Should I Blast Them?
“…Should I blast them?”
“This is… a good thing, right?”
Having finally settled on her weapons, Haring stepped out of the treasure vault with Lea.
On the way back from taking down the ogres, she had been absolutely, positively, never going to pick anything but a legendary weapon. Lea’s persuasion had changed her mind.
Weapons that fuse together?
Just being called dragon swords already put them well outside the ordinary—and they fused. Simply joining two identical blades made them merge as if they had always been one, and their specs jumped far higher than before.
◎ Epic
● Physical Attack 45 (+30)
● All Stats +2 (+3)
● Physical Resistance +5%
● Fire Resistance +5%
● Magic Resistance +5%
● Damage vs. Dragonkin +10%
— ?
Granted, the only real gains were thirty attack and three to every stat—but gains were gains. The fact that they didn’t merely fuse but actually improved meant there was a clear design behind them.
“Attack power alone puts them at quasi-unique tier.”
They still had no special abilities, and the secondary stats were the same as ever. The rest of Lea’s disciples had walked off with legendary weapons—Nya-nya had even gotten two!!
“It’s good anyway. Yeah. Whatever.”
Haring decided to believe that. She didn’t think she could hold it together otherwise.
“It’s definitely good… it has to be good…”
I left the treasure vault alongside Haring, who was muttering under her breath while clutching a stack of thirty practice swords.
Outside, the heroes were beaming so hard their smiles looked ready to split their faces ear to ear.
Are they really that happy?
“That good, huh?”
“Of course!”
“I can’t wait to try it out.”
“No. Hold off.”
Most of what the heroes had chosen weren’t weapons they could use right away so much as ones meant for the far future—pieces like Nya-nya’s Eye Staff, which needed at least four stars engraved before they could be wielded. What they wanted were strong weapons with high potential, and weapons like that inevitably came with restrictions. Not that they were completely unusable. Like Nya-nya, you could force them—so long as you were willing to push yourself to the brink of death.
They were immortals who didn’t stay dead, so they could probably handle the weapons a few times if they steeled themselves for it.
“That doesn’t mean you get to just spam them because you won’t die.”
“Why not?”
“It strains the soul.”
The body could be resurrected a hundred times, a thousand times, by the Goddess. The soul could not. Once the soul took real damage, even a resurrection might not bring you back whole. Recovery would take a long time.
The heroes nodded as understanding settled in.
“Ahh… got it!”
“So there’s a penalty.”
“Yeah, if you could just keep using them it’d be broken.”
“Why me, though…”
“Haring, you picked those again?”
“Uh…”
“Why?”
“Yeah, why…”
I watched the other heroes pat a visibly deflated Haring on the back and thought to myself.
What do I have to hand out so I can sleep longer?
I’d figured the Ogre Lord subjugation would take a year at the absolute minimum. They’d finished it in two weeks. The rewards had made them stronger, and they’d walked off with sacred relics and legendary weapons on top of that—so they could probably clear even harder quests now.
The problem was that the only world-threatening monster I currently knew about was the Ogre Lord. There were probably worse monsters and demonkin up north, but something as vague as “just go grab one~” didn’t count as a quest. It was like the system wouldn’t recognize anything I didn’t specifically understand.
The one still active in the present world was the Fifth Legion Commander—Cadaver of Ministry…
“Alright.”
“Huh?”
“This time, go catch Cadaver. I’ll make the reward generous.”
The Fifth Legion Commander, Cadaver of Ministry. He’d already shown himself in the present world and gone on a rampage killing heroes, so this one ought to work.
I crossed my arms and watched them. Before long the heroes were staring into empty air in pure horror.
“The reward is six million…?”
“Excuse me?”
“Th-this is insane!”
“We cannot catch a Legion Commander! This is really, really, really not happening!”
“Why not? You might catch him.”
He’s not actually that strong, if you ask me. He threw around flashy magic and moved as nastily as he looked, but deep down he was kind of a chump. If they just beat him senseless the way they did the ogres, they could probably take him down inside five years, right? The longer it took, the longer I got to sleep—so either way was fine by me. If they somehow finished this one in two weeks or a month again, well, then I’d have to give them credit.
