Their Respective Trainings to Claim the Man
“Well? How do I look?”
“…Pardon?”
“With this, am I not sufficiently a woman worthy of being held by a man?”
“…….”
For a moment Caldrania could only fall silent in sheer bewilderment. Then she drew a careful breath, steadied herself, and asked as cautiously as she could manage.
“Might Your Lordship clarify precisely what that means?”
“Exactly what I said. I am asking whether this lady lacks anything as a woman. Am I not noble, beautiful, and perfect?”
She lifted her chin and continued.
“So why did those insolent women treat me the way they did? When I declared that I possessed mature charm, every last one of them wore an expression that looked like they were laughing at me. I simply cannot understand it.”
“…….”
Caldrania kept her silence, face tight with discomfort. It was the sort of question that left no good way to answer no matter how one tried.
“What are you doing instead of answering?”
Of course Serapagnia made it perfectly clear she intended to receive an answer no matter what. Caldrania chewed her lip for a moment before finally forcing her mouth open.
“However, my Lord… may I truly speak with complete honesty?”
“You have my permission.”
“Haa… Very well.”
Caldrania took a deep breath. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and hurled the truth straight at her.
“My Lord. Your Lordship is… sorely lacking in feminine charm.”
“…What did you just say?”
Serapagnia’s eyebrow twitched hard.
“Lacking? This perfect body?”
“To put it coldly… Your Lordship’s human form is close to that of a minor. By human standards it could pass for a student in the intermediate division of a Roelina Empire school… or even the upper grades of the elementary division.”
“Y-you little—!”
“By contrast, Empress Serene, Demon King Nemesia, even Queen Arsiena—all of them possess the fully realized figures of adult women. Generous busts, narrow waists, the curve of the hips.”
Caldrania gave a light emphasis to her own chest as she added,
“Human men… no, men in general are instinctively drawn to that sort of mature beauty. Rather than someone like Your Lordship who is… well, flat and cute. A man attracted to a body like that would almost certainly be abnormal—”
“Flat?! Cute?!”
Serapagnia staggered under the impact. For a being who had lived her entire existence as perfection itself, the word “flat” struck harder than any breath attack.
She pressed a hand to her chest and asked in a voice that trembled violently,
“Th-then what is this lady supposed to do? Must I rework my polymorph settings?”
“Regrettably, Your Lordship’s polymorph follows the shape of the soul. Forcibly altering only the outward appearance will not change the atmosphere. And since the opportunity has arisen I will say this as well… the adult-woman polymorph Your Lordship occasionally shows actually feels rather awkward.”
“This cannot be… Am I then doomed to live in this form forever?! And what of that man?! My toy!”
Serapagnia dropped onto the floor and began throwing a full tantrum.
“Waaaaah! I hate this! I want to be sexy too! I want to be alluring! I want to seduce a man!!”
“…My Lord, please maintain your dignity.”
Caldrania sighed and tried to soothe her, yet the Dragon Lord’s whining showed no sign of stopping.
“You’re so lucky! Your chest is big and your hips are round! Why am I still stuck with a child’s body after living three thousand years?! It’s not fair!”
“…….”
So this was the true face of the Dragon Lord who ruled the continent. Caldrania offered a silent prayer of thanks that no humans were present to witness it, then carefully suggested,
“My Lord, it is not as though there is no method at all.”
The weeping cut off at once.
“Method? What method?”
“If the outer form cannot be changed, then we push the concept instead.”
“Concept?”
“I have heard that the human realm contains men of every possible taste. If we weaponize Your Lordship’s cuteness together with the occasional big-sister manner of speech…”
Caldrania’s eyes flashed.
“It might deliver a fresh shock to that man. Appeal as a being who possesses both the skill of an older woman and the appearance of a young girl at once.”
“…Older woman and girl?”
“In any case! I shall assist you. Let us begin by learning the girlish dresses that suit Your Lordship and the proper way to call him Oppa.”
