My Subordinate Is Extreme but Competent
I wasn't sure when I'd drifted off, but the sensation that greeted me when I opened my eyes was unfamiliar, and yet strangely, inexplicably cozy.
...So it really wasn't a dream.
I blinked, staring blankly at the ceiling. A full day had passed since I'd gone from a returning college student to a tiny dragon girl — and in that single day, a crisis had already found me.
I tried to sit up, but my head wouldn't turn. When I put some force into it and pulled, there was a dull rip as the pillowcase tore open and a burst of white stuffing exploded out. I'd tossed and turned in my sleep, and the enormous horns on my head had been the culprit. To make matters worse, the wings on my back were wound up tight in the thin blanket, and my heavy tail had completely flattened one of the cushions.
What kind of state is this to be in first thing in the morning...
Grunting and squirming, I wrenched my horns free and flapped my wings until the blanket shook loose. I had a better handle on this body than yesterday, so when I set my feet down with care, I managed to walk all the way to the bathroom without falling over.
After washing my face, I pulled a bottle of cold water from the fridge, drank, and picked up the smartphone from the table.
Might as well check the gallery.
With a familiar flick of my fingers I logged into the Hunter Gallery. The board was on fire — yesterday's Eunpyeong-gu incident on one side, and a fresh piece of bait that had dropped in the small hours of the morning on the other.
Most of it was about the crater my Dragon Breath had carved out in a single shot yesterday, and about the Magic Stones.
Honestly, I was the one who killed them, so they were basically mine anyway...
In the real world and in games alike, the person who takes down the monster is the one who pockets the drops. That was just common sense. I'd only left them behind because I didn't want the hassle of going back out there and getting tangled up in something annoying — so the news that someone had swept the whole lot overnight left a bitter taste in my mouth. And that was when it happened.
A crackle of static.
The air in one corner of the studio warped like rippling water, and a pitch-black space slid silently open.
"My Sovereign, I beg your pardon for disturbing your rest."
A cool, bewitching voice, and out of the darkness stepped Tiamat. The moment she spotted me she dropped to her knees, blue eyes sparkling like a giant dog desperately waiting for its master's praise — the only thing missing was a tail.
"Huh? Where'd you go?"
"Before you awoke, I recovered the spoils of war that rightfully belong to you, my Sovereign, and have now returned."
"Spoils?"
I tilted my head, and Tiamat — her face lost in rapture — gave a light flick of her fingers.
The instant Subspace yawned wide open—
A cascading crash.
"Wh-whoa?!"
A luminous, crystalline sound, like glass marbles pouring from the sky, and countless Magic Stones came tumbling down through the air. In a heartbeat the room was flooded with radiant light — blue, red, violet. Every last stone was a top-grade Magic Stone the size of an adult's fist. And as if that weren't enough, two of incomparable size rose from among them, steeped in the essences of the Bone Dragon and the Three-Headed Hound.
Tiamat gave another idle wave of her hand, and the hundreds of Magic Stones that had spilled forth stacked themselves along one wall of the studio, neat as a tower. In that instant, a gloomy corner of a one-room apartment transformed into a radiant dragon's hoard.
"Th-this... where did you even get all of this?"
"I swept them up from the very earth upon which you, my Sovereign, personally bestowed annihilation yesterday."
Tiamat drew herself up, chest proud, and went on with shining satisfaction.
"Those wretched mortals swarmed in, daring to steal your spoils as if they were their own. I could not yield so much as a single scrap of your sacred treasure to those insects, and so I gathered every last piece."
"Ah..."
For a moment, words simply failed me. The identity of that "hnngh mommy" from the gallery had been Tiamat all along.
Well. She's not wrong, exactly...
They were monsters I'd erased with a single Dragon Breath, and my own subordinate had picked up the loot before anyone else could. There was no reason to feel morally guilty about it. But if a haul of Magic Stones this vast had vanished before people's eyes in a single stroke, the outside world had surely been turned completely upside down.
The thought had barely formed when a sweet, intoxicating fragrance drifted from the pile in the corner and tickled the tip of my nose. A bright fruit scent, with a clean fizz like soda, and my mouth watered hard.
Without thinking, I reached out and picked up a transparent violet Magic Stone from the very top. I looked at the crystal, a sweet-and-sour fragrance rising faintly from it — and bit down on the corner.
