Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 8 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Dragon’s Rescue

I’d already considered the possibility. Thaddeus’s clan was made up of special monsters who possessed wills. Because Thaddeus already had a will of his own, I couldn’t form a connection with him through the mental path. In contrast, while the stray dragon was part of the same clan, it didn’t have a will. In a sense, one could say that the stray was just a normal monster.

However, it wasn’t quite normal either. Its strength could match Thaddeus’s, after all. That meant the stray was what we would call a rare monster. As such, if it wasn’t special in the sense that Thaddeus was, and was more akin to regular monsters, then maybe whatever was preventing me from forming a connection with their kind didn’t exist in the stray.

That was what I meant when I’d said, “I got through,” earlier. That was why I ran full speed through the forest. I’d taken off as soon as I woke up, which meant I was leaving the camp behind, but I had no intention of slowing down. I hadn’t even had the time to compose myself and slowly explain the situation to my companions. Besides, that wasn’t really a problem; I could sense Lily and Gerbera running behind me.

“My Lord! What’s going on?!” Gerbera asked as she caught up.

“I found the stray dragon!” I said, keeping things brief, seeing as how we were talking on the move.

“What?”

Gerbera’s red eyes widened, but she immediately grasped the situation. She grabbed my arm and pulled me in tight. I briefly felt like I was floating, but then I found myself under her arm.

“Hang on tight,” she said as she accelerated.

Gerbera used her eight legs to move in three dimensions through the pathless forest. It reminded me of the time I’d spent alone with her exploring the Woodlands. To this day, the speed she could reach was far beyond what I was capable of.

“Is this the right way?” she asked.

“Yeah. Keep going. I’ll tell you if you go off course.”

“Very well. I’m picking up the pace a little more.”

Gerbera sped up. In the past, she’d curbed her speed out of consideration for my body. Lily was starting to fall behind, but she had a sensitive nose. She could catch back up even if she lost sight of us. Speed was of the utmost importance right now.

“How did you find it?” Gerbera asked.

“It’s the opposite of when I met you,” I answered, being careful not to bite my tongue.

“Hrm?”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

My first encounter with Gerbera had been unforgettably intense. I remembered a firefang thwacking against a tree and bursting like a flower, and a white spider swooping down right on top of me.

“I found you.”

She’d said those words because she’d come looking for me. She’d sensed I was nearby, meaning we’d already been connected. In other words, the mental path had formed a connection before we’d even met.

“There’s no need to meet face-to-face for the mental path to connect. That’s why I thought I’d be able to do the same thing as you did, assuming the mental path could successfully connect to the stray dragon. Anyway, I kept focusing on the possibility, and now I can tell its location.”

“I see,” Gerbera said, then immediately grimaced. “Wait a moment. That means we’re hurrying because...?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “Just for a second, a scream for help came through the mental path.”

The stray dragon was begging for help. That had been the moment the mental path successfully connected. My ability had first manifested because I strongly desired for someone to be with me, so it made sense that it worked best in these kinds of situations. Still, the connection really was just the thinnest of threads; we were too far away. The reason I’d been the only one to hear the scream was because it had come from the very limit of the mental path’s effective range, meaning it only reached the root of the connection, namely me. It wasn’t clear whether I’d make it in time to help, hence why I’d run off without a moment’s hesitation.

“Meaning the stray dragon is currently in danger. But what could be happening?” Gerbera asked.

“I don’t know. The mental path doesn’t convey that much detail.” I shook my head, then narrowed my eyes. “But I can guess...”

Just then, Gerbera’s brow pricked up. “Is this...a dragon’s cry?”

“You can hear it?”

“Mm. But...what is this?” she said in a puzzled tone. “There are too many for it to be the stray dragon.”

“I see...” I quietly clicked my tongue. It seemed my guess was exactly right.

Gerbera leaped into the air, and suddenly, my field of vision opened up considerably and a sense of weightlessness enveloped me. After soaring over the unexpected downward slope and starting our free fall, my eyes shot open.

“There!”

