Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 13 - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Sworn Enemy

“I’m a little late. Guess I kept you waiting?”

A boy entered the room, acting self-important as he walked in. I knew right away that it was Okazaki Takuma. We’d been in the same grade back in school, so I recognized his face. He’d finally arrived. After taking a look around the room, he raised an eyebrow.

“Did something happen?” he asked.

Sensing the awkward atmosphere, he spoke as if he wasn’t bothered by it at all. Well, that was just the kind of guy he was, but his inability to read the room was convenient in this instance. It created a chance to start back from square one after Mitarai’s criticism of me and the weird atmosphere that had come afterward.

I came to that conclusion logically, but such hopes were unexpectedly dashed.

“You’re...” Ella, who’d been standing by the wall as my guard, muttered quietly. She looked as if she was seeing something unbelievable. The next second, a negative, heartrending gleam filled both her eyes.

“You bastard!”

She screamed, hatred practically flying out of her mouth. It wasn’t just Ella either. All the dragons of Draconia were postured for battle, bloodlust in all their eyes.

“Ella?!”

This was really bad—totally different from Katou and Mitarai’s quarrel. If it turned into a physical confrontation, everything would be a total mess. I didn’t know why they’d lost their cool the moment they saw Okazaki, but we couldn’t let this turn into a fight.

Still, what was I to do? Was it best to order Gerbera, Lily, and Shiran to stop them? No. The dragons outnumbered us, and they were significantly strong. We wouldn’t make it in time like that.

As I continued to fret over what to do, a sudden chill ran down my spine. A colossal amount of mana had filled the room.

“Wha...?!”

It felt as if the mana’s mere presence could bring me to my knees. In the next instant, a flash of white seared my vision, and the blinding brilliance cut in between the lunging dragons and Okazaki.

“Th-That’s...”

The white glow turned out to be a beautiful sword made of hardened light, its blade long enough to traverse the entire room. However, in contrast to its beauty, I could feel terrifying power radiating from it. If any normal person were to touch it with merely a finger, they were liable to lose an entire arm. Even the dragons who’d lost themselves in anger were now frozen in place. The sword simply possessed that much power.

“That’s enough,” Nakajima said.

He remained seated as he held out the shining blade. He hadn’t been holding anything of the like moments ago. In other words, he’d created that thing in the bat of an eye. It wasn’t as if he were holding the blade at my throat or anything, but I gulped. It was the Sword of Light, the strongest ability in the exploration team. The dragons of Draconia stood stock still, their willpower dampened by the sight.

“E-Eeek!”

As for the other concerned party, Okazaki’s knees buckled, and he sank to the floor. It was quite unbecoming of him, but it was as if he’d casually entered a room to be suddenly greeted by a gun...or rather, an artillery cannon or missile. I couldn’t exactly fault him for it. The pressure we all felt was enough to make us imagine death.

Everyone in the room was frozen, which was exactly why I had to take the initiative. This was my only chance to get things under control. The moment I sensed that, I opened my mouth.

“Ella. Mind explaining what’s going on?”

I pushed back the pressure crushing down on me, spurred by my sense of duty to do something about the standoff.

Seeing me like this, Nakajima sighed quietly in admiration, and a smile crossed his handsome face. It was as if he truly found this enjoyable. The sword vanished from his hand; he’d decided it was no longer necessary. With that, everyone in the room was finally released from the pressure, including Ella.

“Lord Takahiro...”

She came back to her senses and realized what was happening. Her usually composed expression was now extremely shaken.

“Ah, um... Forgive me, Lord Takahiro,” she said. “Despite accepting the duty of being your guard...”

“Relax,” I said. “I know you didn’t do that for no reason. What happened?”

Ella’s expression once more filled with hatred. Even after regaining her composure, the emotions inside her remained unchanged. She glared at Okazaki as he staggered back to his feet.

“He’s one of the humans who killed our family,” she said.

Startled by this, everyone turned to look at Okazaki.

“Wh-What?! The hell are you spouting?!” Okazaki protested, looking awfully surprised himself.

It looked like he had no idea what she meant, but I had grasped the situation now.

“Okazaki,” I said.

“Wh-What? I mean, who the hell are you?” Okazaki said, turning my way.

“I’m Majima Takahiro. We were supposed to meet today, remember?”

“Oh, you... I mean, is that so?” Having finally regained his composure, his tone quickly changed. That didn’t matter to me, though. I paid it no mind and continued.

“I have a question. Does a dragon subjugation bring anything to mind?”

“Why do you know about that...?” Okazaki questioned, looking a little surprised. It was just as I thought. He withdrew his astonished look, then shrugged exaggeratedly. “Whatever. I don’t know what’s going on, but if you know, you know. That’s right. I helped out with subjugating some dragons at the Dragon Jinguuji’s request. They were pretty strong, and we lost some guys too. Well, if not for my power, it would’ve been pretty dangerous.”

He even blabbered on about things I hadn’t asked about. The reason he seemed so proud of it was that he believed it was an accomplishment worthy of praise.

“When did you...?” Kuriyama uttered.

It appeared even the exploration team hadn’t been aware of his actions. I hadn’t expected one of Draconia’s assailants to be among the people I met in the capital either, but now that I thought of it, Okazaki’s ability was to use other people’s abilities. By combining Shimazu’s and Iino’s cheats, it was entirely possible for him to make the trip back so quickly. I heard the exploration team often spent a few days in the towns they went through, so he’d had plenty of time to do so.

It wasn’t unusual for an exploration team member to take part in subjugating monsters, but in this case, they’d picked the wrong fight.

