The Butterfly Effect, Immediately (3)

The hero had kept well clear of dragon country until every demon was in his hands.

A dragon, after all, was the summit of this novel—a creature that simply refused to obey balance.

A little soon. No... I think I met one far too early.

"■■■■■——!!"

White hair whipped in the roar that would not end.

"■■■■■——!!"

...Temporary storage?

The mechanical voice was subtly different this time, but I had no room to care. The dragon was roughly thirty meters long. Even those silver eyeballs—visible only if I craned my neck all the way back—felt larger than I was.

"Grrrr—"

I did my best to ignore the guttural rumble vibrating through my chest and slowly took in my surroundings.

An envoy carrying a princess. The kingdom should have picked its elites for this...

Knight Commander Clid lay face-down and unconscious among them. Around craters large and small, knights and mages were strewn like discarded dolls. Blood had pooled between shattered shields. A few mages, collapsed from mana exhaustion, twitched faintly; none of them looked conscious. Even if that force got back on its feet, I couldn't see this turning around.

...All of this from Intimidation alone.

Not an attack. A divine beast that collapsed a battlefield by presence alone. Exactly the stature the original had given a dragon.

"Grrrr—"

"..."

I let out a thin breath and turned my head again. A perfect one-on-one. The belly of the black dragon, squared to me, swelled enormously.

"...!"

"————!!"

...A unique skill?

I scrambled for a thought and rubbed the right arm that had been severed once already.

"..."

If my instinct was right, I wouldn't die no matter what hit me. The instant that breath landed, Irregular would judge it a danger and rewrite the moment. But if the rewrite made no distinction between friend and foe, then everyone behind me—the B-rank, the soldiers, and that princess—would die with it.

"I'm losing my mind."

Whatever it took, I had to drag the dragon's eyes onto me. My foot struck earth. I picked out the empty ground at my back and sprinted, circling wide around the divine beast's flank.

"Grrrr—"

A low bestial sound clung to my heels, cold enough to raise the skin. I ran as if death itself were the pace, with no chance to look back, hunting for a stretch of ground with no fallen soldiers on it—and then a chime cut through.

"What?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The Happy Ending on the system window had flipped to Bad Ending. I didn't stop. I only jerked my chin up and looked at the dragon.

...It wasn't looking at me.

Those silver eyeballs were fixed, glaring, on the soldiers sprawled across the grass.

I wrenched around, kicked off the ground, and sprinted back the way I had come.

Hwoooong—

The dragon's belly swelled and swelled, drinking every breath of air around it, until crimson flame climbed around its maw like steam.

"...Haaah."

The instant that searing heat touched skin—

"■■■■■■■■■————!!!!"

"Khaaa—!!"

From thirty meters overhead, a roar fit to split eardrums, and with the heat-storm a purple breath came pouring down.

Kwaaaang—!

I couldn't even open my eyes against the blast. I threw myself anyway. The breath scorched the green of the meadow, and the moment it met the earth my fingertips met the purple fire.

"Kahaaak!!"

The same instant I understood that I had been touched, heat born on the back of my hand rode up over the joints, went soft, and melted the skin from the bone.

The mechanical voice spoke, and the fire stopped. The space the flames had touched broke apart like glass and evaporated. Then the finger-bones that had melted grew back. Restored skin and nerves closed over them, the dissolved tissue set, and the hand returned to what it had been.

...Rewritten.

"Kaa... haa..."

My head went white. I knew the whole story. I had been sure I could drag this novel to a happy ending. But the pain was real. Pain I had never felt in my life.

The dragon did not give me a breath to recover. It began to drink the air again.

Hwoooong—

"W-wait!!"

"■■■■■■■■■————!!!!"

And once more it vomited purple breath down over my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠head. A heat-storm that felt as if it would melt the body wrapped me, and then the purple flame came down.

"Kkh— haak!"

In heat so fierce I could barely breathe, I clenched my teeth and threw an arm up over my face on instinct.

"Guaaaaa—!!"

Flesh and muscle ran. The vessels inside the muscle boiled, burst with a wet pop, and streamed from the thumb of my clenched fist.

Ah... I'm dying. Dying, dying, dying, dying, dying.

Once again the space cracked. The breath shattered and vanished in shards of violet light. Severed bundles of nerve and the melted tissue alike crept back into pale flesh. It had lasted only a sliver of a moment, before the breath ever reached the ground, and still it felt as if I had been dropped into a living hell. My heart slammed from the violence of it.

"Haa... haa... Has it lost its mind?"

"■■■■■——!!"

The dragon thrust its head out and roared, as if it had never before seen an insect that refused to die.

"...Not again."

One more breath and I might die of shock. Of course, even that would be rewritten. The dragon, as if an extra no longer interested it, began to swell its belly once more. I rolled my eyes fast and checked the system window.

Intimidation, stored for a moment by Irregular. I still had no real idea how the thing was built, and this was not the time to pick at details. I locked my eyes on the temporary skill.

In that instant—

—Kwaaang!

My vision flushed red at once, and a brutal wall of pressure slammed down over the dragon.

"——!!"

