Dragon Education (2)

It was going to kill every last human. A declaration as terrifying as they came.

"That's terrifying."

"…Allen, you have no soul."

A dragon abandoning its own lair and coming out to move around was absurd enough on its own. Was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this just how young dragons behaved differently from the usual kind?

"What kind of freak is this…"

Erinn waved a hand at me.

"Scrub~♡ What should we do~?"

At this point she was seriously thinking of handing me command without even joking about it.

"Use that brain of yours that's worse than a monkey's and come up with something~♡"

…Damn brat.

I didn't like it one bit, but handling sudden developments was a commander's job and a measure of their competence. Even if that mesgaki hero's attitude grated on me, I still had to do what needed doing.

First, I assessed the thing's condition.

As if to prove the talk of being blessed by magic power, even a young dragon boasted outrageous stats and traits. Right off the bat, its magic power and related trait levels already outclassed Letisia's.

If that's a dragon that only recently left the Hatchling stage…

Just how strong were the ones that had lived for ages?

Still, fighting it inside the lair would have been a real headache. Those stats would have been inflated by more than half. Erinn's call to just cut the whole lair open had been the right one.

Outside the lair, though, we had more than enough firepower to hunt it down. Its specs were superior to the Obsidian Golem's, sure — but this party had taken that golem down without a scratch. And unlike the golem, which had no clear counter, this time we had a perfect elemental advantage on our side.

"Aria, pin the dragon's movements. Freya will snipe it."

I pointed out the positions with my finger.

"Lock it down between the tip of that spire and the gap between those round rooftops."

"Kahyaah! Leave it to me!"

Please stop saying things like that with a bottle of booze in your mouth. It does nothing for my confidence.

"Letisia, can you block the magic the dragon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠throws? With the salamander's flames or…"

"I understand."

"You sure?"

Young or not, a dragon was still a dragon. Ordinary spirits might not cut it. But as if my worry were completely unfounded, Letisia flashed a confident smile.

"Of course."

"…Alright. I'm counting on you."

"Scrub, what about me~?"

Erinn asked about her own role. By now she should have roughly figured it out without being told — so why bother asking?

"If the dragon flies in to attack, that's when you intercept it."

"Got it~."

I glanced to the side.

"Clara, you stay back with me."

"…Okay."

Clara's hidden weapons and hexes wouldn't work on a dragon anyway. Concealed blades couldn't pierce those hard scales, and even if she stabbed with a dagger, her strength was on the low side — the efficiency just wasn't there. Having her buzz around in front of it like a gnat wasn't worth the risk. Better to send her in later if needed.

"Freya, you know you're the most important one here, right?"

I said it because Freya was the one who'd be sniping the dragon — but she suddenly flinched and her face went faintly pink.

"Pardon?… Ah, Allen. Such a sudden confession is a bit… Even if you think of me that way, I don't have anything I can give you, you know…?"

Has this girl lost her mind.

"Don't say weird things…"

When I answered with pure disbelief, Freya dropped the coy act and laughed lightly.

"Fufu, was it not amusing?"

Amusing or not, if that actually happened I'd be dragged off to face the Church's judgment.

"Anyway… I'm counting on you."

"Yes, Allen."

That was when the dragon bellowed.

"Kwahaha! Look at you, trembling in fear, unable to do a thing — what a delightful sight!"

"…Are dragons always this arrogant?"

"It's probably because it doesn't know any better at that age. It has no idea how scary the world can be."

In short, a full-blown case of chuunibyou. No wonder the speech pattern felt familiar…

"I shall grant you mercy."

Alongside the magic activation message, a massive, razor-edged chunk of ice took shape in an instant. It wasn't merely large — it was bigger than the dragon's own body.

Its sheer size blotted out the sun that had been shining overhead. For a moment I felt overwhelmed, but the rest of the party looked fine.

"Puhaah, let's go!"

Ser-Aria took a swig, clamped the bottle between her teeth, and drew her bow. The dragon seemed to realize we were about to counter, and it dropped the colossal ice mass it had created.

Crack!

A sharp whip-crack rang out, and a lizard wreathed in searing flames surged forward.

