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Translator’s Note: I will be using the male pronoun to refer to Lucella in narration as his mental state is still that of a guy (talks with male pronoun and tone) until the raw clearly refers to him as a girl or shows girly characteristics. For now, the raw intentionally avoids using a pronoun and only uses the name, which doesn’t work in English, so the only other choice would be “they” which doesn’t feel right here.

He was carried to the dragon’s nest, fed meat, and the next thing he realized he was turned into a girl.

No matter how many times he reconfirmed the situation in his head, he still didn’t know what happened.

He didn’t even know why the dragon took Lucella to its nest.

—Lucella. Lucella…

Feels weird. I’m starting to feel like I’ve always had this name…

For some reason, that name just felt right. It was as if his body was forcibly altered so that this name could fit perfectly. Lucella was wondering if being at death’s door was the reason for this confusion.

But soon, a bigger problem showed itself.

“………C-Cold…”

The food only managed to warm Lucella’s body for a moment.

Now he was wrapped in the repulsive cold.

His senses were numbed until just a while ago, but after ingesting food and warming his body, his body finally recognized the fact that it was freezing.

It was still a warm season.

Mountains normally grew colder the higher you climbed, but this mountain was relatively short and had abundant vegetation, so that shouldn’t have been the cause.

And yet, it was cold. Lucella felt as if he had fallen into a pile of snow.

His body was burning as if it was set ablaze. But he felt cold instead.

“U-Ugh…”

Lucella curled up his body above the bed of foliage. He wanted to make sure as little heat escaped as possible. Naturally, it was only as effective as a droplet on a hot stone.

His fangs didn’t align together and the molars were making a rattling sound.

“…Grrrr…”

The dragon drew its face closer to Lucella and observed him. It rubbed its nose on him to get a reaction, but Lucella had no time to react to it. He was busy curling his body to endure the cold.

He didn’t have a coat or a blanket to protect his body from the cold, so the only way to resist it was to curl up.

“Grrr….rrr…”

The dragon seemed to have murmured something.

The next moment, it felt like flames were poured into Lucella’s mouth. An incomprehensible amount of energy was being poured into the body.

—Is this…magic…?

Lucella remembered receiving recovery magic several times in his life as a human.

This felt similar to that sensation… but it was incomparably more powerful.

Dragons were monsters with immense magical powers. What would happen if one such dragon used its power to cast magic on a human?

The answer was, it would most likely bring life back even into someone at death’s door.

I see now, Lucella thought.

The fact that his wound was gone, as well as the fact that he was alive, must have been all thanks to the healing magic of this dragon.

But magic wasn’t some kind of miraculous power that could create something from nothing.

Rather, Lucella’s condition was so bad that he was at death’s door even after being cast in such magic. He really was in such a state that he should be dead.

After being cast that spell, Lucella’s breathing improved a little. His body still continued to shiver, but the shadow of death seemed to grow a bit more distant.

The dragon lay next to Lucella and winded its long neck, taking Lucella’s body in as it curled up.

Its neck, which was covered in fine scales, gently pressed down on Lucella’s back.

“…So warm…”

As he wondered what was happening, Lucella’s back started to warm up as if it was exposed to the warmth of the fire.

The dragon raised a bellow-like voice as it breathed.

Flame bits escaped from its mouth adorned with fangs.

When you thought of what represented dragons best, it would be the powerful breath they could spew from their mouths. Their flame breath that could burn down anything was the target of fear.

But this dragon was instead revolving the flames in its throat to warm Lucella up. Though Lucella himself only realized that fact much later…

In the first place, if a dragon tried to warm up its egg with its giant body it could end up crushing it, and its thick carapace and scales made it hard to transfer the body heat too.

Their throats, however, had relatively thinner scales, and they could also heat it up at will by passing a flame breath through it.

For that reason, dragons that could use the flame breath sometimes used their throats to warm up their eggs or hatchlings.

As the coldness tormenting his body abated, Lucella started to feel like it was bothersome to even think.

Thus, he fell into a slumber as if sinking into a marsh.