Shadow Step
Crunch!
Its claws slammed down on the corpse of a monster that had already stopped breathing.
With no resistance at all, the talons sank through hide and muscle, tearing the carcass clean in half.
Munch, crunch.
What had once terrorized mercenaries now ravenously chewed through the beast as if it were nothing more than a lump of meat.
Bright red blood dripped between its sharp teeth.
It finished the other half without leaving a scrap behind, then scrabbled at the ground in irritation.
Not enough...
That wasn’t nearly enough to sate its hunger.
There was no way it could recover its original power on this.
To regain its strength...
...
Prey that looked similar to humans, yet carried an ominous stench.
The first time it had encountered that prey, an instinctive alarm had gone off in its head, and it had fled without thinking.
The closer it got to them, the more it felt as though its own existence was being twisted out of shape.
But now it understood.
If it wanted to recover its strength, it had to devour the prey that gave off that foul stench.
And the same stench clung to it as well.
It turned its gaze.
Toward the quiet village in the distance.
* * *
While we were away, Krumo’s shadow had conveniently appeared in the village...
...Though that’s too long and annoying to keep saying, so let’s just call it the shadow.
Anyway, did the shadow’s arrival really happen by chance?
Or had it been waiting for the village to become vulnerable?
Hmm. No idea.
Personally, I hoped it was a coincidence.
If it wasn’t, that meant it had enough intelligence to choose its timing, which would make dealing with it a lot more troublesome.
Either way, what needed to be done didn’t change.
“We have to go back.”
As fast as possible.
Ati’s voice was icy with urgency.
The lazy drawl she usually dragged her words through had vanished as if it had never existed, and for a moment I wondered if she was even the same person.
Ati, speaking properly like a normal human being? Creepy.
I hadn’t even known her for a full day, but in my head she had already settled into the image of someone perpetually sleepy and half-melted.
Still, separate from that, I could understand why she was reacting like this.
No monster that had torn apart the creatures around its nest was likely to go to the village with good intentions.
Expecting it to stroll in and say, “Hi, I’m Krumo, I just moved here. Please take care of me,” wasn’t being optimistic. It was just stupid.
“Canaria.”
For the first time, Ati said my name out loud.
“Help me.”
“I was already planning to.”
That was the whole reason we had come all this way in the first place, so there was no need to ask it like it was some special favor.
If we let it rampage on its own and the ships we were supposed to sail to Laxia on got wrecked, that would be a problem for me too.
More importantly, there were people in that village besides demons.
If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve brought them with me...
Things you thought were the best choice at the time often turned out, in hindsight, not to have been the best after all.
Yes, just like now.
Before we set out, I let out an irritated sigh, and then something warm brushed against me.
“...Celine?”
Celine and I didn’t talk much.
It wasn’t that things between us were awkward or uncomfortable; it was the language barrier.
Whether Celine was speaking to me or I was speaking to her, everything had to go through Daun, and that was a pain in the ass.
Things had improved a little thanks to the word cards Daun had made for us, but natural conversation was still difficult.
So Celine coming up to me like this and gently patting me had never happened before.
“It will be all right.”
Only a few words.
Maybe because of that, I could hear what she truly meant even through the brevity.
...Yeah.
We had magical tools, after all. We should be fine.
Since that one had been made from a Dragon Orb, it would have some resistance against attacks that used mana.
It wouldn’t help much if the thing simply crushed us under a ridiculous mass of flesh, but if it had even a shred of intelligence, it wouldn’t descend recklessly to the ground.
That’s what wings were for.
Hmm. No, maybe not.
If the shadow really had a dragon’s temperament, then all bets were off.
If it had been one of the dragons I knew, it would have sneered that puny humans couldn’t possibly hurt it and charged straight in without a second thought.
“Hoo...”
That’s enough idle thinking.
No amount of worrying and flailing around here was going to solve the situation.
“I’m going first.”
As I exhaled softly, I gathered mana and shot forward without waiting for a reply.
Ah. I should’ve brought Celine.
Her Holy Magic would have been useful.
Too late to regret it now, though—I was already far ahead.
It would be much better to arrive first and fight than to go all the way back, pick her up, and come running again.
Even now, flames were flashing and Magi was surging wildly, so things were clearly a mess.
Even as the scenery around me warped and smeared into streaks, my eyes stayed locked on my target.
As the distance to the village closed, the thing’s shape became more and more distinct.
Yeah, definitely not a dragon.
Not just because it was smaller, either. The fact that it couldn’t use magic was enough to rule it out.
A dragon that couldn’t use magic, when dragons were called the masters of magic?
There was a limit to how stupid a joke could be. Say something like that in a cheap tavern and you’d get laughed out of the place for not making sense.