“If you can’t do it alone, go with other heroes. Overwhelm him with numbers.”
“No, that guy is actually strong. He used magic that could blanket like ten ogre colonies, and heroes got wiped.”
“You can do it. Once you’ve got… about five cores?”
“We just barely have one or two…”
“So you’re almost there.”
Adding stars wasn’t that hard, really. Keep circulating mana, keep using it, and you’d naturally be able to engrave more.
About three years?
Even mass-produced heroes were still heroes. Three years should be more than enough to build five stars and then some.
“Three years should do it. If you’re fast, maybe even two.”
“We haven’t even finished two properly yet…”
“Three years is way too long…”
“Three years isn’t long.”
Whatever they said, I was giving them the quest. I knew better than anyone that they weren’t remotely ready for this level—but you never knew. They might pull some bizarre scheme like they had with the ogres and clear it anyway.
Clap, clap!
“Right then. Take the weapons and power you’ve gained and bring me that Legion Commander.”
“Master…”
“Please, no.”
“Lea, this is seriously not—”
“There’s no ‘not.’ Move ou—”
THUD. THUD.
“Is anyone home!!!”
“?”
“Dragon!! Please, for us as well!!”
I had been about to shove the heroes out with their new quest when a tremendous noise rolled in—countless voices vibrating from the nest entrance outward. I almost dismissed it as the usual handful of heroes coming to bother me, but this time something felt different.
There’s a lot of them.
This wasn’t a few people showing up to be a nuisance. Half-curious, I climbed a rock that overlooked the whole nest—and then I saw it.
“What the…”
An absolutely enormous throng of heroes packed every inch of the ground around the nest.
The existence of the dragon Lea had already been widely known for months. A transcendent being of overwhelming power, master of a mountain of treasure piled high as a peak—and, when she transformed, the form of an adorable little girl. Of course people were interested. In the early days after her discovery, quite a crowd had come flocking.
But once Lea blocked the nest entrance, yelled at them to get out, and generally took a closed-door stance, the visitors had dwindled. It wasn’t that they’d actually been scared. To the heroes—the players—this place was a game. No one was going to stop coming just because a dragon went kyang at them.
They simply weren’t getting anything out of it.
Dragon quests were brutally difficult, and if you weren’t chosen first you couldn’t even start them. Because of that, almost no one besides the disciples had been coming around lately—until something changed.
The Ogre Lord subjugation. Six people everyone had written off as just doing some hard hidden quest had suddenly cleared a raid only the absolute top players could touch. For the high-rankers who had been gearing up purely through raids, it was a bolt from the blue.
That alone would have been enough to set the forums on fire—but one person’s testimony poured gasoline on it.
Someone claiming to be a friend of one of Lea’s disciples said the dragon’s students had actually been leveling on “extremely” easy quests. The photo showed roughly a hundred stacked clear messages of the kind you only saw at the newbie or low-level stage. Every single quest reward had been paid out without exception, and a striking number of the quests were duplicates. A Frolazia-exclusive verification mark was stamped on the image, making the odds of a fake nearly zero.
It was enough to move not only the rankers but every newbie who had been sitting on the sidelines, mouths watering with envy.
And so, at present—
“Lea! Lea! Lea!”
“Lady Lea! Please give me a quest too!”
“She’s so cute!”
“Lea-chan kawaii!!!”
“Just twenty quests for me!”
“I’m great at killing goblins!”
Lea looked out over the sea of heroes filling her entire field of view. They circled the nest without ever crossing the line, shouting from outside only. Not a single one of the usual thieves who showed up whenever she let her guard down was anywhere in sight.
Lea thought.
“Ah.”
Maybe the mass-produced heroes weren’t “just” a few hundred. The Goddess might have summoned far more heroes than she’d imagined, and what she’d seen so far might only be a tiny fraction.
And more serious than that—
…Can I even sleep?
No matter how many of the old heroes she sent away, she might never be able to live in peace again.
Lea quietly closed her eyes.
“…Should I blast them?”
It was the kind of moment that made a dragon crave a good breath attack.