Draig Goch (4)
“Everyone, listen!”
Richard Folschen slammed his shield into the ground.
The earth shook with a heavy thud. It was nothing like a dragon’s tread, but the reverberation was more than enough to make the entire subjugation force turn and look.
Once he had their eyes, Richard thrust a hand forward. Fingertips aimed at their destination, veins standing out on his neck, he roared.
“Open the path.”
Orders on a battlefield were always simple and strong. As a former knight-commander who had led countless operations, Richard carried that authority in his voice and gesture—the force that made people move.
“Open a path for the New Star to run!”
Directly behind Richard stood Najin.
His body was a ruin of wounds, a wreck that looked ready to collapse—yet the sword in his grip still shone. Trailing that radiance, Najin reset his stance.
The White Horn adventurers saw it.
The knight order saw it.
Only Najin’s attacks could wound the Red Dragon. The only one who still held a chance of overturning this battle was that boy. They had all watched him draw the dragon’s blood; every last one of them knew it.
Thud. Thud. Thud!
No further orders were needed.
All that remained was to prove it with action.
Richard took the lead and began to run. Heavy strides drove him straight at the Red Dragon. Najin stepped out after him.
『————————!』
The Red Dragon, too, had grasped by instinct that Najin was a threat—that the sword-aura he carried was danger. As the boy forced himself upright and charged once more, the dragon swung its head toward him.
It paid no mind to White Horn adventurers scoring its scales. Jaws yawning wide, the Red Dragon bellowed straight at Najin.
That radiance—the light clinging to that sword—grated on it. A nightmare branded into its soul. The light that had belonged to the human who once cast it down into the earth and sealed it beneath a stone pillar. Terror and rage tangled together as the dragon expelled the breath it had drawn.
Breath.
Flame like a flash of lightning erupted in a radial blast. In that instant, Richard—still leading the charge—drove his shield into the ground again. Blue mana surged across the rare-metal greatshield, a full two meters tall.
What he called forth was an unyielding rampart. The moment his mindscape wrapped the shield, Richard became a wall. Sheltered behind him, Najin watched the fire fail to melt the barrier and instead split to either side.
“Hot!”
Richard laughed as he shouted.
“But I can hold!”
He shoved the greatshield forward.
Dragging the earth beneath him, he advanced. The shield’s edge was melting; burns crawled up his forearms—and still he forced himself onward.
As if determined to keep his promise to open the way.
By the time Richard had taken six strides, the flames finally died. Through a landscape still warped by residual heat like shimmering haze, he pointed. Before he could even shout run, Najin was already past him and sprinting.
Najin ran across the searing ground.
But the Red Dragon’s thrashing was not finished. As if to keep him from approaching, it spun its body and lashed its tail. A whip-crack of scale and muscle. Najin tried to move for the dodge—and realized the same leap as before was impossible. His ankles had already reached their limit.
Running was all he could manage.
Kicking off the earth and launching himself skyward was out of the question.
So take it head-on? No method for cutting that tail came to him. But the worry proved unnecessary.
Twang!
The greatbow’s string sang; a harpoon shot free. Mages of the knight order warped the ground itself. All of it slowed the oncoming tail—only a fraction, but…
“Grisel!”
“I know without you saying it.”
“Now!”
That delay was enough. Three adventurers leapt from the earth the mages had reshaped. Blades thrumming with mana condensed to the absolute limit, the three of them swung as one at the dragon’s tail.
Crack!
Baschen Corte’s greatsword and Grisel Paramelt’s halberd smashed into the tail. Then Roselyn swung Echo, laden with their mana.
Kiiiiiiiiing!
With a thunderous roar, the dragon’s tail was driven back for the first time. In the moment the unbalanced beast staggered, Najin clenched his teeth and poured on more speed. The path was open. A gap had appeared. A chance that would never come again.
Najin hurtled straight for the dragon’s maw.
2.
The place Najin had pointed to was the dragon’s open jaws.
From the very beginning, his destination had been the interior of that gaping maw. It was not a method any ordinary person would conceive—and even less so for anyone who understood a dragon’s nature.
Because a dragon’s interior was an entirely different world.
