You Can't Die!
The Thunder God Dragon Fulgur.
The monarch of the lightning-wielding thunder dragons, and one of the four strongest dragons of all, alongside Dragon Lord Charlot, the Frost Dragon Sgaredo, and the Black Dragon Seripid.
She was the one who had created Blunt Technique: Thunder God Dragon together with me, and when it came to lightning, her power was great enough to burn even low-tier celestials and demons to ash.
Krrrrrr...
Far in the distance, Fulgur — still spitting crackling bolts — let out a roar laced with thunder and stared down at the ground.
The spot where someone had stood had vanished without a trace, so completely that it was hard to believe anyone had been there at all.
Fzzzt...!
Only shattered wreckage and lingering yellow currents swirled over the place where they'd disappeared.
I walked slowly toward her?
Fulgur, seeing me approach, drew up her yellow lightning once more.
I stepped back.
"...Her mind really is gone, isn't it."
Manifesting Fulgur had been achieved through illusion magic and an enormous outlay of divinity.
Something only possible within fantasy — a mindscape, nothing more.
Summoning her into the world of Deoen was obviously out of the question, and I couldn't even bring over an avatar of her, the way I had with Pharaoh's authority or statue.
'There's simply no medium for her to anchor to.'
Not even I knew where Fulgur actually was.
The only one holding any information was Sgaredo, and even she knew nothing beyond the fact that Fulgur had changed into a female body and laid five hatchlings.
"...Why, though."
Why had Fulgur — the ultimate manly man — suddenly turned into a married mother of five?
By her own choice, no less.
"......Mm."
If Sgaredo were awake, I could ask her.
But she'd fallen into a deep sleep ever since using her breath through Sre's body, so there was no asking her anything.
Sre did surface for brief stretches now and then, but even then she spent most of the day sleeping anyway.
'Hatchlings do nothing but sleep, after all.'
Poof!
Sre, who had been happily munching on meat, was summoned in.
She whipped her head this way and that, spotted me, and came bounding over to prostrate herself at my feet.
Her white tail wagged furiously.
Only a few months ago I'd been carrying her around in my arms; now she'd grown tens of times larger — too big for my eyes to take in all at once.
"Sre."
"Uu?"
"Why did Mama's friend become Mama?"
She was, after all, a friend of Sgaredo — the one who counted as her mother. Surely she'd know something?
Sre stared at me with bright, clever eyes, cocked her head, then went back to her meat.
"Guess you don't know."
"Uu-uu."
"Right. Right."
Sre didn't know a thing.
I patted her with hands too small to even wrap around her, then turned my gaze back to Fulgur.
Fulgur was still glaring at me with eyes empty of all will.
"...If only I knew where she'd gone."
Where had all the vanished dragons gone?
It burned. Her whole body ached.
Every inch of her was burning away.
Mad electric currents burrowed deep, shredding her into pieces so fine that calling them 'fragments' would have been a joke—
"Ha!"
Her body shot upright on pure reflex.
The first thing she saw as her eyes flew open was a thin white sheet draping down over her, and...
"...A bed?"
A spotless, plush bed, not a wrinkle anywhere.
Birang Brenis looked around, still shivering from head to toe. A side table held books, a pen, and medicine, and beneath the bed sat what looked like bottled drinks.
This place was...
"The infirmary..."
The infirmary?
"You're awake."
The sheet was pulled aside as someone entered.
A familiar face. A woman with blue hair.
"Lady Lily..."
"How are you feeling?"
"...I'm f-fine."
Fine, apart from the occasional full-body flinch.
Having declared she could handle anything, then been so disgracefully crushed... that would probably be fine too.
'...It HAS to be fine!'
Lily settled into the chair beside her and pressed a hand to Birang's forehead.
A pure white light seeped in, and the currents that had been making her body seize finally died away.
"It can be disorienting the first time. Fulgur's lightning isn't just ordinary lightning — it keeps affecting you even after you come back."
"...Yes. Wait — what? Come back? Who came back?"
"You did, Student Birang."
?????
Birang groped at her own body with disbelieving eyes, as if checking that she was still herself.
She seemed to be searching for some sign that something had gone wrong — and when she found absolutely nothing, her panic subsided a little.
"Unlike the other students, you're not a user... rather, not an Immortal, so I revived you personally. And since it wasn't the real thing, your soul wasn't damaged by the attack, either."
"No — no-no, wait just a moment. Are you telling me I died?"
"Yes."
"Truly?"
Truly?
She'd died, just like that — without managing a single thing?
"Technically it was the death of your body rather than your soul... but well, if you count that as dying, then you died."
"......"
Now that resurrection had all but vanished from the world, death itself was treated as something enormous — but in the past, it had been one of life's most ordinary occurrences.
A world where, so long as your soul survived, coming back was simply a matter of course.
But the world had changed, and now even the death of the body was weighed with the utmost gravity.
Perhaps the Empire's Saintess could still be brought back... but no one could have imagined an Imperial Sword dying.
