A Parent's Heart
Thud—
The instant Armin's body crumpled, Euclid's smiling face twisted into something unrecognizable.
An unbearable revulsion. How dare they. How dare the likes of them lay a hand on his daughter.
"How dare you…! You worthless scum—my daughter!!!"
Euclid's body began to transform into pure lightning.
Crackle—zzzt—
Thunder God Transformation. The true naturalization of the Gold Dragon chieftain.
E-Euclid, my lord, this is all a misunderstanding—!
Only once Euclid had completed the Thunder God Transformation did the dragons finally grasp the gravity of the situation. They scrambled to explain themselves.
But—
"Silence. From this moment on, you have forfeited the right to speak to me while still breathing. Preservation of the species? Do I look like I care? I will take full responsibility for everything that follows."
At those crushing words, Mord—the Gold Dragon elder carrying both Euclid and Nakamoto on his back, and one of the Empire's hidden knights—broke out in a cold sweat.
In two thousand years of dragon life, Mord had seen Euclid truly angry only twice.
Once, when he opposed the meeting with Asahi, chieftain of the Red Dragons.
And once, when the Black Dragon—overlord of all dragonkind—looked upon Armin and declared her a calamity that would bring disaster upon the dragons, and moved to kill her.
Had Hermes not intervened at precisely the right moment, war would almost certainly have broken out between the Gold-Red alliance and the rest of dragonkind.
The Red Dragon chieftain had been terrifying in his own right. But not like Euclid.
Euclid had been ready to stake his own life to kill the Dragon Lord.
The expression and the atmosphere around him that day still haunted Mord's memory.
Which was why—
Those fools are finished.
Euclid leapt from Mord's back.
Nakamoto flinched, not understanding what was happening—but Euclid's body simply floated in midair. Cloud-like formations gathered beneath his feet, supporting him.
"Mord. That is an order. Heal Armin and Lord Sunghyun beside her. Go."
Yes, my lord.
Mord accelerated and streaked toward Armin.
Watching Euclid shrink to a distant speck, Nakamoto spoke.
"Is it really all right to leave him alone? The opponents are dragons, aren't they?"
Ah. This human still doesn't know?
It's fine. That man is the chieftain of the Gold Dragons.
Only then did Nakamoto nod as if everything finally made sense.
"So that was it. No wonder the way he looked at people felt different."
Aside from a handful of nobles, Euclid had regarded every subject with the same eyes. The retainers called him a fair and impartial king who treated all as equals.
But to Nakamoto, it had never looked like that. The man had seemed barely human at all.
And now—not human. Of course.
In situations like this, there was a phrase Lord Sunghyun always used.
"Then that settles it."
Before he knew it, Nakamoto's eyes found Armin—her entire body blackened and scorched—and Sunghyun, black lightning coiling around his frame.
Finally!
It had already been several days since their summoning to this world. At last, he had found Lord Sunghyun.
Once they returned to the kingdom together, the rest of the team would be overjoyed. They might not revere Sunghyun quite as much as Nakamoto did, but they respected him deeply and followed him without question.
SH Group was peculiar that way—everyone was completely devoted to Sunghyun. Dig a little, and every single person had some personal episode involving him.
Haha!
"When you get right down to it, I'm no different myself."
The moment Nakamoto climbed down from Mord's back and started toward Sunghyun, Mord transformed into human form in a flash and seized his wrist.
"You must not touch that human right now. Even I can barely endure that power."
Nakamoto looked down at the fallen Armin and asked Mord,
"Is this His Majesty Euclid's daughter?"
He had heard she was quite young. Yet her appearance was that of a fully grown woman—and an overwhelmingly beautiful one, the likes of which he had never seen even on Earth.
Even with her eyes closed, the sharp bridge of her nose and those golden eyelashes were breathtaking. How much more stunning would she become once those eyes opened?
Looking at her, Nakamoto found himself smiling involuntarily.
"What wonderful news."
Plenty of people had confessed their feelings to Lord Sunghyun—not counting employees. Daughters of conglomerates, artists, celebrities. And yet, strangely, Sunghyun had never dated any of them.
When asked why, he would simply smile coldly and say something about how a certain noona he'd met long ago had set his standards impossibly high.
But a woman of this caliber—
She would have cleared that bar with room to spare. A face that looked as if every beauty in the world had been gathered and poured into a single person.
To find his other half only after coming to another world—the CEO's fate was truly something else.
The knight beside him was staring at the woman with his mouth hanging open in shock.
"I—I mean, I thought it was strange that she'd suddenly grown so much, but even allowing for instability… she succeeded at naturalization before even three hundred years of age?!"
Nakamoto couldn't fully grasp what the knight was saying, but it didn't sound like bad news.
"How are the two of them?"
When Nakamoto asked, Mord finally collected himself and cast a healing spell on Armin.
"laeh tcefrep."
⟨ Perfect Heal ⟩
Golden light poured from Mord's hands and enveloped the woman's body. Only then did he wipe the beads of sweat from his brow and rise to his feet.
"Whew. She should wake in a few hours. We're fortunate—if we'd arrived even a little later, I don't know what would have become of her…. As for the gentleman over there, he doesn't seem to need healing. Even a glance tells me his baseline regeneration is already beyond human."
Mord shuddered as if the mere thought gave him chills. His face was slightly pale, as though he were unwell.
Nakamoto had been about to ask him to heal Sunghyun as well, but one look at that expression made him nod instead. The man was clearly afraid of something.
Nakamoto turned his gaze toward Euclid, still hovering in the sky.
