The Giant Dragon And The Dispatched Devil

In many worlds, Devils who came from beyond the world were powerful beings.

The same was true of Angels, who were considered their polar opposites. A mid-ranking Angel or Devil, for example, possessed power on par with a high-ranking elemental spirit that governed nature.

And once you got to high-ranking Angels or Devils, there were very few beings capable of standing alongside them.

But there was one kind of being that seemed to emerge in countless worlds from the very beginning, almost as though nature itself were resisting the existence of Angels and Devils.

Those beings were dragons.

In many worlds, dragons were often the strongest creatures in existence.

Of course, there were worlds where mana was too scarce for dragons ever to be born, and worlds containing exceptional beings with absurd, bug-like levels of power.

I could set the former aside, but I had no desire whatsoever to visit the latter, so I doubted I would have much to do with those worlds.

In other words, within the range of worlds I was likely to encounter, dragons were extremely powerful beings.

Lesser Dragons were roughly equal to Lesser Angels and Devils, Mid-Ranking Dragons to Mid-Ranking Angels and Devils, and High-Ranking Dragons to High-Ranking Angels and Devils—sometimes even surpassing them.

And the summoner for the dispatched summoning I had been assigned this time was one such High-Ranking Dragon: Ernesdora, the Guardian Dragon of this world.

Part of me wondered why someone called a Guardian Dragon did not simply summon an Angel, but apparently Angels had a habit of immediately invoking the will of God and blowing everything wildly out of proportion, so this matter could not possibly be entrusted to them.

The “God” Angels spoke of was apparently something akin to what we Devils called a Devil King, but if Ernesdora left things to them, there was apparently a very real risk that, before she knew it, she would somehow be declared a servant of God.

As for my job this time, I was to negotiate with humans on Ernesdora’s behalf.

Given that she bore the title of Guardian Dragon, it might have seemed faster for her to negotiate personally rather than relying on a Devil, but there was actually a reason why that would not work.

In terms of sheer power, dragons rivaled Angels and Devils, but they had one major drawback.

The longer a dragon lived, the greater its power became, but at the same time, its body continued growing larger and larger.

By the time a dragon reached the high-ranking class, its size was literally comparable to a mountain, and no matter how careful it was, its voice and mere presence could easily blow away beings as fragile as humans.

On top of that, Ernesdora was extremely angry this time, to the point that even Mid-Ranking Devils hesitated to approach her properly, which was why the assignment had been passed up to someone of my high-ranking class.

If Ernesdora, in a state where even Mid-Ranking Devils could not approach her, went to negotiate personally, a single roar of anger she could not restrain would kill enormous numbers of humans.

And so I was sent to the human nations as her representative negotiator.

To be honest, even I had found it fairly frightening to ask the furious Ernesdora what had happened.

Apparently, the humans of this world had been hunting the draconic races under Ernesdora’s protection: the Melusines and the Vouivres.

Both were half-dragon races with serpentine lower bodies, dragon wings, and the upper bodies of human women, and both races were exclusively female.

How they reproduced was shrouded in mystery, but in any case, both races were renowned for their beauty, and in the case of Vouivres, their eyes could even become gemstones.

Naturally, that made them targets for greedy humans, so they had lived quietly in hidden settlements under Ernesdora’s protection.

However, several months earlier, while Ernesdora had gone to intercept a threat arriving from another world, humans invaded one of their hidden villages and abducted large numbers of Melusines and Vouivres.

After returning victorious and learning what had happened, Ernesdora flew into a rage and apparently even considered burning the human nations to the ground, but she somehow restrained herself after realizing that doing so would also kill the abducted women, and that was when she thought of turning to a Devil.

Incidentally, if negotiations demanding the return of the Melusines and Vouivres and a permanent end to all interference with them failed, then my assignment would change from negotiation to rescuing them.

After that, Ernesdora would burn the human nations to the ground, but… I was almost certain these negotiations would fail.

That had nothing to do with Ernesdora lacking authority or me lacking negotiation skills. Rather, while the Melusines might still be alive, I simply could not believe that every abducted Vouivre was still alive and unharmed….

The moment Ernesdora saw the eyes gouged from dead Vouivres and turned into gemstones, she would unquestionably burn down every human nation involved in the abductions.

Once things reached that point, about the most I could do afterward would be to demand that the surrounding nations that had not been burned enact laws completely forbidding anyone from laying a hand on Melusines or Vouivres if they did not want to suffer the same fate.

The human representatives turned deathly pale as they listened to me at the negotiating table, but when I saw an especially large gemstone glittering on a necklace around the chest of one of them, I knew the negotiations had already become meaningless.

They made all sorts of claims—that the atrocities had been committed by people of low status and the state itself had not been involved, that their own country had nothing to do with it, and so on—but none of it mattered.

They even offered to hand over the heads of not only the direct perpetrators but everyone involved, yet that was obviously impossible when one of the kings himself was wearing a necklace adorned with a Vouivre’s eye.

Besides, no matter how many human heads they piled up, they held absolutely no value to Ernesdora.

I told them that if they wanted to lessen Ernesdora’s anger even slightly, they were to inflict no further harm whatsoever and bring back every corpse of every Melusine and Vouivre, along with every survivor, within three days—and to do so with the utmost care—then I forcibly ended the discussion.

In the end, roughly eighty percent of the Melusines were returned alive, though all of them were in terrible condition, while ninety percent of the Vouivres were returned as corpses with their eyes gouged out.

That day, eight human nations were burned to ashes by Ernesdora.

The surrounding nations trembled in terror and swore never to touch Melusines or Vouivres again, though how long that oath would last was another matter.

After all, humans were creatures who forgot pain as generations passed and were eventually driven once more by greed.

Some time afterward, I heard that a rumor had begun circulating among the humans that the Guardian Dragon Ernesdora had been corrupted by a Devil and fallen into becoming an evil dragon.

But I had never possessed the courage required to manipulate a dragon that terrifying in the first place.