Missing
1.
The beast-kin were one of the races classified under the beastmen lineage.
But among them, the dragon-kin were a little different from the rest. They were fiercely independent and disliked belonging to any group, and for that reason they didn’t even get along particularly well with their own kind.
Dragons were one thing, beast-kin another; both were creatures that lived in groups, yet half-bloods seemed determined to strike out on their own. I didn’t know why, but from a personality standpoint, you could definitely say something was a little off.
“...What should we do?”
“She’s still young, for a dragon-kin. I don’t know when she got on this train, but bind her and leave her with the humans. Those brats aren’t one of us.”
“Right, then that’s what we’ll do.”
So the beast-kin moved to wake the dragon-kin who had been sleeping on the train.
She looked sound asleep, apparently having just finished a meal.
Thanks to their nature, dragon-kin were stronger than ordinary beast-kin or humans, but even so, there was no need to fear a girl this young all that much.
“Ah, but just in case, tie her up tight—”
That was certainly what should have happened...
-KWAANG!
“Graaah!”
“What the hell?!”
The beast-kin who had tried to bind the dragon-kin went flying past the brown-haired beast-kin beside him. He slammed straight into the wall and nearly got knocked out through the side of the train, but managed to avoid that fate only because he hit the barrier woven into the train’s interior.
“Tch! She’s already awake?”
Startled, they drew their weapons.
Then again, to launch a man three times her own size like that—dragon-kin or not, she possessed a strength that didn’t seem to match her appearance.
“...What are you people?”
-Swish.
The dragon-kin girl stood up from her seat.
At a glance, she looked like an ordinary blonde girl, but the beast-kin instinctively sensed that the mana radiating from her was anything but normal.
However strong dragon-kin might be, they hadn’t expected a child to possess mana this vast.
“Why are you all crowding around me like this? Did some kind of monster show up?”
“?”
But it seemed she still didn’t understand the situation.
“Yaaawn...”
Had she reflexively lashed out because they woke her from sleep? The girl yawned and got to her feet, then walked toward the beast-kin.
“So what kind of monster was it? A goblin? Or maybe a wyvern?”
And then she walked right past them.
She passed the other beast-kin she’d just sent flying as well, stumbling onward with steps that looked like she still hadn’t fully woken up.
Then this was still their chance.
There was no question that the girl was dragon-kin, and just from their first encounter it was obvious she was stronger than they were.
But to leave her back exposed like that?
She certainly had dragon-kin strength, but unfortunately she was still young, and that meant she lacked experience.
“Hah...”
It was a pity the child had to be treated this way, but there was no helping it.
This was what that person had ordered them to do, and for that order, even the blood of a girl who didn’t look like she’d lived twenty years yet had to stain their blades.
-Shuuk!
The sword swung down.
That girl was dangerous, so they couldn’t take her alive.
Still, they meant to make it as painless as possible—to sever her neck in a single blow and end it quickly.
-KRAK!
“Huh...?”
But the girl spun around in an instant and bit down on the beast-kin’s sword, shattering it with her teeth.
-Kwaddeuk! Kwaduk!
“Ptooey. Ahh, it’s not even a toothpick.”
Then, as if she were chewing candy, she crunched the steel between her teeth, and with no more regard for the startled beast-kin than if they were air, she spat the broken pieces onto the floor.
The shattered fragments of the sword stuck into the ground like half-chewed gum.
“So, what is it? Why are you attacking people from behind all of a sudden? Weren’t you supposed to be this train’s escort, according to Sirian? I’m not some monster or anything.”
“...Y-you, just who are you?”
Even now, the girl didn’t seem especially interested in the beast-kin. She just looked annoyed at having woken up at all, as though she were trying to figure out what was going on.
-Thud, thud.
“?”
Taking advantage of the opening, the beast-kin had already surrounded her.
Now even the beast-kin who had been guarding the hostages appeared, armed and encircling the blonde dragon-kin.
“Ah, I get it. This is that thing, right? Betrayal, or something? So that’s why you’re pointing those iron sticks at me.”
“...Dragon-kin girl, you’ve surely suffered as much discrimination and oppression at human hands as we have.”
But they still didn’t attack. Instead, they tried to persuade her through conversation.
Even if she was dragon-kin, she was still beast-kin.
She must have faced the same treatment from humans that they had, and if they could only get her in contact with that person, then they could surely bring her over to their side.
Dragon-kin were each powerful beast-kin in their own right.
Yet because of their fiercely independent nature, even communicating with them was difficult. Still, a girl like the one before them was clearly someone they could talk to, someone they could reason with.
“So come with us. There’s no need to lick the boots of those humans for a few scraps of money.”
If they could bring even one dragon-kin to their side, that would make that person happy as well.
“We’re kin, so let’s share the same cause.”
-Swish.
The brown-haired beast-kin held out a hand.
The dragon-kin girl stared at it silently.
At first, she seemed to tilt her head with suspicion, but before long a faint smile curved her lips.
“Then, to begin with, right away—”
-KOOONG!
“Gah?!”
“You—!”
And then she grabbed the beast-kin’s face and drove it into the floor.
The wooden floor was nearly smashed to pieces by the beast-kin’s head as the girl hammered him down.
It had happened so suddenly, yet the girl was still smiling.
“What did you just say?”
That was how Louis asked, smiling brightly.
-BANG! BANG! BANG!
Then, after repeatedly slamming the beast-kin who had just called her a “comrade” into the floor—his skull already caved in—she said, “...How dare you. You filthy beasts crawling around in the desert. You think you can put me on the same level as you lot?”
