Words Exchanged, Feelings Unreached

When I finished getting ready and reached the castle gate, Lynferia and the others were already there waiting for me.

So I really was the last one…… putting armor on me took forever, didn’t it…….

“I kept you waiting.”

When I called out to the three of them, Lynferia and the others dipped their heads lightly.

I was the only one properly armored up, and even setting Kamila aside, Lynferia and Jōsen were dressed ridiculously light.

Huh? Was I the only one giving off this “overprepared to the max” vibe and making it awkward?

Well, none of them looked at me like, “Aren’t you being too paranoid?” so…… I guessed it was fine.

Overconfidence was bad.

“In less than ten minutes, the dragon should be here. For now, let’s get through the castle town and move to the grassland. Kamila, if the dragon tries to ignore us and head for the castle, knock it down.”

“Roger~”

As I listened to Kamila’s reply, we passed through the gate and headed into the castle town.

It still wasn’t really something you could call a town…… but as housing for goblins, it was more than sufficient.

The development department kids had been getting busier, so we left construction of the castle town to the goblins…… but once we dealt with the dragon this time, we could consider actively increasing the population.

If we had the achievement of defeating a dragon, there wouldn’t be any problem…… and if we froze its head in ice, we could use it as proof.

Personally, I wanted to bring in goblins and other fairy-folk…… but we’d already gotten a massive number of humanfolk, so it wasn’t that high priority.

Getting five times the mana stones was great…… but if we brought humanfolk towns under our control, the numbers wouldn’t stop at five times the goblins…….

If there were goblin nations, I’d want to target them aggressively, but so far I hadn’t heard any information like that, and finding a hidden village and integrating it would take an absurd amount of time and effort.

Well, there was the Frenzy issue, and I’d promised Bangagonga, so it wasn’t like I would never look at all, but it just wasn’t very high on the priority list.

If the duke decided to come over to our side, and that influence made the other nobles fall into line…… we could collect mana stones from the people of the entire Lumoria Kingdom.

Then the mess I caused the other day…… would be recoverable in about five months.

We wouldn’t be able to keep up with installing the collection devices…… thinking about it, it would definitely take more than half a year.

The kids we newly transferred into the development department were working hard, but even so there were only about ten of them total…… distributing mana collection devices across every city and village in the entire kingdom…… could take years if things went badly.

Major cities aside, villages seemed to be scattered all over…… and if so, maintaining local public order wouldn’t be easy either.

Which meant…… we really needed the former Lumoria Kingdom soldiers to devote themselves to keeping the peace.

Rather than having them train in preparation for war, that would be far less wasteful.

It was best to leave the war to our own kids.

As I walked thinking about that, Marie came from the far end of the street with several goblins in tow.

“Fels-sama! Evacuation’s finished with these kids!”

Behind Marie, who said it with a bright, refreshed smile, there were about ten goblins who probably looked anxious.

Half of them were small-bodied goblins…… were those children?

“Good work, Marie. Protect them properly and head for the castle.”

“Yes, ma’am! Excuse us, ma’am! Everyone, hurry to the castle so you don’t trip, okay!”

Marie bowed at my words, turned around, and resumed leading them.

The goblin children held hands with adult goblins, getting tugged along a little as they evacuated.

“We’re almost at the edge of town. Looks like there are no residents left, so we’ll run…… Jōsen, what’s wrong?”

Just as I was about to call to the three of them, Jōsen stared blankly in the direction Marie and the others had gone.

“Ah, no. I beg your pardon—there was nothing.”

He looked a little off…… but we didn’t have time to check right now.

“I see. Then let’s hurry. It wouldn’t be strange if we could already see the dragon any moment no—”

The instant I looked outside the town, Ururu appeared at my side without a sound.

Ururu’s entrances were still bad for my heart…… but if he showed himself without me calling, that meant he had a report.

“……Fels-sama…… soon…… in the western sky…… the dragon’s figure…… will be visible.”

“The west, huh…… move.”

““Yes!””

Thirty minutes really went by in a flash…… if we didn’t move fast, the dragon might arrive here first. There was no way I wanted to fight in the town we’d worked so hard to build.

I started running while looking toward the western sky.

In the distance was a wide blue sky…… and far, far away, a single black shadow like a bird.

So that was the dragon…….

It was still only the size of a sesame seed…… but in just a few minutes, its shape would probably become clear.

Man…… I was nervous…… It was too late to say, “Actually, you guys handle it, Jōsen,” but honestly, I was starting to want to go home.

I’d rushed into the most dangerous place on pure momentum…… normally someone would stop me, right?

It felt like nobody worried at all when sending me off…… well, it was because I said I was going, but…… couldn’t someone have tried to stop me anyway?

Well, blaming others wouldn’t help.

The goblins’ housing cut off, and the ground underfoot changed into open grassland that hadn’t even been properly leveled yet.

Alright, this would be today’s battlefield…… if the dragon failed to notice us and headed for the castle, Kamila would knock it down.

If it noticed us and came down here…… first, I would test what Viktor said—whether conversation was possible.

If it attacked without listening…… we would have it become materials with as little damage as possible.

I brought the approaching dragon into my view again.

With a body that huge, I wasn’t going to say something stingy like “only four harvesting attempts.”

Even if its blood couldn’t be used as an ingredient for top-grade potions, I’d already researched that various dragon materials could be converted into money. Since they rarely circulated, the price was supposedly insane.

If things went well, it might be safer money than potions or the hair-growth medicine…… no, dragon materials were finite, but hair-growth medicine could be produced with mana stones alone…… so hair-growth medicine was superior.

