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“Not good!”
Realizing the danger after seeing what had happened below, Emilia frantically reached out for the top of the pillar.
While she was doing that, Volcanica rose, freeing its tail from the restraining polearms, and slowly opened its wings with very deliberate movements.
The Holy Dragon intended to take flight.
Volcanica could obviously fly, but Emilia had never seen a flying dragon, so she couldn’t really picture it in her head.
Could something that big even stay in the air?
“I’ve never seen anything other than Puck or Roswaal flying…”
It seemed natural to Emilia that Puck could fly, since he was a spirit, and that Roswaal could fly, because he was an eccentric mage, of course. She had heard once that in the Volakian Empire to the south, there were flying dragons in addition to the familiar ground dragons and water dragons, but was Volcanica the same sort of flying dragon?
Or was it a fundamental mistake to group them together…?
“Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho!”
Emilia pulled herself up the pillar as fast as she could.
Anyone watching from a distance would have been blown away by her sheer speed, but even with her unexpected strength and a head start, Emilia didn’t get far enough.
“—Thou who hath reached the tower’s peak, petitioner of omnipotence who treads upon the first floor.”
It wasn’t her imagination that that voice sounded much closer than before. It wasn’t coming from far down below but from about the same height.
The massive Holy Dragon was somehow flying in the air with its blue wings.
Volcanica rose grandly in the sky above the desert and showed no sign of decline or deficiency.
Everything from the pressure it gave off to its piercing gaze—and not to mention the tail, claws, and breath—were proof that this was the ultimate dragon spoken of in legends.
The only thing that betrayed that image was…
“I! Am trying to go higher than the first floor! I might not be your enemy!”
“—I am Volcanica. By ancient oath, I ask thy will.”
Speaking over her, like it wanted to show it had no interest in listening, Volcanica loomed menacingly over Emilia as she clung to the pillar. Then it swung its tail, threatening to crush Emilia and the pillar along with her…
“ ”
She quickly pulled her body up and escaped a direct hit. Unfortunately, the blow to the pillar made her lose her grip, and a weightless feeling quickly enveloped her body.
She fell, wasting all the effort she had put into climbing so high—until she stopped.
“Kyah!”
Emilia should have dropped tens of yards, given how far she had climbed. However, her bottom landed on something much sooner than she expected.
Reaching down, her hand felt something rugged and hard…
“Did…?”
“—Thou who hath reached the tower’s peak, petitioner of omnipotence who treads upon the first floor.”
Emilia heard the voice from extremely close as the high-altitude breeze whipped at her face, and she felt the surface she was sitting on. Emilia finally realized what had happened. She had fallen onto Holy Dragon Volcanica’s back.
“—Gah! This isn’t the time to doze off! If I’m here, then—”
She could use Volcanica as a launchpad to grab back on to the pillar.
That idea quickly came to Emilia, but just as quickly, she realized that would be easier said than done.
Volcanica flapped its wings and began to ascend while simultaneously twisting its body to shake her off.
“—Uh, ughhhhh!”
Enduring the powerful wind buffeting her, Emilia desperately clung to the dragon’s back.
It was a gale unlike any she had experienced before—she was clinging to scales that were each large and sturdy, like boulders, but she couldn’t hold on long.
“—If I fall, I won’t be able to see Subaru and the others again.”
If she wasn’t careful opening her mouth, the rushing wind threatened to tear at her lungs.
She put her head down, gritted her teeth, and, behind closed eyes, Emilia thought of all the people who were precious to her.
It was almost like she was preparing mentally to face death. But that wasn’t it.
When people were on the verge of crumbling under the pressure of fear or unease, they often closed their eyes. But when she did that, the people Emilia saw internally all faced forward, even—and especially—in moments like this. In moments like this, they didn’t shut themselves off from the world.
She had to open her eyes.
To reach, to take someone’s hand and…
“—That weirdo.”
Up, down, left, right. Everything everywhere was blue.
The reason for that was partly because she was high up in the sky, above the clouds, but also because the Holy Dragon she was clinging to had dazzling blue scales.
Everything else was moving past so fast that even with Emilia’s high visual acuity that could see the seams on a thrown ball, she couldn’t track the world passing by her.
And so what Emilia’s consciousness latched on to wasn’t the blue world outside.
“—I am Volcanica. By ancient oath, I ask thy will.”
It was Volcanica, twisting and turning its body as it flew.
It seemed that the spot Emilia was clinging to was near the base of one of Volcanica’s wings. Strangely, the dragon wasn’t moving its wings that much. Birds and insects flapped their wings so much to fly, but the way a dragon flew was apparently very different.
It was probably closer to the way that Puck or Roswaal flew.
In which case…
“Roswaal uses magic…and Puck has some kind of mysterious power.”
Unfortunately, she had never tested it with Roswaal and had never thought to test it before, either. But Emilia had spent a long, long time with the being that she had thought of as her one and only family. She had been so sad so many times this year, away from his side. She had wanted to cry many nights, but her memories of him had comforted her.
And calling upon those memories, even in this moment, Emilia saw a glimmer of hope.
That was…
“Do you not like having your neck tickled?”
Forcing her purple eyes open, she saw the Holy Dragon’s long neck. And beneath the grand dragon’s chin, amid so many blue scales lined up so neatly, there was a single white scale.
—She thought back to the days she had spent playing with Puck.
“Don’t do that, Lia. If you tickle me, it’ll mess up my focus.”
“…Right, Puck.”
Emilia focused.
With the wind buffeting her, Emilia had no way of directly reaching that white scale. But she had a way of reaching out even where her own hands couldn’t reach.
“—Mr. Soldiers.”
Focusing her consciousness, she manifested more ice soldiers around the white scale.
Growing half out of the dragon’s body, their upper bodies all supported one another. And the one who formed in the center of them slowly reached out to touch that white scale—
“ GGGGHH?!”
For the first time, the Holy Dragon uttered something other than its repeated message.
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