The Golden Wolf's New Body
Simple creature. He’d been sulking because I didn’t pamper him as much as Undine, yet the moment I gave him the slightest praise, he seemed to forget his original purpose entirely.
It had been a half-hearted excuse at best, but Rai looked utterly delighted.
I quite liked that cheerfully positive side of him.
"I am Master's secret weapon!"
In truth, I simply didn’t want the hassle of people constantly asking what kind of spirit he was or trying to make use of him, so I kept him hidden as much as possible. Still, a good thing was a good thing.
Besides, having a water spirit for public appearances was more than enough…
I was smiling as I watched Rai flap around excitedly and even start singing, when Magi came running from far away.
Something large was balanced on top of his head.
“Jeanie!”
“You’ll fall. Be careful, Magi.”
Finally, our sugar daddy had arrived! The one in charge of supplying gems.
“Can I put this in the pot? This!”
What Magi was beaming about while carrying it on his head was none other than half a leftover troll corpse.
GYAAAAAAAAAAH!
“Ow, my ears.”
He really knows how to express hatred intensely, doesn’t he, Rai.
“I get it! I get it already!”
No! I hate it! GYAAAAAAAAAAH!
“Ugh! Magi, could you at least bring one with all its limbs intact next time?”
“This one won’t work?”
“It won’t. Rai is currently torturing my ears.”
Rai’s screams were the kind that pierced straight through covered ears, making my head throb.
At my frantic waving, Magi reluctantly set the troll chunk on the ground, his face turning utterly dejected.
“Hng… but this one’s really good…”
By now Magi had taken on the form of a young human boy rather than a dwarf.
A breathtakingly beautiful golden-haired boy who looked about thirteen, with an angelic face. Even his eyelashes were a dense, dazzling gold, making him resemble a child from an incredibly wealthy family.
I’d chosen this particular age because the demonic energy inside me was roughly that old. Plus, I’d grown used to his short stature from all the time he spent in dwarf form.
Magi also loved it when I reached down to stroke his head.
After all, he was both a dragon and an immature hatchling.
“Good boy, Magi, listen. I have to take Rai around with me all the time. Don’t you think half a monster would be way too gross? At the very least, it shouldn’t be something that makes people want to vomit just by looking at it.”
“But he was a snake before, wasn’t he?”
“Snakes can be kind of cute, can’t they?”
“…Yeah, that’s true!”
Above all, Magi and I shared quite a few ways of thinking.
Seeming convinced, Magi nodded, then immediately launched into excited chatter again.
“I checked the freezer and all that was left were leftovers!”
“Rai is crying, so that won’t do.”
“Okay! Then I’ll go catch a fresh one!”
“Good. Make sure it has all its limbs, please.”
“I’ll be right back!”
“Be careful out there.”
Especially around people.
Impatient as ever, Magi vanished instantly with a teleport. Meanwhile Rai was trembling all over.
"Master…!"
“What? I stopped him for you.”
"I hated monsters from the very beginning!"
“Oh, really? I thought you were just against eating leftovers.”
"What kind of spirit would want to turn into a monster! I hate it! I absolutely hate it!"
Good grief, these spoiled brats. I’m only willing to humor them so many times.
Neither Magi nor Rai were particularly mature, and I myself was hardly a model adult.
After all, the person I loved most had always been myself.
I couldn’t stand anything that annoyed me. I didn’t even want to endure it!
“Shut up! Stop it! There’s a limit to how much whining you can do!”
"You're so mean!"
“What’s mean about it!”
"Protect me too! I want you to protect me!"
“What? Protecting is what spirits are supposed to do! Why should I protect you!”
"When Undine died you cried your eyes out!"
“First of all, Undine didn’t die. Second, if you die I’ll cry my eyes out for you too. How’s that? Fair, right?”
Whatever had him so upset, Rai started rolling on the floor and bawling. Of course, they were only fake tears accompanied by sound.
"Bad Master! Mean lady! Bad person!"
“What a pain in the ass…”
"Waaaaah."
Rai often clung to me like this, wearing me out.
I didn’t feel any need to comfort him because even if I did, he’d just latch on again soon after and throw a ridiculous tantrum demanding I only love him.
A spirit with possessiveness toward his master? Really?
“That’s enough! Anyway, you said you can make as many bodies as you want! So turning into a monster shouldn’t matter! Try thinking positively. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a monster form on your transformation list?”
"And what would be good about that!"
“Well, you could prank people you don’t like, for example?”
"Oh… that does sound tempting."
“See?”
"I suddenly feel much better."
In the blink of an eye, Rai had gone from throwing a fit to acting perfectly normal. So it really had been an act.