That enormous body shuddered once and locked stiff. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠crimson flame it had been about to spit, it swallowed whole.

Instinct under Intimidation... something like that?

"Grrr—"

However many centuries it had lived, the divine beast—the strongest living thing on the continent, and one that had never once been made to kneel under Intimidation—rumbled low and stared down at me for a long time.

"Kiiing—"

Then it whimpered, and like a dog it laid that huge body and that huge head flat against the ground.

"?"

Maybe some of the suppressing effect still lingered. I set a hand on the snout with a boldness I did not feel. In any ordinary moment, the act would have been unthinkable.

The divine beast snorted, as if in answer. The pain of a moment ago came back, and my hand flinched before I could stop it.

"...A contract."

Past the great snout, far behind, the tail was swinging back and forth.

"..."

This dragon—this divine beast—was the being the hero, deep in the story, contracted only after a fight to the death, the one that did so much to let him take the world. I had no idea what chain of cause tied my saving Ivelia in the Boundary Forest to the creature in front of me. What I did know, with unpleasant clarity, was that I could not hand it over to the hero.

This divine beast was beyond any standard.

"...Let's see."

I activated the glittering Contract in the system window without hesitating. Blue light flashed across the dragon's body. The torso, more than thirty meters of it, began to contract, and the vast wings and the tail shrank with it until they were gone. In less than a few seconds that enormous bulk had become a human shape—bewitching, short jet-black hair, eyes that shone in a way eyes should not.

What is this.

Dragon had been added to the window. I looked at the skill, and the details came up.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Bad Ending had turned back into Happy Ending, and Skip was active again. I stared at the divine beast, who stood there looking at nothing in particular.

...Is this even the world I know?

I knew dragons. A dragon in human shape was new. As I remembered it, even the contract with the hero had left the creature in its proper form. There was no way that guy's novel had ever bothered with a detail like this.

One thing was certain. An F-rank has no mana at all. Forget a dragon—he ought to be unable to contract with anyone. A contract demanded mana vast enough to overwhelm the other party, and a high command of mana theory besides. I had known all of that. I still couldn't leave the Contract floating in the window unpressed.

"So the result of too little mana is a body locked in human form..."

A little shorter than me. Skin white enough to gleam. Look closely, and it almost seemed dusted with the faintest scales. And for a gender listed as unknown...

...Nobody looking at her would call her a man.

Press the point and she wasn't human at all, only a reptile, so it hardly seemed a crisis. Still, something needed to go on her. March her into a village like this and I would feel as if I had personally resigned from the human race.

"Hmm. Let's see."

I left Sarah standing there, blank as a post, and took a slow look around. A toppled carriage. A broken wheel. Soldiers sprawled in the grass. Through a torn cover, the supplies showed. I pulled out a length of black cloth that looked as if it had been cut from the finest material they had—preferably a piece that wasn't already ripped.

"For now, put something on."

Would she even understand?

Sarah looked at me once with those silver eyes and gave a small nod. She took the cloth, spread it in the air, tossed her short black hair lightly aside, and with a soft flutter settled it over her shoulders like a cloak, wrapping herself from throat to ankle.

The penalty—vulnerable to magic—sat badly with me. Even so, I had gotten my hands on an absurd amount of power before the story had properly begun. I stared at Sarah again.

I had saved a princess who was supposed to die, and a dragon had dropped out of nowhere onto a green meadow. If word got out across the continent that I, a man with nothing, had caught a divine beast, then this story—already warped from the first step—could leap anywhere at all. I needed to be more careful than this.

Which meant—

"...Ack."

I, the victim, flopped onto my back in the grass as well.

"Commander Clid!"

An urgent voice came from somewhere. I cracked my eyes and watched. At the edge of my sight Clid lurched upright at a soldier's word.

"The divine beast...?"

As if it would still be standing there. What remained was a wreck of a field: soldiers and knights down, a shattered carriage, supplies scattered, and Ivelia pushing herself up a little way off. And Sarah, crouched in front of me where I lay.

...Right. I had not, in fact, thought of a single excuse for Sarah.

"Call for reinforcements! Now!"

Clid, finished with his first sweep of the field, got hold of himself, shouted at the soldiers, and came toward me. He looked down with a faintly stunned face and spoke.

"You... were alive."

"That how it looks? Lucky me."

"What became of the divine beast?"

I let myself fall flat on my back again.

"No idea. As you can see, I passed out too."

"......"

Well. The way he stared without another word, he might have been thinking of the disgrace he had made of himself just before Intimidation put him under. He looked for a long while. Then his eyes stopped on Sarah, seated beside me.

"This person..."

He started to ask, and closed his mouth. Maybe he had decided there was nothing worth pulling out of me. Maybe he meant to set the field in order and ask later. He clicked his tongue, short and sharp, and raised his voice as he strode off.

"Until the reinforcements arrive, track the divine beast as far as you can and secure the area!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Second Squad—three wounded confirmed in the rear! Emergency treatment, then immediate evacuation!"

"Third Squad, holding the formation with the mage team! The barrier's mana is still sufficient!"

Reports flew back and forth in a rush. Through them, Ivelia came slowly toward me where I lay.