89

“I’ve been waiting. My little brother.”

David greeted Hamel with a faint smile.

Hamel quietly stared at him in that moment.

Ono sneered in reply on Hamel’s behalf.

“For someone like you, the trip here was oddly difficult… Were you actually afraid to come?”

David looked at him with an intrigued expression.

“Hmm? Weren’t you definitely… dead at the mansion?”

“Thanks to some rat stabbing me in the back, I almost was.”

“Hahahaha! Your tongue is as sharp as ever.”

David laughed genuinely, clearly pleased.

“Tch.”

Was it not the face they had expected?

Ono clicked his tongue and twisted his face.

Hamel, who had been quietly watching their conversation, spoke calmly.

“I have many questions.”

Hamel had become markedly composed.

That was thanks to Ono buying him time.

He was able to steady his wavering emotions.

At that calm demeanor, David snorted lightly.

“So, you really are the famed Azure Flame priest. Well then, what are you so curious about?”

Hamel chose his words for a moment.

There were so many things he wanted to ask.

What the ‘group’ David belonged to actually was.

Whether he knew the identity of the crow they had met in Sturnhelm.

What was hidden in the mansion’s basement.

And…

‘What he knew about my mother’s death.’

David, as if well aware of Hamel’s curiosity, answered sardonically.

“If you’re curious, ask. Who knows? I might actually answer.”

Hamel, looking at David steadily, slowly shook his head.

“No, it’s all right.”

“…What?”

“I’m a bit busy right now. I’ll ask later.”

The moment he finished speaking, Hamel dashed forward.

The distance to David closed in an instant.

“…Graveyard!”

Startled by the surprise attack, David quickly used magic.

Knights poured out from the shadows.

David used shadow crafting to control them.

Clang!

Hamel’s swinging sword met the knights.

The knights’ swords, wreathed in blue aura, pushed back Hamel’s blade.

Watching this, David heaved a sigh of relief and curled his mouth into a smirk.

“…Surprised, aren’t you? But all my puppets are high-grade knights. For you to face them…”

Screech!

Before he could finish that sentence.

Hamel twisted his sword and sliced through the shadow-formed figures.

The knights fell like puppets with their strings cut.

No one can cut shadows with a blade.

Unless one is wrapped in aura.

“…Aura?”

David’s voice trembled faintly.

It wasn’t a mistake; Hamel’s sword clearly emitted a bright blue aura.

A half-wit who couldn’t use mana or aura.

Wasn’t that the true identity of the brother hidden behind the flashy epithet Azure Flame?

‘Since when did he have aura?’

He knew well that Hamel had been interfering with him and his comrades.

But David, who had assumed that was surely because Hamel had borrowed a dragon’s power, was astonished.

However…

“Still, it would be difficult to face all these at once by yourself.”

Auras rose from the swords of the twelve knights surrounding Hamel.

One versus twelve.

If they were knights who wielded the same aura, sheer numbers would overwhelm him.

Hamel’s aura wasn’t exceptionally strong, nor were his movements twelve times faster.

Hamel watched them silently.

Just then, David, thinking he’d frightened him, let out a small laugh.

Hamel charged boldly into the ranks of the knights.

‘…Is he even sane?’

David tilted his head.

It was brave, but the outcome seemed obvious.

There was no way he could block all the swords filled with aura.

David thought he’d surely use dragon’s blood out of desperation, when suddenly.

Swoosh!

Swords clashed with a sound like beads rolling.

All the knights’ swords slipped through the air and tangled with one another.

The knights’ movements faltered like a tangled skein of thread.

And the next moment.

Creak!

Hamel slid forward and cleaved through all the shadows connected to the knights’ bodies.

As easily as harvesting ripe fruit.

“…?”

What had just happened?

David watched Hamel with a thoroughly bewildered expression.

Hamel closed the distance to David and said.

“It’s a technique called grafting. It’s Sir Daniel’s signature skill.”

“You… how did you manage against so many knights…?”

As David was aghast, Hamel answered calmly.

“Just because one can draw out aura doesn’t make them all high-grade knights.”

Knights are those who train their swords.

Their swordsmanship is built from hours of swinging blades until calluses form, and from the insights gained while brushing life and death.

Puppets that forget all that and merely move and swing swords at David’s command cannot be called knights.

Hamel subdued them as if it were only natural and closed the distance to David.

David involuntarily faltered and stepped back.

But that lasted only a moment.

Rather, David muttered as if intrigued.

“You’ve become very strong. Has your swordsmanship been influenced by dragon’s blood as well?”

“That’s not what’s important right now…”

“No! It is important, damn it.”

David cut Hamel off with a look tinged with madness.

Hamel flinched at that force and stopped walking.

“All of this begins with dragons and will end with dragons.”

What did he mean by that?

As if answering Hamel’s question, David spread his hands toward the sky and said.

“Aren’t you curious? Why I betrayed my house. What is hidden in the cellar.”

“…”

“You know nothing. How this world turns. A great tide has already begun. The glory of the former gods is fading. The light will wane and an age of darkness will come.”