Looking down over the open view, I spotted a group of dragons. They were still far away, but I could identify seven...no, eight of them. For just an instant, I could see the other seven surrounding the eighth dragon. My intuition was telling me that that was the stray dragon. The dragons around it were definitely Thaddeus’s clan members from Draconia.

They’d found the stray dragon before us. Even though we’d hurried, or perhaps because we’d hurried, we reached the stray around the same time as the other dragons did. That tiny difference meant the battle had already started. I’d expected this, but I couldn’t keep the bitter taste out of my mouth.

One of the gathered dragons had toppled over, probably due to the stray recklessly rampaging about. A shriek followed. I could tell right away that it came from the stray. I could feel its pain through the mental path, after all. It had suffered a counterattack, making it rampage even more. The situation was getting worse and worse.

There were those among the clan who thought that waiting to incur human intervention would be too late, leaving no choice but to dispose of the stray. Even if they didn’t want to, dragons were killing each other. It was far too painful to behold. I felt the urge to vomit. I mean, that was as if our...

“Like hell I’ll let you...” I mumbled, gritting my teeth and steeling myself. “Gerbera, throw me!”

“Fwah?!” she shrieked hysterically back at me.

“Throw me! I’ll go ahead!” I repeated.

“Huh? Uh, right! Got it!”

When it came to battle, the Great White Spider caught on quickly. Gerbera’s talons dug into the slope as she landed. She stooped down low, then leaped horizontally into the air.

“Shyaaah!”

Before she could lose her momentum, she hurled me out of her arms.

“Hngh!”

I groaned bitterly from the momentary burden on my body. That said, she’d held back some for me, so I was able to control my posture midair. Trees flowed beneath me as I soared through the sky like a bullet. The wind in my face felt like a wall pushing me back. The pressure slowed my speed, but it wasn’t enough to stop my momentum in the right place.

“Asarina!”

“Ssster!”

Asarina shot out and wrapped around a passing tree. She tugged on my arm, and my speed dropped drastically. She’d already been wrapped around my arm, serving as an external exoskeleton, so my strengthened limb managed to withstand the force. Asarina’s viny body, on the other hand, snapped apart.

I now found myself flying above the dragons. Beneath me was a clearing in the trees, no doubt created by the dragons’ battle, occupied by ten-meter-long dragons. Much like Thaddeus, their backs and limbs were covered in a sturdy carapace and scales. Each dragon was a different color.

One dragon in particular caught my attention. It was somewhat smaller, somewhere around two-thirds the size of the other dragons, and it was horribly wounded. Its auburn carapace was ripped to pieces here and there all over its body, and its left membranous wing was torn and bleeding. Smoke billowed from its entire body, probably an aftereffect of the other dragons bathing it in fire multiple times over. A large gash marked its left foreleg, and its tail wasn’t moving, perhaps because it’d been broken. There was no mistaking it; this was the stray dragon.

There was no helping how things had turned out, considering the stray hadn’t had an ego until moments ago, but it must’ve put up enough of a fight that the others had deemed it unmanageable. Glancing at the other dragons, I could see some had chunks of meat missing from their legs, as if something had bitten into them, blood flowing out of their wounds. They weren’t hurting the stray because they wanted to; they simply had no choice but to use violence so that they could capture it.

Even now, the stray was flapping its wings into the face of the dragon trying to restrain it and kicking out its back feet to try and escape. Another dragon rammed into the stray from the side, then snapped down at the base of its torn wing as if to tear it off completely.

“Stoooop!”

The moment before it could, I forced my way among them. Nobody here had a translation runestone, so they didn’t understand my words, but the simple act of yelling drew their attention.

The dragons all snapped their heads up at me as if they’d been struck. How shocking a scene was this to them? They couldn’t even imagine a human in such a remote location to begin with, and here was one flying above their heads.

If these were senseless monsters, maybe they wouldn’t have given any thought to what they saw. Perhaps my servants, well-experienced in combat as they were now, could’ve dealt with such an unexpected event immediately. The dragons of Draconia were different, however. The incomprehensible situation froze them in place.

