Ep.8 - The Road to Lumün (2)
Ep.8 - The Road to Lumün (2)
***
The farther their carriage advanced, the more Delin felt in his bones what that earlier tremor had truly been.
"Uwek..."
The shattered carriage, the fallen horses,
and the sight of knights groaning 'God...' sprawled among them...
It was like a scene of utter disaster.
Bodies lay collapsed on the ground,
every last one groaning 'God...'.
"Hey. Don't bother healing them. If they follow us later, it'll be a pain."
Even as they walked among the wounded, the women could not agree and still argued.
Riko stopped Helen from offering healing prayers for the injured, but Helen only smiled demurely and sought understanding.
"Don't worry. They likely won't wake for quite some time. However, from the position of offering prayers to God, I cannot ignore those who are dying..."
"Bullshit. So it's fine to smoke cigars and guzzle booze from that same prayer-offering position?"
Delin's group walked on, grumbling, yet an unfamiliar tension hung among them.
As they moved along the road, which had been wrecked so badly the carriage could go no further, they remained on guard.
"Everyone be careful! It is surely an existence as strong as this Kaede. Without a doubt."
"It's noisy, so just walk quietly...! Don't spout nonsense!"
"Professor, c-couldn't we just fly on broomsticks...?"
"No. If we accidentally provoke it, things will get more troublesome. We'd better walk quietly."
Delin and Eva, possessing almost no combat ability, were positioned in the middle; Neva and Kaede led the way.
Behind them walked Riko and Chichi. And bringing up the very rear, Helen.
"Do you see those claw marks?"
Helen paused for a moment, gathered everyone's attention, and pointed somewhere.
"There, on the overturned carriage to the left, claw marks are visible."
Even though the carriage was the size of a house, it had been shattered to pieces by the three-pronged claw marks.
From that, one could infer a single claw was larger than Delin's entire body...
"Wh-what in the world is that...?"
Unable to overcome the anxiety welling up from that sharp clue, Delin sought an answer from the women.
It was Kaede who answered.
"...A Dragon. A Dragon has come."
Kaede spoke, wiping the smile from her face for the first time. Before she knew it, the smile and liveliness that never left her lips had vanished completely.
---------------------------------
Because it was a disaster that had occurred in broad daylight, it was all the more harrowing.
On the road strewn with blood and pain, only groans of 'God...' flowed.
The sight seemed to issue a warning about the fleeting nature of human life and death.
This was no trial or anything of the sort. It was a cataclysm.
Albator knights wearing the same armor as Neva lay incapacitated on the ground,
and as they continued walking, Dwarf warriors began to mingle among the wounded as well.
"They were all gathered here waiting. Whether it's a dragon or whatever, it ended up helping us."
"We were lucky. It probably wanted to target the knights who had set up camp rather than a mere carriage."
Riko and Chichi, who walked while surveying both sides, analyzed the situation in their respective ways,
but Neva, walking ahead, simply continued in silence.
"..."
She walked, passing by familiar faces.
In her mind, there was no room for former comrades, juniors, subordinates, or anything of the sort.
Neva walked along the road, lost in her own thoughts...
The one leading the conversation in place of the knight who was acting strangely was Riko.
"Hey, son of a bitch. Can we even stand a chance if we fight that Dragon?"
"...I do not know."
Even the usually cheerful Kaede was trembling with fear, so the forced conversation only amplified the dread between them.
"...You fought those legless little shits just fine, but now you're shitting yourself. Dumbass."
"It is different from that. This, this is different from that..."
A fear distinct from the Twins, the monsters of the swamp they had fought before.
If those were closer to monsters or ghosts, a Dragon was like a calamity one dared not trifle with.
'A Dragon, huh...'
Delin felt the fear of the Dragon too.
But unlike the other women, his fear was mixed with a sense of awe.
Recalling Dragons from all sorts of fantasy comics and movies, Delin was inwardly curious about what the Dragon might look like and what kind of existence it was.
Judging by the flight that had shaken the very earth, it was surely as grand and massive as the Dragons he had imagined?
Breathing fire from its mouth, shattering castles with a flap of its wings...
Devouring everything with its monstrous teeth?
Looking at the scenes strewn around, fear suddenly welled up, but on the other hand, a strange anticipation of being able to face the Dragon directly also arose.