Dragon materials were romance, but hair-growth medicine was a dream…… romance was easier to fulfill, but dreams were harder. Dreams would fetch a better price than romance.

Well, we didn’t have the manpower to produce it right now, so selling dragon materials would probably be the faster cashout.

And…… it looked like the dragon had arrived.

The dragon flew close, hovering as it looked down at us…… apparently it wasn’t going to ignore us and head for the castle.

Just as Ururu said, its body was dark brown…… its eyes were yellow…… no, gold?

The dragon flapped its wings loudly in the sky—over thirty meters of massive bulk, powerful enough to blow trees away…… yet not a single gust reached us.

Was that it? It wasn’t actually flying with its wings, but with some kind of magical force?

Well, it was too huge to fly with wings anyway……

The fact that I had room to think about this meant…… maybe I wasn’t as terrified as I thought? Almost the instant I noticed that pointless detail, the hovering dragon landed in front of us with a thunderous roar.

Dust burst up all at once, but when Kamila frowned and casually waved her hand, it scattered away without reaching us at all.

The dragon that landed was, as expected, absurdly huge and looked incredibly thick-fleshed.

With the distance this close, looking up at its neck was going to make my own neck hurt.

That dragon slowly opened its mouth as it looked down at us.

“Produce a representative of you humanfolk. If you do not come forth within a moment, I will burn to ash everyone who has set foot upon this land.”

It really spoke…… a dragon.

And not some telepathy-like thing—an actual voice…… maybe because the size difference was too extreme, it was a little hard to make out, but it wasn’t a problem.

Putting that aside—could it hear us?

Only one way to find out.

“And what happens if we produce a representative?”

“Obviously. I will tear that one apart and eat them, then burn everything to ash.”

Wasn’t that pointless?

The dragon started saying something utterly merciless in response to my question…… just like Viktor said: even if words got through, that didn’t mean you could reason with it.

“Why would you do such a thing? What problem is there with us being here?”

“Humanfolk are truly foolish. Haven’t I always told you?”

It sounded like it was saying I should already know…… but I didn’t.

For starters, it had burned to ash everyone it said that to, so there was no way it could have been passed on to anyone else.

“Will you tell me for future reference? Why do you need to burn to ash those who enter this land? We have lived here for months…… and during that time, you weren’t here. What is the problem?”

There might have been some reason—like something terrible happened if people entered this land.

Some kind of game-event-like trigger…… that thought briefly crossed my mind, so I asked the dragon for its reason.

“How many times will you make me repeat myself? Learn already. This land is mine. It is not a place that lowly humanfolk may set foot upon.”

“……That’s all?”

“Do I need any other reason?”

Yeah, there didn’t seem to be any deep reason…… just territorial instinct.

“Why is this your land? As I said, you haven’t been here for quite some time.”

“This is my land. It has been so since long ago. And the reason I was not here until today is that I was elsewhere. But my absence does not mean this ceases to be my land.”

“……”

……It really was like we were talking, yet not talking.

I mean, if something weird took up residence in your house, it was natural to drive it out……

“Seems you understand. Then die.”

……That conclusion was way too fast.

Also, what about that whole “produce a representative” thing—was that done now?

Did it already forget what it said, or something?

Either way, with someone this impossible to reason with, keeping it wasn’t an option.

“Kamila.”

The dragon took a huge breath in front of us and opened its mouth wide.

The fire breath Viktor and the others talked about, probably.

Before it could be released, Kamila created a wall of ice in front of us.

Not defeating it—blocking the attack…… incredible, Kamila understood what I wanted without me even saying it.

And Lynferia and Jōsen also waited in silence while I spoke with the dragon, so they must have understood my intent as well.

……If it were Eisha, with the way this dragon talked, she might’ve snapped and blasted it away.

She had prior offenses, after all—was what I thought lazily, and then the world beyond the transparent ice suddenly turned crimson…… the dragon had breathed fire.

It was pretty intense, but not even a hint of heat reached this side of the wall.

“Im—Impossible! Ice that can block my breath!?”

After the flames stopped, the dragon stared at the ice wall still standing as if nothing had happened, and shouted in shock.

The ice wall Kamila made was the spell “Ice Wall.”

True to its name, it produced a wall of ice, but it was weak against fire.

Blocking with a spell that was weak to fire on purpose…… Kamila was pretty angry, wasn’t she?

“Hm…… that was quite the low flame. Was that not a breath attack, but a mere sigh or something?”

“Insolent humanfolk!”

As I shrugged and said it, the dragon on the other side of the ice drew in a huge breath again.

The ice was clear enough that I could still see the other side…… and I was glad my voice was reaching it properly.

If it hadn’t heard my taunt, it would’ve been incredibly embarrassing.

While watching the other side turn red again, I still had enough composure to think about things like that.

The dragon’s proud breath still showed no sign of melting the ice Kamila created.

“Is that it? You really said you’d burn everything to ash with such a weak flame. With firepower like that, I don’t think you could even scorch our sheep pasture.”

“Sheep pasture……? What nonsense are you babbling!?”

On that line alone, I agreed with you.

What even was a sheep pasture……?

“Well, setting that aside…… I’ll show you what flames really are. Study hard, got it? You lizard.”

“You bastard!”

I raised a hand toward Kamila’s ice wall and cast a spell.

The spell I cast was a fire-only spell: White Flame.

White flames surged up as if gushing from the ground around the ice wall, spiking the surrounding temperature in an instant, and the ice wall vanished in a blink.

This was the power of 85 Strategy!