As I ran faster, muttering nonsense to myself, the village entrance finally came into view.
It was still a fair distance away in reality, but it was one I could cross in no time.
Good. I wasn’t too late after all.
Just as I was beginning to feel relieved, I suddenly saw the shadow draw in a deep breath.
“Breath...?”
Come to think of it, wasn’t it said that the thing couldn’t use magic but could use breath attacks?
For whatever reason had set it off, it had stopped spewing fireballs and was now preparing a breath attack instead.
That was a problem.
It wasn’t just a breath attack in appearance alone; the amount of Magi gathering around it was terrifying.
“Magi... breath...”
The more I learned, the more absurd it all became.
But whatever. Absurdity could wait.
What mattered now was stopping the breath it was about to unleash.
Because standing right where the shadow was aiming was someone I knew very well.
What the hell did she do to make it mad enough for this...
No, actually, I could guess.
If it was Daun’s personality, she had probably butted in where she wasn’t needed.
I wouldn’t say that was a bad thing, but...
Watching her stand there squarely in front of the shadow, sword in hand, I could only let out a dry laugh.
She looked so solemn that she probably understood what it meant for the thing to be drawing in breath, and yet she was still trying to block it.
Even if she was borrowing power from the Dragon Orb, there was no way that would work.
...No choice.
I peeled off part of the mana wrapped around my body and redirected it elsewhere.
Vrrrm—
With a low vibration, the ring began to glow red.
At the same time, ferocious mana surged through me, and pain like a thousand needles stabbing into my body raced from head to toe.
Ghk...!
I gritted my teeth, but a groan still slipped out through them in the end.
This is exactly why I didn’t want to use it.
Every time, I was reminded that dragon mana was outrageously vicious.
It turned my body into a wreck each time it activated, so no matter how much of a gift it had been from a dragon, it could still only be an infuriating headache of an item.
Whoever made this thing had done an excellent job of making it a complete pain in the ass.
—You called me after so long, and yet you haven’t changed at all.
“People die if they change too much.”
—No, I meant your appearance.
“...”
...And whose fault is that?
I muttered a halfhearted reply to the voice pounding through my skull and reached out my hand.
By then, a pale red sword—one that almost looked pink at a glance—had formed in my grasp.
“Pff...”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Borrowing Grasid’s power to stand against an evil dragon.
It was like I’d become the protagonist of some old legend.
Of course, I wasn’t Sigrid, and I hadn’t formed a contract directly like she had, but the beast floating in the sky over there wasn’t the same evil dragon from back then either.
It just felt that way.
Clutching the familiar weight of the sword, I poured mana into it.
Fwoooosh—!
Red mana, redder than my own, streamed along the blade.
It looked as though I were holding a flame in my hand.
There was no time to hesitate.
The breath it had unleashed was already pouring toward Daun.
Tap!
With a light leap, I vaulted over Daun’s head.
Heat laced with Magi surged at me like it wanted to devour me whole.
For a fake dragon’s breath, it was pretty damn hot.
“Still not as good as the real thing.”
Still airborne, I slashed downward with my sword.
─────!
Red flames bloomed along the path of the blade.
Like a haze rising from hot asphalt, the flames trembled weakly before the dark red breath, as if they might lose at any moment.
But the small flame born amid the roaring blaze did not go out.
Shhhhhh—!
Instead, it greedily swallowed the breath hurtling toward it and began to push forward.
Little by little, but without fail.
The farther it advanced, the fiercer and more savage the flames became.
By the time the fire that had burned through the breath reached the end of its path,
whoosh—
the shadow felt danger rushing up to its throat and abruptly cut off the breath, scrambling to dodge aside in a panic.
The sight of that huge body thrashing around in such a frantic hurry was honestly pretty ridiculous.
...All right, that’s handled for now.
I turned around to look at Daun, and fortunately, she didn’t seem to be hurt.
Not that she should have been, since I had blocked it in front of her, but still.
Daun’s tightly shut eyes slowly opened as she looked around.
“Ah, ahaha...! I did it! I actually did it!”
Once she confirmed the breath had stopped, she bounced in place, thrilled beyond measure.
As I felt her emotions flooding over me in full force, all I could do was stare in disbelief.
“You did nothing of the sort.”
I mean, I know you’re happy to be alive, but am I invisible to you or something?
The way her eyes skimmed right over me by such a perfect margin made me briefly wonder if she was doing it on purpose.
“I’m the one who kept you from getting roasted alive.”
If I hadn’t helped, by now she’d be one of those piles of ash over there.
Or maybe not even ash. Maybe she would’ve burned away without leaving anything behind at all.
Suppressing the ache in my body as best I could, I muttered at her in irritation.