. Leben kept his guard up and scanned the surroundings. The dragon that had been roaring loud enough to bring the sky down was simply… gone. Transformed, maybe?
"What the. Why is it empty?"
"A person?"
Leben turned at the chat messages. In a corner of the nest, a girl with short blue hair was swinging a sword with relentless focus. She kept at it for a moment, then noticed him, tilted her head, and walked over.
"Huh. Wait, how did you get in?"
"? That user…"
The first person to discover the dragon. The user the community called ClimbingGal — the one responsible for this entire mess. Leben didn't spend much time on the forums, but he'd heard the rumors about her everywhere.
He stared hard at Haring.
…This feels off.
Somehow she gave him the same unpleasant vibe as Hajin, the one who'd chewed him out. Completely different hair, completely different face — and yet that same irritating feeling.
Leben looked away from her and scanned the nest interior. No dragon in sight.
"Where's the dragon?"
"Why?"
"Just tell me."
"Don't wanna though~"
"……"
"Ah, just kidding. But for real, you can't. Flame Dragon-nim said she's not taking visitors."
Haring waved both hands and gave a little bob of her head — so slight it almost looked like she was mocking him. In truth she was just worn out from training, but Leben didn't see it that way.
"And you really shouldn't just show up like this. Flame Dragon-nim is basically at mid-boss levels of cranky right now, so you could actually die—"
"Enough. If you don't want to die yourself, start talking."
"Huh?"
"You want to die?"
A soft rasp of steel. Leben drew a Unique-grade sword and leveled it at her. Haring shook her head hard. No matter how much her level had climbed, she was still a newbie whose only real experience was climbing a mountain. In skill and gear alike, she was hopelessly outmatched.
She asked, genuinely worried:
"You sure you won't regret this?"
"That's none of your business."
"Ah, okay… Follow me."
"This is a tough one…"
After that one good roar, I lay flat on my back deeper inside the nest, staring blankly at the ceiling. It had worked well enough — most of them had scattered — but a stubborn few still circled near the entrance, refusing to give up. Part of me just wanted to take off, fly out there, and stomp around a few times…
But they are Apprentice Heroes…
No matter how many of them there were, heroes were still heroes. If I wiped them out, that old hag of a Goddess probably wouldn't be thrilled. Of course, whether she got disappointed or came crawling back to whine at me the way she used to was none of my business. Still — heroes were, at their core, people who worked to save the world. If a shut-in like me started killing them, the world would only get murkier…
"Hoooooh… Hm?"
Footsteps. Someone was walking deeper inside. Leading the way was Haring, whom I knew well; behind her came a face I'd never seen. An Apprentice Hero, most likely. Haring approached with a thoroughly awkward expression.
"What is it?"
"Um, there's someone who wants to meet Flame Dragon-nim. I told him to leave, but…"
"So you're the dragon."
"Yep, that's me."
A rasp of steel. The male Apprentice Hero drew his sword. He had a decent amount of mana, and his skill looked a cut above Haring or Yong-ba. The faintly gleaming blade was a solid weapon for an Apprentice Hero, too. Not that any of them were all that different from each other.
"I am the hero Leben. I challenge you, great dragon, to a duel."
"A duel?"
"Indeed. Come outside."
"……"
"Of course, a mere human like me is nothing compared to you. But I wish to test it — the measure of my own strength…"
"Sure."
"Huh?"
"I said sure."
I stood up on the spot.
One person should be fine. Even that old hag would understand, right?