The Money-Wasting Dragon's Seal, Stage Two
Word Soul.
A dragon's unique power — the will housed within the soul given form through the voice, bending the world itself into submission.
It erupted from Rabiel's lips.
"Ghk—!"
Rendel let out a strangled groan of pain. He could feel Rabiel's fierce will forcing its way through his mind, determined to tear out whatever it wanted and drag it into the open.
But he was not without a will of his own.
Rendel's resolve never to speak of his harem goal collided with Rabiel's will, the two forces thrashing for dominion over the same territory. It was a vicious contest, like water and fire locked in a desperate struggle. With every clash, Rendel's consciousness flickered, and blood streamed freely from his nose. Pain like a massive spike driving again and again into his brain drained the strength from his body until his knees hit the floor.
Only then did Rabiel grasp what was happening. Her eyes flew wide in horror.
"Rendel!!!"
She lunged forward and caught him as he crumpled.
"…How cruel of you."
Those were the last words he managed before consciousness slipped away.
Even a Word Soul was not absolute. If the will of the one resisting proved stronger than the will contained in the command, it could be broken.
Just as Rendel had done — lying unconscious before Rabiel's eyes.
"Rendel…"
His formidable spirit had refused to yield to the Word Soul, but his frail body had not been able to endure.
"Why… Why would you want to engrave the Dragon's Seal?"
The fate of those who took the Dragon's Seal had always been the same. A hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago. No different. Even those who had managed to reach fairly high stages never felt any real growth — only an endless falling behind — and they turned their bitterness on the dragonoids without fail.
Monsters who only take your money.
A flashy name for a worthless piece of trash.
The rumors had spread, and the Dragon's Seal had slowly faded from memory. In the end, only a vanishing handful of people still knew of it, and that ignorance had become one of the reasons for the dragonoids' decline.
And now Rendel wanted to engrave that very seal.
It was no different from walking into hell of his own free will.
Of course Rabiel had to stop him. She couldn't bear to watch him suffer. And… she was afraid he would come to resent her the way all the others who had taken the Dragon's Seal eventually had.
That was why she had asked him for his true intentions. The attempt had failed, of course.
Rabiel gently stroked the black hair of the sleeping Rendel and let out a long sigh.
"Haa…"
Then Rendel's eyes slowly opened.
"Eek! Re—Rendel!!!"
He looked up at her. Her face was so close to tears that the slightest touch seemed ready to set them free.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry. I just…"
"It's all right."
Rendel answered flatly and pushed himself upright.
"I can't tell you the details. Still…"
Rabiel fixed her full attention on him and swallowed hard, waiting for him to speak.
"My dream is to live a long, long, happy life. A very long one."
"…Uh, huh?"
Rabiel's head tilted. She couldn't make sense of what he meant. If he wanted to live a long and happy life, that was all the more reason not to take the Dragon's Seal, wasn't it?
"I mean it. That was my goal from the very beginning when I started the Dragon's Seal. I have no regrets. I will reach Stage Nine. No matter what."
"Uh…"
Rabiel shook off the brief fog of confusion and pressed him again.
"…You do understand what the Dragon's Seal actually is, right?"
"Of course. It's the greatest money-wasting scheme in the world."
"M-money-what?"
Two-hundred-sixty-year-old Rabiel, who knew little of the world's cruder turns of phrase, flinched at the blunt wording — but Rendel rose as if nothing were amiss and walked toward a corner of the room.
"Anyway. Please do Stage Two of the seal for me right now."
"Huh? O-okay…!"
Rendel unlocked the safe and swung the door open. Small gold bars were piled neatly inside.
"By the way, how did you know I'd already gathered all sixty million Ref?"
He asked as he packed the gold bars into a bundle.
"Huh?"
She only made a startled little noise and gave him no real answer. The truth was that a secret desire of Rabiel's was bound up in that knowledge — something she could never, ever tell Rendel. She turned her head and stole a glance at him, a faint flush of embarrassment coloring her cheeks.
"…Are you feeling unwell?"
"N-no! The room's just a little warm!"