-Paseuk.
[ Red Dragon ‘Louis’ (Hatchling) - Lv. 181 ]
HP : 6,500,000 / MP : 33,000
“N-no way...! That thing isn’t dragon-kin, it’s—”
Scales began to rise along her face. Her canines sharpened. Crimson horns started to grow.
All of it made the beast-kin realize that the girl before them—no, Louis—was not merely a dragon-kin.
-Flutter.
Now wings unfurled from her back as well.
Her hands and feet were no longer human in shape, their skin covered in scales until she looked more and more like an actual dragon.
A dragon.
They were the undisputed apex monsters of the human world, roaming the skies and ruling the mountain ranges.
One breath of their magical might could blow away an entire mountain, and it was said that merely hearing their roar made it difficult for the weak of spirit to remain conscious.
-KROOOOOOOAAANG!
“G-ghhk! It was... a dragon?!”
[ Dragon Fear - Debuff Skill ]
Attribute : None / Range : 250m / Maximum Detection : ∞
▶ Inflicts the effect of Fear on all targets within range. Against dragon-kind, the effect is doubled, and the target’s movement speed is reduced for a set duration.
In the end, the beast-kin collapsed where they stood.
“I’ll make you regret, to the bone, ever daring to treat me like your equal...”
With the dragon’s roar drilling into their minds, even standing on two feet had become a struggle.
Louis was still young, yes, but she was still one of the mighty red dragons.
Probably those beast-kin wouldn’t be anything to her... at all... not at all...
...
...
Hm?
Huh. Why did it suddenly stop?
Just as Louis was about to fully transform into a dragon, everything abruptly froze, as though the world itself had come to a halt.
Or rather, had the tentacle’s memory stopped here?
Come to think of it, I could feel the connection to the tentacle had been severed.
Someone had either pried it away from me, or the tentacle had detached on its own.
But it wouldn’t break the connection on its own without my order.
Did something happen outside—
...Sian.
Just then, an odd voice suddenly rang in my head.
Now I understood.
Someone outside must have pulled the tentacle away. To be fair, to anyone else it probably did look strange, with the tentacle crawling into my ear like that.
It had just been getting interesting, too. It looked like Louis was finally about to do something, and they cut it off right then of all times.
“Haaah, what is it? What’s so important that you had to wake me up...?”
I was irritated, but since they were calling me, I opened my eyes anyway.
-Srrrk!
“?”
Then I heard a strange sound by my ear.
-Surruruk.
Something disgusting and sticky was moving.
-Srrk!
“...Hah! H-hey! Get, get it off me!”
And then Aria’s voice reached me. When I opened my eyes, I saw her hanging upside down from the ceiling while a tentacle stripped her clothes off.
Her priestess robes were already coated in tentacle slime, and thick writhing tendrils could be seen slipping under the fabric.
Aria had been bound by the tentacle as though being toyed with, suspended from the ceiling in a ridiculous and suggestive state.
...I had no idea how she’d ended up like that.
“Damn it, what is this...!”
Then I saw Rain too, his arms and legs trapped by the tentacle.
Of course, the moment his sword touched the tentacle, it corroded and melted away. Had that thing always had an ability like that?
“What the hell are you doing, you monster?!”
He was desperately trying to resist, but the tentacle subdued him with practiced ease and began wriggling under his clothes the same way it had with Aria... better not watch that part.
This tentacle never really did anything differently regardless of gender or race.
You know that thing where it wraps around someone and does that? If I remember right, even the same tentacle had been made to moan like that before, so that was probably it.
But one of them wasn’t in sight...
Where the hell was that dwarf?
“Sian, you’re awake?”
“And you?”
Turns out the dwarf was right beside me.
She had surrounded herself with a wall made of earth spirits, and through a small opening just wide enough for air, I could hear Thomas’s voice.
Unlike Rain or Aria, she’d reacted quickly.
Thanks to that, the tentacle didn’t seem to have found her yet. But why the hell was it attacking those adventurers?
Right. I did say not to attack people... Ah.
Come to think of it, the tentacle was seeing those adventurers for the first time.
So it probably decided they were intruders and attacked them like that.
I guess it needed to be told exactly who was friend and who was foe, or else it just turned anyone who came near me into that state first.
-Surruk.
“Hyaah?! N-no, ahh...! N-not there...”
The tentacle wriggled under Aria’s clothes, and now it was creeping down toward her lower abdomen.
She desperately tried to grab at it, but with both hands and feet already tied, there wasn’t much point.
Hmm, but it didn’t attack those beast-kin adventurers, so why only those guys...? ...Ah.
Come to think of it, in the memory from earlier, the tentacle hadn’t attacked those beast-kin adventurers either. That was probably because I’d told it not to attack them, since they were allies.
Useful, but also a little disappointing.
It definitely had a will of its own, but its behavior was still so passive, moving only according to what I told it to do.
Maybe I should try modifying it so it could exercise a bit of free will sometime soon? If I remember the book I looked at before, there was a method for making something like a composite beast... a chimera, maybe?
And if I recalled correctly, the materials for that could probably be found in beast-kin territory. It might be worth looking into when we headed to Sabna this time.
“Um, Sian, if you’re awake, could you do something about these tentacles...?”
“Ah, sorry. I’ll take care of it right away.”
...Well, first I should probably do something about those two.
“S-Sian! Please, hurry and get this monster off me— ah...!”
Huh. Was I too late?
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