The Trap
“How do you think this is going to play out?”
I put the question to the heretic inquisitor kneeling before me—Zeronia—but he kept his mouth clamped shut and his head bowed low.
It looked like a refusal to give me anything at all. Truthfully, I hadn’t asked because I wanted an answer.
It was more a way to clear my head and sort my thoughts.
“Dragonmen have too much pride to fold to my demands. That’s only natural.”
They probably weren’t even considering meeting my conditions. They were only thinking about how to pull their people out.
You don’t give in to a terrorist’s demands, after all.
I sat down in the chair Zeronia had been using.
On his desk sat a jar of chocolate cookies. I cracked it open and popped one into my mouth.
Something he reached for when his focus slipped or his blood sugar dipped mid-work, I guessed. Being a premium brand, it was crisp and genuinely good.
“Mmm.”
The only sound in the room was the crunch of cookies. At last one of the agents beside Zeronia broke, sniffling as he begged.
“P-please—spare us.”
The instant the words left him, Zeronia’s head snapped up and he roared at the man.
“How dare a dragonman grovel for his life so pitifully! If death comes, face it with courage! The dragons are watching over us!”
“Ah… may the breath of the dragons blow upon us…”
The priest added a line of his own, closed his eyes, and began to pray. Thinking what useless noise they were making, I took another cookie and answered.
“I’m not going to kill you. You won’t get hurt any further either. What I want is exactly what I said before—one thing. Humans are turning into dragonmen, and I’m looking for the reason among you.”
“……”
Zeronia’s eyes lifted a fraction, as if testing whether I meant it.
“Humans… turning into dragonmen, you say?”
Now that he seemed willing to talk at least a little, I took the cookie jar, walked over, and crouched in front of them.
“Yeah. My sister too. And two of the Border Guard are transforming as well. When I told your people about it, they just laughed and provoked me.”
I pointed at the two dragonmen I’d beaten at the Dragon’s Border. They looked away, ashamed.
Zeronia glared at them in reproach, then let out a sigh thick with tangled feeling.
“But we truly know nothing. We’ve never even heard of a disease that turns humans into dragonmen.”
“Is that so?”
The air around him felt genuinely wronged—but I still couldn’t throw up my hands and walk away.
They might not know. Other dragonmen might.
Then a heavy wind rolled in from outside, and a faint but distinct stir brushed past my ears.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Zeronia’s mouth clamped shut again. He tried not to show it, but it was written all over him.
“Looks like they’re here.”
I stood slowly, tossed the empty cookie jar onto the floor, went back to the chair, sat, opened the book I’d pulled earlier, and propped my legs on the desk.
“Hmm.”
It was written in the dragonmen’s tongue. I couldn’t make out a single word, so I simply closed it.
Sitting here under the pretense of guarding the Dragon’s Border, I felt I could almost understand how Zeronia must have felt—bored out of his mind by the same day repeating forever.
Maybe my complete lack of reaction, even after sensing the attack, struck him as strange. He couldn’t hold it in any longer and opened that long, slit mouth of his.
“Why aren’t you responding? If you’re thinking of talking your way out after you’re captured, you’d best forget it, human. You’ll be executed on the spot.”
“I know that much. It’s just…”
I reclined almost flat in the chair and stared blankly up at the light.
“I’m not sure they’ll even make it this far.”
“Crazy bastard.”
“What in the world is this…”
“Is this even possible in such a short time?”
The heretic inquisitors and agents at every outpost along the Dragon’s Border felt their hearts, which had dropped with a jolt, slowly settle back into place.
The moment they heard the hostage-taker’s voice from the Dragon Horn Outpost, every inquisitor had been thinking of only one thing: how to get the hostages out safely and kill the bastard.
They’d heard his demand for information. They had absolutely no intention of granting some mere human’s request.
Naturally they had been moving on the Dragon Horn Outpost to put him down.
They never even got close. The dragonmen had no choice but to fall back.
Like corn packed tight in a field, countless traps blanketed the ground around the outpost.
By now they were genuinely curious how anyone could plant so many in so little time.
Because of them, the dragonmen couldn’t even approach.
“We have to go even if it means taking casualties! We don’t know what that bastard might do to Inquisitor Zeronia!”
The largest of them slammed his halberd into the dirt with a thud and shouted. The ones who had been raising their voices in agreement before they reached the trap field now answered only with silence.
