EP.22 Hraesvelgr -5
EP.22 Hraesvelgr -5
In the middle of the snowfield whose original owner had vanished, Hraesvelgr's theory lessons began.
"Before we get into it properly, you do know my ability is completely different from yours, right?"
"Oh? Completely different, is it?"
"From what I heard from the crow, you two see air as thin threads and can manipulate them. Is that right?"
"Yeah! That's right!!"
"Then it really is different from my ability. I don't see air—I create wind."
Without Hraesvelgr, who was wind itself, the very concept of wind would vanish from this world.
In other words, Hraesvelgr was a being who created wind outright, while Tia and I merely used the wind she made.
Up to that point, you could see Tia's ability as a subordinate version of Hraesvelgr's, but that wasn't exactly true.
The eagle was limited to wind, but Tia could handle air itself.
So the two Divine Beasts' abilities were strictly distinct.
"Well, even if the abilities are different, they're similar in the big picture, so there's plenty I can teach you."
"I'm grateful you're teaching us, but whether we'll actually be able to use it..."
"Don't worry. From here on, what I'm teaching you is fundamentally stuff you can do too."
"Really?"
"Of course. Want me to show you one example?"
Hraesvelgr held up a single finger.
Then she curled that extended finger back in—
—Shwooooosh! CRAAAAAASH!!
—and carved a huge crater into the perfectly flat ground.
She had driven compressed wind straight down into the surface.
I had never imagined you could do something like that with wind.
"When people think of wind, a lot of them picture a vortex, but that's thinking trapped in a mold. It's not wrong, but you can stir up wind in shapes that aren't a vortex too."
"Like what you just did?"
"Exactly. The shape the wind took when I struck the ground was a massive pillar. You make it by compressing rapidly circulating air."
"Compressing air..."
I could bundle up a ton of air threads and turn them into a single knot, but when I did, the knot wouldn't budge at all.
My limit was ultimately just unraveling the knot to unleash a powerful gust.
The technique Hraesvelgr had just shown me looked impossible for me.
And yet she had confidently declared that even I could use it, which made things awkward in every way.
"You can't get a feel for it at all, right? That's only natural, since it's your first time. There's no need to get impatient."
"I suppose..."
"Of course! Nobody starts out amazing..."
—CRAAAAAASH!!
Before Hraesvelgr even finished her sentence.
With a sudden explosion, a second crater of a similar size appeared right next to the one Hraesvelgr had made.
"There are?"
"Did it!!"
Hraesvelgr looked a little flustered, probably because she hadn't expected a first-try success.
Regardless, Tia pushed her head toward me, wanting praise for her accomplishment.
"Yuu! Did good, right? Did good? Hurry, praise me!"
"Yes. Well done, our Tia."
"Eheheh!!"
"But how in the world did you do that?"
"Huh? Just tied the vertical lines and the horizontal lines like this and that and used them!!"
"Vertical lines...?"
Tia's explanations were still hard to understand, but one word in what she'd said caught my attention.
I had seen air threads countless times by now, but everything I had seen had only run left and right.
And yet Tia had clearly said vertical lines.
That meant there were lines I couldn't see, or lines I hadn't even perceived and therefore weren't visible.
The result was...
'The latter.'
Beyond the horizontal lines in my sight, lines stretching up and down began to enter my vision one by one.
While disturbing a horizontal line stirred up wind, no matter how much I disturbed the vertical lines, no wind arose.
Instead, the air vibrated, and a distortion formed in the space.
A fresh and mysterious experience. Without stopping there, I gathered a whole bunch of the vertical lines and knotted them into a single bundle.
Unlike when I bundled the horizontal ones, the knot of vertical lines moved freely in any direction.
"Yuu! Now tie that together with the horizontal lines and it's done!"
"Tie the bundle together with the horizontal lines one more time?"
"Yeah!!"
When I followed Tia's instructions and did it, the small knot swelled in size, and I could reshape it however I wanted.
I shaped the knot into the pillar form Hraesvelgr had described, then drove that pillar straight down into the ground.
—CRAAASH!!
The impact sound and the crater were shabby compared to what the two before me had produced.
But simply being able to pull it off myself let me taste a thrilling satisfaction and sense of achievement.
"See? I told you that you could do it, didn't I?"
"So you did..."
"Yuu! Did great! My turn to give you pat-pats!!"
"Th-thanks."
Hraesvelgr clapped me on the shoulder, saying well done, while Tia climbed onto my back and stroked my head.
I almost never got praised by anyone like that, so it made me feel awkward.
On top of that, the ones praising me were Divine Beasts, magnificent beings. There was no way I wouldn't be happy.
"So then, shall I teach you something new now?"
"Yeahs!!"
"Fufu! This time, you absolutely won't pull it off in one go...!!"
Maybe Tia's one-shot success had scraped Hraesvelgr's pride just a little.
Thereafter, you couldn't find a shred of conscience in Hraesvelgr's teaching.
She showcased all manner of crazy wind-based challenges and ordered us to do them ourselves.
