Hero (1)
Viola Oldina cannot kill Ladon.
Too many years spent fighting him have fixed the dragon in her mind as something that cannot die—something vast enough to swallow her entire world.
Ordinarily that perception would only stop her from killing him; it would not make him stronger. But this world is built from Viola’s mindscape. If she believes him to be such a creature, then that is exactly what he becomes.
A dream repeated for a full five hundred and sixty years.
Inside Viola’s dream, Ladon has kept swelling. The result is a colossal being no ordinary means can hope to face—
Simply because Viola believes him so.
“If her perception is what shapes this world,”
Then the solution is simple.
“We just need to shrink the space Ladon occupies in her life.”
Make the fight with Ladon no longer the whole of her existence. Anchor her somewhere else. And a clue for that “somewhere else” was already there.
On rainy days, Violet played the piano in a shabby tavern. A small hobby, a tiny sanctuary she had built to keep hold of herself. Najin added his own weight to that place.
It was neither difficult nor complicated.
They simply played together, listened to each other, shared their thoughts on the music. And for Violet, that was enough. Najin’s prediction proved right; Ladon’s bulk dwindled day by day.
Time passed, and the final day arrived.
At the very end of a score stamped with a repeat sign, Najin stood ready. In his hand was not a violin, but a sword.
“We’ve come this far, but Viola Oldina still can’t take Ladon down, can she?”
“Probably not. What she wants isn’t triumph or transcendence—it’s an ordinary, peaceful day.”
“Right. And if a hero who’s guarded someone else’s everyday life for sixty-seven years finally wants one of her own…”
Kang— Najin drew his blade.
“Then we ought to grant that wish at least.”
Facing a great trial and protecting the lives of ordinary people is a hero’s duty. Then who protects the hero’s life? Najin answered by drawing his sword.
I will. No one else—myself.
No rain falls on the Kingdom of Kassel today. Beneath a warmly shining sun, Najin raised his sword. Merlin swept her hair back and smiled. Her blue locks glittered in the sunlight.
“So what’s left is simple, right?”
“It is.”
Clang— the sky began to crack.
“We kill Ladon. So the ‘simplest method’ I mentioned at the start turns out to be the answer after all?”
“The answer was always fixed. The problem was how to reach it.”
The sky shattered; fissures raced outward.
Glass exploded into shards, and Ladon revealed himself. Watching him, Najin crooked a smile.
“Now that we’ve worked the problem properly…”
Not even a quarter of the size he had been at first glance.
Still enormous, of course—but.
“I can cut him.”
He was no longer beyond the reach of a blade.
Ding. Daaang. Ding…
At Ladon’s appearance, bells pealed through the streets. But Viola Oldina did not appear. The bells rang louder, more frantically.
Daaaang!
No matter how the bells clamored, Viola did not show herself. The hero who had guarded this nation for sixty-seven years did not come. Sensing the crisis, citizens began to flee, screaming as they scrambled to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Ladon.
And Najin—
Tak.
Stepped in the opposite direction. While everyone else tried to get farther from Ladon, Najin walked toward him. When everyone flees, the one who does not is the hero.
He planted himself before the walls that encircled the kingdom.
Stared Ladon down from the very front.
Najin had made a promise to Violet. That for this one day, he would be the hero in her place.
Najin was a knight. And a knight must keep his word. Break a promise, and how can you still call yourself a knight? So what he had to do was already decided.
“Merlin.”
“Mm.”
“Let’s go.”
The star that announces the end of night blazed.
Even shrunken, Ladon remained a formidable dragon. The fact that he had pinned a transcendent in place for sixty-seven years was proof enough—he stood on a level comparable to one.
And dragons, by their nature, are immortal.
Ordinary means cannot kill them; they rise again and again. Even if an overwhelming power carves them to pieces, even if they are minced to nothing, given time a dragon will always return.
So a dragon cannot be killed.
That was the world’s truth, its rule.
Truth. Rule. Providence.
Turning the words over, Najin gripped his sword.
The world had declared the deed impossible—but Najin held the power to ignore that rule. Look up, and his stars were shining there.
Challenge. Dragonslayer. Breakthrough. Indomitable.
One among them glittered with particular brilliance: the star he had claimed by achieving the contradiction of killing a deathless dragon—the Star of Dragonslayer. Merlin had once pointed to it and said:
Its uses are limited, but when that limited moment comes, that star will shine brighter than anything else.
She had been right. Najin felt the starlight wrap his body. An immense gulf still yawned between him and Ladon—but the light was there to bridge it. What he needed now was not cold calculation.
Only conviction.
Confidence in himself.
Sensing that Viola would not appear, Ladon began to move. His vast wings beat once, and a storm howled. Market stalls along the street shattered and flew; trees torn up by the roots soared into the sky.
Before the raging typhoon, Najin stamped his foot hard. Kuuung— he drove his heel into the earth and steadied his breath.
His gaze locked on Ladon.
The evil dragon’s maw yawned wide, and flame condensed within. A breath—the simplest and most devastating weapon a dragon possesses. The fire gathering in Ladon’s jaws recalled a seething sun.
Take that flame head-on and he would melt without leaving so much as a stain. Had Najin stood here alone, he would have sought some more elaborate way to break the breath—but…
“Merlin.”
He had no need of that now.
Merlin was at his side. She had been preparing the spell before her name was even spoken, and the instant it was, she completed it.
Seventh-circle magic.
She was a sixth-circle mage at present, yet she manifested a seventh-circle spell with almost casual ease. This time she did it without borrowing Najin’s stars. Merlin knew how to force higher magic from insufficient circles, and she had been repeating similar feats long before she became a transcendent.
