Volume 2, Episode 16
Gooooo…….
Under the serpents’ gaze, which could almost have seemed eerie at a glance, Daisy lifted a forepaw in greeting and let out a little “mya!”
At once—
“Gooo-ehng.”
One of the serpents gently rubbed the snout crowded with sharp teeth against Daisy’s head. It was a playful gesture, despite the creature’s enormous size. The others soon followed, weaving through the water with a languid, dance-like undulation.
The giant serpents, gliding freely between the rolling waves, caught the sunlight on their scales and flashed blue.
「Human.」
「Human?」
「Prey?」
The serpents that had been glaring at Airen let out fierce, crackling hisses. But the biggest of them shook its head from side to side.
「No. He blocked the fireball.」
「Fire is hot. I dislike it.」
「Friend of the spirits. Good human.」
Hostility drained out of the true serpents’ eyes. Sensing the change, Airen let out a quiet breath and pressed a hand to his chest.
Thank goodness Daisy blocked that shot.
Even now, the moment felt terrifying in hindsight. If Daisy had not been a lightning spirit, and if Airen had not been a spirit user capable of handling both electricity and wind, there would have been no way to stop that fireball.
The serpent that had let its guard down would likely have died, or at least been gravely injured, and if that had happened, there was no chance the others would have calmed down so easily, no matter how familiar they were with spirits.
There were already so many serpents gathering after hearing the cries that the sea itself seemed to pulse black beneath the surface.
If they hadn’t blocked it, they would have had to fight a sea battle right here.
Chilled to the bone, Airen slowly backed away and recalled the spirit.
“Good job, Daisy.”
Mya!
At the praise, Daisy curled her golden eyes into a pleased crescent and cried out brightly. Airen turned away with the spirit perched on his shoulder like a shield and returned to the ship with the slave boy.
The problem was that he wasn’t the only one coming back.
Goooeeeng…….
By then, the serpents had followed the lightning spirit Daisy all the way to the ship’s side. Their damp scales, as they peered up at the vessel with curious eyes, gleamed like armor in the sunlight.
“Sh-should we attack?”
A mage holding a staff asked in a panic. It was the first time any of them had experienced being surrounded by a serpent school during a voyage like this, so the crew had been scared stiff as well.
The serpents were close enough that their shadows touched the hull, yet they only circled the ship in slow loops.
“Ignore them and leave them be.”
Amid the ship’s near-suffocating tension, a languid voice—utterly mismatched to the situation—cut through the air.
“Priest?”
Seherbian, who had somehow already come down to the deck, was standing there.
“Those little ones are acting like that because it’s their first time seeing a human this close. They’re just curious. After a bit, they’ll finish looking and go back on their own.”
Seherbian spoke as if from exactly the opposite side of everyone else’s worry.
Yet no one could simply ignore his sudden words. The murmuring crew approached him in a rush.
“A-are you a priest from some temple?”
Priests who devoted body and soul to a god usually lived sealed away inside temples. It was therefore extremely difficult for ordinary people to ever meet one outside.
The reason royalty, nobles, and commoners alike respected priests and found them difficult to approach was because they wielded holy magic—the very symbol of divine power.
Seherbian gave the crew a slight bow while holding Mimir in his arms.
“From the Blanconia Temple.”
At that, the crew who had come closer on a hunch sucked in their breath.
A dragon priest!
Their eyes shone with relief as they looked at this rarest of priests, a dragon priest. In their minds, aquatic serpents—like wyverns—belonged to the same broad family as dragons, so the hope was that they would never dare attack a ship protected by a priest under a dragon’s blessing.
And in truth, the reality wasn’t far off.
「It was an honor to meet you, Silver Head, Winter Bell.」
After having seen enough of humanity, the blue-scaled serpents one by one sank back into the deep sea, offering a friendly farewell to the dragon who ruled winter.
At last, one final serpent lifted its head and bowed deeply toward Seherbian, almost like a person offering a formal prostration.
「……The Head of Blue is waiting.」
The Head of Blue.
That referred to Asubell of the present age, the powerful dragon with far brighter blue scales than the serpents, the one who ruled summer.
Seherbian gave a small nod to show he understood.
「Thank you. Now go back and rest well.」
Kwaaaah!
The last serpent arched its massive body fluidly and launched itself above the water before diving down again in a spray of brilliant white foam.
After that, the cries of the serpents could no longer be heard.
Instead, only the low hum of the ship’s slowed mana engine and the slap of waves against the hull remained to fill the emptiness they had left behind.
As the sea finally grew quiet, Airen swallowed a secret sigh of relief and turned sharply to the captain and crew.
“You saw that, right? Those guys recognize spirits as allies, so you absolutely must not attack first.”
“R-right. Never in my life did I think I’d see a serpent up close……”
The captain, who had given the order to fire, removed his hat and muttered with a face full of apology and shock.
Even the sailors who had spent their lives at sea were stunned; this was a situation none of them had ever experienced before.