"I… see. Then shall we head straight to the altar?"
"Y-yes, let's!"
Rabiel spun around in a hurry and left the room first, Rendel following behind. Her ears, hidden from his view, burned a vivid red.
Rendel dismissed it without much thought — Must be hot in here — but then:
Do dragonoids even feel the heat?
He'd heard they had special scales that made them adapt well to any environment. Was that wrong?
No idea.
If Rabiel said it was hot, it was hot. What would a human know?
Rendel and Rabielicainisia arrived at the Altar Room.
In the center of the chamber rose a rectangular stone altar shaped rather like a bed, its sides densely carved with dragon runes.
Rabiel looked at Rendel, hesitated, then carefully opened her mouth.
"Rendel. I'm going to say this one more time. Are you… really going to do this? There's no turning back after this."
"Yes. It's something I absolutely need for my dream."
"Haa… A-all right."
What kind of dream could possibly make him want to take this Dragon's Seal?
Rabiel simply could not understand it.
If I were human, I would never do this.
There are so many things you could do with sixty million Ref!
She screamed the thought inside her head, but of course none of it reached Rendel.
"You've done this once before, so I don't need to explain again, right?"
"Yes."
Rendel sat on the edge of the altar and began undoing the buttons of his shirt one by one.
"W-wait!!!"
"…?"
Rabiel's face flushed so red it looked ready to burst, and she spun her back to him.
"Don't take it off yet — just wait a second. I'm going to ask Mom! Don't take anything off yet!"
"Seranis…?"
Thud.
With that, Rabiel bolted from the Altar Room.
And the place she headed for was the study of Seranisrabiasia — the Red Scale Queen, also known as the Queen of the Dragonoids.
Her resemblance to Rabiel made their mother-daughter bond unmistakable at a glance. She was seated at her desk, reading a book.
"Rabi? What is it?"
"Mom…! Rendel says he wants to open Stage Two of the seal — what do I do? Shouldn't we stop him?"
Rabiel's face was still flushed, as if some unwelcome image refused to leave her mind. Seranis studied her for a moment, then spoke.
Her reaction, however, was a little strange.
"Hmm. He's already gathered it all? How quick. Stage Two at twenty…"
Her tone almost sounded as if she were encouraging the Dragon's Seal — that road destined for hell.
"…Huh? Y-you're not going to stop him? Mom, Rendel is trying to engrave the Dragon's Seal!"
Where Rabiel's reaction was grave, Seranis only curved her lips into a sly smile.
"Rabi, what's the problem? Seeing Rendel's bare body?"
"Eek!!!"
"He's put on some nice muscle, hasn't he."
"M-Mom!"
"Haha. Sorry."
Seranis felt the urge to tease her daughter a little more, but she let it go. The amused expression settled into something gentler.
"You asked whether you should open Stage Two for Rendel, didn't you? Do it. If that's what the boy wants."
"Why? Shouldn't we stop him? Our Dragon's Seal is…"
Rabiel swallowed the rest of the sentence. The words that would have followed were surely a piece of trash.
Seranis knew it too — how inefficient and irrational the Dragon's Seal truly was.
And yet.
"Rabi."
"…"
"Do you know why I took Rendel in?"
Seranis closed her eyes and cast her mind back. She could still see the filthy little boy crying out, "Spare a coin, please!" It might have been nothing more than a whim — but her eyes had seen something. Something special sleeping inside him.
Perhaps it was still invisible to Rabi's eyes.
"That look says you don't."
"…"
"You'll understand someday, Rabi."
Seranis watched her daughter's bowed head for a moment, then turned her gaze back to her book.
"Go on. Rendel will be waiting."
"Okay…"
"Do your best!"
Seranis sent her off with a light smile of encouragement. Rabiel wasn't entirely sure what, exactly, she was being encouraged to do — but she left the study with her face still burning red.
When Rabiel returned to the Altar Room, she couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.
"Hup—!"
"Please begin right away."