In a way, wasn't that a vague faith in the Dragon that had so easily dispatched the enemies sent by the Queen?
"Hic... hic..."
But unlike Delin's thumping fear, the fear of the little witch walking beside him was so great she could barely walk properly.
"D-D-D... Dragon..."
Eva, pale and on the verge of tears, unconsciously grabbed the hands of those nearby. With her left hand, Delin; with her right hand, Riko.
"D-D-D..."
"Hey, what are you scared of."
Riko, who loathed such clingy behavior, was about to shake her off immediately, but seeing Eva looked like she might piss herself any second, she reluctantly let her hold on.
"...Good grief. The sisters are a pair of nutjobs."
Walking beside the stumbling Eva, Delin looked at her with concern. It was almost a natural instinct to worry about her, as she was younger than himself.
"Are you okay? Don't be too scared, just walk. Even if a Dragon is nearby, it already rampaged through this area, so it won't come back. Even if it goes... uh... hold on..."
But as Delin soothed Eva, he realized something.
The fact that this entire area had been reduced to scorched earth meant... the L'Myune they were walking toward...
"...Oh, God..."
must be in an even worse state than this dirt road.
Beyond his sight, he saw flames blazing.
The wavering heat even burned up the screams of people, creating a heat haze, and the higher it rose, the more it convulsed, emitting a cruel light.
"It's already too late."
"No. It's not too late; we dodged well."
"D-D-D... D-D..."
In the distance, the city in the canyon, L'Myune, was burning, spewing thick, acrid smoke.
The voices of those fleeing from it could be heard.
Someone called out for their mother and father,
someone called out for their child,
someone wailed, looking back at the burning city.
"This... is too much..."
It was different from the majesty of Dragons he had only seen in novels.
Confronted directly, it was nothing but a totality of agonizing screams and weeping.
Just like Eva trembling beside him, Delin's body began to be infected by fear, little by little.
The Dragon faced on two feet was no boss monster that dropped good items.
It was the incarnation of terror, the embodiment of calamity, and betrayal itself.
Delin could only freeze up. It was a being born with the will and power to dominate the sky, something one dared not oppose.
"...Don't worry. The weak always get what's coming to them."
Riko probably said it in her own way to console the small man and woman, but those words only reminded the weak of the brutal order of power.
In the eyes of the Dwarves who had fled far, despair welled up. Even the vengeance and anger boiling inside that despair crumbled before the wall of reality and was ultimately swallowed by despair.
The higher the flames set by the Dragon soared, the more the Dwarves' sobs seeped into the earth. They could not cry looking at the sky. They could not shout their sorrowful wails to the sky. The sky was no longer on their side.
Tears beaded and fell to the ground.
The ground where the earth God had bestowed blessings was now filled with the Dwarves' sorrow and resentment...
"This situation is fucked up. Honestly, it would've been better to fight the Queen's lackeys and those short sword-swinging bastards."
"Don't say such things. Even if we cannot share their grief, do not mock their calamity."
In this situation where everyone was fleeing from L'Myune, only seven beings were heading toward it.
"When it comes to a Dragon near L'Myune, there is only one."
"...Leviathan. The most dangerous of Dragons."
"Chichi-ssi is well informed."
"I heard it was sealed and put into an eternal sleep..."
"No. How could anyone seal her. It is simply that everyone made a small promise not to wake her from her slumber."
The roar of the giant dragon echoed, shaking the entire mountain range. Its sound, spreading far, eventually snatched away even the last screams of the Dwarves.
"Hee, heek... hiik..."
The little witch couldn't withstand the roar and eventually collapsed, her legs giving out, but Delin, walking beside her, caught her falling body with his own.
The truth was that Delin's legs had given out before Eva's, but anyway, that's how Eva perceived it.
"Huu, huuk... huk..."
"I-I-It's... okayy..."
Neva's blue eyes, which glanced at the teary Delin and Eva, seemed to linger on them for a moment, then soon turned toward the still-burning L'Myune.
"...Let's save at this point."
She, Neva, the knight, finished speaking and soon walked on again.
A wolf followed behind the knight,
a thief walked beside that wolf,
a witch walked following that thief,
a saint proceeded following that witch,
At their center,
Delin first grabbed his shaking legs and stood up, then helped Eva up and said,
"G-Get up. We have to follow quickly... Save..."
[Save point set!]