To think they had encountered the monsters that ruled the ocean—the serpents—and gotten away unharmed?
If they had known that peaceful sailing like this was possible with nothing more than the presence of a spirit user, the seas would already be crowded with merchant ships.
“We should hire a spirit user as a sailor the moment we get back!”
The captain nodded with a resolute expression. It was such a major discovery that he could report it to the king at once.
As for the very person who had told them all that, Seherbian had already retreated to his room the moment the crisis ended, looking thoroughly inconvenienced.
* * *
“Have you lost your mind?”
“……Jin, even so, that’s a bit harsh.”
The joy of the leader’s safe return lasted only an instant before a grim atmosphere settled among the Winter Knights gathered in the room.
Even Jin, who usually insisted on immaculate speech and strictly proper conduct, abandoned the reins of etiquette she had held so tightly and faced Airen without restraint today.
“Have you truly gone mad?”
“No, wait—”
“You leapt into a sea where serpents live, without even consulting us!”
“If I’d consulted you, you wouldn’t have let me go.”
“And you think that’s something to say right now?”
Airen shut his mouth with a guilty expression.
Deputy Commander Jin Veronica almost never got angry like this. If she was raising her voice, it meant Airen had done something seriously wrong.
“Do you still not understand, Airen? I have told you time and again—if anything happens to you, the Varzian Knights will be dissolved that very day.”
“The Varzian are a free order that follows Winter Bell. Even if I were to disappear, anyone could take over as leader.”
“No. There can be no other leader.”
Jin flatly rejected Airen’s argument.
“I, Casio Drake, and everyone here, along with the ones waiting at camp, have all sworn to follow you, Airen.”
After looking over the faces of the knights, all of them rigid with seriousness, Airen could no longer argue.
He hadn’t been unaware of it, but the loyalty of the members gathered around him was far stronger than he had realized.
“So if you think even a little bit about us, please, act with some responsibility.”
“……Sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize to me.”
Jin said it in her usual stiff tone, but Airen still apologized again.
“No, I want to apologize to all of you who worried about me enough to get this angry. I’m sorry.”
For a split second, something like tears flickered across Jin’s face as the anger drained away. It vanished almost at once, but Airen caught it, and his own heart turned heavy.
Still, I really am not suited to being a leader.
For various reasons, he had taken on the role of leader of the Winter Knights, but as time passed, Airen came to feel all the more keenly that he simply wasn’t the right vessel for it. Impulsive, self-willed, and far too self-sacrificing, he was not the kind of person who suited the head of an organization.
Only after being scolded for quite some time over his reckless behavior was Airen finally released from his subordinates.
During all that, Seherbian had been lying comfortably on the bed alone, resting in peace.
“Sigh, I’m sorry, Priest.”
“……Pardon? For what?”
Airen sat down weakly in a chair, his face drained of color. Seherbian, stretched out like a cat basking in the sun, turned his head to stare at him. He at least showed proper respect to the commander, but his expression said plainly that everything was a hassle.
“I couldn’t trust the information you gave me to the very end. Once I actually saw the serpents coming after us, I got scared……”
Airen lowered his head heavily.
“My poor judgment almost caused a disaster.”
It was true. At the decisive moment, he had not trusted the information Seherbian had given him in advance.
If Seherbian had not appeared to stop him when he was about to drive the dagger down, or if they had failed to block the incoming fireball, the sea would have been in chaos by now.
Seherbian watched Airen’s gloomy self-reproach for a moment, then replied in a casual tone.
“You stopped it well enough. In the end, you handled it properly, didn’t you? No one was hurt.”
“Priest.”
“It’s a pretty troublesome position, isn’t it? Being the leader of a whole group.”
The voice sounded as if it had poked directly into the heart of his troubled thoughts. Airen looked briefly startled, then leaned back in his chair and gave a tired laugh.
“Well, yeah.”
Seherbian, who had not intended to have any particularly deep conversation, closed his eyes again.
Silence settled for a moment.
Airen looked at Seherbian, draped there without even the slightest movement, like someone asleep, and spoke again.
“But what were you talking about with the serpents just now? You were facing each other for quite a while.”
“……”
Airen had an unsettling instinct for strange details.
Seherbian thought it over for a moment, then gave a lazy excuse.
“Serpents are also counted among the fairy races, so of course they can instinctively smell the scent of Winter Bell.”
“So they followed you because you’re a priest of Winter Bell?”
This time, instead of answering with words, he replied with a harmless-looking smile.
But Airen, suspicious, kept staring at the dragon priest who was rolling around like a lazy cat.
That does make sense, but…… something about it feels off.
The explanation itself was neat and logically sound. And yet Airen’s instincts caught on to something that was difficult to accept as simply “they followed him because he serves a dragon.”
That huge serpent school had obeyed a single person’s command all at once. They had willingly lowered their backs, moved in the direction he wanted, and stopped attacking.
More than that—
I could swear he was talking with the serpents just now.
The image of the serpent that had stopped before Seherbian, nodding as though it understood something, stood out vividly in his mind.