Hamel scowled as he looked at David.

He looked like a madman babbling nonsense in a marketplace.

Not much different from the ravings of demon-worshippers and heretics.

But David continued, unfazed by Hamel’s icy stare.

“Great beings of the forgotten Age of Gods are stirring. Whoever gains the power of dragons will swallow this world.”

David’s gaze was no longer on Hamel.

His eyes were rapt, as if gazing at a future to come.

He kept speaking.

“I, too, was chosen by him. And I prepared.”

Snap!

The moment David snapped his fingers.

Crack!

A sound came from behind David.

Something suddenly rose up from beneath the cliff.

Huge, hook-like talons gripped the rock and crushed it as they climbed up the cliff.

From far below the chasm emerged a being with blazing blue eyes.

Krrrrrrr!

With a thunderous roar it spread its wings wide.

Hamel knew the creature’s name.

“…Karalxis, Lord of the Bitter Cold.”

The calamity that had once driven Hamel and his companions to the brink of death stood there.

“So you were the one who resurrected that, after all?”

“Yes! I brought it back with my own hands!”

David trembled with joy, as if in convulsions.

He spit and shouted.

“Of course I can’t call this a true dragon yet. I stitched together many corpses to revive it. But it’s only a matter of time.”

“That means…”

“Yes. This is a primer. A vessel for a true dragon. When the promised day comes, I will be his apostle and swallow this world!”

David shouted with an expression full of rapture.

Hamel watched David in silence.

He couldn’t understand every word, but he grasped the general meaning.

‘Evil gods.’

Beings among demons that are revered as gods.

The crow in Sturnhelm that Lunacornus said was an ancient being.

The grub-infested eye that had been marked and that they encountered in Rengbaster.

They must all be the evil gods that ran rampant in the Age of Gods.

‘The entity David serves is probably the one they met in Rengbaster.’

Since the form of the seal had matched.

Summoning Reteil in Rengbaster and killing the Mage Tower’s Tower master were surely the work of those creatures.

Those who had hidden their identities had begun to run rampant in the empire.

But why?

According to David, it seemed related to dragons.

David’s attempt to resurrect a dragon was likely part of that plan.

Hamel finished sorting it out in his mind.

Then he asked calmly.

“Can that fake dragon become real?”

David’s expression twisted at Hamel’s question.

“It’s not a fake. It’s a vessel. There remain remnants of things that were once dragons in this world. For example, the half-dragons: the earth dragon Deoriasia, the storm dragon Diabolos, the sea-king dragon Rekarishika, and…”

David suddenly gave a sickly smile and continued, looking at Hamel.

“Beings like you.”

“…”

Hamel stood, unable to reply for a moment.

So David’s words meant…

“Devour.”

David nodded at Hamel’s mutter.

“More precisely, consumption. I’ve heard the order reveres dragons, but dragons are inherently greedy. They’ll swallow the scattered powers of their kin to make them their own.”

A brief but intense shock passed through Hamel’s head.

He met the gaze of the immense Karalxis looking down at him.

He felt it instinctively.

That thing was the same kind of being as Hamel.

‘It had a meaning…’

Hamel, who had become a dragonian, was living on borrowed time.

The current quiet madness would gradually worsen, and at the end would await death.

He had believed the only cure was to take a dragon’s heart.

But that was not the only way.

According to David, the act of consumption was to become a more perfect dragon.

If so, even without a true dragon’s heart, by taking those remnants one could survive.

A dragon’s vessel.

He, too, would ultimately be no different from the Karalxis that David had resurrected.

“…Ha.”

Hamel let out an involuntary hollow laugh.

He had found a clue to survival in an unexpected place.

Of course, that was after killing the dragon before them.

Graaah!

Hamel gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.

It wouldn’t be easy.

Though only a form now, the opponent had once been called a true dragon.

Hadn’t they already experienced fragments of its power?

One beat of its wings and breath had brought Hamel and his companions to the brink of death.

Honestly, he didn’t think they’d win.

But what could he do?

There was only one way for him to survive.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“…?”

“Now I can fight with a clear mind.”

Hamel uncapped a flask and threw it into his mouth without a shred of hesitation.

If they couldn’t defeat the dragon and David here, they’d just die anyway.

Hamel carved his resolve to risk his life into his chest.

David, watching, nodded with a pleased expression.

“Yes. That’s it, Hamel! Draw out that power as much as you like. And become part of the dragon!”

David cried out exultantly and reached out his hand.

Then he leapt up and onto the lowered Karalxis.

“Karalxis. Devour him!”

Krrrrrr!

The creature that had been eyeing Hamel hungrily thrust its neck out and roared in delight.

Hamel felt his body go momentarily rigid.

But that lasted only briefly.

Fwoosh!

The energy of dragon’s blood coursed through him, and Hamel’s eyes glowed bright blue.

Hamel snarled like a beast and muttered.

“We’ll see. Who the predator really is.”

Here were the remnants of two dragons.

And the two remnants bared their teeth at each other.

A battle that would not end until one side died had begun.