“O-Oppa…?”
Serapagnia’s face flushed the color of a ripe apple.
“H-how could this lady ever utter such an indecent word…!”
“If you do not wish to, then forget it. Those other women will simply carry him off.”
“…No. I understand. I will do it.”
Serapagnia clenched both fists tight.
“Oppa or Oppabuni—I shall call him anything! So long as I can reclaim my toy!”
“Excellent! Let us begin!”
That night the dragons of Heidelas were forced to toss and turn sleeplessly while strange noises poured without end from their Lord’s lair.
“O… Oppaaa!”
“Again, my Lord! More coquettishly! Shorten the tongue further!”
“Oppa! Buy me some candy!”
“Perfect! That is exactly it!”
And so the final contender, the White Dragon Emperor Serapagnia, finished her preparations to join the war of romance.
Time passed, and the next day found us inside the igloo on the northern snowfield.
“All right! Owl Number One, from this moment we begin training to catch Outer Gods.”
“…Pardon?”
Had that sweet first night been nothing but a dream?
The instant I opened my eyes the next morning, standing before me with a wooden sword in hand was the red-haired devil… no, Kyra’s Rage personality.
“Rise and shine!! You said you were going to thrash Outer Gods! Then you take hits! Building up durability first is the golden rule!”
“Wait, Headmistress? Hang on a second! I’m a mage, why the wooden sword—ugh!”
Thwack!
A cheerful impact sound and my scream rang out across the entire snowfield beyond the igloo.
“I said focus! You’re breaking the cast!”
Crack—!
“Gyaaah!”
A spine-chilling pop of sound left my back tingling in the strangest way. It did not hurt terribly, yet the sensation was thoroughly unpleasant. She had only struck me with an ordinary wooden sword—why did it feel like this…?
“Does it hurt? If it hurts then cast magic! Do you think Outer Gods will wait around for that 0.1 second of pain you feel?!”
“I-I understand!!”
With crimson hair whipping about her, full-Rage Kyra was nothing less than a drill instructor from hell. I gritted my teeth and rolled across the snowfield. My entire body was coated in pure white powder and trembling, yet there was no room to rest.
“Again! Open the mana circuits! Cast faster!”
“Khhh…!”
I screamed and raised my staff once more. Draw up the mana, link the circuits, manifest the phenomenon. The slightest gap and the wooden sword came flying without mercy.
“Do you know, Student Erevan?”
Kyra spoke out of nowhere while thrashing my calves.
“The true nature of those Outer Gods you fear so much.”
“Guh… invaders from… another world… aren’t they!”
“Wrong.”
Thud!
“Urgh!”
“They are not invaders. They are… the rejects.”
“…?”
Even though snow had completely blinded me and I could neither see nor feel a thing, I turned my face squarely toward the direction of her voice. Rejects…? I had never seen that in any of the setting books I read in my previous life.
“Rejects?”
“In this vast story called the world, the leftover scraps of settings that were never chosen.”
Kyra never stopped swinging the wooden sword as she continued.
“The world… or rather, following the metaphor I used before—characters the author created while cleaning the story and then erased, discarded scenarios, fragments of the world-setting that contradicted themselves and were deleted. Those things never vanished; they clumped together outside the world and became a grudge. That is what Outer Gods are.”
“…Is that truly so?”
“That is why they hate this world. They themselves were never chosen and were thrown away, yet the chosen protagonist and supporting cast get to live happily ever after inside the story. They cannot stand the sight of it.”
Goosebumps rose all over me. The Outer Gods I had simply thought of as villains were in fact the aggregate of discarded settings. Yet that also instantly explained why they so obsessively targeted the Academy and the protagonist at the heart of the narrative. They envied the main story and wanted to destroy it.
But once my thoughts reached that far, one point still refused to make sense.
But in the end, weren’t the Outer Gods themselves something the original author created?
Hadn’t they been able to exist only because the villains had been set as Outer Gods from the start?