Using that single moment of stasis, I activated my newly acquired power.

“Misty Lodge!”

It was the one and only magic I could use, the power I’d acquired as a spiritualist by forming a contract with Salvia. With Shiran’s guidance, I’d somehow managed to grasp the very beginnings of this power on the way here.

White mist poured out of my entire body. I could feel my mana rapidly draining as a thick fog enveloped the whole area. Visibility plummeted in less than a second, becoming no more than a few meters.

“Graaawr!”

The dragons quickly realized that this was a smokescreen. One of them immediately flapped its wings, unleashing a gale, but all this did was stir up the mist. This fog was a fragment of a high monster’s power. It was magic mist tinged with mana. There was no way it would amount to a simple smokescreen. It wasn’t so weak that a gentle breeze could disperse it.

Using that time, I landed on the ground. I tumbled about a few times to kill my momentum, when a dragon swung at me with its claw.

“Graaah!”

It had likely guessed my rough location based on the sound of my landing. The attack was haphazard, but the area of effect matched its enormous body. I was well within the trajectory of its claw as it gouged out the earth. If I took a direct hit from this, it’d be difficult for me to continue fighting. It’d be hard to spot the attack by sight in this thick fog, so there was no way I could have dodged such a huge claw after spotting it only a few meters away—normally, that is.

“Gh! Oooh!”

I used my mana-reinforced strength to kick off the ground and managed to evade the massive incoming claw by leaping high into the air. The trick here was in the mist. The white fog covering a good fifty-square-meter area was part of the Misty Lodge. In other words, it was part of Salvia herself. She knew everything going on within her, so using the mental path, she’d informed me of what I needed to know.

Even with the claw just now, I’d known it was coming the moment the dragon raised its foreleg to strike. Despite the roughshod nature of the attack, I’d also been able to read the trajectory perfectly. The magic known as the Misty Lodge was no simple smokescreen. It was also a form of perception magic.

If I had to mention one drawback, it was that the thickness of the fog influenced both how badly it obstructed my enemy’s vision and how effective the perception magic was. That, combined with the terribly high mana consumption rate, made maintaining such an effective fog feasible only for a short amount of time.

The mist started to disperse not even five seconds after it was activated. Still, that was more than enough for me to reach the stray dragon. I’d leapt into the turmoil on my own because I’d estimated this to be the case.

“Graaah!”

Unfortunately, the moment before I reached the stray—with the dragon who’d attacked me hot on my heels—I was caught completely off guard. Because of the poor visibility, the dragon’s attack had thrown it off balance. It had decided that it wouldn’t be able to catch up, and instead spewed fire from its mouth at me on the spur of the moment.

This attack was tenacious. I could sense a great hostility toward humans and even a hint of fear. But above all else, there was an unshakeable resolve behind it. This had overthrown my predictions.

Even without the mental path, even without the ability to communicate, I understood its feelings. This dragon simply wanted to protect its home. This was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Knowing that, I had to stop them.

I turned around and held my left hand out toward the incoming blaze. I was equipped with the Asarina Bracers that Rose had given me in Diospyro. Blue and yellow decorations ornamented the black bracer on my left hand, whereas red and green ones ornamented the one on my right.

I channeled mana into them, and immediately my left bracer shone with blue light. They weren’t merely pieces of defensive equipment; they were a magic tool that Rose had specially made for me. She’d already succeeded in duplicating basic elemental-magic runestones, and the Asarina Bracers made use of them.

The primary use for the bracers was defense through offense. The runestones could only activate an attack of a fixed power and nature, so they weren’t very versatile, but if I limited what I used them for, that wasn’t much of a problem. One other flaw was that they consumed more mana compared to regular magic, but it also allowed someone who couldn’t use magic to do so.

I activated grade 2 water magic in the form of a bullet. It was far too weak to inflict damage on a dragon, but I could use it to intercept an attack. Without waiting for the water bullet to meet the blaze, I channeled mana into my right bracer too. A green light shone, and I activated grade 2 wind magic.

