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“GAAAAAA!”

A mop-like black magic beast with fangs rapidly advanced toward Lucella.

Its dark fur momentarily shone in seven colors like water mixed with oil. The next moment, lightning gushed out of its body and headed for Lucella like a thrown spear.

“Hah!”

Lucella dashed with a low posture.

—So it’s basically the same sensation as using magic! Gotta spread magic power and make it part of my body! So this is how it feels to accelerate…!

The lightning bolt burst and burned the ground black. But Lucella was no longer there.

He was running in zigzags.

The beast got flustered and did a follow-up attack. This time, it was a big swing of its forefoot. But it was slow. He slipped under it.

Lightning, claws, fangs.

Lucella could estimate their timings. He was already perfect at fleeing practice. However, he had gained enough leeway to do something in addition to just running.

“Okay, next I should raise my power and…”

It felt like flames were swirling inside Lucella’s body. He grabbed the magic beast’s fur and stopped its advance while grappling with its body.

And then, he drove a palm heel in the beast’s head with enough force to leave a handprint below.

“Haaah!!”
“Gugi-!”

The magic beast staggered greatly with a clearly abnormal shriek.

It stood like that for a little while, but before long, it suddenly tilted to the side and fell to the ground with an earthshaking thud.

“I-I did it… I did it…!”

Lucella gasped for breath as he stared down at the beast’s corpse with feelings of disbelief. Though it was wounded and slowed down due to being caught by Kafal, it still remained a fact that Lucella had won against a dreadful Variant which were rampant on Mount Kuguse.

“Gruuuh….Rroaahh…”
“Wah, sto-, agh!”

Kafal, who watched the battle unfold, drew her face close and started licking Lucella with unprecedented vigor.

She seemed unbelievably happy, and Lucella worried she’d end up eating him accidentally.

“…Oh, my wounds are gone. Humans tend to say the wounds would heal if you lick them, but it looks like they actually get healed when a dragon licks you.”

Before he knew it, all the pain had gone away.

Kafal used magic to heal him when he got injured during the training, but she sometimes just healed the graze wounds with a lick.

“Gruh.”
“Now hold up!”

Kafal spread her wings preparing to fly off but Lucella hurriedly stopped her.

“I’m tired already, so let’s end it for today! Let’s rest! Please?!”

Kafal clearly planned to bring more teaching materials but Lucella’s desperate pleas made her fold her wings back and crouch.

—I’m saved… Given the direction it was heading, I bet she would’ve dragged the strongest magic beast of the mountain or something…

His wounds were healed, but the sense of tension from the fact that a single mistake could cost him his life had put a big strain on his mind. He wanted to call it a day with this.

Lucella heaved a sigh when he saw Kafal had given up, and then went to check on the stove installed on the side of their house. This was also something he asked Kafal to make.

Just approaching the steaming stove a little, a strange aroma ticked his nose. There was a pile of wood chips inside the stove raising smoke.

“Oh, it progressed pretty well while I was fighting! I just half-a̲s̲s̲e̲d̲ it but it might turn out alright.”
“Ruh?”
“Hehehe, if I do this the flavor will improve and it will last for longer. It’s the wisdom of humans.”

He had skewered magic beast meat with thick sticks and hung them on the stove. The jetting smoke and heat licked the meat, changing it into a light brown color similar to polished lumber.

In short, this was a smoking tool.

The kindling it was using came from the trees around that Lucella punched and broke, and then further smashed into bits with fists.

The wood that was transformed by a dragon’s power had an exotically good fragrance.

Lucella tore off some meat and bit into it. The contrast between the white inside and the glossy outside seemed like the shine of a gem.

As he chewed down the meat filled with umami, the flavor of fragrant wood filled his mouth.

“Here, Kafal, you should try it too.”
“Gruuuh…”

He tore off a big chunk and threw it and Kafal dexterously caught it with her mouth.

She didn’t seem to be familiar with smoked food so she chewed it with a strange expression, but once she swallowed it down she snuggled her snout close as usual.

“Maybe I should turn the magic beast I just defeated into smoked food too. Maybe I can make a bed if I can clean its fur. It looks pretty fluffy and comfortable to sleep on.”

The magic beasts that Kafal brought for Lucella to train already exceeded twenty. Kafal always stripped and presented their pelt to him, so he already had more than he needed, and they were folded and piled up in the corner of their house. There was no worry of freezing if he wrapped himself in those.

—It’s calm… I just can’t get into the feeling that I have time to just not do anything… That said, I’ll probably just kick the bucket if I don’t rest when I can, given this lifestyle.

He didn’t remember his previous lifestyle, but he did feel that he used to be awfully busy. That he used to run around with not even time for proper sleep. Because of that, Lucella wasn’t very used to “resting”. But he did feel that these tranquil days were quite pleasant.

“Ruh.”

Kafal drew her face close to Lucella.

She used to sit still in the nest a lot. Most likely, half of the reason was to watch over Lucella, but Lucella also supposed that it was because she didn’t want to expend energy needlessly.

Dragons had huge bodies, so even just staying still expended far more energy compared to humans, to say nothing of moving.

Humans would be able to stock up money, but the food you could obtain in the forest was always ready goods, so stocking up more than necessary would just make them rot. For that reason, Kafal apparently stayed still until growing hungry to save up and efficiently use her energy.

However, there was a huge amount of dried fruits packed in a pot-like boulder that Kafal made with magic.

He tried to dry as much fruit as he could under the sun, but the trees bore almost limitless fruit, so they eventually became overripe and fell down.

The fallen fruit released a peculiar fragrance, and perhaps they had received the energy of the dragon, the Variant magic beasts gathered around to eat them. As those Variants were nearby, Kafal lately stayed in the nest all the time, remaining ever vigilant so Lucella wouldn’t get attacked.

“Oh right, Kafal. Stay still for a moment.”
“Ruh?”

Lucella took out the thing she was hiding in the storage space of their house.

It was something made of hard nut fragments, the most vivid parts of the monster fur, and well-shaped bones, all tied together with intertwined monster fur.

It was about the size of a ‘loose necklace’ in human terms. It looked ethnical or primitive in a way. Lucella used the bumps on Kafal’s body to climb up on her head and put it over her right horn.

He coiled it three-fold around the thick part of its base, and tied it with a vine to make sure it stayed in place.

“There’s nothing I can really do to pay you back, but I feel bad to be constantly on the receiving end. Anything that I can give is probably trivial to a dragon… but I guess something this intricate would be hard to do with the hands of a dragon. How is it? I hope it doesn’t feel irritating, is it? Do dragons even put ornaments on their horns?”

Kafal, being a dragon, already possessed the perfect beauty as a living being as is. There was no need to add anything to it. It needed neither decorations nor any kind of fixing. But still, it felt a little desolate as is.

Kafal tilted her neck to touch the decoration on her horn.

She stoked it a few times with the ball of her finger to confirm the sensation, and then thrust her nose at Lucella.

“Roooooahh…ruuuuh…”
“Waaahhh!”

Lucella got pushed down on the bed of belts and kneaded by Kafal’s nose and licked as a bonus.

“Groaah…”
“Ahaha, I’m glad you’re happy. But please don’t crush me.”