Dragon and Homunculus
I believe I just explained that casting magic inevitably requires mana.
And as a dragon, I possess something like a metal detector for mana—an ability to sense the mana of others, so long as it does not belong to someone I already know.
Even so, despite having that gift, I still went to the trouble of building and using a separate mana-detection device.
If I am that sensitive to other people's mana, why bother constructing a whole machine for it?
The mana around me was something I could pick up with only a little attention. But if I expanded that awareness to the entire world? I would never be able to maintain a normal daily life; the constant noise would drive me insane.
So I built the worldwide mana-detection machine as large as I possibly could, deep in the basement of our company building.
And in a situation like today's, a certain possibility did cross my mind.
At that moment I had been completely blindsided by Do Ji-yeon's insane energy levels. Was it possible I had made some kind of mistake? The thought lingered at the edge of my mind.
The odds, however, were extremely low.
After finally finishing our last stop of the day—the coin karaoke place—I somehow managed to peel myself away from Do Ji-yeon, whose tension had skyrocketed after a rare stretch of fun with Ha-yan.
Right up until the instant we parted, Do Ji-yeon was still going:
"See you tomorrow! Tomorrow's morning snack is tanghulu!!! It's grape tanghulu this time!!"
She vanished into her apartment still shouting about tanghulu. Ha-yan and I both exhaled long, simultaneous sighs of relief.
I glanced at Ha-yan, who had sighed exactly the same way I had, and asked,
"You played with Ji-yeon even more than I did. Why are you sighing?"
"You think hanging out with a friend whose energy is that high is easy?"
"You were practically dancing with joy when the malatang and tanghulu came out."
"Ugh... Th-that's... I couldn't help it! It was delicious!!"
"Fine, fine. I get it. Let's head in too. Your mom's waiting. I thought we were just going to mess around and eat a little—how is it already evening?"
"Hehe. Still, it was fun after so long, right? We sang a ton at karaoke too."
"Well... yeah."
I had enjoyed myself more than a little myself.
It really had been a long time since karaoke, though.
Trading idle chatter the whole way, we eventually reached Ha-yan's apartment.
Only after we stepped inside her home could we finally have time that belonged just to the two of us.
"So even though it is not a workday for you, and even though everyone else has already gone home, you came all the way down to the building's basement yourself?"
"Couldn't be helped. It was the first time in my life I ever sensed someone else's mana."
"You could have simply called me. I am rather confident with this machine, you know."
"I needed to check it myself. The mana didn't feel... friendly."
Once I confirmed Ha-yan had fallen asleep on her bed, I teleported straight home and immediately headed for the secret elevator that led down to the basement.
I had already relayed the situation to Rhea ahead of time via mana waves.
On the ride down, Rhea—suddenly stuck with overtime—muttered complaints without pause, but she came with me all the same.
She always talked like that, yet she never failed to do what needed doing.
Rrrrk... Thud!
With a fairly loud noise the elevator doors opened, revealing a sight that was nothing short of spectacular.
A space so vast it looked as if several giant baseball stadiums had been fused together filled my vision.
Originally I had never intended to put a building on this land at all.
Call it a dragon's instinct if you like—when I was still in middle school, the thought that I needed to build a dragon's lair had suddenly taken root.
It was somewhere in my middle-school years, which meant it would have been exactly fourteen years after I regained my senses.
I already had more money than I knew what to do with, so from that moment I began scouting land in earnest, chose a suitable spot, and started carving out an enormous underground space.
I expanded the volume without the faintest idea what I would put inside it, so early on I struggled quite a bit.
All I needed for sleeping was a bed, and back then I was basically living and eating at Ha-yan's house anyway.
Then suddenly I had this gigantic cavern?
At first I was at a complete loss. Instinct had driven me to create it, yet I had no use for it.
And right after that, that incident happened.
I learned that there are things sheer personal power alone cannot solve.
So I erected a building on top of the space and began running a company in earnest. Rhea herself came into existence around that same time.
"To me this place is something like a hometown. I opened my eyes inside sticky, slimy liquid, and the first thing I saw was a little brat with weird eyes staring down at me."
"Could you maybe refrain from stories that invite misunderstandings?"