And not just any Imperial Sword — Birang the Cloud Envoy Duke, rated alongside Tu-hyeol-gong as the strongest in the Empire after the Three Dukes.
Birang's expression grew very, very grim.
"...How."
"Don't take it too hard. It was the final stage, so the difficulty was brutal to begin with — and Fulgur isn't just any dragon."
"...What exactly is that dragon? Why does it possess such power? And how do you keep such a creature at your side?"
It wasn't as though she'd never fought one.
As the Cloud Envoy Duke, Birang had faced a fallen dragon before and even claimed a Dragon Heart for herself.
By her own assessment, a dragon was simply 'a lizard a little stronger than your average monster.' Precisely that, and nothing more.
Being erased in a single breath was frankly inconceivable.
She had only faced it the once, admittedly — but at that level of strength...
'Even Duke Arne... might be unable to stand against it.'
Lily smiled faintly.
"Well, the one I keep at my side is a different dragon."
"If you mean the hatchling, then I'd rather you keep it put away. I'm asking about the lightning-attribute dragon."
"The hatchling's strong too, you know."
How strong Sre truly was.
She wielded the mightiest claws in existence, capable of wounding with a mere touch, and carried within her a fragment of the Frost Demon King.
That sharpness and chill could cut even me — stronger now than ever after my fourth class advancement.
If only she could reach it, even the Kraken's stubborn hide would be torn open in a single stroke.
Birang shook her head firmly.
"A hatchling is still just a hatchling..."
"Waaa!"
"Kyaaaa!"
A crack had split open beside Lily without any warning, and Sre — prying her way through the seam between dimensions — pounced straight at Birang.
Having been miniaturized for the occasion, her body was only slightly bigger than Birang's head.
She was nothing but a hatchling, far weaker than any dragon Birang had ever faced — yet the instant Birang's eyes landed on her, she flailed her arms wildly, as though seized by a fit.
"Get away! Get awaaay...!"
"No?"
"No no no, vanish this instant!"
"Uu-uu..."
A cold reception she'd never once felt before.
Sre had seen people dislike her before, but never outright revulsion. With a face gone completely sullen, she trudged back on heavy paws and buried herself in Lily's arms.
Sre rumbled a low growl, eyes locked on Birang.
Entirely indifferent to it, Birang avoided the hatchling's gaze and exhaled in ragged bursts.
Only when a fresh wave of the Divinity of Healing washed over her did her breathing finally settle into an even rhythm.
"Haa... haa..."
"It wasn't on purpose. I'm sorry. I only meant to let her show her face, but she barged right out."
"...No. The fault is mine. I was the one acting like a fool."
How could she — so recently crushed by a dragon — turn around and shriek at another one?
If Duke Arne could see her now...
Sniff.
"Are you crying?"
"I-I am NOT crying! Who said anything about crying!"
"Your eyes have gone red, though."
"Th-that's — fur! Fur must have gotten in my eyes! D-didn't you just summon that hatchling!"
Sre's body is covered in scales. She doesn't have any fur.
Lily wanted to say exactly that — but one more push and the woman would surely burst into tears, so she swallowed the words.
"...Please leave. I want to be alone..."
"If you'd ever like trauma counseling, my office door is always open—"
"Please."
Birang buried her reddened face in her hands.
Lily gave her hand a squeeze, cheered her on, and stepped out of the infirmary.
"...I want to die."
Why had she survived?
She should have just stayed dead when she had the chance. Coming back to life for nothing but this humiliation.
BOOM!!!
"You can't die!"
"KYAAAAAAA!!!"
Birang's Great Dragon Commotion thus came to an end, closing with me blocking Sre's second unauthorized appearance.
Birang shut herself inside the infirmary, hollowed out by shame, while Sre — sentenced for rampaging far too wildly — was placed under an official ban on her beloved lamb.
Sre wailed and fussed and carried on as hard as Birang herself had, but the verdict never budged an inch.
"Wasn't that a bit cruel to her?"
"Less cruel, more telling her the truth."
The Kraken was by no means a simple foe, and it wielded power on par with what Fulgur had displayed.
The Empire might be the powerhouse of the continent, but taking this lightly would only invite catastrophe.
"They've seen what Fulgur is capable of now, so the Empire will surely take precautions of its own — assuming they'd rather not watch their lands sink beneath the waves."
"If they can't figure out that much, they deserve to fall."
The private space belonging to Rasty, Professor of Supernatural Powers & Authorities.
Meeting her in a room decorated entirely to her own taste, I faced her across a cup of the tea Rasty so often savored.
Rasty gave a nod and let the flavor linger on her tongue.
"So. How is the teaching going?"
"Apart from one of them, not much to write home about... but they're serviceable. All of them."
"That one would be her, I take it?"
"Yep."
The girl with a genius for magic that bordered on the innate.
"She might manage to master Blood Formula magic before long."
The magical girl, Candy Star.