Rendel had already stripped to the waist and was lying face-down on the altar. The well-trained, angular muscles of his back formed clean, aesthetic lines. If she had been one of the littlefolk, she would have been climbing that mountain range of muscle right now.
"Hoo… hoo."
His back had grown properly manly now. Which only made the whole thing more mortifying.
Stay calm. You've done this before!
She tried to settle her heart — but:
It's completely different!
The old Rendel had been a small Rendel. The one before her now was a full-grown adult — a big Rendel.
She was staring blankly when he turned his head.
"Rabiel?"
Coming back to the Altar Room only to stand there frozen, of course he would wonder if something was wrong.
"What… are you doing?"
"N-nothing! I'll do it right now!"
Rabiel flinched, then set her hand on the gold bars laid out on the table.
"…"
She exhaled and closed her eyes, as if appraising them — gauging how much mana each bar would need to hold.
"I should be able to leave one bar over."
When she opened her eyes again, her gaze had gone utterly serious. The girl who had been fidgeting and stamping her feet was nowhere to be found.
She focused on her hands and poured a certain energy into the gold bars—
Crk. Crrrk.
The cubic bars warped and crumpled like sheets of paper. Smaller and smaller they shrank, until the great heap of gold compressed into a single compact sphere.
"Hoo…"
She set the gold sphere aside for a moment and checked the materials required for Stage Two.
A Sand Rose and a Treat Mushroom — both obtainable on the second floor of the Labyrinth. She put them in her mouth, chewed them thoroughly into a pulp of juice, spat the mixture into a glass vial, then drew a dagger across her palm. Bright red blood ran into the vial and mingled with the juice. She finished by dropping the gold sphere into the mixture.
At once the sphere drank every drop of the blood-laced juice. In that instant it flared with a brilliant crimson light.
Without touching it, Rabiel lifted the sphere into the air and guided it over Rendel's bare back.
"Rendel. I'm starting."
"Yes."
He answered in a tight, tense voice.
The gold sphere settled onto the shield-shaped mark on his back — no, it sank into it.
Immediately Rabiel climbed astride him and pressed both palms flat against his back. She took direct control of the energies gathered in the gold sphere, and Rendel felt every drop of blood in his body surge the wrong way, a groan tearing from his throat.
"Ghk."
And then — from the shield mark, new lines branched outward, and two horn-like patterns etched themselves across his back like a pair of wings. They were neither truly a shield nor truly horns, but that was how they appeared. If he ever reached Stage Nine, the design would become complete.
Confirming that the Stage Two seal had fully taken, Rabiel climbed down from his back.
"Haa. Rendel. It's done. It went well."
She too was spent, beads of sweat standing on her skin.
"Thank you."
Rendel rose, bowed to her, and then turned his attention inward to his own body.
Stage Two — Seal of Mana
"You won't feel much effect from Stage Two yet. Still, your total mana capacity and recovery rate should have gone up. Not that that makes it any less inefficient…"
Stage One, the Seal of the Body, enhanced physical abilities — stamina, strength, agility, and the like. Stage Two, the Seal of Mana, did exactly as Rabiel had said. Neither stage produced an instant transformation. The structure was cumulative: the effects built gradually as Rendel adapted to his changed body. Once he accumulated experience running the Labyrinth, it would become a real source of power.
Rendel clenched and unclenched his fist, feeling for the mana. He had just driven sixty million Ref straight into his own flesh, and he expected nothing. He had known from the start that it was a money-wasting scheme.
And yet.
"…?"
Was it just his imagination that something felt a little different?
He lifted his head and looked at Rabiel.
"Rabiel. Would you… spar with me?"
If he had taken the seal, he ought to check the results.
"Of course!"
Rabiel smiled brightly.
Meanwhile—
"Yesss! I found it!"
After burying himself in the library all day gathering every scrap of information on the Dragon's Seal, the crocodile beastman Lokt had finally uncovered a way to haul Rendel up out of hell.
A way for him to abandon the Dragon's Seal and live a safe life as an ordinary adventurer!
"Hahaha! It's not too late! If he's only at Stage One…!"
He could still save Rendel!