Until the moment of its death, a dragon carried another world inside its body, and its mouth was the sole passage into that world. Anyone who set foot there met a wretched end.
Flesh crumbled. Soul was unmade.
The disassembled soul was absorbed by the dragon and became part of it.
That was a dragon’s meal; that was a dragon’s digestion. Those swallowed became part of the dragon and lived on forever—never finding rest, enduring an immortal existence of endless pain.
But that isn’t all there is to it.
When Merlin had told him this, Najin had asked one question. If a world existed inside a dragon, wasn’t it something like a mindscape? And if so, wouldn’t that mindscape have a center?
Merlin had affirmed his guess. With a sour look she had answered:
At the heart of the world nested inside a dragon lay the dragon’s origin—and if you shattered that origin, the dragon died. But it was a method almost never used, and in all of history only one fool had ever succeeded.
—There was one. A bastard who thought of the same method as you.
—The idiot they called the Dragonslayer.
According to Merlin, the greatest fool in the world. And according to the world’s judgment, the man who had slain more dragons than any other—and the great hero who had stood with Arthur.
—The First Sword Saint, Siegfried.
The First Sword Saint who founded the Sword Church.
The tale of him diving into a wicked dragon’s mouth and smashing its origin had passed through the lips of countless bards. It had become a heroic legend that still lived a thousand years later.
That was why, when Najin pointed at the dragon’s mouth—when Richard pointed at those jaws and ordered the path opened—everyone gathered there understood what the boy meant to attempt. They snorted that it was madness, that it was suicide—and still they willingly carved him a path. The odds were vanishingly thin, but if it succeeded, it would overturn the entire situation in a single stroke.
They would reenact the myth of dragon-slaying.
Among so many great heroes, the one Sword Saint who alone had chased Arthur and reached the same destination. Najin intended to challenge the feat that man had achieved.
Originally I never planned to use this…
But with things as they were, it was the only way left.
At this rate he would die regardless. Standing at the fork of life and death, Najin chose to challenge.
He locked eyes with the Red Dragon. The pupils that the witch had dyed crimson had returned to their original black, and those eyes fixed on the radiance Najin had kindled. With a roar that threatened to rupture eardrums, the dragon lunged at him.
As if to swallow that light whole.
If you can swallow it—
And Najin charged the dragon in turn.
—then swallow all you like.
Najin’s sword trailed light. The constellation coiled around the blade stretched long in the wake of his strides. His gaze never left the dragon’s maw. Without a shred of hesitation he dove into the abyss that waited inside those yawning jaws.
He sliced through the Red Dragon’s tongue, scraped past its teeth, and set his foot upon the root of that tongue. Toward the abyss waiting beyond, he took one more step.
…Feats of greatness, by their nature, are claimed only by those who turn their backs on life and walk toward death.
In this moment, Najin achieved one.
He had always challenged the strong. He had overcome his own limits. He had endured the flames of a Transcendent. And now, not content with making a complete dragon bleed, he had gambled everything on diving into its mouth.
Of course, each of those alone fell short of becoming a star. Taken one by one they might not even count as true feats—mere shards of starlight, perhaps…
But the instant they were bound under the single theme of challenge—
the moment those great and small feats fused into one—they transformed into a feat worthy of heaven’s notice. Heaven acknowledges the feats of a human who has challenged and overcome. In the star domain that belonged to Najin alone, a star rose.
A New Star was born.
A new star shone brightly in the night sky.
Even with the first star he had so long desired now in his grasp, Najin did not realize it. All he felt was sudden strength flooding a body that had been on the verge of collapse—and he only frowned in confusion. Treating even that as a last thrash of dying will, he hurled himself into the abyss.
First priority: finish off the lizard brat in front of him.
That single thought filled his head. And so the moment he stepped fully into the abyss, an entirely different world greeted him. What unfolded before his eyes was the Red Dragon’s mindscape and world, drowned in flame.
“Merlin.”
Najin called out.
“This place is fine, right?”
—You already know the answer and you’re still asking?
The reason Merlin had permitted this insane plan was simple: this was the one place where he could use the greatest variable he possessed.
