Homecoming
The moment the severed arm touched the Dragon Heart—
Kuuuuuuung——!!!
The mana that had originally belonged to Seliac erupted outward in an explosive burst of green light.
That green mana settled into Seliac. The skin that had formed over her severed elbows and below her knees split open, pure white bone surging forth as if leaping free.
Blood seemed ready to gush from the regenerating sites—yet almost at once, like vines climbing along the bone, muscle writhed and rebuilt itself, skin racing to cover it all.
The fingers, toes, arms, and legs she had lost for so long grew back to their original length in an instant.
“Uwaaaaagh——?!”
“Wh-what the hell is that?!”
“A m-monster?!”
Guests in the lobby kicked over their chairs and toppled backward. Glasses shattered, tables overturned, and someone crawled across the floor with their pants still around their ankles, scrambling to flee.
Even Ruby’s eyes bulged as she stumbled back.
“G-good girl…?”
Seliac snorted at the brothel madame’s words and slowly rose to her feet.
The instant her regenerated legs touched the floor, her body was wrapped in a murky green radiance. Her human form cracked and split apart; massive blue-green scales erupted. Wings unfurled. Her tail smashed through the lobby wall as it stretched free.
The lavishly decorated ceiling collapsed. Expensive chandeliers came crashing down in a glittering cascade.
“Kraaaaaaah——!!”
The massive Green Dragon Seliac fully manifested, leaping across seventy years of lost time.
At once the entire brothel Red Rose Night began to collapse. Walls burst outward; the three-story building half-sank in a single heave.
People screamed and fled into the dust, but Seliac paid them not the slightest glance.
She lowered her long neck, carefully took the still-restrained, Full-Head-Masked, unconscious Elion in her jaws the way one might lift a dog, tossed her lightly into the air, and caught her inside her mouth.
A salty taste spread across the tip of her tongue—the wretched mixture of sweat, love juices, tears, urine, and semen.
She beat her wings.
Kuuung——!
The completely destroyed brothel left not even a silhouette as it finished collapsing; dust clouds billowed skyward.
Seliac soared toward the Westburka Mountain Range.
In a corner of the Westburka Mountain Range, deep inside a cliff cave that had long stood abandoned and dust-choked—Seliac’s nest.
She carefully set Elion down on the floor.
Elion was still unconscious, yet her breathing remained steady and regular. Seliac slowly lowered her massive blue-green head until it hovered close to Elion’s face.
The thick leather pads and iron frame of the Full-Head Mask completely covered Elion’s features. Clear tracks of snot and tears that had leaked through the rubber tubes inserted into her nostrils remained dried upon the leather.
Seliac opened her vast jaws and very carefully took the mask’s leather straps between her teeth.
Zziiik—— zziiik——
With the sound of tearing leather, the Full-Head Mask split in half and fell to the floor.
Elion’s face was revealed.
Her eyes were swollen shut, her lips cracked and crusted with dried blood; her cheeks still bore the hardened traces of mixed tears and snot.
As light poured onto eyes that had been sealed away for so long, Elion half-opened them and began to surface into consciousness. The moment she saw Seliac’s enormous face, her eyes flew open as wide as lanterns.
Seliac looked down at her with those huge eyes and asked in a low, thick voice,
“Elion. Did you kill Kron?”
Elion’s pupils wavered for an instant.
“Woof……!”
A small dog’s bark echoed through the cave.
Seliac let out a long sigh. The massive dragon’s breath lightly shook the air inside the cavern as it passed.
“…What a truly pathetic state.”
Pity and anger mixed in her voice.
She turned her gaze to Elion’s back. The transparent Magic Crystal embedded in the center of the Hitoinu Constraint Apparatus was faintly pulsing.
“If we’re going to have a conversation…… I suppose I must release the restraints.”
Seliac lightly closed her massive teeth around the back plate of the apparatus. The restraint that had been gripping the hard Dragon Heart broke weakly and tore free.
The instant she swallowed the transparent Dragon Heart she held in her mouth, the mana sealed inside Elion’s body exploded outward like a storm.