“Oooh!”

My water magic lost to the vigor of the breath attack, so I slammed my wind-wreathed sword right into it.

“Gh!”

I managed to disperse a fair amount of the fire, but a dragon’s breath was as fierce as one would expect. The remaining fire kept going and threatened to scorch my skin.

The instant before it could, a warm power wrapped around me. I was rather surprised by this phenomenon, but it all made sense when I remembered what I had stowed in my chest pocket—the Rosette Dagger I’d gotten together with these bracers.

Built for self-defense, the dagger dampened any mana-based attacks regardless of element. The dragon’s breath, which should’ve inflicted some amount of damage, instead vanished in vain, leaving only light burns on my sword-wielding hand, which I’d thrust into the flame. Fortunately, it wasn’t enough to hinder me.

Protected by the magic tools charged with the feelings of the girl who’d once told me that she existed to protect me, I ran the remaining few meters to the stray. I touched its burned, scaly body. The sight was heartbreaking, but I couldn’t do anything about the wounds right now.

“Calm down,” I said to it. So long as we were connected by the mental path, the meaning behind my words would be conveyed.

I turned around, my back to the stray dragon. Seven other dragons stood before me. There was no way I could handle all of them as I was now. I’d lost the advantage of my preemptive attack, and I’d used most of my mana already, so I couldn’t maintain the Misty Lodge’s magic to an effective degree. The enhanced perception it had provided was pretty much gone, and visibility was practically back to normal. The mist actually had the effect of grade 1 glamor magic too, but that didn’t do anything against opponents of this level.

About ten seconds had passed. Buying that paltry amount of time was all I was capable of... Or perhaps that wasn’t the right way to put it. Considering my current strength, this was a good result. Normally, I would’ve used all of my precious magic tools to harden my defenses. I’d trained all this time focusing on evasion and counterattacking, so my fighting style leaned hard toward defense.

Because this was my field of expertise, I’d managed to hold out for ten whole seconds despite running headlong into the fray without thinking about what would happen next. I’d done what I was capable of. Moreover, this was largely the end result I’d expected. Having gotten this far, it was more than enough.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, My Lord.”

In the next moment, a white spider descended between myself and the dragons, her talons thudding into the earth. The palpable bloodthirst she was unleashing froze them all in place.

“Now, then. I suppose it’s my job from here on out.”

Her red eyes lorded over the area, sending a wave of fear through the dragons. They had no choice but to realize that taking on this spider was sure to lead to deaths among them. Nevertheless, there were seven tenacious dragons here. If they charged head-on without heeding any casualties, they could possibly win. That was, of course, if the white spider was their only opponent.

“Thanks for waiting, Master.”

Lily arrived at the flank, her white skirt fluttering in the air. She looked like a dainty girl, seemingly unreliable against these massive dragons, but in truth, she was a monster whose power approached the strength of the Great White Spider of the Depths. She stretched out her empty left hand with a smile and exercised her power.

“Partial mimicry—Devil Arm Mode.”

Everything from her left elbow down transformed into the strong and bristly arm of a bear. Her fingers elongated, each taking on the shape of a praying mantis’s scythes. A venomous liquid dripped off the blades, scorching the ground. Her palm shifted into a gaping maw filled with craggy fangs.

After having conquered the fear that’d once dominated her, Lily no longer tried to hide her monster side. That was why she could fully manifest her new power. The reason she’d chosen the most fiendish-looking transformation was because this was meant to be a threat.

Faced with the sinister menace of a devil paired with the sweetness of a girl, the dragons could no longer move. They could sense that Lily and Gerbera matched or exceeded all seven of them put together. If it came to battle, it was clear that both sides would suffer horrendous damage. To be precise, the two girls had acted in a way to make this abundantly clear to the dragons.

As a result, we were now at a stalemate. Seeing that our goal was to stall them, this was a favorable development for us. From just a little farther away, we could hear Thaddeus’s roar.