Loud crashes had been ringing out for some time, but the flood of thoughts that had risen at the sight of Sunghyun had drowned out every sound of battle.
Until—
BOOOOOOM!
"What in the world—"
Nakamoto's mouth fell open as he took in the clash between the dragons and Euclid, now transformed into pure lightning.
"Is what I'm looking at even a fight?"
He had watched Hayato, the Hero, spar and train countless times. Whenever something resembling sword aura flew out, he would clap and think, Heroes really are incredible!
But this—this was not even remotely on the same level.
Nakamoto blinked rapidly, as if trying to confirm that what he was seeing was real.
"Good heavens! Do dragons always fight like that?"
Mord let out a short laugh at Nakamoto's astonishment.
"Did you know? Right now, Lord Euclid is deliberately using weak attacks—so he can slowly dry them out."
Looking again with that in mind, Euclid's strikes were gradually eating away at the dragons' hides. The dragons' attacks, by contrast, failed to inflict even the slightest damage on him.
Mord swallowed hard.
"And that isn't all. He's deliberately interfering with their mana, slowly eroding even the mana pathways in their bodies. At this rate, their hearts will be destroyed before long."
And if that happened—
"They will lose their power as dragons, lose their sense of self, and become nothing more than common lesser dragons."
A dragon's formidable physical abilities were, in the end, reinforced by the mana pouring from its Dragon Heart. Nakamoto understood.
"He means to give them a suffering worse than death."
"Precisely."
Just as Mord said, deep terror was written across the dragons' faces.
E-Euclid, my lord…! Please! Please, calm yourself!
They felt it. They could no longer deny it.
Their very identities were about to vanish. They were about to become primitive.
A terror worse than death itself.
Please! Please, stop this! Hear us out—!
"No. I already told you. The moment you attacked my daughter—"
Your opinions no longer reach me. No matter what justification you may hold.
At those words, the Red and Gold Dragons sank into despair.
Grit—
Their eyes rolled back with madness.
There was no other choice. Kill Euclid. That was the only way they would survive.
The dragons began burning their remaining lifespans. Drawing on the mana harvested from that sacrifice, they started forging their Breath. Overwhelming power gathered at their maws.
Kill him! Kill the king who will not listen to us!
They no longer had the luxury of rational thought.
This was the end.
BOOOOOOM!
A Breath forged with everything they had left blasted toward Euclid.
Crackle-crack-CRACK—!
Wrath of the Thunder God
A technique that dared to carry a god's name. Overwhelming mana erupted from Euclid's hands. The mana took form as lightning, and the lightning shaped itself into a colossal human figure.
The giant of lightning drove its fist forward—and the fist collided with the Breath.
It was a Breath they had staked their lives on. The dragons were certain they would win.
But—
"Young fools. You actually believe Breath is the strongest thing there is."
Hah. Who taught you that garbage?
"You were never going to be of any use to me. Die, trash."
The giant's fist shattered the Breath as easily as parting a stream of water.
And what remained at the end of that path were the dragons themselves.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—
In the dragons' eyes, a colossal fist filled the sky.
Dodge? Impossible. No matter which direction they fled, that enormous fist would find them.
They were going to die.
And yet—they smiled. At least they could die as dragons.
"Where do you think you're going? On your own terms?"
Lightning refined to the extreme strikes only what its master wills. Euclid's lightning delicately, precisely collapsed nothing but the dragons' hearts.
All that remained were empty shells of flesh. Their sense of self began to fade.
N-No…
The dragons who had lost their selves let out sounds like something that had swallowed every foul thing in the world—then flew off somewhere into the distance.
Kyaaaaaaak!
A dragon that has lost its self is no longer a dragon. Any other dragon who saw them would fly into a rage.
But Euclid could not have cared less.
Whoooosh—!
Euclid streaked toward Armin.
Thud—!
He landed naturally at her side and carefully gathered her into his arms. The trembling of his fingers and the quaver in his voice spoke for everything he felt.
"My daughter. My everything. What in the world was Lord Sunghyun to you, that you would go this far to protect him…."
He had heard from Hermes that the man was a disciple. But he himself had only heard of what Sunghyun was—he did not truly know.
And so Euclid asked the still-unconscious Armin.
What made you so desperate? What made you grow? Was this man truly that precious to you?
Ah… so that's how it is.
"You'd already grown up…. And here I thought you still had so far to go."
Euclid carefully set Armin down and approached Sunghyun. His expression was so murderous that Nakamoto's body moved on its own to block his path.
"Haha… even after watching what just happened, you still stand in my way? There's no need. I have no intention of harming Lord Sunghyun…."
If Lord Sunghyun weren't here when my daughter woke up, I don't think even I could handle what she'd do to me. Honestly.
When the king laughed with a hearty hoho!, Nakamoto finally relaxed and stepped aside.
"Hmm…. This aura…."
Ah. So that's why those fools went berserk. Understandable enough.
Even a mere residual trace, and the aura of death is this dense. If Armin hadn't been involved, even I would have tried to kill him.
But—
"It's far too late for that now. Hup—! …That's sharp. Mord! We're leaving."
Euclid lifted Sunghyun into his arms and transferred him onto Mord's back. To keep from wounding Mord's hide, he carefully layered mana over Sunghyun's body. Then he gathered Armin up as well and settled her onto Mord's back.
"We're going home. To the kingdom."
Mord's wings unfurled like the yellow canvas of a sail catching a fair wind.
Whoosh—
Kim Sunghyun. Armin.
Successful entry from the Forest of Demonic Beasts into the Rom Kingdom—complete.