A cheerful crack, like biting through a thin ice candy, and a rich, sweet grape flavor bloomed softly through my mouth.
"...Haa."
A thrilling rush, as if every bit of fatigue in my body were being washed away.
About a hundred grand in that one bite, give or take.
The most expensive Welch's grape flavor in the world. If the Association executives had seen this, they would have wept blood and grabbed the backs of their necks.
My mood soared, and my tail started swaying from side to side, thump-thump, cheerfully beating against the arm of the sofa. Realizing that each color tasted different, my curiosity sparked on its own, and I took a bite of a red one too. This time it was a bright, tart cranberry.
Tiamat, who had been watching me in a daze, flushed pink to the cheeks.
"Ahh... the way you clutch it in both hands and nibble so earnestly... how can you be so majestic, and yet so utterly adorable..."
I pretended not to hear and spoke around the mouthful.
"Mmph... you want one too?"
"I am most honored! However, these are snacks meant for you alone, my Sovereign. A lowly servant such as I would never dare put them to my lips!"
Tiamat trembled, overcome, pulled out a handkerchief, and carefully wiped the powder from the corner of my mouth. A faint smile rose to my lips at the soft touch as she leaned in, and at her subtle fragrance. Still munching on a Magic Stone, I hit the remote and turned on the TV.
As expected, the moment the screen came on, a red emergency banner carpeted the bottom of the display.
The news anchor, his face drained of all color, rushed through the briefing.
A burst of static, and footage from helicopter and drone cameras began to play. In the center of the enormous crater, a figure tore through pitch-black darkness and stepped forth. The image was blurry and thick with noise, but I recognized her at once.
It was Tiamat.
On screen, she gave a light wave of her hand toward empty air, expressionless, as if the hunters ringing her on high alert were not even worth her notice. The hundreds of Magic Stones scattered across the site drew into a massive vortex and were sucked into Subspace in an instant. The hunters leveled their weapons and started to close in — but the moment she swept them with a single cold glance, an invisible, enormous pressure crushed every last one of them to their knees, coughing blood. Then she sealed the space and vanished without a trace.
The faces of the Association officials being interviewed on screen had gone white with terror and shock.
A crackle of static. I hit the remote and turned the TV off.
...Good. They don't have the faintest idea who I am.
No traces left behind, and nothing to deduce from. It was safe to say there was no chance the hunters would track me down. And in my hands — or rather, piled in the corner of my room — was a mountain of the finest desserts I could roll around chewing on for months without a single worry about snacks. My peaceful shut-in life was as good as perfectly guaranteed.
"Good work, Tiamat. You did really well not killing anyone."
"I know not what to do with such undeserved praise...!"
Tiamat placed a hand over her chest, her face enraptured, and bowed her head deeply. But after I'd munched through a few more Magic Stones, it wasn't that I'd gotten tired of them, exactly — I was just starting to crave actual food. Magic Stones were the ultimate snack, but if you were Korean, sooner or later you needed something spicy and greasy sitting in your stomach.
I had something sweet, so I should throw on some ramen and catch a nap.
I toddled over and threw open the kitchen cupboard.
And then.
......?
My brain came to a complete halt. As of yesterday, that cupboard should have been packed tight with cup ramen and pack ramen, canned tuna and instant rice. Instead it was empty. Not merely empty — a fine white dust was drifting around inside, as if the thing had been scoured down to nothing.
...Huh?
For a moment I felt like I'd been clubbed so hard across the back of the neck I needed to grab it. I turned around, my stiffened neck creaking.
"...Tiamat."
"Yes, my Sovereign!"
"The ramen I had in here, and the instant rice, and the Spam... where did it all go?"
At my question, Tiamat puffed her chest out with pride, her eyes sparkling as if she were reporting the greatest achievement in the world.
"While you rested, I purified the surroundings!"
"...Purified?"
"Yes! Those filthy mortal impurities were strewn about your sacred sanctuary, so this Tiamat annihilated them completely — not so much as a speck of dust remaining — that not even the slightest harm might befall your precious person!"
...This girl?
She was sparkling at me like a giant dog hoping for praise, which made it awkwardly hard to even get angry. She wouldn't have had a shred of ill intent.
Frozen in that speechless silence, I fired off a Dragon Breath of pure despair on the inside. In the middle of the perfect shut-in plan, a truly serious, fatal emergency had just gone off.