I had no idea. Part of me wanted to ask right that instant, yet watching Kyra passionately continue her explanation made it hard to interrupt.
…I’ll ask later if the chance comes.
“Therefore the magic you cast must carry a conviction fiercer than their grudge.”
Kyra’s eyes blazed scarlet.
“I am the true owner of this story! I deny you! Without that shameless certainty you will not pierce even a single layer of their shells! Understood?!”
“Under… stood!!”
“Then prove it! Right now!”
Her wooden sword began to fly mercilessly toward my skull. Even a rough glance told me this one was real. Fail to dodge and my head might actually crack.
Focus. Focus!
Forget the pain, the fear, the shocking truth—think only of magic. I forced my eyes wide open, glared at the hurtling sword, and hauled mana up from my core as though detonating it.
“Shield!”
Boom—!!
A dull impact. The shockwave that burst outward scattered the blizzard in every direction. I lifted my gaze a fraction and looked above my head. There a translucent blue magical barrier was perfectly holding Kyra’s wooden sword at bay.
“…Hmm.”
Kyra withdrew the sword and the corner of her mouth curled upward. At the same time her crimson hair began to lose its color little by little.
“Not bad, blocking an attack. Your Academy grades were only upper-middle so I hadn’t expected much.”
“Haa… haa… I thought I was going to die.”
I collapsed onto the ground and gasped for air. Every muscle in my body was screaming, yet a strange exhilaration rose at the same time. I had blocked it. A Transcendent’s attack—practice or not—I had stopped it with my own power.
“Good. That level earns a pass for today’s training.”
Kyra tossed the wooden sword carelessly into the snow. Then she stripped off the thick training leathers she had been wearing and swept her hair back. With a soft whoosh like something burning, the flame-like aura vanished completely, and in its place her hair color began to shift into something mysterious. A silver-gray base closest to her true personality, yet shot through with a soft dark teal like a night sea.
“You worked hard, Student Erevan.”
The voice that had been roaring moments earlier was nowhere to be found. Calm, with a faint shyness clinging to it. Looking like that, Kyra approached me where I sat in the snow and gently wiped the sweat from my forehead with a handkerchief. Seen up close, the beads of sweat on her face only made her look purer.
“Ah… thank you.”
I accepted her touch in a daze. Every time the dark-teal-threaded hair fluttered in the wind, an oddly mysterious and alluring air drifted from her. Hard to believe she was the same person who had been beating me with a wooden sword.
“Um…”
Even after finishing with my sweat she did not withdraw her hand, simply staring straight into my eyes. There was a slight hesitation in her gaze.
“Since today’s training went rather well… I thought I might give you a reward.”
“A reward…?”
“Yes. Being cooped up in this igloo is stifling, and we also need to restock food…”
She glanced away and fidgeted with the hair at the back of her head. Dark-teal strands slipped between her pale fingers.
“There’s a small village down the mountain. I heard there’s a festival going on and plenty to see…”
For a moment she stared into empty air, face reddening, before looking back at me. With cheeks faintly flushed she asked carefully,
“Shall we… go take a look around the village together?”
“….”
For an instant time itself seemed to freeze. Against the pure white backdrop of the snowfield stood a woman with that enigmatic hair color, shyly asking for a date. The sight was so unrealistically beautiful that I could only sit there with my mouth half open, unable to form a single word.
This… was the Headmistress? This was the same free-spirited, eccentric mage I thought I knew?
My heart gave a heavy thud and dropped.
She’s beautiful.
I did not need Truth Binding to know it. Right now that single word occupied my entire mind.
“Student Erevan? If you’d rather not…”
When my answer lagged she began to turn her head away in embarrassment. At that sight I could no longer hold back; as if entranced I nodded on pure reflex.
“…Let’s go.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to go. On a date.”
“…Really?”
Only then did a radiant smile bloom across her face—brighter even than the snow of the field.