His acting was getting more realistic by the day.
I’d almost fallen for it, but Rai pretending to cry to get my attention was hardly a new occurrence. What a sly little brat.
“Sometimes you should really stop and think about why you get scolded so much.”
"Is it because I'm too cute and adorable?"
In simple terms, he was an attention-seeker.
And not just any attention-seeker—an unpredictable one. That was my spirit.
The sun rose, and the long-awaited project to create Rai’s new body finally began.
First, we needed a massive cauldron.
This was where Magi’s hobby proved incredibly useful. In just one day, he brought back a cauldron large enough to satisfy me completely.
It was big enough for a person to fit inside.
Once the cauldron was ready, the most important part was filling it with gems. That was the real key. It was fortunate that Magi had offered to provide them.
While I stayed at Magi’s lair, I decided we might as well make as many bodies and variations for Rai as we wanted.
After all, this place really was a mountain of gems.
“No matter how many times I see it…”
It really is incredible.
The moment we passed through the enormous door, an unbelievable sight unfolded before us—an endless sea of gems, as countless as grains of sand on a beach.
Would a human ever get the chance to see a literal mountain made of jewels in their lifetime?
I could confidently say that even an emperor would never have witnessed such a spectacle.
The dragon’s gem vault, created by plundering every human treasure hoard imaginable, was on a scale beyond comparison.
It was less a room and more a cavern with an impossibly high ceiling.
And the gems were piled so high they nearly touched that ceiling, making it impossible to know where to begin looking.
That one’s a hill, that one’s a mountain…
“Jeanie! Come up here too!”
I waved enthusiastically at Magi as he set off to climb one of the lower gem mountains.
“No thanks, I’ll pick from down here. You go up and bring back the rare ones.”
“Rare ones, got it!”
“The more variety in materials, the better!”
While Magi rummaged through the upper layers, I dug through the gems scattered at the bottom.
I picked out especially large and sturdy-looking ones and tossed them into the cauldron. It was a strange moment—picking up gems from within a pile of gems.
In the meantime, Rai who had followed us inside joined in the task of selecting gems.
As expected, he was ridiculously thorough when it came to his own body.
"Master! This one is solid!"
“They all look the same to me?”
"Higher hardness and no impurities are best! You can tell by putting them in your mouth!"
“Well, you’re a metal spirit, so of course you’d know…”
"Ah, that's right!"
Full of enthusiasm, Rai kept running back and forth, carrying gems in his mouth.
Since I didn’t feel like moving much, I simply wandered around near the cauldron and picked up whatever was close.
The cauldron was so enormous that filling it took longer than expected.
Eventually I got too lazy to even walk over to it, so I started tossing gems from a distance like shooting basketballs.
Every time a gem landed perfectly inside the cauldron, it made a satisfying clink—an incredibly luxurious game.
Ting.
Ting-clatter.
“This is actually pretty fun, isn’t it?”
“Jeanie! Look at this weird je—woaaaah!”
I don’t know when he’d climbed all the way up there, but Magi appeared at the peak of the gem mountain, waving excitedly as he started sliding down—only to lose his balance and go sliding straight down the pile.
“Magi!”
"Riding the gems—feels so refreshing—!"
For a moment, Magi looked exactly like he was sledding as he shot down the gem pile at breakneck speed.
“Yeah, it must feel refresh—wait, that’s not the point! Rai, stop singing weird songs! You’re confusing me too!”
Boom!
While I was yelling at Rai, Magi reached the bottom.
By crashing violently into the cavern wall.
The impact must have been strong; Magi was sprawled out flat in front of the wall. Just as I started running over in alarm, he sprang up and came dashing toward me.
Even after tumbling and getting back up, he proudly held out the gems he’d kept clutched in his arms the whole time. Despite the loud crash, Magi looked completely fine.
“Is this enough? Mom gave them to me!”
“…Magi, are you hurt? Is your forehead okay?”
“Why would it hurt?”
As expected of a boss monster boasting the ultimate attack and defense stats.
When I looked back, I saw a huge crack running through the wall where Magi had collided.
Magi seemed just as tough as Rai—maybe even tougher.
"That kind of thing doesn't hurt much, Master."
“Have you seen these before, Jeanie?”
Magi dumped the gems he’d brought into the cauldron, then held up two of them in front of me. His face practically screamed praise me.
“No, first time seeing them. What kind of gems are those?”
One was a jewel of dazzling golden brilliance, while the other was a strange orb with black and yellow swirling together like water and oil.
Both were about the size of a fist, but my eyes were drawn more to the golden one.
Because inside it, I could sense something like a swirling vortex of mana.