Things like bounding through the air on wind alone without wings, or using wind like hands to build a gigantic snow structure.
Her going "See? Easy, right?" with a smirk while breezing through tasks that looked simple but were seriously hard was infuriating.
But it wasn't like I could refuse. I tried with everything I had, but I failed over and over. Meanwhile—
Tia...
"Yuu! Look, look! It's a super-duper big snowman!!"
"Damn it!! You damn talent monster!! What can I teach you next to finally make you struggle...?"
She was darting through the air without flapping her wings, making a snowman. Using nothing but wind.
And Hraesvelgr, seeing that baby dragon, was acting utterly un-adult-like.
I hadn't even caught up to half of the lessons yet, but at least I gained one precious lesson: when I grow up, I definitely shouldn't end up like her.
***
My success rate was near-abysmal, but I somehow managed to complete all the assigned tasks, and ended up clutching my throbbing head.
A power overload. The first time I'd felt it since my sparring match with Fenrir.
It meant I had no strength left to use my ability.
"Urrghh...!"
"You okay? There's still one more task left, you know?"
"I can't do any more... I'll learn this slowly later. Please just teach Tia."
"Uhh... sorry, but I already brought them over?"
"What...? Brought them? Brought who?"
"A herd of mammoths."
—Fwooooon!!
A thunderous elephant's cry, and footfalls pounding the ground as if an earthquake were happening.
A herd of mammoths—the woolly elephants of the snowfields, bodies covered in brown fur—had arrived.
"Wh-why in the world are those things...?"
"Why? Because the final task is using wind to send them over that mountain."
"Are you insane? Eagle?"
"I'm actually going pretty easy on you, you know? Originally, I was going to have you slice off a whole snowy mountain, then move it."
"You crazy...!!"
The mammoth herd alone was already dizzying, and she'd been thinking of moving a mountain?
That was something I couldn't do even if I died and came back to life.
With Fenrir, he'd at least put a regeneration ability on me that worked no matter how many times I died, but Hraesvelgr was...
She was beyond Spartan. She was in a category of her own.
"Anyway, what to do? I already brought them here, and of all times, Seon-ju can't use his ability?"
"What do you mean, what to do? You can just send them back."
"But then all the effort I went through to herd them would go to waste, wouldn't it?"
"That's not really..."
—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!
The mammoth herd began charging straight toward us.
If those huge bodies collided with us, I was dead certain it wouldn't end with just a fracture or two.
If I could use my ability, I might somehow get out of the situation, but right now I was in no state to use it.
In the end, I had to hope Hraesvelgr would send them back...
"What do you want?"
"You'll hear me out?"
Hraesvelgr's face instantly brightened.
I had formed a hypothesis that she was doing this to demand something from me, but...
Having it confirmed as fact was seriously galling.
"Depends on what it is. Of course, things like marriage or mating I'm refusing in advance."
"Tch! Fine. Then how about just a deep kiss?"
"Do you not have a conscience, ma'am?"
"Whyyy!! This much isn't a bad deal, is it? Isn't it?"
"No matter how you slice it, a Divine Beast thousands of years old deep-kissing a twenty-year-old human... that's tactical-nuke level."
"We're the ones who stopped humans from developing nukes, so what's this nonsense about tactical nukes?!"
"Anyway, it means it's that kind of unconscionable request."
"Grrr!! Fine! Then a kiss on the cheek! That much is okay, right? Right?"
"Hmm..."
A kiss on the cheek was definitely acceptable.
But I was still hesitating, because the situation—having no choice but to grant her request—was deeply unsatisfying.
I found myself mulling it over, trying to see if there was any better way.
Still, I couldn't exactly ignore the charging mammoths.
With no further alternative or compromise, I was just about to grant Hraesvelgr's request—
"Hup!!"
A tiny, adorable shout rang out, and a dragon girl stretched both arms toward the sky.
It looked like a meaningless action, but with that single move, every mammoth's body began bobbing gently into the air.
Tia must have used her ability to lift the mammoths.
This time, without even a hint of a demonstration from Hraesvelgr, Tia was precisely carrying out the task she'd assigned.
To complete the objective, she sent the entire mammoth herd soaring over the mountain the eagle had designated.
"Hmmpf!!"
Then she let out a proud little snort of satisfaction.
To be perfectly honest, it was incredibly cute.
Anyway, having finished the final task in my stead too, Tia came pattering over and immediately clung to me in an embrace.
"Yuu, I solved it, so! You give me a peck on the cheek, right?"
"Ah...! Yeah!"
Originally, it should have been done for Hraesvelgr, but Tia had gone and taken over what the eagle was supposed to do.
In other words, the compensation meant for the eagle had become entirely the baby dragon's reward.
A good kid who'd brilliantly resolved my troublesome situation—giving her a kiss on the cheek was something I could do as many times as she wanted.
"Eheheet! Tickles!!"
The recipient of the reward was beaming with glee, and I, as the one giving it, was about to feel happy in turn—
—when I spotted Hraesvelgr, who had unintentionally gotten netorare'd, and couldn't help but send a pitying glance her way.