Every magic circle of the Hitoinu Constraint Apparatus extinguished at once. The metal frame shattered into fragments; the leather pouches and the frames locking her elbows and knees collapsed.
Elion’s body trembled once.
The mana that had been suppressed for so long wrapped around her entire form and began to recover at high speed.
And then—
“…Ah…… aah……!”
This time a clear human voice emerged.
Elion slowly raised her hand. Free fingers. Moving arms. She stared down at her own hands as if she could not believe them, then looked up at Seliac again.
“Seliac!”
The bright tone mixed joy and relief.
Seliac’s massive blue-green eyes blinked twice; then she shook her head as if she could not quite believe what she was seeing.
The blue-green scales gradually lost their light and melted away. Wings folded, tail shortened, body rapidly shrank. Within seconds Seliac had returned to her elf form. Long blue-green hair spilled to her waist, and a luxurious dress formed around her.
“Put some clothes on first before you start talking, Elion. Your reckless nature never changes.”
At the rebuke Elion scratched her head, then wove a blue dress out of water-blue mana.
Watching her, Seliac summoned two chairs, sat in one, and asked,
“…What happened, Elion?”
Seated, Elion kept her mouth shut for a long while. Uncharacteristically bashful, she finally opened it.
“Well… that… the play got a bit excessive.”
Seliac’s brows furrowed slightly, yet she soon nodded. It had been severe, but she too knew a dragon’s boredom all too well.
She asked again.
“Kron? Did you kill him?”
Only then did Elion realize that the Dragon Heart she sensed inside Seliac carried not a green scent but a black one. She paused a moment, then repeated the words Kron had shouted just before dying.
“…‘Because of your damn Magic Crystal my mate is dead!’ he yelled as he charged in, so I just killed him.”
Seliac’s teeth ground together with a sharp crack.
“…Mate, my ass……”
Elion watched her blankly for a moment, then asked,
“How did you find me? It couldn’t have been easy with my mana suppressed.”
When the two of them had first crossed paths at the brothel, Seliac had lost all her mana and become an elf, while Elion’s face had been completely covered.
She didn’t even know I was there!
“Hmph. I found you by chance. Be grateful for the rest of your life.”
She turned her head sharply so the flush on her earlobes would not show, speaking with deliberate arrogance.
Elion listened to that haughty tone, thought a moment, then said,
“…Yeah. Since I’m grateful— that Dragon Heart was originally mine, but you can keep it.”
She stretched out a finger and pointed to Kron’s Dragon Heart—once the Magic Crystal—now absorbed into Seliac’s body.
Seliac smirked and looked straight into Elion’s eyes.
“If it weren’t for me…… you’d still be climaxing while sniffing cock, and yet you’re full of bluster.”
At that single remark Elion’s body trembled. Her eyes unfocused, her breath quickened, her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Haa…… haa……”
Unconsciously she began lightly clenching and unclenching her thighs. Alongside her innate tastes, the pleasure circuits engraved into her mind were reacting sexually to Seliac’s scorn.
“…You’ve got talent……”
Faced with that almost delighted response, Seliac pressed a hand to her forehead and spoke.
“I have no desire to join in your vulgar tastes.”
“Haa… thrilling.”
Wondering just what had happened to this young dragon once called the strongest during the seventy years she herself had been trapped, Seliac merely sighed and then drove Elion out. For someone who had suffered so long, peace was necessary.
“Hurry up and be on your way.”
“If it’s Seliac, I’m always ready to include you in my play! Contact me the moment you get bored!”
Even as she returned to her blue dragon form and soared upward, Elion left those parting words, still trying to recruit Seliac as a collaborator.
“That will never happen.”
Seliac watched Elion’s figure grow smaller in the distance for a long time, then finally turned and entered the nest.
Inside her mind she was already forming a plan.
Kron, who had directly driven her to ruin, was already dead—yet Seliac knew perfectly well that was not the whole of it.
Their relationship had never been good, but it had never been the sort that would make him think of ending her life as a dragon with the Flamel Abrogation Method.
Someone had instigated Kron.
It was time to begin her revenge.