"Salamander, if you fail to block this, it's five hundred lashes on the rear♥"

…She'd probably hit it even if it succeeded.

The salamander's jaws split wide, and a scorching blast of flame fanned out in a sweeping arc.

FWOOOOOOSH!!!

The fire engulfed the falling ice mass and melted the entire enormous chunk away to nothing.

As expected, the spirit mage of a hero's party was on another level. Elemental advantage or not, wiping out a dragon's magic with nothing but the power of one of the Four Great Spirits was no small feat.

Meanwhile, Ser-Aria's arrows began pressing the dragon hard. When the Divine Archer's shots targeted the thin membrane of its wings, the dragon couldn't just sit still.

"Aigh, it won't hit! That thing's fast!"

If she'd just drunk a little less, she might have landed one more shot.

Even so, she was pinning the dragon's position exactly as planned. Whenever it tried to break free of the zone, Ser-Aria's arrows immediately covered that direction.

"How dare mere insects…"

The dragon seemed thoroughly irritated that its movements had been constrained by the arrows of some lowly pointy-eared creature.

"Then try blocking this as well."

Dozens of ice masses the same size as before materialized all at once.

They blanketed the sky over Eisencastelle. Spectacular, if you wanted to call it that… and if you wanted to call it dangerous, it was extraordinarily dangerous.

Commander Ben Griff took one look and cried out in horror.

"H-Hero! At this rate the capital will take damage…!"

"It's fine~."

Erinn looked at Letisia.

"You can handle it~?"

"Fufu. Of course."

Letisia swung her whip in a wide arc. She cracked it across the salamander's rear and began to chant.

"Spirits of nature, in accordance with the contract we have shared, yield your power unto me."

Spirit Possession. It was a trait listed on Letisia's status window, and in Dungeon in Evil it was the signature combat style unique to her character.

A spirit mage's secret art: channeling a contracted spirit directly into one's own body, wielding its power as if one had become the spirit itself.

Even when a spirit and its contractor were perfectly aligned in judgment, a brief delay still existed for the command to transmit — and this technique cut even that short.

The salamander's form vanished. At the same time, Letisia's green eyes flooded with scarlet light, and the spirit's aura radiated from her body.

That was a long explanation, but put simply…

"Salamander, I'll put your power to full use."

Letisia had fused with the salamander.

With Spirit Possession active, Letisia's stats themselves had changed.

Her strength, agility, and vitality had all surged under the salamander's influence. Magic power had dropped, but that was almost certainly the cost of the possession process itself.

The most striking boost was in strength. Her original eighty-five had rocketed up to match Ser-Aria's level. And where did she put that power to use?

KRAAAANG!!!

…On swinging that whip. When she cracked the flame-wreathed lash, the bricks paving the street shattered apart.

Letisia gazed up at the ice masses raining from the sky with a look of pure rapture.

"I'll reduce them to dust."

She spun the whip she'd raised toward the sky, and a vortex of blistering flame whirled upward to blanket the heavens.

FWOOOOSH!!!

The blue dragon's ice masses were swallowed whole by the fire — not even fragments remained. Just as Letisia had promised, nothing was left but dust.

"…Mere insects!"

Apparently deciding that magic would get it nowhere as long as Letisia was around, the dragon beat its wings and dove hard.

"Somehow it's playing right into our hands a little too well…"

Weren't dragons supposed to be a race superior to anyone in wisdom? Things were going so smoothly it felt off.

"It's walking into the trap knowing full well that it is one."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's that arrogant. A dragon like me, dancing to the tune of insects like humans? Impossible — that's what it thinks."

This had gone well past ordinary chuunibyou.

"That's… quite the mindset…"

"…Freya knows a lot about dragons."

At Clara's words, Freya smiled faintly.

"We have a bad history."

A bad history?

"Here it comes."

In the meantime, the dragon was charging straight at Letisia. Claws extended, it looked ready to tear her apart with them.

But those claws never reached her.

KUUUUUNG!!!

A little blonde brat had locked the claws in place.

"Where do you think you're going, lizard♡"

Erinn. Just as we'd planned beforehand, she'd intercepted the diving dragon.

Tanking the full force of a dragon's dive from the sky — she really was ridiculously strong…

Then the dragon suddenly opened its jaws wide.