“So? What’s that got to do with this?” Okazaki asked.

The dragons were once more seething in rage as they watched him shrug. Grateful that they kept themselves from attacking him, I spoke in their stead.

“The settlement you destroyed was their home.”

“Huh?” Okazaki looked like he had no idea what I was saying.

“I’m telling you that they’re dragons.”

“What...?”

Even after I spelled it out for him, he still hadn’t caught on. Ella’s group looked no different from humans right now, and they hadn’t been introduced to Okazaki because of his tardiness, so he’d never considered that they were dragons.

Seeing her sworn enemy playing dumb, Ella trembled in anger as she carefully chose her words.

“Visitors attacked our settlement. We were the dragons who were there at the time. I watched with my own eyes as you used magic to crush Rex’s...my little brother’s head.”

Even as she spoke, her emotions ran wild. Then Ella’s figure started to transform. Scales covered her face, and her pupils turned into vertical slits. Her fangs creaked as they grew out, her hands turned to claws, and a tail stretched out behind her.

Being the target of her glare, Okazaki shuddered. “Th-That can’t... No way... Really...?”

There was no way he could continue being ignorant now. He looked at all the dragons, his expression torn, then shook his head.

“I-I didn’t know...”

The first words to come out of his mouth were a refusal to accept what had happened.

“What the hell?! How was I supposed to know that?! Humans that turn into dragons?! You should’ve said so from the start!”

“You’re the ones who attacked without any questions!” Ella screamed. “After magic blew up our settlement, one of my surviving brothers tried to talk to you, and he was murdered while still in human form! He wasn’t able to communicate with you to begin with!”

I’d heard the details and the outcome of the attack on Draconia already. A group of visitors had broken through the Mist Barrier that only dragons could navigate, presumably because of the Dragon Jinguuji Tomoya’s ability to transform. The visitors had infiltrated the settlement in a small group completely undetected, and after undoing the Mist Barrier, they’d launched a surprise attack with magic.

Thrown into chaos by the sudden attack, the dragons had engaged the assailants. However, the visitors had received reinforcements as the fight dragged on, and all hopes of victory had been lost. Rex had been slaughtered, and the others would have all been massacred if not for Malvina’s arrival. By sacrificing herself to stall them, she’d barely managed to let the surviving dragons escape.

As Ella said, they hadn’t been able to communicate with the visitors, meaning no translation runestones had been active during the attack. It had likely been decided that it wasn’t necessary when the attack was being carried out entirely by visitors. What’s more, the first assailants had probably concluded that the human trying to talk to them was a monster pretending to be a human. Monsters like doppelgangers existed, so it would be natural for them to believe that.

Even so, the fact that there was a settlement at all should’ve prompted them to suspect that the dragons weren’t just monsters. Maybe they hadn’t seen it as such because they’d blown everything up with magic right off the bat. Sadly, it didn’t seem like I’d be able to hear those details.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know any of that!” Okazaki shrieked.

“Okazaki...” I said.

“Shut up!”

I tried talking to him, but he was unapproachable. Still, the way he screamed about not knowing seemed to be the truth, so he likely hadn’t been part of the initial wave. He’d joined after the residents of Draconia had turned into dragons and the battle had already begun for real. In that case, there was no way for him to know about what had happened before that and no point in asking him about it either. Rather, there was no use in talking to him at all.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know! It’s not my fault!”

In truth, it was clear that Okazaki had been under the impression that he’d done a good thing, which was why he was in such a panic once the situation turned upside down on him. He couldn’t look reality in the eyes. All the same, his attitude slighted the victims’ feelings far too much.

“You bastard...”

As such, I couldn’t fault Ella for her anger.

“Ella.”

Lobivia called out to her older sister. Lobivia had a tendency to be impulsive, but unexpectedly, she hadn’t shown any signs whatsoever of preparing to attack Okazaki this whole time. On the contrary, she was trying to get everything under control.

“Leave it at that,” Lobivia said, keeping her voice low.

“But Patricia...”

“There’s no point blaming him. He’s not worth it. More importantly, if you fight here, it’ll be a bother for Takahiro. You can’t do that.”

Lobivia wasn’t fine with this or anything. She glared at Okazaki with a look that could kill and bit hard on her lip. Her reaction was understandable. The young girl had lost her mother. There’d been a rift between them, but the opportunity to reconcile that they’d both hoped for would never come now. Lobivia was enduring it, so nobody else could say anything about it.

A grave mood engulfed the room. That was more than enough.

“Nakajima. Unfortunately, I’ll be excusing myself here,” I said.

Nakajima nodded. “Right. Seems that’s for the best.”

“About joining you, let’s just forget the whole thing,” I added.

“That...is sadly the only option at this point,” Nakajima agreed, looking awfully regretful.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. One of his members had done something of his own accord completely separate from the group. I didn’t even think of asking the exploration team to take responsibility for it. However, it was out of the question to join them now.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “You even went as far as supporting me to join you.”

“If that is your will, I’ll respect it,” he said, unoffended by my answer. “I’m sure you have many opinions about us, but I think of myself as your ally, Majima.”

In other words, Nakajima had no intention of changing his view of me, even after Mitarai’s criticisms. From my point of view, even if I couldn’t join the exploration team because Okazaki was with them, it didn’t mean I was hostile toward the team as a whole just because of him either. I was grateful for Nakajima’s calm behavior.

“Let me know if you’re ever in trouble,” Nakajima said.

“Thank you.”

With that, my first meeting with the exploration team came to an end.