Leave a comment

A loud sound shook the mountain.

“…Roooooooaaaaarrrr…”

The soldiers trembled with fear from the dreadful tune akin to the wind blowing through a cave.

“W-What was that? That wasn’t a dragon, right?”
“Calm down you all. We’re on Mount Kuguse. It’s not strange to hear monsters around. The exterminators protect our encampment, so stop fearing. If you start trembling and lose mobility, you’ll end up as the dragon’s food all the more.”

Spoke the knight commanding the soldiers.

They had bound the dragon to the ground and were supporting the aerial battle with magical arms. If the soldiers started making mistakes in agitation the dragon hunt could end in failure.

However, the Variants had already decreased in number and they hardly ever approached the dragon’s nest anyway.

And there were finely selected hunters standing by to hunt the dragon when it fell down, so even if the monsters found their way here, they could just scare them away.

…But that plan crumbled away the moment he saw adventurers noisily rolling out of the bushes.

“Adventurers?! You b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲s̲, this place is off-lim-”
“Run! It’s dangerous! Actually, help us pleaseee!”
“What?!”

Following that, abnormally deformed monsters started flooding out, and in an abnormally excited state at that.

“GROAAAAAR!!”
“A-Aaaagghhh?!”

Several soldiers were instantly turned into bloody lumps of meat by the fangs and claws of the bests.

This unexpected abnormality threw both the soldiers and the knights into confusion faster than they could feel fear.

“What the?!”
“Variants are attacking!”
“What are the exterminators doing!”
“Why are there so many?!”

Even a single Variant was strong enough to be beyond a normal person.

But now, there were at least ten of them. No, there were still more— there were sounds and presences of more things coming toward them while toppling trees and bushes along their way.

The soldiers here had no way of knowing it, but the exterminators that were guarding them while standing by had already fled in defeat. Even if they were strong warriors, they had no hope of taking on this number of Variants at the same time.

“Move! Move!”
“Aagh! Don’t come heree!!”
“Gyaaaahhh!”

Even as the monsters chased the fleeing adventurers, they still attacked anything in their path due to their excited states in every possible way.

They bit, they crashed, they tore. They spewed flames, dropped magical lightning, and spit acid.

The surroundings quickly turned into a scene of hell. The adventurers were running about like drunk bees, so everyone around was getting rolled up into the monsters’ rampage.

“S̲h̲i̲t̲, the dragon!”

They finally noticed it once someone screamed.

The stakes that were binding the dragon to the ground had been turned useless, either mowed down and rooted out or melted and rotted by the acids.

Being freed from her restraints, the dragon flapped her wings with all her might despite the harpoons and chains still dangling from her wings.

“GROOOOAAARRR…!”

The sky flared up.

Her claws and tail danced in the air as she spread her breath around, mowing down three hippogriff riders coiling around her with one shot.

The dragon hunters got wrapped in flames and also started to withdraw.

“It’s a lost cause, run!”
“Where do we even run?!”
“You b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲, you stepped on my foot!”
“Moooomyyyy!!”

The ground units could no longer support the aerial fight either.

Amidst the instinctual rampage of powerful monsters, those that barely survived threw down their weapons and ran away.

They failed to even realize that the adventurers had disappeared somewhere during all this.

“We did it…!”
“Haha! That’s how you do it!”

The four of them were overlooking the situation from a little distant elevated point.

Once they led the Variants there, they used Viola’s teleportation magic to lose them by taking distance, and by erasing their smell, they also erased the stimulant they had been scattering on their way, so the monsters had switched their target to those present on the scene.

As a result, the ground unit that had caught Kafal was destroyed.

“Lucella!”

They heard a familiar voice from behind.

“Kafal, are you okay?!”

Kafal’s clone with a flaming red dress stood there.

The battle was still ongoing in the sky, but she had prioritized creating a clone and coming here over finishing the battle.

She was in dismay and worried for Lucella as if she had witnessed the ruin of the worst kind.

“Why… come. Dangerous. Human… kingdom. Lucella… will be seen… as enemy too…”
“Don’t say something like that. I came because I wanted to save you… That’s all there is to it.”

If Lucella fought with a human kingdom, he would no longer be able to stay in human society.

Yes, Kafal was worried about that. However, it was a needless worry.

“Thank you. For telling me to run when you were in a life-or-death situation. I… now understand that you value me more than yourself.”
“Lucella…”

Lucella looked at the thing he was holding.

It was an ornament made out of hard shells of nuts, the most vivid parts of a monster’s skin, and well-shaped bones.

It has gotten torn, scattered, and stepped on during the chaos, so many parts were broken.

The horn ornament that Lucella gifted Kafal. Or what used to be that horn ornament. It probably fell off her horn during the battle. It had fallen at that place, and he picked it up.

“Tim. You said that adventurers have their own way of fighting, right?”
“Y-Yeah.”

Lucella spoke with a hoarse voice akin to a burning hammer hitting the steel.

“Then from here on it would be a dragon’s fight! Screw the laws and kingdoms! We don’t need humans! I’ll let them experience it firsthand… what happens to fools who lay waste to our domain!!”

Lucella’s eyes were filled with tears, not even knowing whether it was from anger or sadness.