"Foolish. To stand in my path."

So the claw attack had been a feint for the breath.

"Learn the depth of your folly through death, insect."

Watching that, I realized something.

An inexperienced dragon's arrogance just kept breeding mistakes.

It clearly had no idea what was standing right in front of it.

"Breath?"

Erinn snorted.

"Go ahead and fire~♡"

With Erinn's casual taunt, the dragon unleashed its breath — straight at the girl right in front of it.

KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

An enormous wave of cold exploded outward. Split into several streams, the freezing air ricocheted off building walls, soldiers' shields, and everything else in its path, flash-freezing whatever it touched.

But the dragon's expression was far from pleased. Confusion clouded its eyes.

Fair enough. The cold splitting in every direction was a bizarre phenomenon in itself.

"How could a mere insect…!"

"Pff, that face looks so stupid~♡"

Erinn had split the breath apart with her Holy Sword and magic power, and the greatly weakened cold was what had scattered in all directions.

"O Lord. Your faithful servant prays — grant me the spear of light with which to judge evil."

Meanwhile, Freya's prayer reached completion.

As the prayer finished, Freya's divine power surged skyward.

"!"

The clouds parted. And from the heavens, a colossal spear of radiant light revealed itself.

"…A Saintess?"

The dragon whipped its head around in panic, spotted Freya, and recoiled in pure shock. Then it frantically beat its wings.

"Where do you think you're running!"

Ser-Aria loosed a single arrow. Powered by magic, the arrowhead split into multiple strands of wire and transformed into a net.

Could a net really hold a dragon?

"Gyaah! What is this now…!"

"Puhaha! I caught it!"

"…Yeah. Nice work."

What kind of dragon couldn't break free of a net…

No — I shouldn't be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bound by common sense. That net had to be something special. Given that it was activated as a skill, the odds were high.

"Then drop it, Freya. Send it to the Lord's side in one shot."

"Yes."

There was a lot to gain from killing it.

Scales, horns, claws… As a race blessed by magic power, every byproduct of a dragon was saturated with mana. There were elixirs you could brew from those materials.

That alone would make a formidable tonic — and there was a further elixir you could create by carefully blending those with byproducts harvested from the lair.

It was a hidden recipe never shared on the community boards, known only to people who'd actually tried it. Most never bothered, since even a simple mix of dragon materials already produced excellent elixirs, and a slight error in the ratios rendered the whole batch useless.

I'd only stumbled onto it myself because my inventory had been overflowing with dragon materials and I'd been combining things at random…

Anyway, brewing that would improve even my current scrub — no, pathetic — stats somewhat. It raised every single stat, after all.

"W-Wait…!!!!"

Suddenly the dragon shouted for us to stop. I, the rest of the party, and even the capital defense force under Commander Ben Griff all stared at the dragon in bewilderment.

"S-Spare me!"

An arrogantly overbearing dragon, begging for its life…?

Even its speech had become remarkably polite.

Letisia looked so dumbfounded she had to comment.

"…Did that dragon just ask us to spare it?"

"You were calling us insects a second ago, and now you're begging for your life~? That's so pathetic, pffh♡"

It was the first time I'd ever genuinely agreed with one of Erinn's put-downs.

Then Commander Ben Griff roared.

"You waltzed into a place where people live, built a lair, and ran wild — and now you want to be spared?!"

…This guy had a lot of pent-up rage.

Thinking about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it, I could understand. As commander of the capital defense force, how thoroughly must his superiors have chewed him out over a lair appearing right in the middle of the capital? He'd probably been raked over the coals far worse than I could even imagine.

"Please kill that mangy lizard at once, Hero!"

"You heard the man~?"

"W-Wait, I beg of you!"

The dragon frantically groped at its own leg with its hands. I'd heard there were gaps between the scales on a dragon's legs where things could be stored — so it was true.

"I-I'll give you this!"

"……A orb?"

It was a fairly large orb. Even resting on the dragon's palm it looked sizable — practically as big as a person.

"Oh, that's—!"

Ser-Aria seemed to recognize it and cried out in surprise.

"It's a Dragon Jade!"