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It had been an hour since Kugutfulm was dyed by the evening glow.

“This… Money?”

Kafal held a coin shining in silver and analyzed it in detail with her slitted brown eyes.

Dragons instinctually liked the treasures and were said to even snatch and gather the gold coins that humans made despite having no real use for them. Kafal, however, was seeing even this silver coin for the first time.

“Yeah. You know what money is, right?”
“Humans… trade… money… for goods. Does… not rot. Easy… to carry. Can… trade… with… unfamiliar… people. With… money… trust… unneeded. Invention… to… strengthen… society.”

Kafal expressed her opinion about money, her understanding was deep despite her poor language handling.

—She is not familiar with human society but grasps the concept really well. As expected, Dragons really are smart.

While Lucella was impressed, Viola seemed like she had something to say about that.

“Is money really something so good? The world gets divided into people with and without money. On top of that, there are even those who resort to murder for money. Isn’t it more like a necessary evil, if anything?”
“Fools… bad. Money… not bad.”
“Well… I suppose that’s true too…”

Kafal’s statement was tinged with a certain nuance.

Rather than a philosophic statement, it felt more like her words contained something akin to irritation.

“Lucella. With this… buy… what?”

Kafal returned the small silver coin to Lucella.

They were having a little break now to fill their stomachs.

Tim headed to the lunch vendor that sold extremely large portions, while Wein went to buy skewers at the stalls. It seemed that they commonly bought seven people’s worth of food and ate with the three of them.

They offered Lucella to buy his share too, but Lucella wanted to eat something different so he declined it.

“Those sandwiches over there.”
“Huh… Those?”

Lucella pointed at the food cart on the outer edge of the fountain square, and Viola’s expression turned bitter even though she wasn’t the one who was going to eat them.

“Are you sane? Why would you buy those sandwiches that are filled with more leaves than meat?”
“That’s what makes them good. I couldn’t eat bread or any delicious, human-made vegetables in the mountains. It’s been nothing but meat and fruit. Delicious they might be, I’m longing for some sandwich now.”
“I see…”

Viola seemed convinced after hearing the reason.

Now that he returned to the civilized world, Lucella really wanted to eat bread and vegetables.

“Kafal… too!”
“…You wanna eat? Actually, can you even eat with that body?”
“No… problem.”

Lucella hadn’t included Kafal in the picture since human portions would be too small for her for one, and even if she could eat it, the one right now was just her clone, but it appeared that she was quite eager to try it.

“What do you wanna eat?”
“Same… as… Lucella. Will… try.”
“Got it.”

It seemed that she didn’t particularly need to eat but just wanted to try eating what Lucella did.

Holding the money, Lucella walked to the middle-aged woman at the stall.

“Give me two portions of ‘vegetable and fish special sandwich’ please.”
“Oh, little lady, is the second one for your mother?”

The stall lady responded amiably.

However, her smile dealt a shocking blow to Lucella, as if someone punched him from an unexpected direction.

“Errr… yes.”

Mother.

That’s what she called Kafal.

The current Lucella and Kafal did resemble each other so much they would be identified as mother and child at a glance. So objectively, they would be thought of as such. In the first place, Kafal had given the name of her daughter to him and raised him.

Lucella did see his current position as the foster child of a dragon. But still, even then. The middle-aged lady in front of him was the first person who referred to Kafal as his mother.

—What the… why do I feel this unfamiliar sense of embarrassment…

Not paying attention to Lucella feeling embarrassed, the lady started making the sandwiches with a hearty smile.

“That’s so admirable. I’ll give you some extra fish as a freebie.”
“T-Thank you…”

With skillful movements, she made two sandwiches packed full of vegetables and pieces of fish.

Lucella received them in a bag and returned with tottering steps, still not fully recovered from the earlier shock.

“I bought it.”
“What… did… human… tell… Lucella?”
“Oh, uhh, nothing bad. Uhh… ‘you’re a good girl to buy for your mother too so I’ll give you some extra’— or something like that.”

Seeing the anxious Kafal, Lucella quickly provided the explanation.

“Good… human.”
“Y-Yeah. Probably.”
“Will go… praise.”
“Don’t! You don’t have to do that!”

Lucella stopped Kafal from going to the stall while acting three times more flustered compared to earlier.

If she did something like that, his face would be set on fire for three days and nights.

“We brought lunch boxes… huh, what are you doing?”
“Motherly love was about to explode.”

The other two came back with this timing, each holding a big wrapping.

The five people (or maybe four people and one dragon) sat at the edge of the big fountain and reached for their respective meals.

“Let’s start then…”

Looking at it again, the sandwich was fairly big.

Or perhaps it was better to say that Lucella’s body had grown smaller now so it looked bigger in his eyes.

He opened his mouth wide and bit into the sandwich spilling with fresh veggies.

“…So good… I never thought I’d find bread and vegetables this delicious…”

The vegetables felt crunchy with a pleasant tinge of bitterness. The bread was soft and wafted the scent of wheat.

It if was grass that was just bitter, you could get as many as you wanted in the mountain, but the vegetables that had their taste adjusted through selective breeding were a product of a civilized society, to say nothing of bread and such.

“By the way, what do you think, Kafal?” Asked Viola who was devouring her lunchbox while sitting with a poor curled posture.

“Strange. This is… new.”

Kafal was eating the sandwich in slow bites as if to confirm its texture and taste.

“Maybe it’s because you’ve never eaten proper cooking? I have heard that dragons sometimes live like human nobles while served by countless monsters…”
“Oh, yeah, the famous Four-Colored Group was like that. They say dragons normally live using human forms.”
“Kafal… different.”
“There are humans that prefer living primitive lives in uncivilized lands, but is Miss Kafal something like a naturalist category among dragons? Because I think it’s quite rare even for independent dragons to be this thorough about it.”

Lucella never thought about the matter this much, but it was certainly true.

Dragons were often considered high-class and noble beings beyond humans.

But their nobility differed in nature—there were some that were known for their graceful wild nature as Legendary Beasts, and there were also civilized ones that lived refined aristocratic lives, interacted with humans, and weaved dramatic tales

Kafal’s way of life was the former.

Indeed, she led a life where she used her fangs and claws to hunt, strip and eat her prey raw and slept under the sky, so she probably didn’t have experience eating properly cooked meals.

“How is it? Does it fit a dragon’s taste?”
“I… don’t know… yet. But… eating… same as… Lucella… happy.”
“…I see.”
“What are you acting all embarrassed for? Oh you~!”

Violla elbowed Lucellla. He could do nothing but continue munching on his sandwich.

But then, when he saw Kafal in the corner of his vision, it felt like his face was brushed by a cold hand.

—Kafal…?

Kafal’s eyes, as she stared at the partly-eaten sandwich, were strangely serious and strangely lonely.