"Everyone here is a homunculus just like me. What is there to worry about? Ah. Or is this a request that I tell the exact same story in front of Miss Ha-yan later? If so, I will gladly visit the house anytime, even if it means setting aside my work..."
"Stop, stop! I was wrong, okay!!"
Once again I had no chance of winning a verbal sparring match against Rhea.
I followed after her, grumbling only to myself.
Wummmmm...
Inside the vast underground chamber, countless homunculi moved busily this way and that. Those who spotted us bowed their heads in greeting.
I waved a hand a few times to tell them to get back to work and walked onward. At the exact center of the space sat a massive gray sphere that seemed to be operating with a strange low hum.
It was so large that even if several dozen people stood shoulder to shoulder around it, they still could not encircle the thing completely.
In front of the sphere sat a simple console along with what looked like a computer, a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard.
I pulled up a chair, sat down in front of the computer, powered it on, and logged into the program.
"All right... let's take a look. If I narrow the worldwide scan down to just our area, something should turn up. Unless it's another dragon like me."
"Isn't that rather overestimating yourself as a dragon? You are currently putting everyone through this ordeal precisely because you failed to sense a single mana signature."
"Ugh, seriously..."
I grumbled at Rhea's jab and activated the mana detection.
Wummmmmmm~~!!!
The sphere's hum deepened. Waves that only those with mana could perceive radiated outward as it began scanning at terrifying density.
The first mana wavelength the program picked up was, of course—
"That's me. And this is Ha-yan's house, so obviously not... Hmm? What?"
"Did something come up?"
Rhea must have been curious as well; she stepped closer and peered at the monitor.
I tilted my head in disbelief.
"There... isn't anything?"
"...I see. There is nothing. With this we can conclude that my master's magical faculties have already begun to age."
"Hey, cut it out."
I had no good comeback to Rhea's sarcasm, but the situation was far too strange.
"No way... I definitely felt it... and I hadn't even been drinking..."
"Alcohol is for adults, Master."
"I know that. That's what makes it even weirder."
No matter how thoroughly Do Ji-yeon's insane energy had scrambled my brain at the time, I had not been so out of it that I would mistake someone else's mana for Ha-yan's or my own.
And it had been the first time in my life I had ever sensed another person's mana. How could I have misread that?
They say that after eating something extremely sweet, even the tiniest pinch of salt tastes overwhelmingly salty. Was I supposed to believe I had failed to notice something like that?
"There's something."
"You are simply hoping there is something."
"...Then 'hope' there is something and look into it. Got it?"
"Of course. I am a subordinate who must carry out every word my master speaks."
With that, Rhea trotted off to begin the investigation.
I leaned back in the chair and stared at the monitor again, muttering to myself with an expression of pure disbelief.
"No way... it was real... Wait. Has aging already hit me? I'm a dragon. I'm a creature that lives for thousands of years, right?"
All personnel assigned to the mana-detection apparatus, report immediately to the underground grand conference room.
This was no ordinary matter. Master had clearly sensed something, yet the mana-detection apparatus registered nothing?
It was practically a natural disaster.
He is a dragon.
Even if Master currently lives an unremarkably human life without lacking anything, he is still a dragon.
Every last one of us moves with new life solely because of the overwhelming quantity of mana a dragon possesses—mana granted to us by his grace.
Miss Ha-yan and her family had lived with him from the very beginning, so that was one thing. Among the homunculi, however, most of us—myself excepted—still found it burdensome merely to approach him too closely.
And yet a being who wielded that much mana and magical power had spoken with such absolute certainty that he had sensed another person's mana... and the device detected nothing?
This was not something that could simply be overlooked.
Thankfully, Master had given me authority over all the children in positions beneath me—authority to do as I pleased with everyone except Master himself, Miss Ha-yan, and her family.
I was truly grateful for that.
That did not mean I intended to round up every human in the region like rats, of course.
If we got tangled up with ordinary society, that would become its own headache.
Still, if we held a meeting, something was bound to surface.
"Everyone's here?"
At my broadcast, the homunculi who had gathered in the grand conference room all fixed their eyes on me.
Even here, an enormous number of them stared up at me with bright, sparkling eyes.
I surveyed them, straightened my chest, and declared with full authority,
"This concerns Master. I trust you all know exactly what to do?"
"Of course!!"
...This is not a gang meeting.