Among them, a judge in glasses crossed his arms and spoke up.
“The emergency channel is linked to the Havelock Forward Base as well. A high-ranking inquisitor is probably already on the way, so for now we should wait—”
“What kind of nonsense is that?! If we show a high-ranking inquisitor us floundering over a single human, how can they trust us with the front lines of the Dragon’s Border?!”
“Grr…”
The big dragonman kept driving his voice higher.
“We clean this up and report before they arrive. We do not leave the solution to a high-ranking inquisitor!”
“He’s right.”
Other inquisitors stepped forward in agreement, and the volume rose again.
“They must have run short on time—the traps carry a high risk of injury, but nothing life-threatening. We push through even if we take hits.”
That way the blame wouldn’t splash onto them. Only Zeronia would be branded an incompetent inquisitor.
None of them said it aloud, but they all believed they were thinking the same thing.
They had no idea that the man who had shouted the loudest was thinking something entirely different.
Keyalmirek.
Among the inquisitors he possessed outstanding combat strength. He forced himself to ignore the cold sweat running down his back.
Done.
Somehow he’d gotten these idiots to charge the Dragon Horn Outpost. Marveling at his own leadership after delivering what amounted to a speech, Keyalmirek felt a thrilling rush through his entire body.
That human has to die.
Before the high-ranking inquisitor arrives, he has to be chewed up and killed.
Otherwise there was a risk of his tail getting stepped on.
These stupid human bastards—can’t handle a single damn thing properly.
Keyalmirek cursed Dogfight’s handling of the job up one side and down the other, forcing his rage to settle.
If his involvement in this incident came to light, he’d be handed straight over to the heretic judges for trial.
Then the fact that he’d kidnapped dragonmen and handed them to Dogfight—or the records he’d altered to claim they’d tried to scale the wall—would almost certainly be exposed.
Anyway, there was no problem.
As long as I chew that human bastard to death, it’s over.
Executing him on the spot wouldn’t look strange at all. If anything, not executing him would make the picture look more suspicious.
His grip on the halberd tightened. Keyalmirek took the lead and started for the Dragon Horn Outpost.
How did I end up in a party like this.
Having entered the Dragon Lands, Eris glanced back at the companions trailing her and managed an awkward smile.
A dwarf warrior named Hotsim, whose height only reached her waist but whose beard looked ready to drag on the ground.
A beastman named Jaguar, with smooth black skin and cat eyes that seemed to hold crescent moons, purring softly as he walked.
Even to the humans guarding the Dragon’s Border, the combination of elf, dwarf, and beastman must have looked novel—their gazes locked on despite the urgency of the situation.
“In a forest like this, elves are the right people for the job. We ran into a lucky break.”
Hotsim laughed heartily. Beside him, Jaguar furrowed his brow.
“Just shut up.”
“Aigoo. This crazy bastard won’t even let me say something good is good.”
“Ugh.”
Both the dwarf Hotsim and the beastman Jaguar.
Their meeting had been strange, but the three of them had decided to travel together knowing they shared the same goal—unraveling the mystery of their precious people turning into dragonmen.
The sniping banter between the two made Eris’s head ache a little, but she had no choice except to keep moving forward.
Daniel.
The captain of the Border Guard had told her.
A male student with the surname McLane had smashed through the fence and entered the Dragon Lands for his sister’s sake.
The moment he crossed over, there was nothing the Border Guard could do. They could only stamp their feet and pray.
To think Daniel came here with the same goal as me.
At this point it almost felt like fate was tying them together. Eris laughed self-deprecatingly and was about to pick up her pace when—
“……”
Sensitive to the scents of the forest, Eris came to a sudden halt.
“What? What’s going on?”
“Dragonmen?”
Hotsim and Jaguar asked, looking at her. She slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again.
A pattern had risen in her pupils.
The power granted to her by Artemis, goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity.
“Traps… why are there so many…”
Looking at the countless traps laid out before them, Eris couldn’t help but be flustered. Numbers like this meant the dragonmen had set them—had they been this serious about their defenses?
Is Daniel alright?
They seemed designed for capture rather than to kill, so nothing life-threatening—but there were so many of them, and getting caught in even one would be the end. Worry began to settle in.
“There are a lot of traps, so everyone follow closely behind me.”
Even as she weaved past them, Eris could only hope for Daniel’s safety.