She meshed her six circles together until they formed one great ring. That ring stood in for the seventh.
What spell she had forged, Najin did not know. Even if a great archmage had stood here—even if Cypria Gachevska, Lord of the Platinum Tower, who had studied every magic in history, had been present—none of them could have named Merlin’s magic.
What Merlin wielded was unique: magic refined for herself alone, that only she could command.
Glimmer.
The moment the spell completed, a bluish current shimmered around Najin’s body. He did not know what the magic did, and he did not particularly care.
He had asked Merlin for a means to stop the breath.
If she cast without a word of explanation, all he had to do was trust her magic.
Gripping tight.
Trusting Merlin, Najin set his stance.
And Ladon breathed fire.
Flame fell, dyeing the sky a searing red. A wave of pure fire that incinerated everything it touched rolled toward Najin. The instant the blaze met him—chiiiiissss!—steam billowed upward.
Steam born of water meeting fire.
Merlin’s magic guarded Najin’s body. Even before a dragon’s breath, he did not melt. Far from melting, he felt no heat at all. Thanks to that, he could finish his technique without interruption.
Just as Ladon’s fire began to dissolve the city wall—
Najin thrust his spear toward the sky.
The steam was pierced. The flame was pierced.
His vision, once choked by fire and vapor, cleared in an instant. A vast hole tore through the wave of fire, and a storm howled through the gap.
Ka—gagagagagagagagagak!
A Ramming launched from firm ground into the sky. A single line of light punched through everything between earth and heaven and slammed into Ladon’s jaw.
Jjeok— the dragon’s maw snapped upward. In the process his mouth was forced shut, and the breath cut off as a bonus.
One exchange. That was enough for each to take the other’s measure. Lowering his flung-back head, Ladon glared at Najin. Split yellow beast’s eyes fixed on him.
Najin flicked the tip of his spear toward the dragon.
“Come down.”
You can spit fire from up there as many times as you like—it will never reach me. Come down. Scratch me with those hard claws, that tail, that maw. Tear into me.
Otherwise I’ll drag you down myself.
What makes a dragon so troublesome is not only its iron scales or its immortality. The most fundamental reason is that dragons fly.
Ladon hung hundreds of meters overhead.
However well Najin could unleash Ramming or Triumph, he could not fully deliver that impact to an enemy so far away. Kruenbel or Alderan might manage it—but Najin was not yet as strong as they were.
So to deal meaningful damage to Ladon, he first had to close the distance. The orthodox approach would have been to float a hot-air balloon or some artifact-built flyer and use it as a platform.
“Hm? Why would you need something like that?”
Merlin had said as much once, when Najin was researching such methods.
“Why would I need it? Because I have to close the distance, don’t I? I can jump a few dozen meters, but hundreds is a bit—”
“No, I’m asking why you need it at all.”
She had tilted her head and pointed at herself.
“Have you forgotten who’s at your side? I told you. In this dream, at least, you can lean on me.”
Merlin had shrugged.
“A platform? What’s that?”
“I can even make you a road.”
As if to prove those words no empty boast, Merlin raised her hand toward Ladon in this very moment.
“Some worthless thing has the nerve to look down on me.”
Merlin’s brow furrowed.
She flicked the hand stretched toward Ladon with a sharp snap. In that instant the vast sky above—the expanse spread behind Ladon’s back—rippled like a lake.
For the past month Merlin had steadily made rain fall on the Kingdom of Kassel. It had not been mere weather-making; it had been a process of dyeing the sky with her own mana.
A sky undulating like a lake of blue light.
Merlin wrung every drop of the mana she had seeped into the heavens. A mage is supposed to prize efficiency and waste not a grain of power. She recycled the mana she had “wasted” over the past month.
Eight rings layered upon the sky flared with light.
"Eighth-circle magic."
⟨ Submersion ⟩
The sky fell. That was how it looked to Najin. A portion of the blue heavens seemed to shear away and drop straight onto Ladon. Only when it struck did he realize what had fallen was not sky at all.
Water. An immense volume of water.
A pillar of water poured down like a waterfall and swallowed Ladon whole. The dragon’s wings, unable to bear the full mass, gave off the sound of bone snapping and muscle tearing.
Deudeuk, deudeudeudeudeuk!
A dragon’s scales hold high resistance to magic—but what was breaking bone and rending flesh now was pure physical force. The mass and weight of the cascading water crushed Ladon downward.
Then—tak.
Merlin lightly tapped the ground with the toe of her boot. That alone etched six circles into the earth. The instant a single droplet from the falling torrent struck those circles—
"Sixth-circle magic."
⟨ Brinicle ⟩
The water froze. Ice that began from a single droplet spread outward through the moisture in the air.
Jjeok.
The waterfall that had swallowed Ladon began to freeze. Freezing the whole of it took only a few seconds.
A colossal pillar of ice reaching from earth to sky.
Trapped within it, Ladon thrashed and shattered ice—but far too slowly. Frost had packed the gaps between his scales, and his movements had grown sluggish beyond measure.
Pointing at the ice, Merlin smiled for all to see.
“Who am I?”
“The great archmage who holds eleven stars—”
“Not that.”
Merlin gave Najin’s back a light shove.
“Right now I’m your guide. And a guide’s job is to make the road. Isn’t that right?”
“It is.”
“Well? Why aren’t you running?”
Merlin smiled.
“I can’t stand that arrogant beast looking down on me—so hurry up and knock it out of the sky.”
A road completed in a rather physical sense.
Along the path of ice that reached all the way to Ladon high above, Najin began to run.