A place where no one’s gaze needed to be considered. A place that could, for a little while, veil starlight. A world completely sealed off from the outside. And therefore, a place where Najin could reveal everything he had.
Merlin pointed at the origin that sat at the very center of the Red Dragon’s world and shouted.
—Cut it down.
Instead of answering, Najin closed his hand on empty air.
His eyes flooded with platinum-gold; the constellation carved into his wrist blazed. Neither the light of the flames filling the dragon’s world nor their heat could compare to the starlight that took the shape of a sword in his grip.
The boy seized the Sword of the Stars.
Upon the star-sword Excalibur, platinum-gold sword-aura that pierced Mystery bloomed in radiant glory.
And in that instant—
of the thirteen stars engraved upon Excalibur’s blade, the first star shone.
3.
The Red Dragon’s inner world.
At the center of that place choked with violent fire lay the dragon’s origin—its heart. The moment that was pierced, the Red Dragon would die.
But Najin understood at the same time why piercing a dragon’s origin inside its inner world was praised as a legendary feat—and why only the great hero Siegfried had ever succeeded.
Sssssssssssssssssssssss!
His flesh began to burn. Flame clung to his skin. Enormous pressure wrung his body. This was a world meant for the Red Dragon alone, and of course it rejected every outsider.
The dragon’s digestion had begun.
He was burning. The moisture in his body evaporated. His soul, unable to endure the pressure, screamed. Pain of a dimension he had never felt before crashed over him. A body already pushed past its limit by merciless overuse thrashed in agony.
Crack.
Najin clenched his teeth until they ground and forced his eyes wide open.
Blood ran from them. Even as the flowing blood evaporated, he tightened his grip on Excalibur. Relying on the sword’s restorative power, he closed the distance to the dragon’s origin.
If you can digest me—
If you can swallow me, then go ahead and try.
You digesting me, or me piercing your heart. Let’s see which is faster.
Thud!
Eyes still wide, Najin drove Excalibur into the dragon’s heart. He had not put enough force behind it; a single blow could not cleave the heart in two. But he had no intention of stopping there.
If once was not enough, then ten times.
If ten times failed, then a hundred.
The platinum-gold aura coiled around Excalibur shoved the flames aside and scattered light. And as if answering the will of the master it had Selected, the first star engraved upon Excalibur’s blade shone.
By seizing a star, the boy had proven his qualification.
The first power, now unbound, wrapped itself around Excalibur.
Gray Tower Master Nayuta groaned.
Without warning the witch’s constellation had thrown the heavens into chaos. Constellations thrashed in confusion; star domains collided with star domains, and the sky was left in ruins.
“Kh—hack, kuh, hrrk…”
Because she had kept the star-counting spell active while looking upon the witch’s constellation, Nayuta was forced to cough blood. She wiped the blood running from the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief, downed a potion, and steadied her breathing.
A major incident. A historic major incident had occurred.
Not long ago Excalibur’s drawing had flipped the heavens upside down, Arthur’s constellation and Merlin’s constellation had convulsed—and now the witch’s constellation as well? Historical catastrophes seemed to be arriving without end.
Damn it. I wasn’t in any position to complain about Cypria running me ragged…
So the Gray Tower Master’s seat was not the cushy job she had imagined. How were historic events supposed to keep happening every few months? Still groaning, she forced herself to her feet.
Work still had to be done, after all.
She had to re-observe the tangled heavens, and if the witch’s constellation had produced any changes, she had to report every last one of them. This was not an incident that could be glossed over.
“….”
After staring at the stars for a long while, Nayuta suddenly tilted her head.
“What is that?”
Her gaze had caught on a star hanging in one corner of the sky. Had a star like that been there before? Had it simply been shoved aside by the thrashing constellations? No—she was fairly certain no such star had existed…
She began casting observation spells one after another.
Reinforcing her eyes with magic, analyzing the flow of the heavens, she looked again.
It was a New Star.
A star that had never been there had suddenly appeared. New stars did occasionally form like this—but this one felt wrong. Nayuta sensed a deep dissonance.
A star that shone far too brightly.
And beside that star, new starlight was already gathering.